Satan sucks

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When confessing sin to God yesterday, I was deeply troubled.  The Bible talks about having a "contrite" heart before God (Psalm 51:17).  Contrite can be defined as sincere remorse, desiring atonement, worn down, and crushed.  I felt crushed by my sin, totally disgusted with my flesh and my desire to do anything but please the Lord.  "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23).  When we sin, we earn death, sorrow, pain, misery and offensiveness.  We have submitted a time sheet to Satan, he approved it and sent it to payroll.  Sin is the agreement with the devil that his way is more convenient, effective and desirable than God's prescription of righteousness.

In my prayer, I recognized a parasitic relationship exists when we choose to sin over obedience.  Parasites are organisms who live at the expense of another organism.  For instance, mosquitoes have a parasitic relationship with humans and animals.  They drink our blood for nourishment, but may leave the bitten mammal with disease (i.e., malaria or West Nile Virus) or a raised itchy sore.  The bite victim has been harmed for the good of the parasite.  A parasite can live in the intestines of a human or animal, feeding and thriving while causing its host serious illness.  Parasites are not typically friends with their hosts, but cause them harm and suffering.  There are some organisms called parasitoids, which actually cause the death of their host.  They have relationships similar to parasites because their life hurts the host, only these suckers actually go for the eventual kill.

Similarly, sin allows for a parasitic experience between Satan and his demons and the sinner.  When we sin, the evil spirits and forces of darkness thrive off of our disobedience.  The enemy, though judged and defeated, finds life in our death.  He is a blood sucking parasite, longing to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10) the life source of our spirits.  He hates God with all of his condemned being and he hates what God loves.  Because God loves His creation with an infinitely abounding love, Satan hates all His creation, especially those who serve Jesus.

When we sin, our sin feeds the demonic.  We have made an agreement with Satan and his demons, if only a momentary one, that sinful conduct will satisfy us more than the righteousness of God and His love.  The more we choose to sin and disobey God, the greater the demonic stronghold of the sin in our lives.  Our sin quite literally feeds the demonic and welcomes the presence of spiritual forces of darkness.  This is why the Scriptures tell us to resist the devil (James 4:7), to flee from temptation (1 Cor. 6:18), and to avoid all forms of evil and immorality (1 Thessalonians 5:22).

Satan sucks.  He offers the bait and switch.  We make the mistake of trying to achieve often a good thing (pleasure, enjoyment, fun, etc.) but doing so outside of the means by which God has allowed.  Instead of finding genuine pleasure or peace, we have instead earned death.  The power of the demonic and sin in our lives will be lost when we starve it through obedience to the Scriptures and the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  Our lives cannot be marked by this Satanic parasitic relationship, but by love, the fruits of the Spirit and spiritual growth.

There is another type of relationship amongst organisms called a symbiotic relationship.  Rather than one organism being hurt while the other thrives, both thrive due to the relationship.  While I do not believe that God needs humanity to thrive, His Kingdom on earth is advanced when we feed on His word (that means read the Bible) and His fellowship (that means spend time with Him).

Satan is a parasite.  He is a parasitoid.  He feeds of our life, to our detriment, and goes for the kill.  Jesus came to offer us life and fullness thereof.  Thrive off of the nutrients of God and His Word and let the parasite the devil and his sin starve.  True story.