“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” – John 15:18 (New International Version)

Nicole D. Hayes, Founder, Voices Against the Grain

Since the moment you asked Jesus Christ to be yours and He made you His, you’ve had a target on your back.  Make no mistake: your enemy Satan hates you. The very fact that you are a mouthpiece, a living testimony of our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, moving throughout the earth empowering and equipping other believers, you have stirred your greatest adversary to seek your destruction. 1 Peter 5:8 says “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” (New International Version). Don’t believe the devil is real? Enter a room speaking love and correction where occupants are backbiting and gossiping. Lift up the name of Jesus in a non-believing environment. Note the atmosphere shift. Stand up to illegal activities and injustices. Call popular worldly and accepted norms ungodly. Hold the unaccountable accountable. Note how many slip a Valentine’s Day card into your shoebox.  🙂 We don’t typically move into these spaces with people greeting us with arms wide open.

As a Christian, you’ve been called specifically to bring light, restoration and truth to areas of darkness that the enemy has long and comfortably occupied. You are shaking up and reclaiming this territory for God’s Kingdom. We enter the fight knowing we will face attacks head-on presented by our adversary. Satan will seek to discourage us so we won’t move. He knows every time we move in God, life and light is put forth and swallows up darkness.

The devil does not want us to do anything that brings people closer to God. We are proxy authorities—we don’t always perfectly represent God, but we are growing in our authority and as special missionaries of God. Satan can only work with our imperfections, but he doesn’t know what the Spirit of God is doing. We’ve been appointed by God. 

The good news: You belong in the space God has sent you to occupy. God has made you worthy. God’s decisions are flawless, irrevocable. God’s election of His people is irrevocable. Stay staunch!

If you do not have such an adversary, you have a greater problem: If you’re not operating in the true freedom, peace and abundant life which are some of the blessings of being a co-worker with Christ, then you’ve been comfortably lulled into being a co-worker with Satan, whose counterfeit offerings of “freedom” will enslave and wreck you.  As Jesus said in John 10:9-10, “Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” (The Message Bible)