1 Peter 5:8-9 BSB (Berean Standard Bible)
“8Be sober-minded and alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9Resist him, standing firm in your faith and in the knowledge that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.”
Guard Against Distractions
I just finished posting a meme/poem called, “All Hands on
Deck,” which is about our enemy Satan who is hard at work to get all of us to
back down from our walks of faith in obedience to the Lord, in service to our
Lord, and to get captivated and caught up in the things of this world, instead.
So Satan (the devil) pulls out all his tricks he has in his bag of tricks to attempt
to get us distracted from our service to the Lord so that we will not obey God.
Fight the Good Fight
The poem then encourages us to fight this battle against
Satan by getting on board with God, instead, in serving Him and His will for
our lives. Especially in the age of the internet, smart phones, and smart TVs, it
can be so easy to get distracted and to waste precious hours or days on being
entertained rather than in being a witness for Jesus Christ in spreading the
truth of the gospel of Christ to the people of the world, like on the internet,
for instance.
And Then..
And then as I continued reading in 1 Peter, I came upon this
passage of Scripture in 1 Peter 5:8-9, which speaks on the same subject as the
poem. And I will admit that, since I am on the internet daily, writing and
posting daily devotionals and songs, and sometimes memes, poems, and video
talks, too, and so I am on social media and YouTube and other internet sites
pretty much 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, it is easy for me to get distracted
by all these little stories which pop up here and there (not any bad ones).
So, I am praying and asking the Lord to give me guidance and
direction in that so that I am not wasting time on those little stories when I
could be using that time in better ways. Now I am spending at least 8 hours a
day writing and posting devotions, and I spend time with my husband and with other
family members, and I do household chores and eat meals, etc., so I am not talking
about much available time here for anything else. But as I have spare time, I
want to use it wisely, as the Lord leads me in what to do.
It Isn’t Just the Big Things
So, what is my point? Satan doesn’t just try to tempt you to
sin or to disobey God and His commands. He does do that, indeed! But if he
knows your walk with the Lord, and he knows he is not going to get you to sin
against God or to stop serving the Lord in ministry, he will find other ways to
distract you by drawing your attention to things which, in and of themselves
are not sinful, but which could be stealing away your time that would be better
spent on better things. So we need to pray for discernment.
And I am certainly not saying that we should go hide in a
hole somewhere and never have the world touch us in any way or that we can
never be entertained at all by movies, music, and stories, etc. Some short stories
I have watched actually hit on biblical themes where they show the wrongness of
prejudice, pride, false judgments, and mistreatments of others who are not like
us. And they demonstrate for us the right way that we should treat other people
with kindness, sympathy, love, mercy, and compassion.
Pray and Obey
If you are being tempted to sin against God and to ignore His
commands, you must resist the devil, flee from him, and draw near to God in
obedience to His commands, in surrender to His will and purpose for your life. That
is a given! But when it comes to those things which are not expressly sinful
but they are not necessarily overly righteous, either, that is where we need to
pray and ask God for wisdom. For not all entertainment is sinful, although a
lot of it is. But God may have a better use of our time than for us to turn to
entertainment when we have spare time and nothing else is happening.
So, this is just an encouragement to all of us to realize
that Satan doesn’t just tempt us to sin, but he might tempt us to waste time on
things which could be better spent on something else. And this is not saying
that watching a story or listening to something non-religious is in itself
sinful. That would be legalistic to insist on that. Certainly we should stay
away from what is immoral and what speaks against God, and we should not indulge
in entertainment and then not obey God. So, we need to pray, then obey God.
Pray and Obey
An Original Work / October 31,
2026
Christ’s Free
Servant, Sue J Love
Refresh My Spirit, Lord
Based off of Psalm 51 & Matthew
11:28-30
An Original Work /
August 8, 2011
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
Refresh my spirit,
Lord. Revive my heart today.
Move me to serve
You, Lord, in all I do and say.
Be my heart’s one
desire; my spirit set on fire
In pure devotion,
Lord, to love You and obey.
Create within me,
Lord, a pure heart, this I pray,
So I can worship You
and yield to You always.
May all Your love
and pow’r be lived in me, I pray,
So I might love as
You; be Your witness today.
Jesus says, “Come to
Me all you with heavy hearts,
And find in Me your
peace, and give to Me your all.
My yoke is light to
bear, ‘cause I paid for your sin,
So you might be set
free, and purified within.”
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