Satan's Sieve

Consider the Lord. He is all-knowing. He is omni-present. He is sovereign and all-powerful. He is good. He has good plans for our lives (Jeremiah 29:11-13).

Consider man. He knows nothing that he has not seen or heard apart from the Lord. He is fleeting. He is weak and powerless without Christ. He is easily deceived. He does not know of the Lord's plans except by faith.

Consider Satan. He knows a lot. He was second-in-command to God when he fell. He is deceitful and very powerful - he currently rules the earthly realms. He is evil. He also has plans for our lives.

These are the players, but what is the stage? Earth. And another realm so easily forgotten about - the Heavens. An inaccurate but simple illustration puts this "play" in better light - Satan and God are playing chess and we are the pieces. Both sides have strategies, and both sides are trying to take pieces from the "other team." I think we realize this about God, but quickly forget that Satan is also a strategizer and schemer.

Before we dive into the plot, let's examine a brief history of the players - maybe we can get an idea of the script. Throughout the Bible, Satan has tormented, seduced, beguiled, and frustrated the efforts of man to know God. And man, in accordance with his nature, has fallen many times into the hands of the great deceiver. However, God is sovereign, and although Satan is very powerful, he must have God's permission to reign on earth and act against believers (Revelation 20 talks about the Lord ending Satan's rule at the appropriate time).

Example: Job.
In Job 1, Satan comes before God from roaming through the earth. God asks him if he has seen his upright man of faith - Job. Satan taunts God, saying that if Job was cursed rather than blessed, he would turn around and curse God. God sends Satan away from his throne with the rights to everything that Job possesses. Read that again. God sends Satan away from his throne with the rights to everything that Job possesses. God gave Satan the authority to put Job through trials - to devastate his life. But God in His omnitience knew that Job would withstand the test and prove faithful.

Example: Peter.
In Luke 22, we see another example of Satan gaining the Lord's permission to touch one of His believers. Luke 22:31-34 says, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. But he replied, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death. Jesus answered, I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me." Satan asks Jesus to sift Simon as wheat, and Jesus allows it, saying He will pray for Simon Peter. He allows it, and here's a key difference from Job. He allows it, knowing that Simon is going to fall, knowing that he is going to deny Him three times. And Jesus tells him to strengthen his brothers when he turns back (from his fall).

As I was reading about this and realizing these things in my Beth Moore Bible study, I was shocked and comforted at the same time. Shocked to see that Jesus handed Peter over to Satan's wiles knowing that he would fall. Comforted that God uses even the devil to work all things out for good.

Not only did Jesus know that Peter would fall, but He also knew the results of failing in our lives that would follow - shame, regret, pain, sorrow. Jesus knew that Peter would sin when the devil came and tempted him. That blows me away. Why would Jesus give the devil any room in Peter's life if he knew that he would sin?

Matthew 16:18 says, "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." When sifting of wheat occurs, the impurities are separated from the pure seeds. The wheat is refined so that it can go on and become flour. Peter needed to be refined; Jesus needed him to become the rock of the church.

Our first choice would naturally be to imitate Job - to prove ourselves faithful to the Lord before the devil and to help win a battle being fought in the spiritual realms. So we strive for that. However, when we do fall into the devil's snares, and sin one or two or multiple times (Peter denied Christ three times which could be labeled as a "pattern of sin"), it is wonderful to know that Christ is praying for us, and that maybe He is allowing Satan to "sift" impurities out of us. Some lessons must be learned the hard way (think about understanding God's grace without having first failed).

And when we turn back (not if, when), Christ calls us to strengthen our brothers - to encourage and spur on the Church. Even the devil's schemes are not outside of His purposes. We are in a play where the end has already been determined; it is up to us how we read the script.

Christ wants us to be Jobs and Peters. Our lives influence the spiritual realms. We just need to realize it.

LOVE WINS part deux

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." William Shakespeare

Love wins. Everyday. Always. I know why it wins - the blood on the cross. But how? Practically speaking, in my life today and everyday, how does love win?

To answer this question, I quote William Shakespeare - certainly not the theological mastermind, however we cannot deny it when Truth is spoken, and he speaks it quite well in the following sonnet.

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

I've been struggling with explanation, when all I had to do was turn to Shakespeare's eloquent ideas on the topic. "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." So succintly yet poignantly stated. A love that changes in regard to the various objects of that love, is no love at all. Period.

So go live a love that doesn't change.

While I was brainstorming the practical applications of love "winning" in our lives on a day to day basis, I was hoping (as all writers do at one point in time or the other) to come up with a magical and thorough list of ways to love with a selfless and sacrificial lifestyle. I am learning, however, that there is no list. My love manifests itself very differently from yours, as does yours from your neighbor's. The only constant among all of our "loves" is that it is like Christ's; all of our love must transcend this world, be motivated by Christ, and have no desire to gratify ourselves.

So let us be centered on Christ and love in all the ways that He has gifted us. I can't necessarily tell you how, and you can't necessarily tell me how. Just follow Jesus and love. Let us live a love that does not alter "when it alteration finds," and let us lose ourselves while doing it.

Brainstorming - love wins practically speaking

“Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That’s the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That’s the Christianity I have fallen in love with.”

“There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of.”

"Charity wins awards and applause, but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them."

"Jesus is pointing the church to her true identity -- she is to live close to those who suffer."

*All quotes by Shane Claiborne.


I have been thinking a lot about the body of Christ and its function as the church in the world, and I'm still thinking. These quotes illustrate my brainstorming as I think about "Love wins" and continuing thoughts about how that is lived out practically in our lives.