Who is Sitting at Your Table Revisited

A while back I wrote a post entitled Who is Sitting at Your Table? With the number of covid cases growing in our state, the shut down of our state, economic issues, and the postponement of our ministry I have found myself struggling with a lot of negative thoughts. So, I went back and listened again to Louis Giglio's talk on Psalm 23:8 and decided to revisit the truth in his sermon on the blog. 

I loved the word picture Giglio presented. The negative thoughts I was experiencing, were the enemy whispering in my head. As I watched his sermon, I was reminded again that God has prepared for us a table in the presence of our enemies. Those enemies can be anything from a person who has verbally attacked us, spread rumors about us, or someone who acted like a friend and then stabbed us in the back. The enemy could be things like hard circumstances like this pandemic, threats against our safety, and addictions raising up their head during a time when support is difficult to find. The enemy can also be Satan or one of his cohorts, whispering ugly lies into our heads as they were mine when I postponed our support groups. The lies the enemy whispers are many--you are not good enough, you are too much, you are not smart enough, you are crazy, your not a valuable part of the body, and you not loved. The lies can also be lies about God--He isn't hearing your prayers, He doesn't care about the things happening in your life and country, and He no longer is working in your life or your ministry. 

I think our natural tendency (at least mine) is to beg God to destroy or remove our enemies and to make life easier. But Psalm 23:8 tells us that He actually prepares a table for us in the their presence. Wow, this tells us is in the midst of battles, in the midst of temptations, in the midst of the ugly things we hear in our heads our God is ever present and serving lavishly what we need to survive. Giglio says we need to remember God has given us the power and authority to choose who sits down at our table. As believers, I imagine we are sitting at a beautifully decorated table with a lavish feast the Lord Himself has prepared. As we engage with Him through His Word, He reminds us of His Holiness, His goodness, His power, His strength, His faithfulness to us, and His great love. He also reminds us that we are redeemed, we are accepted, we are reconciled to the King of kings, and we are chosen to be a royal priesthood. He also reminds us that through Jesus we have been made good enough, beautiful enough, are fully known and loved, and have been adopted as sons and daughters into His family with the full rights of sonship. He also reminds us that His Spirit empowers us, comforts us, and dwells with in us so that all we need is to live holy lives that is pleasing to God. 

When we are focused on the One forever seated at our table, I envision our enemies hovering over our table. We are safe even with them there hovering. I picture the enemy walking repeatedly by our table and whispering lies into our ears--If God really cared He would have wiped out covid, you could use a drink to deal with this stress, that man (or woman) over there could make you happier than your spouse, you really aren't good a enough teach to teach your classes on line, you are a failure as a parent--and the list of lies could go on and on. If we are really focused on the Lord, we probably don't even notice the whispered words. 

But when we get triggered, exhausted, lose focus, struggle with temptation, are dealing with traumatic events, or are ignoring the Savior seated at the table, Satan sees it as his opportunity to pull up a a chair and join us at out table. Sometimes, we  recognize the Enemy for who he is and we tell him he is not welcome. But, at other other times when we are vulnerable the Enemy speaks a lie or a half truth that resonates with what we are thinking or feeling in that moment and we get hooked and begin to ruminate on the lies. Before long we  have turned our chair away from the Lord and are fully engaging with the Enemy and buy into one ugly lie after another. Before we know it, we have forgotten the Lord who is sitting at our table and we are feasting on the lies. You are ugly. You are fat. You are a failure. You are unloved. You are unwanted. You are too broken. You are too much. You are not enough. You are nothing but damaged goods. You deserve to be battered. You are too weak. You are invisible. You don’t deserve God’s forgiveness. You deserved the abuse you experienced. Something in you caused the man to do those vile things. Everything wrong is your fault. You are responsible for everyone’s happiness. And the ugliest lie of all--Jesus didn’t really love you, what you experienced has proven that. God has forgotten you. He is not really good or all these things would not be happening.

But, Jesus is the Good Shepherd and He understands our weaknesses and our thought patterns because He lived in a fallen world and rubbed shoulders with people just like us. He is the Good Shepherd who lay down His life for us. He demonstrated His lavish love when He was wounded, beaten, rejected and hung on a cross, bearing the blame for things He didn't do. Because of His love and His faithfulness, Jesus never leaves our table even when we turn our attention to the Enemy. When we are engaged with the enemy, the Lord may gently nudge us, but when we are struggling with confusion, shame, fear, pain, or anger, we may not notice His nudging. After a moment or two, an hour or two, a day or two, a week or two, a month or two, a year or two, or maybe more, we realize we have been listening to the Enemy and have given him power that is not rightfully his. The Holy Spirit within us may get our attention or send someone we know to remind us that we have the authority to decide who sits at the table with us. And, we yell, “STOP, LEAVE!” And we turn back to the Lord and reengage with Him, hanging on to His truth and begin, once again, to live out our faith. 

It sounds easy, but it isn't. When there has been trauma the lies Satan uses are deeply are often embedded deeply into our core. To overcome them, we must change our core by taking our thoughts captive to God's truth twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We want to remember that at Calvary, our Jesus stared into the face of our Enemy and defeated his hold over us and all we have to do is use our God given authority to boot the enemy from the table. 

So, we need to ask ourselves who is sitting at our table today? To whose voice are we listening? God's God’s voice isn’t a condemning voice, that is the Enemy’s. We would do well to remember that we, as believers, decide who sits at our table with us. Fear, insecurity, lack of peace, condemnation, bitterness, the ugly lies we think about ourselves, and the paranoid things we think about others usually indicate that we have let unwelcome guests sit down at our tables and we can dismiss them and focus on Him who is ever present, ever loving, offering His peace even when we are surrounded by enemies. 

Know the Enemy's Strategy

When we enter battle, we not only want to know who the enemy is, we want to know what strategies he employs. Satan uses a couple of different strategies. One of his strategies is to trap us the same way trappers trapped wild animals for their fur. A trapper would put something the animal would eat in the middle of the trap on a trigger. When the animal smelled the bait, he would approach the trap cautiously, because he could smell scent of the trapper lingering with the bait. As he would circle the trap sniffing the bait, at some point the animal's desire for the bait grew bigger than his fear of the man whose scent he could smell. He would then step into the center of the trap, taking the bait, which triggered the trap to shut. The trapped animal was either killed or wounded if only one of his limbs was caught. In the same way, Satan has observed mankind and figured out what he can use to bait us. 1 John 2:16 tells us the bait Satan uses falls into three categories--the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Glancing back to Eden, Satan planted doubts about God's goodness and then baited Adam and Eve in all three of these categories. First, the fruit was good for food and would satisfy their fleshly appetites. The appetite could have been any appetite--food, relationship, sex, status, or significance. The desires we have are not bad as God provides us ways to fulfill every appetite in legitimate ways just as he provided a garden of food for Adam and Eve. Second, the fruit was appealing because of its beauty. Don't we all go for beautiful fruit, passing over that which is misshapen or insect damaged? That is why the advertising industry uses airbrushing to make food, goods, services, and people look better than they are. After all who falls for ugly? Third, the fruit appealed to their human pride as it would make them wise like God. That equates to our wanting to be in charge of our own destiny. We fear God won't give us a spouse so, we don't wait for a godly man, have sex outside of marriage, or marry someone of questionable character. We get impatient as we are working our way up the corporate ladder and begin to take credit for others' work, hoping to get ahead. The enemy watches us and knows what bait we will most likely take and he uses it over and over wearing us down until it becomes a strong hold. Can't we hear him laughing as he watches us circle the bait and play with it, knowing that if we keep circling it we will bite.

Because Satan is not equal to God, his only power is in his ability to deceive. He wants us to believe God isn't really who He says He is, that we aren't really who He says we are, and that His plans and laws deny us instead of protecting us. He did that in Eden. He insinuated God was not really good as He denied them of one fruit in the garden. Look at how he changed their focus from all God was providing to the one restriction. They were made in God's image and fellowshipped with Him daily. Yet, the enemy also implied they were less than they were and that they needed what God prohibited to be more--to be more fulfilled, to be wiser, and to be happier. He stirred the desires with which God had created them, but focused the desires on what God in His love had prohibited. When they bit, they were thrown into a world of hurt and shame and they turned on each other, making each other and God their enemies instead of the serpent who hissed in their ear. The devil took the order God had created and turned it into chaos. Satan does the same thing to you and to me. Can't we hear him laughing when we turn on our spouses, hurt our friends, blow up at our kids, misrepresent our God to a culture that desperately needs him, or when we walk away from God disappointed in the journey He has designed us to live.

Why does the Enemy do what he does? He does what he does to dull our passion for the spiritual. For when we aren't passionate about God, His truth, and His holiness, our relationship with Him grows cold, our witness gets destroyed, our power is diminished, we live in chains that have already been broken, and the image we bear looks nothing like our Father. Satan does what he does to distract us away from our identity in Christ--our inadequacies, the parts of ourselves we believe to be defective, the failures marked by sin, and abuse that has ripped hearts opened wide have a way of distracting us from who He has created and redeemed us to be. He does what he does to stifle the callings God has placed on our lives because worry and fear keep us from living in a way we are most fulfilled and God most glorified. He does what he does to entice us to live lives full of impurity because impurity leads to a perverted state that hides God's beauty and glory. He does what he does to destroy our relationships, because it destroys the picture of our God being a relational God.

The truth is believers positionally are already seated at the table of God. All that we need is found in Him. When the enemy sets a trap before us that looks like a table containing food that is better than the Lords, we need to remember the character behind the meal--he is a thief, a deceiver, and a murderer. His every intention is to destroy. We need to call him out. "You have robbed me one to many times. I will no longer give you the power to deceive me. I choose life. I will not let you kill me with your lies and your forbidden meals. My God is good. I am beloved and redeemed by the blood of His precious son. Depart from me. I belong to God. He will provide."  

The Bible gives us two interesting instructions. First, it tells us to flee the flesh. When it is being tickled by the Enemy, we need to run and we need to run fast. We don't sit in a bakery to lose weight. We don't sit in a bar to stop drinking, we don't flirt in the office when our marriage needs work. Second, The Bible tells us to resist the devil. We stand firm, having girded our loins with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shod our feet with the gospel of peace, taking up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit for greater is our God than he who is in the world.