Making Plans With God: Out of Satan’s Reach

Nothing was wrong, but things certainly could have been better. Working together in a growing church and teaching in a college left little time for us, and the lack of time together was beginning to take it’s toll on our relationship. Our problem never required counseling; it wasn’t that we had fallen out of love. The problem was we had fallen out of touch because of the pace of our life. The solution was simple: time away, together, alone.

We arranged a place with friends for our youngest to stay and slipped away to our favorite nest at the coast that is refreshingly bereft of telephones and televisions. There, without the distractions of people or programs, my wife and I were able to laugh, talk, and remember why we were in love to begin with. The privacy encouraged our conversation and our conversations renewed the strength of our relationship. The precious time of privacy in that B&B enabled us to face the challenges ahead with renewed unity and vigor.

It is unthinkable that believers ever genuinely fall out of love with the Lord. I do, however, sometimes find myself out of touch and wishing the relationship was deeper. Just as I’ve learned the importance of private time with my wife, I’ve discovered the importance of private time with God. Private time is different from quiet time. Quiet time with my wife would be a casual evening of conversation in our living room talking about the day’s events between phone calls and text messages. Private time is a couple days alone in a B&B away from tele-anything, and talking about us.

In the same way, private time with God goes beyond a daily quiet time, because there is hardly a quiet moment in the midst of a busy day. Private time is a place unaffected by the noise of the day. It is also different from a planned spiritual retreat, in that we can go there anytime, anywhere. The Bible calls this place of private meeting the Secret Place! It is a place where God and I meet to talk about us. It is a time to talk about my life and His plans.

Doesn’t it make sense that if Satan has spent his millenniums on this earth trying to steal God’s glory, that he will busy himself trying to thwart God’s purpose in your life? He constantly stands in opposition to the purpose of God, and the last thing he wants for a believer is a fresh discovery of your secret place or a clear understanding of God’s will! His suggestions are designed to discourage our use of the Secret Place and intimidate us by lying about the extent of his power.

But knowing that Satan can’t read one’s thoughts, and understanding that he is confined to some sort of a spiritual body, is very freeing. Yet he is not without an ability to communicate to people. We find him speaking to Eve in the garden. He has a conversation with Jesus in the wilderness. We see his ability to physically afflict lives in the account of Job.

His demons are listening, gathering, and sharing information among each other. In the book of Luke chapter eleven we find the demons sharing information about a place in a man’s life where there was room for more of their kind (or even worse) to be invited in. They went out shared the information and recruited more. Seven times more!

A Physical Illustration of a Spiritual Truth

            Suppose in war, before the sorties are flown and the bombs are dropped, the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff make a phone call to the terrorist headquarters and invite them into the war room to sit in on the strategic plans for the bombing. The enemy would then be aware of when, where, and how the United States was planning to carry out essential maneuvers. They would be privy to information on how we were planning to protect our pilots and inflict the most damage on our enemy. Of course this scenario would never happen! It would be ludicrous to entertain such a far-fetched tale.

Yet is it possible this very thing happens every day in the spiritual battles of the Kingdom? When we talk about our plans and discuss our hopes and fears openly from the very start, guess who else is listening besides the Lord? The devil doesn’t even have to guess about how best to confuse the clear leading of God in our lives: we’ve told him how. Because we unsuspectingly reveal our plans through audible conversations, even prayers, he knows the smallest of details concerning our strategy. Armed with intimate information wisely shared only between us and God, you can be sure before our feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan and his cohorts are already working to exploit the information we’ve given them in hopes of impeding the progress of God’s plan in our lives.

Questions

In the course of discussing this topic with friends, some have wondered, “If Satan does not use information he hears or sees, how then does he operate?” How does he know our weaknesses? How does he know how to effectively make shipwreck of our lives? How does he know which device to use at different times?

Without being facetious, the basic impeachment about the usefulness of the above illustrations and questions would only seem viable if Satan was at least deaf and possibly deaf and blind. In other words, it is obvious that Satan uses information at his disposal to work his deeds… so the obvious next question comes, “How do we keep him from that information?”

The argument surfaces that God has the power to blind the evil one to our activities as well as make him deaf to our conversations. This is true. God is all- powerful, but He has chosen to limit His power. As in the case of Job, Satan could not have access to Job unless God allowed it; but God drew back His power and gave Satan access to Job’s everyday life. The rights to Job included all but the breath of life.

Satan’s access to Job did not come with Job being struck dumb. Common sense about pain and pleasures remained intact with Job, as they are with us. In other words, God could save us if we decided to stand on the tracks in front of an oncoming freight train. We could ask and ask and ask God to stop the train, but would He?

Likely not!

Why?

God has already armed us with the common sense not to stand on the tracks and place oneself in harm's way. Yes, He could blind Satan to our activities. Yes, He could strike Satan deaf to our conversations, but would He?

Likely not!

Why?

Obviously, because life comes with a manual that warns us not to place ourselves in harm's way. “Don’t give place to the Devil,” it says (Ephesians 4:27). There are at least twenty-eight Scriptures that warn us to flee, to avoid the onslaughts of the devil. If God has those warning devices already in place, why force Him to double-duty rescue by violating common sense activity He has previously forbidden.

The Secret Place -- Defined

The Secret Place is not a new place and not a secret in the sense of being hidden to believers. Rather, it is a place where believers are invited into God’s presence to a deeper fellowship than is available in the typical, hurried devotional life. In this place, we are reminded of God’s benefits, are given God’s guidance through His illumination of His Word and the heightened sensitivity to His Spirit, and we are given answers to some of life’s most perplexing and dangerous situations through the deeper fellowship to be found in being alone in the place where God dwells.