Today’s war is fought in the heart. That is where the deep fake happens. Satan confuses our minds, he makes us doubt the truth, and then he gets us talking to ourselves so that we create an emotional narrative. We stop thinking logically. Emotions drive our words, our beliefs, and our actions if we are not careful.
I’ll give you an example: dating relationships. Some of us are dating right now, it’s hard! Maybe you’ve even tried online dating. That’s a prime opportunity for a Deep Fake! Did you ever go on a date and someone misrepresented themselves? Others of us, we’ve dated in the past. I’ll wager nearly all of us, at some point, were in a bad dating relationship. And yet, many of us probably stayed in the relationship longer than we should have. We didn’t want to break up. Why? Because it is emotional!
Have you ever heard of someone who tried to break up with someone logically, “I’ll send you a meeting invite with the subject—break up conversation.” Imagine you did that. And then imagine the person showed up and you said, “Ok, let’s look at this logically … I have 5 reasons why we shouldn’t see each other anymore.” And then imagine the other person says, “That makes good logical sense. Best wishes!” You shake hands and leave.
NOOO! Emotions are so powerful most of us opt for the “it’s not you … it’s me routine!” My point is we make bad decisions because emotions capture our hearts. And Satan knows this—spiritual warfare is not just a battle for minds, it is battle for our hearts. And here is the truth: if we don’t stop Satan’s lies in our MINDS, by the time they get to our hearts they are harder to dislodge. The narrative is emotionally wedged in there and it is hard to let go. Here is the great lie Satan tells and we believe:
LIE: It doesn’t matter if it is true, it feels good.
If you lived during the modern era, your key question was this: Is it true? In our post-modern world, the key question we are asking is this: will it make me happy? Happiness is the goal, it doesn’t matter if it is true. Satan uses the world’s message to entice our flesh and pull us away from God. That’s the goal. What device does he use?
SATAN’S DEVICE = “Arrows”
What are his arrows? In their book, Sacred Romance, John Eldredge and Brent Curtis introduce the idea that our lives are a grant story, with an enemy. The way this enemy, Satan, attacks us is by lodging arrows in our hearts. This is manifested in the “sentences that we live by …” What are the sentences that you live by? We all have them:
- “No one respects me.” During your early years, perhaps your parents never listened to you and you started to believe you were not worthy of respect.
- “I’m not beautiful.” No one affirmed you when you were younger, so you started to believe you were ugly and no one would ever want to be with you.
- “If you want it done right you have to do it yourself.” Somewhere along the way you learned the you can’t trust anyone. So you’ve closed yourself off from everyone in a deep way.
What is your sentence? We all have them. Somewhere along the way, someone spoke to us and their words placed a thought in our minds and it made it’s way to our hearts. Without the breastplate of righteousness, we were unprotected and our heart was wounded. And if the devils attacks reach the core of our being, our hearts, he can influence to live with guilt, fear, anxiety, depression and discouragement. Is anyone living there today? What wounds are you carrying today? I imagine, at some level, Satan has used those wounds to cause confusion and chaos in your life. And he loves it!
If that is you today, I want to encourage you to get up and fight back. I want to invite you to focus on the breastplate of righteous right now, put it on! It is the protection and healing that your heart needs today. Because I want to remind you that the battle has already been won.
