This is part 4 of a 5-part series of blogs summarizing the message of Thomas Brooks’ Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices. Brooks lists Satan’s most common strategies to discourage, defeat and bring down a believer, and then offers practical suggestions to combat Satan’s spiritual warfare.
Satan’s Devices to keep Saints in a Sad, Doubting, Questioning and Uncomfortable Condition
Device 1: Satan urges us to think more about our sins than about our Savior.
This is a trap many good, earnest and sensitive believers fall into. They start to focus on the gravity of their sin more than the grace of their Savior. Our hope, strength, and future are all tied to Jesus, not our behavior. There is a time to weep, but we should worship more than we weep.
Remedies:
i. Though Christ may not have freed us from the presence of sin, he has freed us from the damnatory power of sin.
You will still stumble, but that stumble will not define you or damn you.
ii. Though you may not be entirely free from the vexing power of sin, you are free from the reign and dominion of sin.
iii. Keep one eye on the biblical promises of remission of sin while you look upon the inward operations of sin.
Live by the truth of Scripture over your experience. Even if it doesn’t feel like you are freed from sin, hold on to the promises of Scripture that say you are.
iv. Look at all your sins as debts charged to Christ that have been fully paid.
v. Remember that God allows us to struggle against sin to keep us humble and to make us mindful of our need for divine help, to wean us from the world, and to make us long for Christ and heaven.
vi. We should repent for being discouraged by our sins.
Device 2: Satan tempts us to question grace simply because we may lack assurance of grace.
Remedies:
i. Consider that there may be true faith with no assurance.
ii. God defines faith solely as receiving Christ.
iii. You can have true faith amidst much doubtings.
iv. Since assurance is an effect of faith, it cannot be faith.
Device 3: Satan tempts the soul to make false inferences from disappointed prayers
Remedies:
i. Remember that many things may be contrary to our desires, which are not contrary to our spiritual and eternal good.
God loves us so much, and cares so well for us, that He may allow us to be disappointed in Him while knowing that what He is doing is best for us. He cares for our soul more than He cares for our attitude toward what He is doing.
ii. Consider that the hand of God may be against a man, when the love and heart of God is much set upon a man.
What God does is not always an accurate account of what He feels for us. This is due to our lack of understanding, not God’s eccentric ways.
iii. Every disappointment that falls on a saint is for a nobler good that God intends to confer upon him or her.
iv. All the strange, dark, deep, and changeable providences that believers meet with, shall further them in their way to heaven—in their journey to happiness.
Device 4: Satan suggests our graces are counterfeit
Because Satan doesn’t want us to be encouraged by the graces God gives to us (which would put us further out of Satan’s reach and influence), he suggests that the graces we witness aren’t genuine—they are counterfeit.
Remedies:
i. Remember that grace is taken two ways: the gracious good-will and favor of God, and the demonstrable gifts of grace, both common and special.
Even if you don’t see the latter, you can be assured of the former.
ii. Consider the differences between renewing grace and restraining grace.
iii. True grace enables a Christian to do spiritual actions with real pleasure and delight.
The fact that we desire to do the will of God and that we take delight in His word and worship is evidence of grace.
iv. True grace makes a man most careful and most fearful of his own heart.
v. True grace “will work a man’s heart to love and cleave to the strictest and holiest ways and things of God, for their purity and sanctity, in the face of all dangers and hardships.”
“Others love [the word] and follow it—for the credit, the honor, the advantage that they get by it; but I love it for the spiritual beauty and purity of it.”
vi. True grace enables a Christian to prefer the crown and cross of Christ above the glory of this world.
vii. Sanctifying grace moves the soul to perform spiritual duties out of divine love.
viii. Saving grace moves us to follow God fully in deserting all sin and observing all of God’s precepts, but restraining grace cannot enable a man to follow the Lord fully.
“True grace works the heart to the hatred of all sin, and to the love of all truth.” “So a soul truly gracious can say, Though I do not obey any one command as I should, and as I would desire, yet every word is sweet, every command of God is precious (Psalm 119:6, 119, 127, 167). I dearly prize and greatly love those commands that I cannot obey; though there be many commands that I cannot in a strict sense fulfill, yet there is no command I would not fulfill, that I do not exceedingly love.”
ix. True grace leads the soul to rest in Christ as his highest and ultimate end.
x. True grace enables the soul to sit down satisfied and contented with the naked enjoyments of Christ.
“A contented man cannot be a poor man.”
Device 5: Satan tells believers the conflict they face isn’t one normally faced by saints, but only by hypocrites and profane souls
Remedies:
i. The whole frame of a believer’s soul is against sin.
ii. A Christian hates sin universally, all sins, whereas wicked men frown upon one sin and smile upon another.
You see this so much in those who mock the cause of Christ—they use the fall of believers (such as sexual sin) as political leverage to attack, even though in their own lives they don’t hate sexual sin (in fact, they often condone and celebrate it). They just want to use the sin of a believer to attack the cause of Christ. Thus, they are the hypocrites, even above the believer who falls.
iii. Saints struggle against sin by drawing arguments from the love of God, the honor of God, sweetness and communion with God, spiritual blessings from God, and the sacrifice, glory, goodness and sweetness of Christ.
The best defense against sin is the goodness, the loveliness, and the wonder of God. Think on the best things about God more than you do His wrath.
iv. Saints face constant conflict against sin.
“A Christian lives fighting and dies fighting, he stands fighting and falls fighting, with his spiritual weapons in his hands…[and] the pleasure and sweetness which follows victory over sin is a thousand times beyond that seeming sweetness that is in sin.” In contrast, “the conflict that is in wicked men is inconstant.”
The fact that there is sin conflict in your life is evidence that you are a saint, not evidence that you are not.
v. The conflict in the saint is in the same faculties.
vi. The saints’ conflict against sin is more blessed, successful and prevailing; they gain ground against their sin.
“Remember this by way of caution: though Christ has given sin its death-wound, yet it will die but a lingering death.”
Device 6: Satan troubles the Christian by suggesting his soul is in a bad place because he doesn’t take joy in Christ as he used to
Remedies:
i. The loss of comfort is a separable adjunct from grace. “Though my comfort is gone, yet the God of my comfort abides.”
ii. Remember that the precious things you will enjoy are far better than the joys and comforts you have lost.
iii. This temporary loss was also experienced by the saints who are now in heaven and who now rejoice fully in Christ.
iv. Consider that the causes of joy and comfort aren’t always the same.
v. God himself will restore and make up the comforts of his people.
Device 7: Satan reminds the Christian how often he goes back to the sins he has already grieved over
Remedies:
i. Many Scriptures speak of the possibility of saints falling back into previous sins.
ii. There is no promise that once we are converted we won’t fall into the same sin after conversion.
iii. Prior saints—Lot, John, Abraham and David—relapsed into the same sins.
iv. There’s a difference between relapses into “enormities” and relapses into “infirmities.” It is more unusual to relapse into enormities (destructive sins).
v. Remember the difference between involuntary relapses and voluntary relapses.
vi. Neither true sorrow for sin nor rejoicing in the sweetness of God provide absolute permanent protection from relapsing into the same sin. Yet, “by way of caution, now, it is very rare that God does leave his beloved ones frequently to relapse into one and the same gross sin; for the law of nature is in arms against gross sins, as well as the law of grace, so that a gracious soul cannot, dares not, will not, frequently return to gross folly.”
Device 8: Making Christians feel they are not right with God because they are tormented with temptations.
“Satan’s method, first to weary and vex your soul with temptations, and then to persuade the soul, that surely it is not loved by God, because it is so much tempted.”
Do you see Satan’s cleverness? He sends the temptations our way, and then uses the temptations he sent as evidence that God doesn’t love us because we are tempted so much.
Remedies:
i. Remember that the most beloved saints have been most tempted by Satan.
“It is as natural for saints to be tempted, who are dearly loved by God, as it is for the sun to shine, or a bird to sing. The eagle complains not of her wings, nor the peacock of his train of feathers, nor the nightingale of her voice—because these are natural to them. No more should saints complain of their temptations, because they are natural to them.”
ii. All the temptations of a saint “shall be sanctified to them by a hand of love.”
“Temptation is a school wherein God teaches his people to see a greater evil in sin than ever, and a greater emptiness in the creature than ever, and a greater need of Christ and free grace than ever.”
iii. No temptations harm a saint as long as they are resisted.
“Bid defiance to the temptation at first sight. It is safe to resist, it is dangerous to dispute.”
If you’d like to purchase Thomas Brooks’ book for more detailed study, you can find it HERE (Gary Thomas is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and Church Source Affiliates Program, advertising programs designed to provide a means for Gary to earn fees through customized links to these sites.)
If you’d like to read about how other classic writers address sin and temptation, consider my book Thirsting for God.