Satan and Healing

It has been a few months since I have written any thoughts on pain, forgiveness, and healing. I want to focus this post on an enemy of the latter two—Satan.

The men’s group is reading Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and I have been continuing my reading of The Sacred Romance by Curtis/Eldredge. What was impressed very strongly to me in reading Sacred Romance is the vulnerability of people to Satan. It is fair to say that we believe that Satan hates God. But what can he do with his hatred? God is all-powerful – can Satan successfully attack God directly? Not really. But he can attack God a different way—by attacking the people God loves. The intense hatred that Satan feels for people is his burning hatred for God Himself. Milton, in Paradise Lost, says (quoted in Sacred Romance):

Heav’n, whose high walls fear no assault or siege
Or ambush from the Deep. What if we find some easier enterprise?...
There is a place…
Of some new Race call’d Man, about this time…
In his [God’s] own strength, this place may be expos’d…
By sudden onset, either with Hell fire
To waste his whole Creation, or possess
All as our own, and drive as we were driven
The puny inhabitants, or if not drive
Seduce them to our Party, that their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works.

I will admit that I am a bit unhappy with being put in the middle of God and Satan’s “disagreement” (to put it lightly). Part of me wants to be a little irritated – really now, can we just all get along? A bit of wishful thinking on my part. It isn’t this way, and wishing it won’t change anything.

How does this relate to healing? Satan does not want you healed. He will do everything in his power to keep you from forgiveness and healing. Because the existence of such in the life of an individual will draw that person closer to the heart of God, and will open wide the gates of ministry towards others. As long as I am covered by anger, bitterness, hatred, and malice toward others, I am blind to my own sin and pain, the pain of others, and to the graciousness of God. A broken back prevents me from looking up… to Him.

What I want to emphasize here is that there is an enemy who does not want your healing. And one of his favorite methods of working is invisibly, so we do not suspect it is he blocking our path. James says to “stand firm and resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (4:7b). This resistance is preceded by our submission to God in humility (see verses 6 and 7a). How interesting that when we stop resisting God and humble ourselves towards Him in obedience, we then have the strength from Him to stand firm and resist. Healing then, depends on the submission of my will to God, and my understanding that there is an enemy that I can only resist in my Father’s strength.

"But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:6-7)