This Week's Pastor's Cut
Sunday, May 31st, 2026
Most of us have a picture of Satan we've never seriously examined — assembled from horror films, Halloween decorations, and offhand jokes until the whole thing feels too cartoonish to take seriously. But that's precisely the problem, because dismissing a real adversary is one of the most effective ways to become vulnerable to one. The biblical picture of Satan is not a costume — it's a description of a function: an accuser, a divider, someone whose entire purpose is to insert distance between you and the God you belong to. His goal is rarely your dramatic destruction. It is your quiet drift.
In this week's message, we look at two passages — 1 Peter 5:8–9 and James 4:7 — written to very different communities facing very different pressures, but both pointing to the same reality and the same answer. Peter writes to people in genuine suffering, wondering if God has abandoned them. James writes to people who have drifted so gradually they no longer noticed it happening. Neither passage offers a lecture on demonology — both offer something far more practical: a posture and a promise.
The answer both passages land on is not primarily about the adversary at all; it's about God, about proximity, and about the kind of resistance that is less willpower and more alignment. The promise James gives is startling in its simplicity — draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
