Why the faithful are under attack today and how to stay strong in God's love: 'Will never leave you'

The new book "Light For Today: 365 Daily Devotions from the Lighthouse" was a labor of love — to see God in the everyday challenges of life and to reconcile the inner pains and normal stresses with the God who said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

It was a natural postlude to my first book, "Lighthouse Faith: God as a Living Reality in a World Immersed in Fog." This devotional, you could say, is the practical application of what was presented in the first book.

The lighthouse is a great symbol of refuge and strength, a beacon of hope in darkness. In that way, it's packed with symbolism and metaphors.

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But it is also so much more. The lighthouse, its actual structure, seems to be God's logo stamped on every part of creation, from the planets in heaven to nature and the animals and, of course all of us, who are made in His image.

So how is the lighthouse God's logo?

Because it is so incredibly like God's law, the Ten Commandments. These laws are not just an arbitrary set of rules and regulations to keep us in line, but an actual description of who God is ... And who we are meant to live out our lives as His image bearers.

Of course, it's a lot harder to do than to say.

The First Commandment is the hinge: "I am the Lord your God … You shall not have any gods before me."

It's a simple command that is both an edict and a statement of truth. And like all God's commands, they are motivated by love.

It's a command because God knows how we are made and how best we can live joyful, meaningful lives. 

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It's a statement of truth, as there are no other gods but God. And anything we put in God's place is a false idol. 

Turns out idolatry is our biggest problem. Or, as one theologian noted, it's about "disordered loves."

For example, you can't commit adultery unless someone else's love means more than God's love. You can't steal unless something else is more valuable to you than God.

So all the laws are identified first by their relationship to the First Commandment — and second by their relationship to each other. It's the horizontal and the vertical of the cross.

What you have here is a simple and rudimentary, closed system. It's a seminal point that everything in the system relates to first, and then second to everything else in the system. 

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We see this repeated in architecture with a right triangle, in biology with the structure of the cell, and in music with the diatonic scale.

So what does that have to do with love and a devotional as a labor of love? 

Scripture tells us that God is love. First John: "God is love." Yes, God loves — but He is love itself. He is the Author, the Headwaters, the Fountainhead, the Source itself. 

It means God didn't create love. He IS Love.

So if God is love, what are the implications? Lots!

We think of love as purely emotional, even irrational. But God's love is far more complex.

If God is love, it means that all creation — all its laws, and scientific principles, the periodic table that science discovered, the strong and the weak forces, gravity, quantum physics, the motion of the planets — are products of God's love.

Which means God's love, first and foremost, creates order. 

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When God said, "Let there be light," it was out of love. 

God didn't just create a dwelling place for us. He created a home for us — a loving home.

And yes, this order is under spiritual attack. Just look at what's happening in the world — crime, protests, violence. 

All of it has a spiritual component. And this spiritual attack has existed almost from the very beginning of time.

We are all vulnerable to spiritual attacks. Satan’s purpose is to draw us away from God, to make us put our fundamental and foundational trust in something other than God.

The Bible warns us constantly about these spiritual battles.

"Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil" (Ephesians 6).

"For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh" (2 Corinthians 10).

"Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Peter 5).

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Satan's goal is to not only make you distrust God, but in that distrust, to turn away from the source of love that we all want and crave. 

There are three things that are very important to remember about spiritual attacks.

Here's a deeper dive into these three points.

The best example of No. 1 is where it all began, the original sin, the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. 

There, Eve and Adam are enjoying this beautiful relationship with God. And God tells them that they can eat anything in this beautiful garden — except, "do not eat of the one tree in the middle."

Things start to go downhill quickly; remember Eve’s encounter with the serpent. Big questions surround modern folks living in a technologically advanced world. 

Why is Eve talking to a serpent? And why is a serpent talking?

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These are the wrong questions. 

Because the Bible is much more a story of the "why" than the "how."

The real issue here is that Eve is not surprised by the serpent's presence. She is not afraid of him talking to her. She does not run. 

What does that tell you? This was probably not their first conversation. They may have even had many talks before — might have even been friends. 

But at a crucial time regarding the one "don’t" that God gave to her and Adam, this is where the serpent's deception does the real damage: "Did God actually say...?"

Eve can’t recognize the evil intent because it’s not coming from an enemy. It’s coming from a friend.

And his deceit is with a harmless phrase: "Did God actually say…?" 

It was a twisting of God's words to mean something other than their true intent.

If you don’t trust God, you're automatically putting your trust in something else. 

Where is Eve putting her trust if it's not in God? It's in her own ability to judge what is right and wrong — what is good and what is evil.

This begins the breakdown of her relationship with Adam. She gives him the forbidden fruit. 

And instead of owning up to his violating the command, he blames Eve — and then blames God for giving him Eve.

He now calls her, "That woman!" Not even recognizing the wife, the one he first called "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."

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The family breakdown started here, as neither of them put their ultimate trust in God.  

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Our strengths tend to become our identities. They are talents, gifts from God. 

But they can also be a source of great pride and illusions about their ultimate value. Let's take the very successful Taylor Swift as one example.

She's an extremely talented singer, songwriter and poet. She's also quite beautiful — and has become astonishingly prosperous, with a net worth estimated to be $1.1 billion.  

Her latest album, though, has drawn criticism from some Christian leaders, who say that "it mocks God and Christians." One example cited in a recent Christian Post article says, "In the song ‘Guilty As Sin,’ Swift sings, 'What if I roll the stone away? / They're gonna crucify me anyway / What if the way you hold me is actually what's holy."  

In another time, this would be labeled blasphemous for mocking the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of Christianity, and for making earthly romantic love equal to, or worse, better than the Love of God, the Creator.

Today, Swift is successful in every arena that the secular culture values. 

In the documentary about the Eras Tour, she is heard saying, "I just want to be on the right side of history."  

Yet the Lord of history is more concerned about our eternity.

Good things that become ultimate things become our reason for being — and they are prime for spiritual attacks. Without offering them up to God, they can be used for our downfall. 

The talent becomes the false "hinge" on which life hangs.  

This week is Holy Week for millions of Orthodox Christians, who are now focused on the climax of the Lenten season, which is Pascha (Easter, on May 5). Lent is a time for spiritual reflection, prayer and fasting. The 40 days commemorate how long Jesus was in the wilderness, where He was tempted by Satan.

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One thing to remember: The temptation came at the end of His 40 days of fasting and prayer, not at the beginning. Jesus was the weakest physically and probably emotionally. 

Satan tempts Jesus with food, sustenance: "If you're the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."  

And Jesus answers, "Man does not live by bread alone. But by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"

He tempts Him with safety and shelter, basically saying, "If God loved you, He'd do this or that … He wouldn't let you suffer."

Jesus answers, "You shall not … tempt the Lord your God.'"

And the third temptation is money, power and prestige — about making the proverbial "deal with the devil," having our heart's desire with the caveat of worshiping that desire.

Jesus answers, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"

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Notice that Satan tempts Jesus using Scripture — a twisted interpretation of Scripture, that is. Jesus responds with Scripture — its true understanding and meaning.

We're always going to be faced with a challenge to our belief in God. It's the sacred versus the secular. 

The subtleties may seem harmless — but little by little, they can draw us away from God.

It's why we must always remember: "For God so loved the world..."

This new daily devotional, "Light For Today," was my journey of love — to know and have faith in what the Bible calls "a love that surpasses all understanding." 

And to know for certain what God tells us: "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

This article is drawn in part from a speech given at the Lenten Retreat at the Greek Orthodox group, Archons of the Ecumencal Patriarchate, April 20, 2024. 

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