test time

When we experience spiritual attacks (in various forms, including discouragement, sickness, loss, and demonic oppression), we often interpret it in one of two ways:

1. I must be doing something right– the enemy must be irritated that I’m getting closer to God and doing what He wants.
2. I must be doing something wrong– the enemy must have a legal right to do this to me because I probably have unconfessed sin or have been cursed, and I’ve might have lost God’s favor because I may have displeased Him.

These two responses reflect pride and self-condemnation, respectively. Which one is correct? Are either of them necessarily right or wrong?

Let’s take a look at number 1. Yes, Satan sometimes tries to snatch away what God has planted (Mark 4:15), stop us from doing Kingdom work, as he did with the Apostle Paul (1 Thess. 2: 17-18), and divert our attention away from what God is doing, as when Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (Matthew 16: 21-23). But this doesn’t mean that spiritual attacks are always an indicator that we’re “on the right track.” Sometimes, spiritual attacks are tied to our disobedience.

Nebuchadnezzar was driven mad to the point of acting like an animal because he failed to heed the warning to “Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed” (Dan.4:27). Saul lost his anointing to be king due to his disobedience (1 Sam. 15), and when he became jealous of David, whom the LORD anointed to replace him as king, God sent an evil spirit on him (1 Sam.18:10). Later, Saul was told that he and his sons would die due to yet another act of disobedience (1 Sam. 27). In 2 Chronicles 18 and 1 Kings 22, God allowed a lying spirit to speak to false prophets that would lead King Ahab to his death at Ramoth Gilead. None of these men were “on the right track.”

I do see where interpretation number 1 might have stemmed from: when we draw near to God, His holiness and His light shines on us and often reveals areas of our own lives that perhaps we’ve tried to keep hidden in darkness (1 John 1: 5-10). In this sense, drawing near to God can stir up our own junk, which may have enemy attachments to them, but rather than view this as a spiritual attack, it might be more helpful to see it as part of the sanctification process– it’s part of throwing off “everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” in order to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Heb 12:1).

As for interpretation number 2– does everyone who undergoes a spiritual attack have unconfessed sin or a curse? Does the enemy always need a legal right to harass someone?

Did Satan have a legal right to torment Job?

One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”

Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”

Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. (Job 1: 6-12)

God said that Job was “blameless and upright” and “shuns evil,” yet Satan took everything but his life away from him– and only with the LORD’s permission. Sometimes, spiritual attacks are allowed in order to test us, and James 1:2-3 exhorts us to “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”

The next time you experience a spiritual attack, rather than react with pride (“I must be doing something right”) or self-condemnation (“I must be doing something wrong”), instead ask the LORD, “what are You doing in the midst of all this? What are You trying to show me? Is there something I can do to become more like Christ? How can I grow as a result of this?”

By reframing it this way, we take the focus off of the enemy and off of ourselves, and we shift it to God– where it should have been all along.

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