The Devil: Is He for Real? Why Does God Let Him Hang Around?

THE DEVIL, OUR ancient enemy, really exists. Jesus talked about him a lot. The Catechism emphasizes the reality of this fallen angel, who is interested in interfering with the adventure of love we are called to live:

And the devil knows the truth…that God is faithful, that divine grace will never fail us. The devil knows that he cannot obstruct the flow of God’s grace at its source. He can, however, clog up the channels by which we normally receive that grace. He can confuse and distract the minds and hearts to which God’s grace is directed, turning us into bad receivers, bad cooperators, irresponsible partners. This is his strategy.

And our ancient enemy has powerful allies: the fallen world (all the corrupting and wounding influences that come from the proliferation of sin in human society and culture) and our fallen human nature (our own internal divisions and insecurities that make us vulnerable to temptation). Because of these, we have built-in tendencies that continually nudge us away from God’s grace and disturb the spiritual docility needed for that grace to be fruitful in our lives. St. John refers to these negative influences when he warns the early Christians:

Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world.” (1 John 2:15–16)

The fallen world in which we live—though good in its essence because it was created by God—can be a snare for us fallen human beings. This is why the Church has never ceased to remind us that the spiritual life is, at least in part, also a spiritual combat:

Therefore man is split within himself. As a result, all of human life, whether individual or collective, shows itself to be a dramatic struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness… The whole of man’s history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battle- field man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.*

An Interior Battle

This spiritual combat doesn’t happen with guns and swords and tanks and missiles. It takes place much more subtly, often invisibly, in the intimate arena of human freedom. It has to do with our daily choices, whether large or small. It has to do with how we use the gift of free will that we have received.

God, as well as our better self, wants us to use that freedom to choose, step after step, the path of union and friendship with Christ, the path of abundant life, the path of obedience to his wise and loving plan for the human family: “I came sp that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd” (John 10:10–11).

Our enemy and our fallen nature, on the other hand, want us to use our free will in order to choose a different path, a path strewn with false promises (that we can somehow be fulfilled without God, for instance) and false ideas about God and ourselves (we are unloveable, God is untrustworthy, holiness is beyond our reach, it’s not worth trying anymore, etc.).

This path often appears to offer easier and quicker access to happiness, but in fact it leads to interior disintegration and emptiness, because the devil is “a murderer…a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44, RSV) and because sin always has evil consequences: “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23, RSV).

Spiritual combat is the ongoing battle between these contrary forces: Which will we choose to follow? St. Peter sums it up vividly in his first letter.

First, he points out our need to be watchful:

Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith…

And then he reminds us that our vigilance should never be harsh and desperate, but calm and joyful, even when it’s hard, because God is with us:

The God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory through Christ [Jesus] will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you after you have suffered a little. (1 Peter 5:8–10)

Sometimes our choices are stark and obvious, as when the Israelites abandoned God in the wilderness by worshipping the golden calf, or when David laid his life on the line by going out to face Goliath.

Yet, although some individual choices may be stark, the process by which we make those choices is complex. We arrive at big-decision moments with a predisposition for self-giving or self-centeredness, for docility or resistance to God’s action in our lives. The gradual formation of that pre-disposition is the real, day-to-day spiritual battleground. The predisposition is built up from many little, seemingly insignificant choices that gradually fill in our spiritual profile: choices about how we spend our time; whom we befriend; what we say and how we say it; and how we react to unforeseen opportunities, difficulties, or temptations.

Through the exercise of our free will in the little choices we make, we are either furthering Christ’s kingdom and growing in spiritual maturity, or we are inhibiting that kingdom and stunting our spiritual growth. As Jesus put it:

The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trust- worthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. (Luke 16:10)

Small Battles Prepare Us for Bigger Battles

Jesus illustrated the relationship between the many small choices that pre- pare us for bigger decisions by using a construction image. He likened the spiritual life to the construction of a house. We build gradually, through choices in or out of harmony with his wisdom. Then comes a storm, a stark choice, a big decision, a decisive temptation. Our response to the storm is conditioned by all the small choices that went into building up our spiritual edifice:

Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who lis- tens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined. (Matthew 7:24–27)

Spiritual Responsibility

Before he became bishop and then pope, St. John Paul II was known for his wise advice in the confessional. But he was also known for the delicate respect he showed to those who came to confession. After helping them sort through their confusion and their trouble, and after identifying some possible next steps, he would always say, “But now it is up to you; you must choose.”

Once we surrender to the Lordship of messiah Jesus, we obtain the same power in us that raised Jesus from the dead.

satan is a created being. The Holy spirit lives within us, we have the power to call out satan and his minions.

Once you realize that God is NOT mad at us and by receiving the free gift of grace, we defeat any power satan has over our lives.

God knows we are sinners...it is our nature. You don't have to teach a child to steal or lie, you have to teach a child not to steal or lie. This is the reason Jesus came.

All of God's fury, wrath, punishment, separation was poured out on the spotless lamb of God...Jesus. It is finished!

We do not have to EARN our way to heaven. As we receive his grace, promises, wisdom, we begin to transform our lives because of our love for a faithful and loving God.

Praise to the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ the righteous.

I have met satan, but I have also met Jesus and Michael. I chose the winning side and satan could not harm me. I do not care to meet him again. But if I do, that’s ok as my strength is in my weakness or emptiness that allows the Holy Spirit to work through me.

I used to do a lot of exorcism work. Most dark spirits are merely misguided people who died and carried so much fear, anger, hatred, or jealousy that they could not go to Heaven.

satan and his minions recruit these spirits and manipulate them with fear. The great lie he uses to manipulate them is that the Light will kill them and they must avoid it at all cost or they will die. These earthbound dark spirits attach to people without them knowing it and influence them for the attached spirits benefit of the human experience. They drive people to become drug addicts, alcoholics, sex addicts.... you name it as it relates to the pleasures of the flesh.

Since there is a hierarchy in the dark realm just as there is in the Angels of the Light, I would call in the dark spirits superior or commander and proceed to redeem it with Love & Light. After working my way up the ranks to the top commanders and redeeming them, I would have them call out to all the dark spirits under their command. One night when doing this there were thousands of balls of light, each one with a dark spirit in it, all connected like a DNA strand of beads spiraling upward.

Suddenly the room got freezing cold like a blast freezer. That’s what it is like when you are around a powerful demon as they suck energy from you. satan had come to confront me himself. I turned to Michael and said, “There he is, you can get him.” To which Michael replied, “It’s not time yet.”

At that moment I realized that: 1. God is in control. 2. Everything is unfolding according to God’s planned timetable, 3. God is using satan for a purpose.

God is using satan to get rid of the old to make room for the new. It’s the reason you can’t put new wine in an old wine-skin or patch an old garment with new cloth. When we are full of ourselves we have no room for God.

God is using satan to plow the soil to remove the old growth so there is room for the new seeds to sprout and grow.

After that night, I no longer had a need to declare war on satan as I know God is in control. I still deal with his minions when I encounter them, but do not go looking for them.

Recently I was working with a thirty year old schizophrenic man who was dealing with a dark spirit that was tormenting him and taking control of him by destabilizing his negative emotions. Each time they guy would come to me, the spirit would leave and then return as soon as the schizophrenic man left my presence. The second visit I figured out what the wound was in his soul that caused him the fear that was blocking him from the experience of Love. I have never met anyone with so much horizontal energy. The foundation of his soul was like Swiss cheese, it had so many holes in it. The man was psychic beyond belief as I could think of him and work on him from many miles away and he would feel it and call me. He did this many times.

The wound in his soul was caused by his parents getting divorced when he was two years old and he blamed himself for the fighting between his parents and the emotional pain of all involved.

Since the two year old blamed himself, he thought he deserved to be punished to remove his guilt. Thus he reversed his emotional subconscious reward/punishment system to where he was positively stimulated by criticism and negatively stimulated by praise. (I find this same pattern in every person with cancer, MS, ALS and all auto-immune disorders. ) It appears that the allosteric enzymes in the liver work to inhibit the immune system as a subconscious punishment as I always feel a hot burning sensation in the bottom of the liver in these folks and it goes away when the wound is healed.

Bottom line is, yes satan is real, but so is Jesus and God. You make the choice which team you are on. Even if you pick the losers, eventually you will realize your mistake and like the tax collectors and prostitutes you can be redeemed.

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