“Keep Your Senses, Be Watchful,” ?

[Bible Speaks]

“Keep your senses, be watchful,” Peter warns. “Your adversary, the Devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour someone.” (1 Peter 5:8)

“WE HAVE A WRESTLING . . . AGAINST THE WICKED SPIRIT FORCES”
Satan cannot win the war, so to speak, but he can make casualties of us as individuals if we let our guard down. 

Satan knows that he can devour us if he can weaken our bond with Jehovah. How does Satan try to achieve this? By attacking us intensely, personally, and cunningly. Let us consider these main strategies of Satan.

Intense attacks. The apostle John stated: “The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.” (1 John 5:19)

Those words contain a warning for all true Christians. Since Satan has already devoured the entire ungodly world of mankind, he can now focus on and intensify his attacks on those who have so far eluded him—Jehovah’s people. (Micah 4:1; John 15:19; Revelation 12:12, 17) 

He has great anger because he knows his time is short. So he has stepped up the pressure.

Today, we face his final rampage of savagery and destruction. Hence, now more than ever, we need to “discern the times to know what [we] ought to do.”—1 Chronicles 12:32.

Personal wrestling. The apostle Paul warned fellow Christians: “We have a wrestling . . . against the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)

Why did Paul use the term “wrestling”? Because it conveys the idea of hand-to-hand combat and a struggle at close quarters.

Thus, by using that term, Paul stressed that each of us has a personal fight with wicked spirits. Whether we live in a country where belief in wicked spirits is prevalent or not, we should never forget that when we dedicated ourselves to Jehovah, we stepped on the wrestling mat, as it were.

At least from dedication onward, each Christian is locked in combat. No wonder that Paul saw the need to urge Christians in Ephesus three times to “stand firm”!—Ephesians 6:11, 13, 14.

Cunning schemes. Paul exhorts Christians to stand firm against Satan’s “crafty acts.” (Ephesians 6:11, footnote) Note Paul’s use of the plural.

Wicked spirits use not one but various cunning devices—and for good reason. In the course of time, some believers who have stood firm against one kind of trial have given in when faced with another.

Hence, the Devil and the demons closely observe the behavior of each one of us to detect our weakest spot.

Then they exploit any spiritual weakness we may have. Thankfully, though, we can recognize many of the Devil’s methods, for they are revealed in the Bible. (2 Corinthians 2:11) Such schemes as the lure of materialism, harmful association, and sexual immorality. 

BEWARE AND FLEE!

He seeks ways to confuse Christians to the point that some will think that “good is bad and bad is good.” (Isaiah 5:20) To do so, Satan often falls back on one of his time-tested methods—he raises questions to create doubts.

Notice how Satan used that approach in the past. In Eden he asked Eve: “Is it really so that God said you must not eat from every tree of the garden?” In Job’s time, during a meeting of the angels in heaven, Satan raised the question: “Is it for nothing that Job has feared God?”

And at the start of Jesus’ earthly ministry, Satan challenged Christ by saying: “If you are a son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” Imagine—in Jesus’ case,     Satan dared to mock the very words that Jehovah himself had spoken some six weeks earlier: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved”!—Genesis 3:1; Job 1:9; Matthew 3:17; 4:3.
 

Today, the Devil uses a similar scheme in an effort to create uncertainties>.
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