17 June 2022
Let's review the basic biblical parable (AKA "model") of what Satan's role is in our Lord's Creation. The Devil is God's appointed Left Hand -- the Punisher, the Black Hat. There are two Hebrew words that we translated as "temptation". One points to assaying your heart; the other indicates the fiery cleansing that results in transformation. If you fail the assay, you are cleansed. Both are considered temptation, in that most people tend to fail the cleansing, at least for a while. Satan is God's assayer and refiner.
I recently mentioned how Saul failed his assay and lost his anointing. He failed the testing of his faith. As the narrative moves forward in 1 Samuel, we see him increasingly losing his grip on reality. That's not the way it is supposed to work, but that's the most common result in humanity. Saul refused to repent of his basic flaws, and so was increasingly in the hands of Satan.
If you don't view it from the Ancient Near Eastern feudal frame of reference, you simply cannot comprehend what the story means. If you recognize that Creation itself is feudal in nature, then you can begin to understand why some people experience an endless string of miracles, and others wallow in misery. Saul's successor, David, walked in miracles. When facing Goliath, the real miracle was not what David could do against the giant, but that David had the courage to proceed with what God always did for him. The combat victory wasn't the real miracle; David lived with that kind of thing every day. He was already able to kill Goliath before he showed up, because he walked in faith. That word "faith" means a feudal submission to God.
When you are under God's feudal command, consciously and voluntarily, then what other people call "miracles" are your spiritual birthright. Do you recall how Paul told in one of his letters that folks considered him "contemptible" in person when he showed up to preach? He had no charisma; that was at least part of his "thorn in the flesh". Yet you would not know that from his writing. And from the results of his preaching, you would think he was the greatest orator of all time. God used him as he was. That was Paul's common daily ration of miracles.
Our daily bread of miracles is part of our Covenant birthright. Yes, you can ruin it. You can presume upon the Father's grace instead of taking a moment to be grateful every time He calls on you. Saul lost his humility; he began to presume upon God's grace, and it was taken away from him. He started operating from the flesh instead of faith. Still, the early successes showed what God could have done with him, and what He can do with us.
But we don't live in that world, eh? I'll grant you that physicians can be men and women of faith, but they don't get faith from medical school. Thus, while medical science recognizes that some treatment results defy the odds, the basic model is purely mechanistic. The whole point of medical science is to keep researching things because we always need to grasp the next piece of the puzzle, to understand how biology works under the microscope. The only reason we can't do better is that we don't know enough about how it all works. But in theory, we could know it all, right?
No, we cannot. We cannot know it with our heads, at least. You see, it's the same failure with psychology and mental health. All those models of human behavior that we construct work just fine with people who operate from their heads in a western setting. The models break down as soon as someone walks by their heart and begins harvesting the miracles God offers His Covenant children (AKA shalom). In other words, once you start operating from your heart instead of your head, those models break down quickly. All those various psychological assessments will fail to account for what drives you in faith.
All of those models are based on the assumption of living in Satan's domain. They are algorithms that do not account for God. If you lived by them, you'd never walk on water. Yet, there was Jesus acting as if walking on water, in the middle of a terrifying storm, was quite routine. For God's children, it is routine. That particular miracle might not be part of His provision for you, but there are plenty of other miracles in His storehouse, and some of them have your name on them.
Paul routinely broke the rules of psychology. He had the courage of David in facing his own giants. Satan's job is to see if you doubt the feudal authority of God. And if you do, you fall into the Devil's feudal control. His feudal control rests on the random happenstance of a world without God. More to the point, it's a world that does not calculate for God's revelation. It's a fake world, the world of the fallen.
This fallen existence is a fiery trial that should drive us into the arms of God. It should be so utterly hideous that you can't bear it without Him. Bad things happen to "good people" because that's what this fallen existence is like. That's how it's designed. It is under Satan's feudal domain. If you let it cleanse you, then you learn to walk in faith under the Covenant domain. You'll be passed through the fire repeatedly until your faith is highly refined and you can slay the giants, breaking all the fallen rules by the routine miracles God has set aside for you.
Miracles are built into Creation. The ways of power are already there, waiting for you to start using them.
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