Satan’s strategy is to confuse
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 14
The enemy doesn’t want you to pray in tongues. In fact, the less you find out about
this foundational operation, the better he likes it. He doesn’t care if you play at being
an apostle, prophet, evangelist, or pastor — as long as you never qualify for these
offices through the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
He even rather enjoys deceiving men into building massive organizations of their own
making, separate from the calling of God. Men put themselves in charge of these
organizations so they can hand down doctrinal rulings as to what is and is not God.
With self-deceived pride, they proclaim great, swelling mandates, such as “Tongues
are not for today” or “Healing is not for everyone.”
The devil is a tactical genius. If he can’t remove tongues from some part of the
Church, then he goes to step two of his plan: He tries to cause believers to enter into
such fanaticism about tongues and hold such unruly, out-of-order services that the
sinner doesn’t want much to do with them. Satan’s strategy is to confuse the use of
tongues so greatly that the operation loses its effectiveness and credibility in the eyes
of those who have been deceived by its misuse.
PRAYER FOCUS
Think about it. What is it about tongues that scares the devil so badly? Why has
he worked so hard to surround this gift with so much confusion? Paul himself
dedicated an entire chapter, First Corinthians 14, to straightening out the error
and confusion within the Early Church concerning this gift. No other gift or
operation has an entire chapter dedicated to explaining its proper use.