Satan's Strategies to Steal Your Identity: To Defeat God's Purposes In Your Life

By Savannah Micheals

Savannah Micheals is a dedicated believer and disciple of Jesus Christ who has a strong desire to encourage others in their faith about salvation and the gospel message. She has served in the Social Services, Mental Health and Addictions profession for the past 30 years and utilizes her knowledge and experience when exploring the sufferings and struggles of humanity. Savannah has written this book for the purpose of inspiring and encouraging others to confront and overcome the destructive and self- defeating strategies of the “enemy of their souls”. This is a spiritual “self-help” book that will assist Christians and non-Christians alike with the exploration of their faith and belief in God. This book will expose the tactics of the devil in his attempts to destroy a Christian’s spiritual walk with Jesus Christ and provide “spiritual weapons of warfare” that will defeat the devil and enable a Christian to walk victoriously “in Christ”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483488899

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MICHEALS

Copyright © 2018 Savannah Micheals.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8890-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8889-9 (e)

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 08/06/2018

INTRODUCTION

For many are called, but few are chosen…Matthew 22:14 (NASB)

This book is being written for those professing Christians who sincerely believe in their hearts that they have been chosen by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to fulfill His purposes in their lives. These Christians believe and understand that the Lord Jesus Christ chose them before they were even born. During the course of their lifetime they became born-again due to the leading and guiding of God’s Holy Spirit.

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, And before you were born, I consecrated you…. Jeremiah 1:5 (NASB)

Just as He chose us in Him…He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself. Ephesians 1:4-5 (NASB)

and these whom He predestined, He also called Romans 8:30 (NASB)

You did not choose me, but I chose you. John 15:16 (NASB)

Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me Psalm 139:16 (NASB)

because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. 2nd Thessalonians 2:13 (NASB)

This book is also being written for those that do not identify themselves as Christians but struggle with the meaning and purpose of life in general. Even though these folks may have acquired a measureable amount of success in their careers, their finances and their families they continue to struggle with the question…. isn’t there more to life than this ? Even after obtaining everything they had ever hoped for they still might be asking themselves why do I still feel so empty inside? They might begin to feel that no matter what they do, it is never enough to escape that gnawing and empty feeling inside. If I have possibly described you then I do hope that you continue reading and that this book can assist with finding some answers to your questions.

For those of us that identify ourselves as Christians, the exact time that we became born-again (John 3:3) will vary from person to person as it will occur at varying stages of our individual lives. For instance, some of us were drawn to the Lord as young children, while others of us were drawn to the Lord when we were teenagers or young adults. And then there are those that did not accept Jesus as their Savior until they were senior citizens. The exact time does not matter but what does matter is that during the course of our lives, we did become born-again and began to understand that the Lord chose all of us to fulfill His purposes in our lives.

On that note, here belies the problem and the reason for the writing of this book. Even though most of us desired to recognize and fulfill God’s purposes in our lives, there appeared to be consistent and insurmountable struggles and trials that continued to invade, plague and interfere with our lives. I will define these struggles and trials as personal problems, emotional problems, mental health problems, family problems, relationship stressors, financial problems, health problems, addiction problems…and the list could go on and on. We wrestled with these life problems before we became born-again and unfortunately even after we became born-again and became so distracted and overwhelmed by these problems that we became unable to focus on, or fulfill God’s purposes in our lives.

I will attempt to describe in detail through the information in this book; my theory, that who is behind all of these overwhelming problems and distractions, is no other than Satan himself, the enemy of our souls. I will describe what I believe are the tactics and strategies that the devil uses to stop us from living a victorious life in Christ, which will inhibit us from fulfilling God’s purposes in our lives. I also believe that it is one of Satan’s greatest desires to destroy the Christian’s personal sense of self-worth and self-esteem by using destructive methods of operandi, which I will describe in detail in the following chapters.

I can only hope and pray that you will find this book useful and helpful in your walk with Christ, when you attempt to defeat the enemy’s relentless barrage of spiritual attacks that he uses on you to destroy your self-worth and to steal your identity. For those non-Christians, I do hope that you will not put this book down but attempt to read this book with an open heart and open mind as you search for meaning and purpose in your life. It is my hope that this book will bring you some personal level of comfort, enlightenment and guidance that will instruct and inspire you during your life’s journey.

This book is dedicated to the love of my life….Jesus Christ…My one and only true…….. Soul-mate !!

This book is also being written in honor of all of the seen and unseen angels throughout my lifetime that have watched over me and kept me from all harm; and also in honor of the Holy Spirit who by the grace of God, encouraged and inspired me to write this book and keep going, even when the times got so dark and so tough……….

Hopefully, this book will inspire others to become overcomers and victorious in Christ while fulfilling their true destiny and purpose in life…because, it is never too late………………

PART I

OUR FORMER IDENTITY

CHAPTER 1

THE SHAPING OF OUR FALSE IDENTITIES

Who in the world, am I ? How did I become who I am, today? Do I really make a difference in the world today or am I even capable of making a difference in the world, in my family, in my neighborhood, or in my local community ? Do I even matter in the scheme of things, and in the events unfolding in the world today?

I do believe the reason you may have picked up this book is because several of these above questions have persistently invaded your mind as you live your life on a daily basis. You may be sitting quietly in your own home or apartment after sending the children off to school or you might be sitting on the bus or on the train, taking a little time to yourself before you start your busy day at work. For others you might be sitting alone in your jail cell, wondering why that person gave you this book to read or sitting with your room-mate in a rehabilitation treatment facility, taking a break from all of the 12-Step-Work that is required of you. There also may be some of you that have contemplated the thought of taking your own life due to feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. Others might be sitting on an airplane in flight to another city or country for that important business meeting and were humored by the title of this book, therefore you ordered your lattee, while scanning through the pages of this book. Please remember, wherever you may be and for whatever reason you are reading this book, I am so excited that you are and do hope you continue reading until the end because I have saved the best for last !!

Now, back to that besetting question…Who am I ???….. really….and how did I become who I am now ? Please keep in mind that the answers to these questions stem from my own personal beliefs, philosophies and experiences that I have acquired throughout my life while working in the counseling/social work profession for over 30 years. I have acquired this knowledge from my own personal experiences, my college educational studies, my investigative research efforts and my counseling observations and assessments. I want to send out a special thank you to each and every person that I have been given the opportunity to serve within my counseling/social work profession. You have enlightened me and taught me so much about myself through your own personal struggles, failures and accomplishments. You were all gifts from God to me, on my own personal journey of self-awareness and self-actualization.

The majority of this book’s content is also gleaned from my personal spiritual beliefs as a born-again Christian and from my personal life experiences over the past 40-50 years. The insight, knowledge, wisdom and information in this book was derived from my personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the inspiration from the Holy Spirit that now dwells within me, and the Holy Bible. It is and always will be, your individual and personal choice to believe the information contained in this book. I encourage all of my readers to study the scriptures and consider applying some of these spiritual tools to your life and to begin assessing any significant changes that might begin to occur. I believe it will help you overcome a great deal of self-doubt and self-criticism that you might have been harboring within yourself for most of your life.

In response to that question, Who am I, really, my personal interpretation is that from the moment we were born into this world and through our early childhood experiences we have all received messages from those in our environments regarding our physical, emotional and intellectual selves and how we present to the world around us. In regard to our physical selves I am referring to our physical appearances such as our body image, our hair color, the color of our eyes, etc. We also received messages from those in our environment regarding our intellectual and emotional selves which influenced how we thought and felt about ourselves at that time. For example, a few of those comments coming from our external environments could have sounded like this…Wow, isn’t she adorable or…. that baby is ugly, that momma must have been messing with Frankenstien! That boy is so bright, but that little girl seems a little slow…. Oh, look how quiet and well mannered he is, but she is always moving around too much and never seems to be paying attention . I know what your problem is, you can’t handle your emotions. You act out too much and throw too many temper tantrums. And on and on it goes……..I think my readers are getting the message.

Now we can label several of this messages as positive and several of these messages as negative but nonetheless they are messages that we may have received and internalized during our early childhood years, which I will now define as our early developmental stages. Over time these external messages become internalized, which begins the process of an inner dialogue that begins to define and shape how we think and feel about ourselves. This in turn begins to create our individualized self-perceptions. In other words, what we hear from people in our environments is what we begin to believe about ourselves, internally, on the inside.

My personal philosophy is that our individual self-perceptions will now begin to mold and influence our individual levels of self-esteem, even though our self perceptions were influenced by people outside of ourselves. Therefore, it would appear that our individualized self-perceptions based on our internalized messages that we received from others will now determine our level of esteem that we have toward ourselves which can be defined as our self-esteem. It is my belief that from the foundation of our self-esteem, comes the building blocks to the development of our self-worth. A person with a high level of self-worth would certainly recognize that they have some very unique and outstanding qualities that need to be explored and expressed for the benefit of themselves and others. It is my belief, that how you individually respect and regard yourself will determine your potential in doing great things during your lifetime. This in turn will affect your identity and individuality and discovering your purpose in this life. My personal belief is that a person with high self-esteem will have a stronger and more defined sense of self-worth which will help uncover that person’s individual identity or sense of uniqueness. This individual will display a strong desire to fulfill their potential in life and will stand above the crowd. On the other hand those with low self-esteem will struggle with feelings of low-self-worth producing a very weak or non-existent identity, with no sense of purpose in their lives. These folks usually do not see themselves as special or unique and do not believe that they have any special talents or abilities. This in turn results in low motivational levels for success with minimal attempts at achieving goals in their lives due to a lack of purpose in their lives. These folks will more than likely be followers of the crowd or simply disappear in the crowd altogether.

With the above distinctions, I would now like to give you my personal definition of the word, Identity:

Self-Esteem + Self-Worth = Identity

With this in mind, I would now like to introduce to you my spiritual thoughts and concepts regarding the definition and the development of our individual identities. Because of this, I will be turning the focus away from who helped shape our individual identities, to how our individual identities were shaped and molded. In the next chapter I will be focusing more intently on the who and the people and circumstances that influenced our self-esteem during the developing stages of our lives and how that impacted our self-worth and the creation of our individual identities.

As we begin to explore my spiritual concepts of how our individual identities were shaped and molded, I would now like to define these identities as our former, false, or fallen identities. For now, using the term former will suffice. It is my belief that our former identities were developed, shaped and formed in a corrupt and fallen world that had established cultures and societies that were just as corrupt. To expound on this corrupt and fallen world I will have to take you on a journey all the way back to the Garden of Eden and the creation of mankind and the human race. After God created Adam and Eve in the garden of utopia and eternal bliss, which is how I would describe the Garden of Eden, God gave both of them the following instructions: From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die. (Genesis 2:16-17) (NASB)

Hopefully, most of us know what happens next but let me explain my perceptions of the following events. The serpent said to the woman,You surely will not die !! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3: 4-5 NASB) When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate." (Genesis 3:6 NASB)

I believe that Adam and Eve were the original parents of the human race therefore, their choices affected all of us thereafter and through the many generations to come. We the human race fell from grace because of our ancient parents poor choices. These poor choices were made due to the craftiness of the serpent and his ability to deceive them into believing his lies. I believe that the serpent is and was a methaphor for the Devil whose main purpose was to deceive, to destroy and to take authority over God’s newly found creation. Now let us explore in more detail how he used his art of deception to entice Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Simply put… it is my belief that the serpent tricked their minds into thinking….How can something so good….be so bad for us..? For example, the tree and it’s fruit was pleasurable to the senses….the eyes, the nose, the tastebuds. It looked good, it smelled good, it appeared to taste good and hey… once you eat it, you will gain wisdom and become like God, having the knowledge of good and evil….How can this be something bad…, they might have been thinking.

So after Eve succumbed to the temptation and deception and ate of the tree while convincing Adam to do the same, what were the consequences to these actions? Let’s turn back to the Scriptures….."Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil"; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken." (Genesis 3: 22-23 NASB).

Now they are living outside the gates of God’s eternal Garden of favor, blessings and eternal life and living in the reality of a temporal existence that will be comprised of toil, hardships, suffering and death. Our needs will no longer be met by our Creator but we will have to work hard to meet our own needs. But what have we gained………………

The knowledge of good and evil resulting in our physical and spiritual deaths in our now corrupt and fallen world.

It is my belief that God always wanted to protect Adam and Eve and the generations to come from this knowledge of evil because mankind could never fully comprehend or manage this knowledge in a beneficial way. Instead this knowledge would only harm the human race. Therefore, the Lord immediately removed Adam and Eve from the Garden for their own protection. If God would have allowed them to stay in the Garden and eat from the Tree of Life, they would have remained in their fallen condition for all of eternity with no chance for redemption. This would then have eternally condemned the human race to a life of corruption, evil, misery, hardship, death and hell itself !!! Through the process of redemption God would allow us to regain the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ due to the salvation experience. To redeem means to rescue by paying a price. This of course is accomplished by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ at a later time in the history of mankind. I will continue to expound on this redemption process throughout the course of this book. What a loving God and Creator we have!!

So, for now the human race is subject to a physical and spiritual death. Our physical bodies will experience a physical death, but what does it mean to die spiritually? It is my belief that after the fall from grace God removed His Holy Spirit from within us, leaving us only with our fallen human spirits. When we make decisions that coincide with our morals we are making decisions that require thoughtful actions that coincide with our belief systems and our values. Unfortunately, after the fall from grace our belief systems and values became infected with this knowledge of evil which negatively impacted our decision making skills and our choices. Our thought processes and our minds became exposed to and infiltrated by this knowledge of evil which constantly tried to block out and smother any incoming information from the knowledge of good which comes from God. Because of this, we then began to make choices and decisions that satisfied Satan’s imperfect and evil will instead of God’s perfect holy will. This my friends, is my definition of spiritual death.

I believe this corrupt and fallen world that was created by the human race after the fall from grace was influenced by two main factors. I believe these two influencing factors were pivotal in the creation of our historical and current civilizations, cultures and societies. The two influencing factors are:

1.) Mankind’s willful disobedience to and independence from God’s knowledge, laws and instructions. (The Knowledge of Good)

2.) Mankind’s intense curiosity of and insatiable desire for the Knowledge of Evil, which I will define as: Satanic thoughts, ideas, values, desires, beliefs, deceptions, lies, attitudes, and behaviors).

I also believe that the majority of our societal and cultural values, beliefs and customs of this world were generated from this knowledge of evil, which I will now define as the ideology of Satan, rather than the ideology of God. For example, let’s explore some of the current societal and cultural values, beliefs and customs in America today. Let’s start by considering how most Americans today would define the word, success:

Success in America is defined by: the size of your house, a fancy car or two, high yields on your investments, having enough money for retirement, a high number of friends, having influence over other people, feeling good and having a large portion of time set aside for leisure and recreational activities.

Because of this definition, it is my belief that we have allowed our individual identities to become molded and shaped by; how much money we have and by how many possessions and materal objects we own. The emphasis in our American culture is not about who we are, but instead on what we have. Our sole purpose in life becomes the accumulation of more wealth and notoriety because this will improve our socio-economic status. This improved socioeconomic status will then provide the recognition and approval from others that we so desperately need in order to feel accepted in our communities and our individual neighborhoods. This in turn, will provide the happiness and contentment in our personal lives that we are consistently stiving for. Unfortunately, if this does become our sole purpose in life then a very unhealthy internal characteristic could begin to develop within us, which I will call greed. Because of this, we begin to define our individual identities by our level of financial prosperity that we have obtained. Let me give you a description of a person who identifies themselves as successful by mere financial gain:

This person must accrue more and more money, things, accomplishments and achievements because this improves how he/she feels about him/her self (self-esteem). If by some unfortunate circumstances this person should lose everything he/she has gained (financially and materially) then this person becomes extremely worried, anxious, fearful and depressed with fleeting thoughts of suicide. They are no longer happy and begin to feel that they are a failure, and have nothing to offer the world any longer. (low feelings of self-worth). This person’s identity and purpose in life is completely defined by their financial prosperity and recognition from others.

I must stop here for a moment and remind my readers what the Bible has to say about this topic: 1st Timothy 6:10 states: For the love of money is the root to all sort of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (NASB) Please remember that this is not inferring that money is the root to all evil, but the love of moneyis the root to all evil. Money and all of the recognition and things that it can buy will never bring people the lasting happiness and satisfaction they long for, but will only bring temporary rewards. It is all vanity and fleeting !!!

It is my belief that there are also people who begin to discover that wealth, status and the attainment of power and influence are not giving them the happiness they thought it would, therefore they instead turn to the pursuit of Sensual Pleasures to find some semblance of happiness. I believe some of these folks become so bored and dissatisfied with their lives, that they begin to self medicate their internal dialogues and feelings by the use of mood-altering stimuli through the use and abuse of food, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling and other compulsive behaviors. Their sense of meaning and purpose in life becomes lost to their addictions. Another group of folks that struggle with these addictions and compulsive behaviors are those that struggle with low self-esteem or no self-esteem. These folks do not have a solid foundation of self-worth or a definable identity, therefore it is my belief that these folks have no definable purpose in their lives. Many of these folks turn to the use of mood-altering chemicals and external stimuli to alter their internal worlds due to their persistent feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and powerlessness to change their negative life circumstances.

It is my belief that Satan wants all of us to buy into this cultural lie that money and material gain will bring us the success and happiness we long for. Let us reflect on the words of an Old Testament figure by the name of King Soloman who at that time was one of the wealthiest and wisest men in the land. King Soloman stated : and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.(Ecclesiastes 2:11) NASB. What I believe he was trying to tell us, is that there is no meaning or purpose in chasing after things that are only temporary and will not last. It is utterly useless and futile, so we might begin to ask ourselves why we do it and who is behind this insane behavior? Once again, it is my personal belief that it is Satan who desires for us to spend our time chasing these meaningless pursuits because this will ultimately distract us from finding and fulfilling our true purposes in life, which I will call our God-ordained purposes.

I believe the United States and our American culture have been seduced and