Daily Reading
Weaving a Story
God and Satan each have a design, a battle plan, to capture our heart’s devotion.
The intimacy, beauty, and adventure of the Sacred Romance are placed and nurtured in the deepest longings of our heart by God himself. God’s grand strategy, birthed in his grace toward us in Christ, and nurtured through the obedience of disciplined faith, is to release us into the redeemed life of our heart, knowing it will lead us back to him even as the North Star guides a ship across the vast unknown surface of the ocean.
If we were to find ourselves living with total freedom, Jesus informs us through his summary of the law in Luke 10:26–28, we would find ourselves loving God with all of our heart and our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus said further, “You will know the truth [me], and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
The enemy knows this as well and his strategy to capture us is simply the opposite: to disconnect us from our heart and the heart of God toward us by any means possible. It is what he no doubt had to do to his own heart to bear the loss of heaven. Milton captures this terrible picture in earlier lines from Paradise Lost as Satan tries to speak to his fallen legions: “Thrice he assay’d [tried to speak], and thrice in spite of scorn, Tears such as angels weep burst forth.”
Before Satan could become a true citizen of hell, he had to kill the desires of his own heart. He did it with scorn and much scorn was required. And this is his strategy with each of us: to kill the desire that would eventually lead us back to the One who loves us, using all the forms of shame, contempt, apathy, anesthesia, and perversion at his disposal.
The core of Satan’s plan for each of us is not found in tempting us with obvious sins like shoplifting or illicit sex. These things he uses more as maintenance strategies. His grand tactic in separating us from our heart is to sneak in as the Storyteller through our fears and the wounds we have received from life’s Arrows. He weaves a story that becomes our particular “Message of the Arrows.”
Want More? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today
The intimacy, beauty, and adventure of the Sacred Romance are placed and nurtured in the deepest longings of our heart by God himself. God’s grand strategy, birthed in his grace toward us in Christ, and nurtured through the obedience of disciplined faith, is to release us into the redeemed life of our heart, knowing it will lead us back to him even as the North Star guides a ship across the vast unknown surface of the ocean.
If we were to find ourselves living with total freedom, Jesus informs us through his summary of the law in Luke 10:26–28, we would find ourselves loving God with all of our heart and our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus said further, “You will know the truth [me], and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
The enemy knows this as well and his strategy to capture us is simply the opposite: to disconnect us from our heart and the heart of God toward us by any means possible. It is what he no doubt had to do to his own heart to bear the loss of heaven. Milton captures this terrible picture in earlier lines from Paradise Lost as Satan tries to speak to his fallen legions: “Thrice he assay’d [tried to speak], and thrice in spite of scorn, Tears such as angels weep burst forth.”
Before Satan could become a true citizen of hell, he had to kill the desires of his own heart. He did it with scorn and much scorn was required. And this is his strategy with each of us: to kill the desire that would eventually lead us back to the One who loves us, using all the forms of shame, contempt, apathy, anesthesia, and perversion at his disposal.
The core of Satan’s plan for each of us is not found in tempting us with obvious sins like shoplifting or illicit sex. These things he uses more as maintenance strategies. His grand tactic in separating us from our heart is to sneak in as the Storyteller through our fears and the wounds we have received from life’s Arrows. He weaves a story that becomes our particular “Message of the Arrows.”
Want More? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today