SATAN

Satan...
Not a very popular subject in most churches, but one which I believe needs to be re-addressed everyday...
Satan means Slanderer, Accuser or Deceiver, Comes from the Greek word Diabolos.
Many people still see Satan as an 'old testament thing' or other people just prefer not to talk about it...
I believe we should talk about it, to see what we're up against and see how we can stop him from getting into our lives.

Satan is tactful:

Mark 3.23 says this "How can Satan drive out Satan?"
Now on the surface this may seem like quite a strange verse, It is about how the daemon possessed cannot drive out daemons... but what I think it is also saying is Satan does not attack himself... He attacks tactical targets... Targets that are either doing things that are profoundly 'God' or doing things that may lead to more people becoming Christians...

Recently (well over the last three years) I have been trying to put together a mission centered youth band at my church to lead the youth of Fareham into new places with God, but it is a real battle.
Looking back at it I can really see how Satan has stopped us in our tracks.

The story starts just before the fantastic pastor of our Church, Barry, suddenly and sadly died, it was in this time that my first planning and thoughts about the group were coming together and it was around this time that I was first starting to ask some people about the band. I am sure that Satan was ultimately responsible for Barry's death, firstly because my God is the god of light and life, but also because of other more minor reasons like the fact that this band that me and other people were trying to set up became almost impossible under the rubble that Satan left behind.

After this, our current pastor Dan, who is also brilliant picked up the baton. This allowed our Church to regain some of its structure and allowed us to make some well-needed changes. This was also about when the-then youth workers/leaders took over. Things were looking great for a couple of months and we had lots of meetings about the band and the band's goals (this might of seemed a bit heavy for just a small youth band, but we wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing and where we were going). We organised a Jam session in November to get to know people and see what peoples styles/ abilities were like. The week before the proposed jam night I was off with a horrible strain of Mumps, which gives you puffy cheeks and sickness and stuff. We had to postpone the night for another six weeks, which was a real blow after all the planning and effort we had put in.

Then six weeks on when we finally got round to the jam session, a number of people were ill again and lots couldn't make it. We ended up with 2 older worship leaders, me and three drummers, which was very hard to work with (also i think everyone had a cold, being December so people weren't even really in the mood to worship God)
Basically the Jam session didn't really help much in the epic quest of the youth band

Then we had possibly the biggest blow, our youth leader, suddenly and quite scarily and dramatically lost his faith, causing yet more uproar and problems to the already hindered band. He was the main person I had been having the meetings with and so the band never really took off. We basically lost the momentum and had to stop...

Satan moves in weired ways.
It is only now that I realise how much we have been stopped by Satan.
Satan doesn't want us to be well, or alive or have faith...

I have now joined the normal Sunday morning rota, which is good...

But also our fantastic new Youth leader (Mickele and his wife Lara) I think are really up to the challenge...



Thanks for reading...

sorry about the randomness of it

Ben