Shutting Out Satan Series - Pt. 1: Introduction

Today I sat down to start writing a blog post, and I thought that I should start a series that has something to do with women because I originally started this organization to empower women through Christ. I began researching verses about women and I kept coming across bible verses saying truly awful things about women, and this upset me deeply. My understanding has always been that Jesus loves everyone, including women. I already knew there were verses about women being silent in the church etc, but I always thought that those rules were man-made and didn't come directly from God, so there was nothing more to it than outdated rules that were no longer relevant. However, I continued to research these verses and I became deeply upset. I found so many verses saying awful things, so many thoughts were racing through my head. Am I useless without a man? Why can't I have authority over a man? Am I only here to be a man's sidekick? Does God only value me because I may bear a child someday? Does God really love me if His prophets say these things about my gender? All of these thoughts really hurt me, but I got some perspective and started to read around those verses to get some context. I realized that those rules were not God's rules, rather they were rules created by humans. I then read what biblical scholars have said about these verses, and they all came to the conclusion that those rules either came from the culture at the time or they were created so no trouble was caused. 

You may be thinking, what does this have to do with Satan? I realized that when I was having a mental breakdown over these out of context verses, thinking it was God's word, I was questioning whether God loved me. This is the work of Satan. Satan wants you to feel like God doesn't love you, and that's how he was trying to make me feel. Thankfully, I have a strong Christian community around me who were able to reassure me of the truth, but some people don't have that community to remind them of their value. There are people who will go their whole lives thinking that God doesn't love them because of who they are or something they did, but that's not God that's telling them that, it's Satan. 

Today I realized the importance of shutting out Satan, because there is no truth to any of the lies he feeds us. So this series will be my way of trying to help others recognize what thoughts are coming from God and what thoughts are coming from Satan. Because it's important that we listen to what Jesus said when He was on earth, that is the whole truth. But when we start to let those thoughts creep in, the ones that tell us God has abandoned us, we have to recognize that that could never come from God, because God is love.

1 John 4:8 says, "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."