David Diga Hernandez - If You Truly Believe this, Satan's Already Trapped You

The enemy studies you. The enemy knows you. The enemy watches how you behave in certain scenarios; he observes how you act around specific people. The enemy observes where your eyes go, what your words say, and what you choose to listen to. He sees what you do in secret and how you behave in private, using all of this information to create the strongest temptation and place it before you. He has many strategies, but all of his strategies are ultimately based on deception. The only power that the enemy can have over you is the power that he deceives you into giving him.

Now, there are many deceptive strategies of the enemy, but I want to focus on just two right now so we can really dig in and see exactly how these work against us in our everyday lives. I encourage you to write in the comment section right now: «Open my eyes.» Let that be your prayer for discernment and your commitment to being vigilant about the supernatural realm. Remember this: everything about the kingdom of hell is built on shifting shadows. All the weapons and all of the attacks are just formations of shadowy figures. The moment you introduce anything related to the kingdom of hell to the light of the Holy Spirit, the power of darkness dissolves; light eradicates darkness. What does light do to darkness? It dissolves darkness. By their very nature, light and darkness cannot coexist; the presence of one means the absence of the other. Therefore, in your life, you must receive the light of the Spirit.

Now, you have the Holy Spirit living in you; you have the power of God residing in you. You’ve been positioned in Christ. You are in Christ, Christ is in power, and you are seated in heavenly places. So, why then do we not always see the manifestation, realization, and attainment of that power? Why does it sometimes seem as though we live defeated, even though in the Spirit we know we’re positioned in victory? I want to show you how the enemy attacks. In fact, you may be under the power of this attack without even realizing it. It is my prayer that it is exposed and eliminated in your life.

First, we must understand that Satan is called the tempter. Look at 1 Thessalonians 3:4-5: «For when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know. That is why, when I could no longer stand it, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that the tempter had gotten the best of you.» The Apostle here has some concerns about the faith of the people. He was afraid that the tempter had gotten the best of them and that their faith had been weakened.

Think about this: the enemy’s primary goal is to weaken your faith. Why? Because if he can weaken your faith, he can keep you from accessing and becoming all that God desires for you. When the enemy deceives you, he convinces you not to use your power. I believe we make the Holy Spirit jealous when we exaggerate demonic power and minimize the Holy Spirit’s power. What does the scripture say? «Greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world.»

You have great strength—the power of the Holy Ghost residing in you. We have been given dominion, power, and authority over the forces of darkness, and we are beings of light because we reflect the glory of God. Yet the enemy deceives us, wanting us not to use the strength of the power we’ve been given. Instead, we often panic when he attacks us. We become anxious when we don’t understand how the enemy is coming against us. When we face trials and tribulations, we sometimes take this as proof that God has abandoned us or that the enemy has somehow gained power over us. No, my friend! You have the power of the Holy Ghost residing in you.

I think far too many believers misunderstand their identity in Christ. This crisis of identity is what prevents many believers from walking in and realizing the strength of that power. We have been delivered; we have been rescued; we have been filled with the Holy Spirit. But many of us don’t realize or actualize or experience the fruit of that freedom simply because we are deceived into not embracing it. The enemy deceives you; he exaggerates his power over you. He wants you to feel bound, cursed, and unable to break free, no matter how hard you try. That is a lie of the enemy. You feel stuck because you do not realize the power that has been given to you.

The scripture calls him the tempter. So what does he do? He places before us the things he believes will cause us to choose sin over God. Consider Matthew 4: when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the enemy tried three times to offer him something that would satisfy the cravings of the flesh. Jesus, of course, resisted. The truth is that if sin were a product, demons would be salesmen. But here’s the reality: though demons may tempt you, they cannot sin for you. Many times, Christians try to blame their sinful, disobedient decisions on demonic powers. «I can’t stop doing this because of a demon, and I can’t get delivered from that demon because I don’t understand the secret.»