The Advantage

 We all have an idea what advantage means. One definition says it is a beneficial factor or combination of factors, superiority of means. A person who is better trained, better equipped, has an advantage over another contestant or foe. There is an old saying, “Don’t take a knife to a gunfight.” The person with the gun has the advantage. But that is no guarantee. Someone who is fast and accurate with the knife has a good chance of winning in a face-to-face contest. 

We are seeing multiple examples of this with boys who claim to be girls. Rather than compete against other boys, they compete against girls. Given the basic physical differences to their advantage, the boys win most of the time. An obvious conclusion is they know they can’t be successful against other boys, so they claim to be girls as their “gender identity” and use this to win where in real life they could not be successful against boys. Unfortunately, there are some states that sanction this. 

Okay, I’ll get down off of my soapbox. 

When God created the angels, some remained loyal and others rebelled. This latter group was cast out of heaven into hell. We refer to them by different names: Devil, Satan, The Great Pretender. While God is superior in all ways, Satan has a certain power and is very sneaky. He has learned how to use this in order to tempt us and recruit us to follow him into his hell rather than go to heaven and spend eternity with God. 

Satan has his wiles, his tricks, his deceptions. Remember Satan’s temptations of Jesus. Jesus, of course, rejected all of them. But it shows just how far Satan is willing to go in his temptations. He will look for your weaknesses, your desires, and use them to tempt you into sin and, maybe, ultimately, into hell. 

Do you have a desire for more money? Then it is no big deal to take a little here, a little there. Say you are working in retail. Just short the till some. “The company can afford it” and “they did not give me that raise that I deserve.” Maybe you’ll get away with it, maybe you'll get fired. Satan doesn’t care. He just won. Or, perhaps you have a weakness of alcohol or drugs or both. There are some people whose DNA makes them more susceptible to these addictions. Satan makes it easy to obtain them. Others become addicts over time and use. He doesn’t care that it destroys families, marriages, jobs. Satan has won. 

And then there is sex. Some people are predators. Children, pornography, and crimes like rape. Thankfully, these are not so common as other forms. Maybe Satan wants you to build up a record. How many times can you score and with how many partners? Or, say you just flirt at work. Satan is going to push you to go further and further until it ends up in bed with someone not your spouse. He will put the thought in your mind that your spouse isn’t as exciting as in years past, You have needs that aren’t being answered, you’re bored, it isn’t great anymore, so you have the right to take care of them extramaritally. Wrong! Broken marriages, loss of trust, divorce, alienation from your children. Satan has won, and he doesn’t care about your problems. 

Satan had the advantage over you in that he knows how to tempt you. There are many other ways and weaknesses and he knows the best ways to tempt you. He has the advantage. 

BUT! You can have the advantage over Satan, you can counter his every strategy. You have a partner, a teammate, one who knows everything Satan knows, and he has the ways to beat Satan. He is God. If you can’t win or are being tempted to your limits, it is time to call on God to add his strengths to yours and guide you in the right direction, and coach you on how to resist Satan and his ways. Satan will never give up, never quit trying to win to recruit you into hell. However, God always bests him. You and God, unbeatable. With your faith and following his coaching, it has a different outcome. You and God win. Satan loses. Every time. 

So, make sure you call on your partner, God, any time. He is always there and is waiting for you to call. 

Final score: You and God – 1; Satan 0.