Prayer: Getting Ready for a Fight

"Satan masquerades as an angel of light and resists being unmasked. Get ready for a fight" (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life, 91).

Putting Lipstick on a Pig ... Things the Liar Does

"He [Devil] will paint, cover with gold, and dress up sin, in order to make you fall in love with it. He will deform, misrepresent, and fabricate true Christianity, in order to make you take a dislike to it. He will exalt the pleasures of wickedness--but he will hide from you the sting. He will lift up before your eyes the cross and its painfulness--but will keep you out of sight the eternal crown. He will promise you everything, as he did to Christ, if you will only serve Him. He will even help you to wear a form of Christianity, if you will only neglect the power. He will tell you at the beginning of your lives, it is too soon to serve God--he will tell you at the end, it is too late. Oh, do not be deceived!!" (J.C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men, 13).

Watchful

"Spiritual warfare calls us to be watchful because Satan's chief means of destroying people is through deception (Gen. 3:1-5, 13; John 8:44; 2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14; Rev. 12:9)" (Joel R. Beeke & Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life, 194).

Spiritual War

"We must view sin and evil in its larger proportions as a kingdom that embraces the subtlety, craft, ingenuity, power, and unremitting activity of Satan and his legions - "the principalities, and the powers, the world-rulers of this darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies" (Eph. 6:12)" (John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied, 50).