| “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” |
| —1 Peter 5:8 |
Cinderella, the beauty of her family, lived her life by the stories her stepsisters told her and in the mockery and servitude in which they made her live. She willingly allowed them to pile the dirty jobs on her and to intimidate her into believing she wasn’t fit to attend the ball she prepared them to attend.
In their book, The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis and John Eldredge liken many of us to this poor housemaid. The authors suggest that we believe the lies that we may have heard all our lives, instigated by our real enemy, Satan himself.
This very trickery worked on Eve in the Garden of Eden when Satan questioned her—as recorded in Genesis 3—and asked “Did God really say?”
Unsuccessfully, Satan tried these same tactics on our Savior when He went into the wilderness of temptation before He began His public ministry. Satan tried to put doubts into Jesus’ mind over God’s plan, as well as doubts about His place in it, using such statements as “If you are the Son of God …” found in Luke 4:3, 9.
Satan likes to tell false stories to us, as well. Sometimes he uses the voices of family members or classmates, causing us to believe the lies he tells us. If we allow him to convince us, our whole lives can feel useless and pointless, unaware of the Prince of Peace who has a new name, a new nature, and a new ever-after for us.
Here’s how the authors of The Sacred Romance put it: 1
Fortunately for Cinderella, the prince is a romantic who will not give up searching the city until he has found her, and they live happily ever after. And so it will be with us who are the beloved of the great Prince who is Jesus. It is this destiny that so enrages our enemy and makes him determined to destroy the love affair that he can never have a part in.
Have you been listening to the wrong voices? Let God’s written Word, His great Love Letter to us, fill your mind and heart. And, accept from Him the invitation to see yourself as a Child of the King with a royal purpose. Allow Him to invite you to the singing and praising of God’s people, where you will find a sense of belonging and true rejoicing.
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| 1 Curtis, Brent, and John Eldredge. The Sacred Romance. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1997, p. 110. |
