“For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been useless.” – 1 Thessalonians 3:5
Joe Carter is an editor for The Gospel Coalition. His wife Misty asked the question: “I realize that, unlike God, Satan and demons cannot read minds or know what is in my heart. They also, unlike God, can't be everywhere or see everything. How then do they know what temptations we as individuals are susceptible to?”
Joe answered: “The question of how demons know about us can be illuminated, I believe, by comparing it to how your grocery store, Amazon, Google, or intelligence agencies like the NSA all use metadata to know our habits.
Take, for instance, the grocery store "loyalty card" that most of us carry. By using the cards, we get discounts on groceries, and the store gets detailed information about our shopping habits. Every transaction you make at the store can be tracked and stored in a computerized database. The metadata is the "data about data content" the store knows about you. When you swipe your loyalty card, the store's computer can know what you purchased (based on the price barcode), the time you bought an item (based on the computer's internal clock), what other items you bought at the time, and various other information about you. The store not only knows where you live and what you buy but could, based on the metadata collected in the past, even predict that on Friday evening you will buy Pop-Tarts and Diet Coke.”
We are all tempted in different areas of our lives. But the Lord is faithful and we can resist temptation through the power of Jesus Christ. Today in prayer, confess any weaknesses to temptation and ask the Lord to deliver you from sin.
“Believe that as sure you are in the way of God you must meet with temptations.” – John Bunyan
God’s Word: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” – Matthew 6:13
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