Know the Schemes. Take Your Stand. Live Victoriously.

Hey IFam, it's Sheridan Correa here, and I'm the host of this broadcast, Stepping Forward, and I am also the Director of Healing and Restoration Initiatives for Victorious Living, a new title. Whoop, whoop! We'll talk about that another time, and I'm a walking, living, breathing testimony of the goodness and the faithfulness of God. Nine years ago, I met Jesus in jail, I met God in jail, and I had been in a 12-year journey of being totally lost, addicted to pills, and alcohol, and meth, and heroin, and ending up in jail all the time on my way to prison. I had lost everything in my life, absolutely everything, and not once, but twice. And this last nine years, I have experienced God's radical, radical power, His love, and He has restored and returned everything back to me, everything that I had lost, and made it into something totally new and amazing. And so that's the goodness of God. That is the reality of God. What He has done in my life, it can happen to you. Look, God is not a respecter of persons, He doesn't show favoritism, so what He's done in my life, it can happen to you in your life. So here on this show, we talk about how to step forward in our faith, that trust walk, that journey with Jesus, because it's really kind of confusing and frustrating sometimes. So I'm here to share my experiences with you, I'm here to share my life with you, and hopefully wisdom, things that I've learned along the way. So welcome to Stepping Forward. Today we are going to talk about schemes of the devil. Now in John 10.10, it says that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Now that's his family, that's his MO. And so there's obviously strategies and schemes that he has, that he does in order to steal our identity, to kill off the love that we have been given from God to destroy our lives, and he does that in very, very specific ways. So I wanted to give you a clear picture of his devices and schemes.

And in 2 Corinthians 2.11, Paul is writing to the Corinth church and he says, after he's talking about forgiveness and all this other stuff, but I'm just going to stick to 11. In order that Satan might not outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes, family, we cannot be unaware of the devil's schemes. If you are a Christian, you have to know that you are in a battle. You are in a battle for your soul against evil. And you got two choices. We can go with evil and subscribe to the crap that he's given us, or we can go with God and subscribe and yield to a life and surrender to a life of God's design instead of Satan's design. We know that, and the scripture tells us, that if we subscribe to Satan and continue in the evil and godless ways, that we will all be destroyed. Not only eternally, because we will not have that eternal life, but even in our natural life down here, while we are living and breathing and have oxygen, we have a destructed life. We are on the road to destruction, and we don't want that. We don't want that. I hope that you want something different for your life. I hope that you want the abundant life that Jesus died to give us and that God is offering us every single minute of the day and every step of the way. And so we have to know the devil's playbook, just like we know the word of God, just like we know the heart and God's design, divine design and blueprint for our life. We have to also know what Satan is up to and how he tries to get us and how he tempts us. So that's what we're talking about here today. I mentioned John 10.10. His goal is to steal, kill, and destroy by drawing us away from the truth. He's often trying to knock us off kilter and believe lies, drawing us away from peace, God's peace that surpasses all understanding. We could be in prison. We could be in the middle of a hurricane, in a storm, and still have an assurance, still have a hope, still have a trust and faith that it's going to be. okay, because God is in control. We're not in control. My circumstances do not dictate

how my belief system is and how I am following Jesus or not. It is God. It is my trust in God's character and His promises that determines all of that. He is drawing us away from our authority. Who is Christ? If we are in Christ, that means we are now underneath the authority of Christ's rule and reign, not Satan. Satan no longer gets to decide. Satan no longer gets to have words for us. Satan no longer gets to tell us how to live. Christ does. God's way does. And so we are exercising and walking under our authority in Christ. No longer Satan, but Satan's mad about that. So he's always trying to draw us away from that. And he's trying to draw us away from the intimacy with God. He knows that if he can get you separated from God, where his voice is not the loudest and he's not the Lord's voice and the Holy Spirit is not influencing you any longer, then immediately our mind goes to negativity. It goes to lies. Then we are tempted to believe the things that Satan wants us to, and he draws us away from that. So we got to know this, and here are some central themes that the Bible reveals about the schemes of the devil. So I'm going to use my spectaculars because I'm getting a little old and they ain't working so well sometimes anymore. The first way, I have eight, so hang with me, but the first way is deception. Satan's schemes are to deceive us, to lie to us and give us only half-truths, or to sometimes give us some truth, but to twist it in a way that it seems so like, oh, wow, yeah, that totally makes sense. Even the deceptions of our hearts, he's trying to stir those places up also. The Word of God says that our hearts are not to be trusted because we deceive ourselves as does Satan, and so he is called the father of lies. In John 8, 44, Satan is called the father of lies. That's all he knows how to do, is lie to you. Praise God that our God does not. He speaks truth. Jesus says that he is the truth, the way, and the life, and only truth can be found in him. It also says that where there is truth, there is freedom. That's what the Word of God says, and that is a reality. That is truth, and it is comforting to know that our God will never lie to us. Scripture says that too, that God does not lie to us. He only tells us the truth, and sometimes truth can be hard. Sometimes truth can be challenging even to us and be like, I ain't trying to hear that, but truth, we need to be challenged. We need to be challenged in our belief system. The things that we're thinking about, the things that we are believing, they need to be challenged and faced with the truth so that we can get on the path of truth. The path of truth, the Word of God is a lamp unto our feet. It shows us the way to take. It keeps us safe and secure, but Satan, he twists truth like he did with Eve in the garden,

found in Genesis 3, 1 through 5, and he also did this to Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew 4. Satan was even kind of spitting Scripture back to Jesus sometimes, and Jesus is like, yeah, no, bro, you didn't get that right, okay, and don't be trying to twist that to try to get me to believe that I can have power and control and blah, blah, blah. You don't even know my God. He is talking back to Satan and putting him back in his place. Jesus was the perfect model and example of what following looks like or what a journey of faith looks like, and we are to become and reflect his modeling. So when Satan comes with the temptations and the lies, we are to spout back Scripture. We are to spout back the truth back to Satan and remind him, because look, he knows. It even says in the Word of God, the demons even believe in God and know who he is, but they're just so hardcore in rebellion that they're not trying to go along with God and be on team God. So they're trying to come at us and steal us away at all costs, and at ridiculous costs, at wimpy and foolish costs. So we got to know this, family. So the scheme is that Satan makes us doubt God's goodness. He makes us doubt God's Word, and he makes us doubt God's identity of being all-powerful God, of having all authority and power on the earth. And so we have to know that so that we do not become duped and deluded. into following after that temptation or following after that scheme. So the second thing is temptation. Temptation appeals to our fleshly desires, our power, our control, our comfort, even the idols of our heart. So what he does is he entices, he entices with what looks good, but it leads to bondage. Okay? I'm going to throw some stuff out, women, men, he entices us to look for love in all the wrong places. He entices us to, you know, go after and hustle to make all that money because money is what's going to make me better and make me feel secure and really going to help me rise up. That ain't true. That ain't true. And let's see, addiction. I mean, that's obvious. It looks good at the time.

There might be a temporary reward, but it will lead to bondage and captivity every single time. It will lead to an inner and spiritual incarceration every single time. Crime, you might get a temporary reward or some type of fix even from that, but it is still sin and it still leads to bondage. All sin leads to bondage. And if we're being honest, the temptation to sin is so that we get some immediate relief from something that we might have discomfort in, or that we might get a temporary gain in something, but then again, it turns into bondage and into captivity and into an incarceration in all its own. So the temptation is he's going to draw you into sin through pride, lust, greed, anger, and even selfishness. And these are all idols of our heart also. And when we are following after the idols of our heart, we are replacing God. And he is the only one who gets all of our hearts, that gets all the affections of our hearts. He's the one that gets every single part of us. And we cannot, family, listen, we cannot fall in love with God. We cannot fall in love with God until we release the affections of our heart and fall out of love with all these other things that we're chasing, that we think that we need, and that we're tempted to believe that will give us what we are seeking for and desiring. Number three is accusation and condemnation. Satan is the accuser of the brethren. As it says in Revelations 12, 10, his scheme is he's going to weigh you down with shame, with false guilt, with feelings of unworthiness so that you hide from God. We are not called any longer into living in caves. You feel me? We are not called to living in caves any longer. When we come into the life with God, when we come into the identity in Christ, we come out of hiding because God is safe, because Jesus is safe territory, because he has our

best interests in mind, because he doesn't lie to us, because he's not gonna hurt us, as Jeremiah 29, 11 says, that he does not harm us, but he's giving us a hope and a future. That is the assurance. That is the reality. That is truth, family. And we have to stand firm in that and remind ourselves of that. We do not serve a God who is accusing us and condemning us all the time. In Scripture, it says that we no longer live in condemnation. We no longer have to live in hiding in caves. We no longer have to be ashamed or live in shame, but to be honest and living in our divine design and step into what he has called us as image bearers and an abundant life. But Satan, what he does is discourages us. He's constantly accusing us. He's constantly condemning us. He's constantly saying like, oh, see that? You're not really changed. You just did that thing right there. And so you're guilty and we get trapped in what I refer to as the shame corral. Don't follow after that lame scheme from the enemy. The fourth way is division and strife. Satan loves to sow discord, dissonance, not harmony, not unity. He loves to sow it among families, among churches, and communities. In 1 Corinthians 1, 10 through 13, go look that up, also Ephesians 4, 3. This is a scheme to break the unity because unity releases God's blessing and God's power, and Satan knows that. And so he'd rather have us try to be angry with each other and pitting us against each other so that it breaks the unity and it breaks the purposes of God. And we can't do that. We cannot subscribe to that family. So right now, if you even have some beef with your brother or your sister, or you have something

against it, go do what the Word of God says. Go reconcile with him, with them, with him, with her, with somebody from a family member. Go reconcile and forgive. Get over yourself and do it God's way so that the unity and your freedom can even be restored to you. Because when we are not walking in unity, when we are walking after the division and the strife, we are not free. We are not free, and Satan knows this. The fifth way is fear and intimidation. He prowls around like a lion. Have you ever seen a lion prowl at the zoo? Okay, it's not pretty. It's not pretty. I was at some wild zoo in Arizona years ago, and it was feeding time, and they hucked this huge piece of meat over the fence, and watching that lion prowl around, well, even like he knew it was feeding time. So he's seeing that piece of meat and prowling around, waiting for the keeper to feed him. It was frightening, and then watching him pounce on this piece of meat was frightening. Have you ever watched the Discovery Channel? It is frightening. But listen, we know this. We know this about Satan. We know that he's out there prowling around, waiting to pounce on us, that he's waiting to get his foot in the door and get that little crack in the door so he can come and sneak in and wreak havoc in our lives. But that's in 1 Peter 5.8. And why does he do that? Why does he prowl around to paralyze us with fear, or to even study his prey, and know exactly how to get up in your business and get up under your skin so that you can follow after his schemes and get out of the path that the Lord has you on, the path of restoration,

the path of healing, the path of faith? Satan knows this. He ain't no fool, okay? He ain't no fool. But we become fools because we still follow after this crud. So the scheme is that he keeps you by prowling and using that fear and intimidation. He keeps you from stepping into faith, obedience, and courage. The sixth thing is distraction and busyness. Oh my gosh, I can speak into this. This is even true in my life, even in the realm of ministry. Because I thought that, wow, the field is ripe and ready to harvest, and let's go, and let's just live and breathe it, and never have any sense of my priorities. And oh my gosh, I still have a family, I still have a husband that I need. It is tricky. And I really believe that the enemy has these assigned arrows as he's shooting them over to us with even the words ministry on them, and gets us so busy and so spun out in working for the Lord that we even forget to be with the Lord and create space in us to answer the Lord's invitation of how he might be pursuing us in a way of growth and development and intimacy in our own life. I hope that makes sense. And I talk more about this in my other video, The Courage to Let Go. But even good things can become idols if they keep you from seeking God first. There's some scripture references there in Luke 10, 40 through 42, and Mark 4, 19. And I'm just going to expand that space a little bit. In my season of busyness and trying to work for the Lord, what I thought I was doing was getting closer to the Lord, and I'm becoming more like Christ, and woo, woo, woo. forget to inquire of the Lord. I would completely forget that I had this intimacy with the Lord, that I am first a human being where my being needs to sit with the Lord in rest and renewal and solitude and hear from the Lord.

And I would completely skip over that and go straight into like, whoa, whoa, let's go into becoming a human doing and forget my being. Forget that I need to, what's the word, forget that I need to sow even into my personal and intimate relationship with God and make room for that. And so in that, Satan can use even ministry and good things to distract us and busy us so that we can't even hear or sense God. I've read a book one time and it said that the spirit of hurriedness, the spirit of busyness gets us so blinded and so deaf from what God is trying to teach us or talk to us and speak to us about because we are so consumed and preoccupied and full already. So the scheme here is Satan works to keep you spiritually numb, too busy, or even too tired to pray, burnt out, and reading the word of God and growing in faith, even exercising more in performance and not presence, not his presence, or even perfectionism. So the seventh thing is discouragement and weariness. He whispers to us, this is too hard, it's not worth it. When you're pressing forward in faith, Galatians 6, 9 is that scripture reference, family, it's hard. But if you know the purposes of God is he calls us into hard things, yes, but they are for our benefit. We are given trials and tribulations so that we become mature and complete. That is biblical. We are here to mature, to be sanctified, to become more holy, to become more godly, to become more like Jesus. And he uses the difficult and challenging things in our life to do that. If we were just coasting all the time and it was easy and comfortable, we wouldn't grow, we wouldn't learn. Some of us may even have parents like that, permissive parents that just allow you to do whatever you want and to make your life as comfortable as possible and not create any hardship. That does not allow us to become responsible and mature and whole and complete, disciplined and wise people.

And so don't believe that. Don't fall for that scheme. Don't become discouraged and wearied. It says in the word of God that we are a people that do not lose heart, that we do not give up. And Paul also writes in Galatians that once we are sowing, we will reap a harvest. But it says at the end of that scripture in Galatians 6, 9, if we do not give up, do not go digging up that seed that you planted in faithfulness and obedience because you can't wait for his timing and you become impatient and discouraged and weary. Don't do that. That is Satan's lie. That is Satan's scheme for you to not continue to trust and not continue to follow in faith. Don't do it. Go put that seed back in the ground if you done dig that up. This is the scheme. He wants to get you to quit before the breakthrough happens and family, the breakthrough is always coming. It is always on the horizon. Breakthrough comes oftentimes after we surrender it and we are in a constant state, a continuous and consistent and committed and covenantal state of surrender to our God. Not just one time, but at every time and every day and every moment we are to crawl on that altar and offer our whole living life, our whole life, all the areas of our life to our God so that he can do with it what he wants to do. And the last one family is counterfeit light and false teaching. Okay. Paul writes about this all the time. Jesus is, talks about this all the time, warns us of the counterfeit and false teaching and ooh man, it can be sneaky. It can be so, so sneaky works of the law, religion by our good works. We are saved.

Those, those are counterfeit, false teaching. It is by the grace of God that we are saved and not nothing that we can do to. earn that space, to add to it, and we cannot add to the truth of the gospel. He masquerades, Satan masquerades as the angel of light. That's in 2 Corinthians 11, 14. His scheme here is he uses distorted teaching, false doctrine, or empty spirituality to lead people away from Christ. Don't fall for it, family. It is garbage, it is garbage. So family, to recount, we need to know these schemes. We need to know these strategies of the devil because we are in a war. We are in a real, real war, and we have to, we are called to fight in that war. And you have to know not only offense, but defense. You have to know your enemy. If you are in a war, study history, you have to know, you have to know how they move, what makes them tick, how they work, and so that we can win this war with Christ. Now we know that Jesus already won this war. But while we are down here on earth, we can live victoriously. We can stand with Christ. We can stand with Christ. In Ephesians 6, when he talks about the word of God, when Paul writes about, I'm sorry, when Ephesians 6 talks, Paul writes about the armor of God. He says, ooh, let me, let me get this out because I love this. This is a very personal, a very personal invitation to us. Ephesians 6, it says, verse 10, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. This is personal. This is personal. This isn't just like, wow, yeah, the body of Christ and all Christianity are supposed to get dressed spiritually.

No, no, no, no, no. This is personal for you. And that word stand means to remain in. It means to believe with Christ. It means to stand in his victory already. It means to walk out your life in victory that is part of your identity. To stand in, to remain, to continue in and to stand firm in your faith, in the belief and the knowing that Jesus has done it, family, and that we don't have to do it. And we can rest in that promise and that assurance in our new identity and walk it out. So family, here it is. Take your stand against the devil's schemes that we have listed. Make it personal, declare and decree that you will no longer subscribe to and follow after and fall for the strategies of the devil so that he can no longer steal, kill and destroy from your life so that he can stop the generational pattern of that happening in your life so that it does not even reach your children. Okay. I know that you've heard the saying or you probably have, maybe you haven't. You know, this, it just runs in the family, right? It's genetic. Well, this is where it runs out right now. Amen. I love you. I hope you were encouraged by this word and until next time, bye-bye. Thank you for watching our broadcast. Are you an incarcerated brother or sister who needs encouragement? Write to us at Victorious Living Correspondents, PO Box 2751, Greenville, North Carolina 27836 or email us at hope at vlmag.org. To view Victorious Living Magazine in its entirety, please have your chaplain contact us at 352-478-2098 or email us through our website at vlmag.org. We are happy to provide our Victorious Living Magazine free of charge, in bulk, with or

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