In his devotional for today- “The Enemy’s Secret Strategy”(Link NLA)-John Bevere says the following about the goal of our enemy Satan to marginalize Christians:
Hollywood, religious people, and our culture have painted a warped and limited image of God’s people. What is the distortion? We have an enemy named Satan, who is called “the ruler of this world,” “the prince of the power of the air,” and “the god of this world.” He influences the world’s systems and sways the minds of those who do not belong to God. He has fallen angels and demons to help carry out his grand strategy.
The sad fact is that too often the church has limited Satan’s chief strategy to certain behaviors, like trying to get people to drink alcohol or watch sex scenes in movies. He’s much more crafty than that and uses a wide variety of snares and diversions. We’ve missed his primary purpose. Because what he fears most is Christians discovering who God’s made them to be—extraordinary people with abilities to carry out remarkable and unusual feats. This should be the image society has of Christians.
Response: You can see this everywhere in America today and particularly in Europe and the UK. Christianity is being marginalized and most of the time falsely identified with a couple of ‘far right’ issues now considered out of the mainstream.
However, the reality is that when accurate polls are taken Christians are still the real mainstream in this country but a great delusion is reining over this land and the Western world. Christians have allowed the enemy and in some ways have helped him to redefine and marginalize the church.
The media now portrays Christians as mean, angry, and judgmental folk who care more about their antiquated beliefs than about people.
We are living in times where what is ‘good’ is now sometimes considered bad in this society and what is scripturally ‘bad’ is now the goals of many. Nevertheless we should let our lights shine in the darkness and do everything we can to make life better for ourselves and those we come in contact everyday.
Christians need to accurately portray the gospel and the Kingdom in our everyday lives blessing everyone who comes in contact with us—this puts the lie to how our enemy defines Christians and breaks through the deception and prevailing delusion.
May we let the Holy Spirit enliven us and let us become the example and face of Christ in a fallen and deluded world.