Luke 4: 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
If… If... If… I think Satan has a packet of doubt seeds beginning with the word—If. He tries to sow them in our hearts whenever he spots a vulnerable moment.
You’re familiar with his tactic against Jesus. After 40 days of fasting in the desert, Satan appears to him, beginning every temptation with that insidious word. “If you are the Son of God tell this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3). “If you worship me, it will all be yours” (v. 7). And again, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here” (v.9). He wanted to make Jesus doubt his identity as well as God’s plan and purpose.
We can be sure if Satan had the audacity to try and sow seeds of doubt in the Son of God, he’ll attempt blocking our faith with the same strategy. “If you are really following God, why are these bad things happening?” “If you were a good parent, why is your child rebelling?” And one of my favorites, “If you had faith, why aren’t you seeing miracles?”
Believe me, if’s can completely uproot our faith. They rob us of the confidence we need to carry out God’s will. And they make us forget our call comes from God, the God who promises he himself will bring our work to completion (Philippians 1:6). The longer we linger over all the if’s, the deeper they get entrenched in our soul.
So what do we do with the if’s? We do what Jesus did and let the Word of God cut them down. Even when the enemy’s accusations hit the bullseye, we call upon the One who promises to redeem our past, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
Friend, we have been given an outlandish opportunity to shed the light of truth in a dark world. How important it is to counter Satan’s seeds of doubt with seeds stemming from the Word of God. Faith comes from hearing his word. It’s a faith that stands strong enough to overcome all those weedy if’s.