Whose Desires? Satan's or Ours?

"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of it." (John 8:44, emphasis added)

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience." (Ephesians 2:1-2, emphasis added)

"We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one." (1 John 5:19, American Standard Version, emphasis added)

"You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world." (1 John 4:4, emphasis added)

"Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved." (2 Thessalonians 2:8-10, emphasis added)

"I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me." (John 14:30-31, emphasis added)

"And the Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will." (2 Timothy 2:24-26, emphasis added)

When the Lord Jesus spoke those tremendous words recorded in John 8:44 He pulled back the curtain to reveal an insidious lie by which Satan has deceived the whole human race to this present day: "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father."

A. Paget Wilkes, in his excellant book The Dynamic of Service, observes, "Behind all mere secondary causes stands the one great origin of evil--The Devil. Divine revelation makes it abundantly plain that men are 'taken captive by him to do his will' (2 Tim. 2:26). Whatever means he may employ to imprison and enchain, he is the author of our bondage."

As persons with the ability to feel and to think we sense the pull of this world on our emotions and our thoughts. These are the avenues through which temptations come, often acting on our bodies first through some stimulation that finds its way into our physical senses: whether it's something we see or hear, a fragrance that reminds us of something (or someone), something that we taste or touch. We associate something with these things. But our reactions, the directions that we go in when these things act on us, are they our desires or do they belong to someone else?

Here is the great question that we have not even thought to ask but the Lord Jesus has given us the answer to and this now prompts us to ask the question. And with a sense of awe (and maybe anger!) our eyes are opened to see the truth. We have been duped, we have been used. Another has been expressing his desires by us and we have been his unwitting slaves!

How many times have we not even been thinking of a particular thing only to find our minds off in some illicit direction? Where did that originate? So many times we take the blame when someone else should be taking the brunt of it because the thought did not originate with us. We are not the author of it only the conveyer of it.

With this realization comes tremendous freedom. Satan does not have the ability to express his desires without a human host. If these are not my desires then why do I have to do them? If, for example, I don't want to do something but you want me to you'll have to work a lot harder to get me to do it if I have no interest. How often has Satan convinced us that these are our desires, that we want to do a particular thing? It even feels like us! But he masquerades as us and gets us to express his desires under the impression that they are our desires.

When we realize that we can turn away from him and say to Jesus, "I'm not Satan's vessel. I'm Yours to flow through. I surrender myself to You and to the pull of Your Spirit." And there is a pull in the Spirit. He draws us away from Satan like a whelming tide and into Himself with the result that Satan has lost the vehicle for his expression. He will make other attempts at other times but for the present he is out of a job. The "body of sin"--what our flesh becomes when it's available to him--is rendered inactive and he has to go somewhere else if he's going to express himself.

Remember this. If you don't want to eat steak but someone else wants you to he'll have to work harder to get you to do what you don't want to do, i.e., if you realize that it's not your desire but someone else's then ignore it. It has no hold on you and you don't have to do it. Someone else has the desire and wants to use you so that he can satisfy himself.

Our culpability: "Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." (Ephesians 2:3) "Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." (Galatians 5:24-25)

This is what happens when Satan finds the vehicle for his expression: Our physical and mental desires become associated or wrapped up with Satan's desires to the point of confusion. When we agree with him--"Yes, these are my desires"--then we get mixed up with what he's doing. When the serpent approached Eve in the garden there's no indication that she was even thinking--never mind longing--to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The thought had apparently never entered her mind. But when Satan started to suggest the idea he convinced her that she wanted it, when actually it was Satan who wanted her to take it. "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate." (Genesis 3:6). Remember, the serpent deceived her by his craftiness (2 Corinthians 11:3). Why did he have to be crafty? Because he had to convince her that this is what she desired.