Skip to content ↓

Do You Have a Personal Relationship with Satan?

Resist the Devil

Yesterday evening I enjoyed a mid-week prayer service at a little Presbyterian church down here on the coast of Scotland. Before prayer the minister spent a few minutes leading a study on Revelation 12, and as is so often the case when I listen to the teaching of God’s Word, there was one idea above all the others that arrested my attention and got me thinking.

Every Christian is told to pursue a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We have all seen the consequences of dead religion, of people who claim to worship Jesus, but who do not seem to know him. They relate to Jesus like they relate to the king or president or to a fictional character. There is nothing real about it.

But we are told time and again that we have the joy and the responsibility of relating to Jesus in a personal way. He is real. He is alive. He is a genuine person. We can and should and must relate to him personally.

However, as much as we emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we tend to view Satan and his evil forces as an abstraction. We believe that we need to relate personally to the Savior but that we can relate impersonally to the enemy as if Jesus is a person while Satan is merely an idea. What the minister said yesterday was simply this: You need to have a personal relationship with Satan as well.

We need to be careful here, obviously. We do not equate Jesus and Satan in some yin and yang kind of relationship. They are by no means equal. Jesus is creator and Satan is created; Jesus is the conquerer and Satan the conquered; Jesus is alive forever while Satan knows his time is short and that he must soon be thrown into the pit.

But until then, Satan is alive and on the prowl. He despises those who have that personal relationship with Jesus Christ and both desires and seeks their destruction. So until the time Christ returns and casts Satan into that pit forever, we need to relate to him as well. This does not mean that we pray to Satan or even speak to him, but it had better mean that we pray to Christ about him and pray to Christ against him.

We need to believe that Satan exists, that he is powerful and that he will stop at nothing to hurt, hinder and destroy us. He is not an idea. He is not a theory or hypothesis or explanation. He is real, and it is crucial that we remember and believe it.


  • A Batch of New Books for Kids

    A Batch of New Books for Kids (and Teens)

    Every month I put together a roundup of new and notable books for grownup readers. But I also receive a lot of books for kids and like to put together the occasional roundup of these books as well. So today I bring you a whole big batch of new books for kids of all ages…

  • A La Carte Thursday 1

    A La Carte (March 28)

    A La Carte: The case against the abortion pill / What I’ve learned about grieving with hope / Heartbreaking deception: teen girls, social media, and body image / Could podcasts save the church from stupidity? / Count it all joy / and more.

  • What God Wants You To Forget

    What God Wants You To Forget

    We are never far from reminding God of our credentials, of providing him with a curriculum vitae that lays out all we are, all we have been through, and all we have accomplished for his sake. We are never far from making the subtle turn from grace to merit, from what is freely given to…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (March 27)

    A La Carte: New music / Millennials and GenZ / Scotland’s new hate crime law / Cate Blanchett, Easter is for you / Why the Reformed pray for revival / What truly happened to Jesus on the cross? / and more.

  • New and Notable Books

    New and Notable Christian Books for March 2024

    As you know, I like to do my best to sort through the new Christian books that are released each month to see what stands out as being not only new, but also particularly notable. I received quite a number of new titles in March and narrowed the list down to the ones below. I…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (March 26)

    A La Carte: God delivers from the suffering he ordains / The beautiful partnership of family and church / The end of religious liberty / On whales, menopause, and thanks to God / Ordinary women, extravagant gifts / and more.