Welcome to the Intedge Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, May 19th.

It's difficult to win a spiritual battle if you don't first understand what's going on.

Today's podcast shows us key aspects of how our enemy operates and how we are enduring a satanic attack.

Have you ever found yourself facing a very strong, inviting, alluring temptation,

seemingly almost absolutely irresistible to you? What did you do? Did you walk away,

or did you find yourself debating with yourself, and finally succumbing to Satan's temptation?

Well, people respond to temptation all kinds of ways, and oftentimes because we don't understand what is going on,

we yield. And so what I want to do is I want to title this message, this simple title.

A title that will deal with what you and I have to deal with on a daily basis, and oftentimes we don't even understand it.

It is enduring a satanic attack. Because when you and I face those temptations and those trials and those difficulties,

that is exactly what we are facing, a satanic attack. And the Apostle Paul warns us about that in Ephesians chapter 6,

and I want you to turn if you will to that chapter. And look if you will, in verse 10, how he describes what our enemy is all about.

He says, finally, be strong in the Lord, in the strength of his might, put on the full arm of God that you may be able to stand firm against what?

The schemes of the devil. His strategy for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,

against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Paul is warning us here of the nature of this battle. And I want you to notice one phrase in this particular passage when he says,

here in the 11th verse, he says, being able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Now what does he mean when he talks about the schemes of the devil?

He is warning us of this, that Satan has a definite strategy that he uses against God's people. He has tactics, he has strategy, he has a way in the means,

what he's simply saying is this, that Satan comes to us with a plan, a very definite plan as to how he will bring us down, how he will destroy us, how he will defeat us.

And so what he's saying here is, he's reminding us that our battle is not against flesh and blood. It is against an evil force, it is against Satan and his evil forces, who have a specific strategy by which to destroy the people of God.

Now when we talk about the whole idea of a satanic attack, what do we mean by a satanic attack? A satanic attack is a deliberate, willful assault by Satan upon an individual in order to destroy, listen, to harm them or to destroy them in their spirit, their body, their physical being, their material possessions, or even in their emotional life, or all of those things.

But his goals are always the same, and that is his purpose in attacking us, in seeking to unseat us in some fashion, here's what his goal is.

...