Are You Deceived?

Can the Devil read your mind?

Scripture is loaded with references to God knowing our thoughts, both human thinking at large and in detail with you personally. You might wonder whether He has granted that power to any of His staff. Is it something in the nature of being elohim?

There is no clinical answer. Even saying God can read your mind is symbolic of something more substantial than mere data floating around in our heads. God knows our hearts, too. Perhaps a better image is that our bodies are broadcasting thoughts, feelings and commitments. If you believe any part of our teaching on the heart-led way of living, then you know there’s measurable scientific evidence for the emanations of our brains and hearts as a literal output of electromagnetic waves.

We know that God’s Creation around us can read our hearts because the energy field extends at least 15 feet. Researchers have detected an alteration of that energy field, a measurable reaction, when it encounters a living creature, even plants. Brain waves are far weaker, requiring very close proximity to measure anything. Would you expect that elohim could decode this output, too?

Yet we have a wealth of anecdotal evidence that our Enemy can be caught off-guard by some of our choices when we serve the Lord. Granted, this is only a perception, in that our Enemy is unable to hinder our pursuit of some choices. By the same token, we surely have experienced resistance and harassment that stings like fiery darts from the Enemy, very precisely targeted against our resolve to obey the Lord.

By the way, that term “Enemy” with a capital “E” is plural — “they, them” — referring to a whole class of beings. They all serve Satan in seeking to suck us into, and keep us in, God’s wrath. It’s like the royal “We” usage; it is Satan specifically, but also everyone who serves his agenda.

The image of temptation and interference is not one of stasis, as if it were a matter of regulatory policy from God. It’s not entirely a question of status. His law is more personal and has some flex. Don’t forget Job. We are the objects, not the subjects of the divine dispute. We are the pawns in a game that is far beyond our reckoning.

Thus, we return to the concept of covenant. We know that the Covenant hinders the Enemy from interfering in the Lord’s business with us. On the one hand, Daniel tells us that God’s decrees are a “public” matter that Satan can dispute and delay. The effects of that bickering outside of time and space can echo down to us for a substantial amount of time and space. But we also sense that there are some private communications between God and us that the Enemy cannot intercept.

Instead, they are left to discern it from what emanates from us and how we act. So it should be obvious that we would seek to stand in the place where God communicates with us personally, that we should seek access to His courts and His private counsel reserved for His own family. But the real issue is not so much what the Enemy can discern about God’s business, so much as what they can do about it. That inside track with God vests us with authority that they cannot touch.

Indeed, the whole point of the Covenant is that we drag our fleshly nature kicking and screaming into the counsel of the Lord. As we experience it, persistence over time improves everything we experience. A critical part of that process is both enslaving and killing the fleshly nature, something Scripture describes as incremental in nature. Like training any living thing, it requires our constant attention. Some fleshly natures are more intractable than others.

And some fleshly natures are more open to manipulation from Hell. But the greatest factor is how long and how thoroughly we may have coddled that fleshly nature over the years before we got serious about serving the Lord. The flesh gains strength and becomes a mighty ally of the Enemy against us. It becomes leverage for torment, the tension between what our hearts know is right and how compromised we are by a history of fleshly indulgence.

On the one hand, we know that we are tormented simply because we have a will to follow Christ. It would seem that people lacking that divine call would have fewer internal conflicts. Yet, Scripture makes it clear that those who belong to the Enemy are tormented in ways we can only imagine. The fleshly nature is vulnerable to the madness that separated us from God in the first place. The flesh is arrogant enough to insist that there is no trouble at all even when there is. We have an instinct to drive into the subconscious all sorts of things we cannot handle.

Thus, if you ever get the notion that sinners aren’t suffering, you are dead wrong. That’s a false accusation from the Devil, simply doing his job. The whole reason he is in that position is because he dared to suggest God wasn’t just when He sentenced the Devil to the Abyss for refusing to follow orders. God’s justice is the primary point of debate in Heaven. The mere lack of peace with God means that fallen men are denied something they desperately need. They will live their entire lives knowing on some level that they are missing something absolutely necessary for existence.

It won’t matter whether people allow that tension to rise to the conscious awareness. It’s there. We who have come to know His peace should sense that torment in some way. The Holy Spirit’s Presence includes a sense of empathy. It should be painful to watch people chasing any number of false promises in pursuit of that peace that only God can give.

Don’t sorrow merely for the pain they give you when they chase the lies; sorrow because they are tormented even worse than you. If you don’t long for them to come to peace for their own sakes, you are deeply deceived about your own salvation.