Satan's Strategy to Curse Christ's Congregation

Introduction:
Satan Hates Christ and His Bride

Have you ever experienced pain and heartache in a church you have been a part of? Have you ever seen an abusive, unfaithful, power-seeking, self-serving leader of the church? Have you ever seen immature, selfish, biblically illiterate people oust a godly, dedicated, faithful pastor or elder? Have you ever witnessed a leadership team of a church that has great ideas that could help the body of Christ reach more people for Christ yet those ideas are stifled and set aside by people who hold the majority of sway or political votes in the church body? Have you ever been hurt by a church body and church leadership because the organism strayed from the biblical mission of making disciples in, by, and through love to become something more like a corporate business that has to gather enough monetary resources to support its operational expenses?

If you answered yes to one or more of those questions above then this book may be a great aid to either your spiritual healing or to your overall spiritual growth. Psalms 11:3 shares the essence of this book. The verse asks a simple yet profound question. It reads: “if the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do?” Over the past seventeen or so years of ministry I have come to the conclusion that many of the problems that surface within the spiritual organism known as the church develop due to an erosion, misunderstanding, or rejection of some basic foundational principles. The body of Christ and the local manifestations of that in local bodies within geographical regions is no exception to the importance of proper foundations.

Many problems we face in the family, among the church body, or even in the political or public sector remain unresolved because the approach we use to confront these problems never looks beyond the surface to evaluate the core issue—the root, so to speak—that leads to the problems. In the field of medicine we call this treating the symptoms of a sickness but not the cause of the illness.

Likewise, in the spiritual world billions of people across the globe, and millions of people in America, confess the name of Christ and gather together in spiritual organisms known as local churches. It is here where Satan seeks to devour, divide, and destroy the precious people of Christ. Satan’s first goal is always to replace God so he himself will be worshipped as God (Isa. 14:12-16; Ezek. 28:11-17; Matt. 4:8-10). He unites his coalition of demons with a master plan to do all that is possible to distract people from God and turn their hearts and minds towards anything other than God, the supreme sovereign who alone deserves to be worshipped.

Satan’s mission is an effort to undermine God’s mission of spreading his glory throughout the universe. But by the sovereign grace of God people from around the globe experience the effective grace of God which leads them to life and faith in the Lord Jesus (Eph. 2:1-10). This experience radically turns people by their very nature towards the Lord of the universe.

But therein is where Satan’s second most essential strategy remains. Once a person believes in Christ, Satan’s next goal is to make that person ineffective in his or her spiritual journey. To accomplish this, Satan targets the believer as well as any leaders of that believer who seek to mature the infants in Christ into mature saints. In this second goal Satan uses a multiplicity of various plans to do all he can to lead the established spiritual organism, the church, into either apostasy or anarchy. In my years of service to Christ I have seen this tragedy occur in the lives of many people. Many good, loving, intelligent, and faithful men have entered ministry only to be broken, humiliated, abused, and discouraged in the work of Christ due to the people living in spiritual anarchy. This anarchy among the body, and sometimes even within the leadership team, damages the whole organism and undermines the progress of God’s love spreading to those who need discipleship.

When Satan accomplishes either or both of those objectives, anarchy and/or apostasy, he can still fulfill much of his first goal by undermining the glory, goodness, and grandness of God. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer stated this about Satan’s work against God and his children:

The enmity of Satan is not only toward the person of God from whom he has everything to fear, but also toward every true child of God. Too much emphasis cannot be placed on this fact. Satan has no controversy or warfare with his own unregenerate people, but there is abundant Scripture to prove that he makes unceasing effort to mar the life and service of believers. In his efforts to undermine the glory of God in the church, Satan strikes at three key areas: (a) he opposes the faith (Scripture, doctrine, trust) of the believer; (b) he does all he can to destroy the hope and power of the collective body of believers (organizational as well as mind and heart unity), and (c) he does all he can to undermine the bonds of love among the body and leadership (the leaders and followers). In these areas Satan damages the glory of God within the local regions where God’s faith, hope, and love is to be spread in the ultimate mission of making disciples in Christ (Matt. 28:18-