There is no better thing we can do on Thanksgiving Day than to look up to heaven and begin thanking God for His great love to us—for giving us His only Son, that he would die on the cross in order that we may have eternal life.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
This is our great prize from heaven. There is no better gift. Our joy and thanksgiving overflows on this day. All other things we are thankful for pale in comparison to that great gift. Nonetheless, with hearts full already, with eternity awaiting, we thank God for all other good things. His basket of gifts fills our life. Our joy overflows.
Doctrines of Demons, from C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters – Part 2
The following points are from notes I took while reading C. S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters. The book is a compilation of thirty-one letters from a demon named Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood. In it Screwtape gives instructions to his nephew on how to seduce and take down certain humans, mostly new Christians. I think it is an excellent manual on the doctrine of demons (but of course, it is according to one human’s perspective, C. S. Lewis; hence, we can’t be sure it is perfectly accurate). The following points are ways the demons will draw a person over to the evil path.
(p 36) They know that it is during the low periods (more than the high periods) that we will grow.
They know that our prayers offered up in a state of dryness are those that most please God.
They realize that we learn to walk in the Lord when God takes His hands off us—and He is pleased even when we stumble. (But He will not let us be cast down, Ps 34:24).
(p 40) They know that the low periods in humans provide an excellent opportunity for sexual temptation.
They realize that humans are stronger when they read more (keep knowledge flowing).
(p 49) They say consisting scoffers are progressing toward Satan. They are glad when we do this.
As for humor, they encourage virtue as funny and ridiculous.
(p 53) They will introduce a change of direction in the young believer—but they do not want him to suspect where he is headed—downhill!
They will encourage him to dislike any religious duties and prayers.
They know that pleasure temptations cut off real happiness.
They seek to have him waste his time doing menial things for long periods of time: TV watching, etc. They want him to avoid healthy and outgoing activities.
They want him not to do what he likes to do.
They want to steal away a person’s best years.
They know that the best thing they can do is separate the human from the enemy (God).
(p 57) They recognize when humans repent and are renewed, and they are discouraged by it.
They know that there are times when they can’t get through—due to the fact that God is directly present with them.
(p 58) They count it a defeat when the human reads books they enjoy and does things they enjoy, like nature walks, etc.
They count it a defeat when the human abandons his self-will.
They will try to eradicate from a person his personal hobbies—all things he enjoys, because they will be a source of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness. They will endeavor to force upon them more “important things”, more “righteous things,” things that if not accomplished will be a great source of guilt and an entrance for sin.
They are in favor of getting the human to not apply things that they read—to keep it out of his will. They are in favor of keeping them from developing habits.
(p 62) They hate it when we stop thinking of our virtues—thinking of how good we are becoming. They want us to think of how humble we are, how wise we are, so that we become proud. They love to see us become proud.
They want us to endlessly think upon ourselves.
They know that God wants us to think of all humans as glorious and excellent, so they try to remove this truth from us. But they may try to get us to think too much of ourselves and putting ourselves above others.
They want us to continually think of our sins—how bad we are, instead of thinking of the Saviors love and forgiveness.
(p. 67) They want us to be tortured by fears.
They know that God wants us to live in eternity or in the present. For in our meditation with God in the present, time touches eternity and God brings us in union with Him.
The devil and all his demons are, for the most part, the cause of our spiritual conflict; it is against them that we are called to war (Eph. 6:12). The demons are referred to here as “principalities” (or rulers), as “powers,” as “rulers of the darkness of this world,” and as “spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” They are organized into a powerful evil force, whose purpose is to corrupt, destroy and to keep people from the saving grace of God (2 Cor. 4:4).
Our battle with the devil is both defensive and offensive. Defensively, we stand firm against the devil—always having on our spiritual armor (Eph. 6:14-18). Offensively, we seek out and destroy demonic strongholds that Satan builds up against us in our mind (2 Cor. 10:4-5). These strongholds are the accumulation of arguments for evil that he tries to bring into our mind—for the purpose of deceiving us into believing his lies as truth. They are the places in our mind where demons are protected and like to go. They are the places of moral darkness. If we categorized them, I suppose we could give names to them, such as: unbelief, failure, fear, and lust.
But we have many weapons at our disposal to break down these strongholds. Here are just a few: the word, faith, obedience, humility, and love; but our greatest weapon is prayer. Without prayer we would have no power at all. Prayer brings us the energy to put on our armor, as well as to pick up our sword. Without prayer we can do nothing at all against the enemy, but with prayer we can always gain the victory. Hence, in all our warfare against the enemy there must be constant, earnest prayer, all kinds of prayer, and prayer that travails.
Stephen Nielsen 