Dear friends,
In warfare, the most dangerous enemy is the one you don’t know is there. Since you feel secure, you are not on guard and seemingly out of nowhere, he is free to pounce on you and at least damage and if he has his way destroy you! Today’s devotional prepares you for his assault. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• I Peter 5:8-9 (ESV)

  8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

“Men don’t believe in the devil now,

As their fathers used to do;

They’ve forced the door of the broadest creed

To let his majesty through.

There isn’t a print of his cloven hoof,

Or a fiery dart from his bow,

To be found on earth or in air today,

For the world has voted it so.

But who is mixing the fatal draught

That palsies heart and brain

And loads the bier for each passing year

With ten hundred thousand slain?

Who blights the bloom of the land today

With the fiery breath of Hell?

If the devil isn’t and never was

Won’t someone rise and tell?

Who dogs the steps of the toiling saint,

And digs the pit for his feet?

Who sows the tares in the field of time

Whenever God sows His wheat?

The devil is voted not to be

And of course the thing is true;

But who is doing the kind of work

That the devil alone can do?

We are told he does not go around

Like a roaring lion now;

But whom shall we hold responsible

For the everlasting row

To be heard in home, in church and state,

To the earth’s remotest bound,

If the devil by unanimous vote

Is nowhere to be found?

Won’t someone step to the front forthwith

And make his bow and show

How the frauds and crimes of a single day

Spring up? We want to know!

The devil was fairly voted out

And of course the devil’s gone;

But simple people would like to know

Who carries the business on?”

[Alfred J. Hough]