Satan’s Four Favorite Lies

John Gardner said, “Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit—and each man is his own gardener.” The thoughts we cultivate shape our lives and destiny. There is another force at work in the garden of our mind.  

Satan has a way of slithering into our minds and planting wrong thoughts that lead to wrong behavior, and every wrong thought is based on a lie.   

Precisely what lies do Satan and his demons attempt to plant in your mind? The list is endless, yet there are some lies that seem to be his favorites because of the resulting consequences.

1. Discontent: “You don’t have what you need to be happy.” (Genesis 3:1-3; James 3:16; James 4:1-2, 4, 7)

Although God had provided the first couple with a idyllic setting filled with thousands of trees to enjoy, Satan zeroed in on the one tree from which God had prohibited them eating and said, “That fruit is what you really need. Eat it and you will experience joy beyond your wildest imagination.”  

Today, Satan continues enticing us with the same deception. If only you had … that mate, that house, that job, that income … then you could be truly happy. But, alas, God has kept those things out of your grasp and is cheating you out of the happiness you deserve.

Allow me to paraphrase James’ words: Resist the devil because he is promoting a worldly value system that equates money with success, sex with love, and power with purpose. When you adopt these values you will start lusting for those things that are outside God’s will for your life.  That constant craving not only leads to turmoil within your life when you disobey God, but it causes dissension with others as you jealously crave their possessions and positions.

And falling for that first lie causes us to be more susceptible to Satan’s next lie.

2. Pride: “You are in control of your destiny.” (Genesis 3:5; Psalm 100:3)

If indeed God cannot be depended on to give us what we need to be happy, then we must start looking out for “number one.” At the core of pride is the conviction that I must take care of myself … and that I can take care of myself. 

The connection between discontent, his pride, and independence is illustrated in Lucifer’s own fall from heaven. No longer satisfied with being God’s second banana, Satan convinced himself that he occupy the number one chair in the heavenly boardroom. “God is too power-hungry to ever allow me to be in charge, so I will have to take matters in my own” Satan concluded. 

But stop and think for a moment. What caused Lucifer to think he was capable of running the universe? Why did Lucifer think he could ever be successful in his all-out assault on God’s throne? One word: pride.

Here’s the Jeffress paraphrase of Ezekiel 28:17a: You became intoxicated with your God-given beauty and allowed your thinking to be messed up by your God-given gifts.

3. Fear: “You Are All Alone” (Genesis 3:10)

The great irony of pride and independence is that they do not result in confidence, but in fear. You are all alone the enemy tells us. In spite of our self-affirming credos such as “Invictus” we eventually learn the hard way that we are not the masters of our fate.

A disloyal mate, a maverick cancer cell, or a random accident have a way of sobering us up to the reality of our helplessness. Having dismissed the notion of a Being greater than ourselves Who is controlling our destiny—or at least choosing to leave the security of His pasture and go it alone—we eventually come to believe that we are all alone in this gigantic universe. We are no more than victims of the capricious acts nature or other people may choose to inflict upon us. 

The aloneness that an alienation from our Creator produces eventually results in fear. The first couple, having chosen to take control of their own lives and act independently from God, were immediately overwhelmed by anxiety.  

It is no accident that the first negative emotion recorded in the Bible is not hatred, jealousy, or depression (those would come later), but fear.  

Ironically, the byproduct of acting independently from God is not indomitable confidence but continual apprehension. By freeing ourselves from the notion of a Creator who controls all things, humanity has become enslaved to worry. 

The relationship between a society’s independence from God and susceptibility to fear is obvious.  The more we teach people that there is no Being Who controls everything from the orbit of the planets to the most minute details of our lives, the more susceptible we become to fear as we obsessively calculate all the things that could go wrong in life. 

Satan understands all too well the vicious cycle of fear and independence.  Independence from God produces fear, and fear motivates us to act more independently from God as we try to control our own destiny. 

Discontent leads to independence, independence leads to fear when we believe we are all alone, and fear ultimately leads bitterness which is based on the lie. 

4. Bitterness: “You have been mistreated.” (Genesis 3:12-13)

Is it any surprise, then, that one of Satan’s favorite mind games is to convince us that we have been unfairly treated by God and/or by other people? After Satan enticed the first couple to sin, God came to Adam and Eve and demanded an explanation for their disobedience. Their response? Adam pointed his finger at Eve and said, “This woman You gave me, she is the one who made me do it!”

Eve also quickly learned how to play the blame game. When God looked to her for an explanation, she pointed to the serpent “This slime ball creature—which by the way you placed here in the garden—deceived me” 

Blaming God or others for our divorce, our termination from employment, our financial struggles, our deteriorating health, our lack of close friendships is certainly more palatable than accepting any personal responsibility for our situation, but it also prevents us from receiving the forgiveness we may need, as well as changing our behavior that may have led to our predicament. 

Satan understands that reality.  Part of his game plan for your destruction is to blind you to your guilt, your need for God’s forgiveness and to hold you hostage to the patterns of disobedience that produce so much of the misery in your life. Bitterness is one of the enemy’s most effective blindfolds. 

One of Satan’s favorite traps is resentment.  Spiritually, we have both the ability and the motivation to forgive others because of the forgiveness Christ has offered us.  Practically, it only makes sense to release our offender and move on with our lives rather than be held captive by him.  When we are wronged, Satan encourages us to grab hold of the one who has mistreated us, refuse to let him go, demand justice, make him pay for what he did … and the tighter we hold on, the more enslaved we become. Letting go was essential for experiencing freedom.