God Is Mad But Satan Is Madder

A friend of mine in Phoenix just told me that he thinks God is mad at us. This is true, but not exactly why Katrina, etc has happened.

I believe God is fed up with us, but I know that Satan HATES us, and passionately. His time is short, and you know how it is when you have a deadline. He has only so much time to kill, steal and destroy.

Go to the story of Job, the oldest book in the bible, to understand what I am saying.

Satan has the gall to go before the throne of God. People of God - can you see this? We don't even have the guts to go before the throne, but Satan, the perfect idiot,perfectly evil and going before a Holy God, just walks right in. He goes there and he complains. God points to Job and says, "isn't he wonderful? He is a blameless man." Satan says, "yeh, because you protect him. He has a hedge around him."

The point of what happens next is that Job is so righteous, even with everything taken away, he still loves God.

God took away the hedge. Well, that was for a blameless man. Satan goes before the Lord everyday and says, "look at the Americans - awash in sexual immorality and greed. And pride - oh! Aren't you disgusted with them?"

Now, our sins are the work of the devil - he is the author of sin and puts pressure on to sin. But, we are responsible for the truth of the cross - Jesus gave us authority over the devil. If we allow the devil to continue his destruction, it is still our fault.

God has said, "Ok, the hedge is down." That is all. God is a patient, forbearing, merciful God. Even while angry, HE is not inclined to immediately strike out at us. The striking out - the passionate hate displayed in 9/11 - comes from the devil and his servants.

Satan cannot wait to strike out at us. How long can God go on protecting us? We are denying Him. Next, the fatal choice will be to remove "In God We Trust" from our currency.

I was in York, England in 1989, on a month-long visit. Just before I got there the York Minster (the cathedral) had been struck by lightning and there was a terrible fire. The story was that the Arch-bishop the Arch-diocese ot the Arch-somebody (the arch-enemy) had just made a declaration that Jesus was not actually God in the flesh (the bible calls that the spirit of the anti-Christ!) Again, the hedge went down and Satan struck.

When we are struck by the devil because of a door we opened, the good news is that consequences teach us that we are doing something wrong. How else would we know?

Many of us are not down on our knees repenting and reaching out to God until everything has collapsed. I am no different. I'm just lucky that I collapsed about 13 years ago.

The real problem is that God's people in America have been mush - cowards and pathetic, driven by the spirit of striving and religion. We have allowed Satan's people who permeate our land to take over. It is time to rise up oh ye soldiers of the Lord.

In the story of Job, he says that the thing he feared came upon him. So, religious preachers then say that he sinned in being afraid instead of trusting God. How can you pervert such a story just to support your works-driven righteousness philosophy? God clearly states that Job is blameless. His friends come to him after he has been struck and say that he must have sinned. He passionately refutes this. The whole point of the story is that a blameless man was struck by the devil - because that is not the norm.

One good preacher explained that Job was afraid for his sons. He had been making sacrifices for their sins because they weren't doing it on their own. He feared for their safety and when Satan struck, they were immediately killed.

Satan does cause weather. He has been called the god of this world. he has a certain degree of power over the earth. As Pat Robertson said, we truly can stop hurricanes. But first, they come without warning. Second, I can stop Satan's power in my life or in the life of the innocent young ones who are not yet accountable to God. I cannot stop Satan for members of my family who refuse to listen to wisdom. I cannot stop Satan with regards to my fellow countrymen who continue to reject God.

I take that back. I do come against Satan for my family and for my countrymen. Every city that I come to is an opportunity to find out what the spiritual strongholds and problems are. if God shows me something, I do fight the principalities that wage war against the people of that place. Because Jesus said, "father forgive them, they know not what they do," and much of what the devil is doing is not seen.

It's just that there is a limit to my own authority when it's someone else's life.

Another good preacher also explained, about the story of Job, that now we know about the devil, unlike Job. Now we have all the armor that Ephesians 6 talks about and gifts of the Holy Spirit to fight him with, so we are not vulnerable as he was. There is no longer any reason why we have to get beat up by the devil, if we know our enemy and we know how to fight, we can live in victory! This is part of what makes the good news (gospel) the good news.

Now in May of 2007, I read this and there are so many questions and things to add to this. I was this big authority on fighting the devil. Now I'm not so confident. I was traveling and binding principalities and powers over cities as I went, something that good teachers had already told me not to do. I was escaping places because they were evil, like my own city (Minneapolis) something I had already learned not to do. I had learned to escape into Christ. I was, in essence, living in pride. I was above other people, looking down from my higher position of spirituality.

So, I've been humbled, and in this humbled place I find I am not so harassed or bothered by the devil. So, God's words make sense when he said to submit to Him, then resist the devil. I paid a price when I was running away from evil rather than facing it: I lost my two precious cats. If I had stayed in Minneapolis rather than fled to New Mexico, passing through Texas, I wouldn't have had the car accident and lost my cats. It stings. I miss Tubby and Bonita, but I've learned, and they are alive. That's what matters.