What Biblical Discernment IS....and What it is NOT.

What Is Spiritual Discernment?

The first question would be, like, what is spiritual discernment and why is it so important for us?

In 1 Corinthians 12, verse 10, Paul talks about discerning, distinguishing between spirits, discerning between spirits, and having the spiritual gift of the discerning of spirits.

So each believer is endowed with different levels of expertise in different categories of discernment. Some people, some people, for example, they can discern the Holy Spirit, but they can't discern demons.

Well, there are lots of ways you could talk about spiritual discernment. And when I use the word discernment, I'm always talking about spiritual discernment. Spiritual discernment has to do with the Holy Spirit, you know, being guided by the Holy Spirit.

And I think this is one of the gifts that in our day and age, we are not walking in in the way that we should. This sense of being able to discern by the Holy Spirit what actually is going on. I'm talking in every situation.

You know, listen, usually when people start in discernment, they discern more demons than anything else. I know I did. When I started out in that gift of discerning of spirits, I was more prone to see the devil than God.

I will talk discernment, but I mean spiritual discernment, which is by definition, being willing to be guided and finding ways to open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

You and I do not learn to hone the gift of discerning of spirits that is available to all of us, according to the word of God in First Corinthians, chapter 12. Then you know what? We're going to have a lot more conflict in our lives than we need to have.

We're going to walk into a lot of situations that we don't need to. And you end up going, how did I get here? And had we asked the Lord at the beginning for the gift of the discerning of spirits, we would have picked up very quickly.

There's something off here. There's something not right there.

The Holy Spirit. Here's the point. The Holy Spirit can manifest in many different ways. The Holy Spirit represents oil, right? There's these different representations of the Holy Spirit.

Ignatius has a definition that I really like, finding God in all things in order that we might love and serve God in all. And that definition is very, very simple, very meaningful. And it has to do with alignment, really.

And that is aligning ourselves with God's purposes and being willing to move in that way.

If I'm discerning, there's something off. Like in that case with that victim, we ended up shutting down a whole trafficking ring simply because I stopped. I listened and I went, Lord, show me what is going on.

There's something not right. Don't ignore that thing on the inside.

And if we're not careful, we'll get so used to discerning the Holy Spirit's movement in one way that we fail to recognize him moving in another way. I learned well, I can discern Jezebel, but I had to learn then how to expand my discerning gift in order to discern the Spirit of God.

So discernment, according to the dictionary definition, is the quality of being able to grasp or comprehend what is obscure. And it stresses the power to distinguish or select what is true or appropriate.

So being able to sift through truth from error, right from wrong. The primary word in the Greek language for discernment is the word diakrisis. Diakrisis, it means distinguishing a clear discrimination, judging.

And in the verb form of the same word is the word anachrono. It means to distinguish, to separate out, to test.

Test the spirits. A mandate, a command from the Apostle John. Test the spirits. Spirits meaning persons. Persons. Whether they be human or whether they be angelic, test the persons.

Dear friends, we are to test all things, right? 1 Thessalonians 5 .21 says, test all things and hold fast to that which is good. Discernment is not an option for the Christian. It is our duty, it is our mandate to exercise discernment.

We are reminded to do this also in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 21 and 22. Not despise prophesying, but to examine. And the same word is used to test what we're hearing.

One of the things that makes false teachers so appealing and yet so dangerous at the same time is that not everything that false teachers teach is false, okay? Some of it is right, but there's enough error and heresy mixed in with it to corrupt the entire thing.

This is critical. It is critical because Satan exists. And because demons exist. And because they operate a kingdom of lies that dominates the world.

You know, a broken clock is right twice a day. False teachers do get some things right. But it is that mixture of error and heresy that corrupts the entire thing and just saturates the whole thing and corrupts it.

Lies coming out of the kingdom of darkness, half-truths, poison and kill. Stay away from any kind of instruction or teaching that is not true. It was the Lutheran commentator Linsky who said this, the worst form of wickedness consists of perversions of the truth.

The worst form of wickedness consists of perversions of the truth. Although, he said, many look upon these perversions with indifference and regard them as harmless. Any perversion of the truth is evil.

Anything evil is poisonous, destructive, damaging.

And that is why discernment is so important for us.

So as believers, this is foundational to our Christian life. We must discern what is evil and what is good, what is false and what is true. This is a direct call for exercising spiritual critical powers.

Welcome to the Thirdly Equipped podcast, where we compare the teachings from popular women's ministry, books, conferences, Bible studies, etc. to Scripture. Our focus is 2 Timothy 3, 16 -17, that all Scripture is God-breathed, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I'm your host, Melba Toast. May this episode bless you and bring glory to God. Hey ladies, welcome to another episode of Thoroughly Equipped. If you are new to TE, welcome. So, if you are new, you are coming in in the middle of a series, kind of on this kind of sidetrack.

We took a detour off of a series I've been doing on discerning female teachers within the popular American evangelical sphere, looking at, assessing whether they hold to the authority of Scripture, looking at what else they think about Scripture, do they believe it is sufficient enough and efficacious enough.

We looked at does she proclaim Christ and Him crucified, and I kind of took a sidetrack or a detour into doctrine, because my final question in learning whether to discern a female teacher will be about her own discernment, assessing or discerning whether she is a discerning woman.

And to do that, I wanted to look very deeply at what doctrine is, good doctrine and the blessings that come from good doctrine, which I did an episode on that, false doctrine and false teachers, and the detriment to our spiritual walk that comes from believing false doctrine.

And today I wanted to talk about what is discernment. And this term, discernment, has taken on many meanings in evangelicalism today. So I'd like to talk a bit about what discernment is and what it isn't and what Scripture says about it.

Most of you listening and watching to this podcast are women. I think I have like 90 of you are women, and that's good. You know, that's the target audience that I'm trying to reach out to. So as a woman in the Christian and evangelical sphere, you probably have read at some point Titus 2 and its instruction to older women to teach the younger certain godly attributes to be encouraged in and to pursue.

But what does discernment have to do with Titus 2? Well, I believe it has everything to do with Titus 2. When Paul instructs Titus and by proxy other elders and shepherds of the church, he instructs the elders to teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.

And instruct the older women in the flock to teach what is good. So how does one come to know sound doctrine and that which is good so that they can teach it? This is the practice of discernment. The ability to know truth from lie, evil from good.

And as we will see, it's an ability that one matures into. One person must exercise, practice, and train themselves in. We older women must learn to separate truth from lie, evil from good, so that we can teach and do that which is good to and for others.

This is the very service of love. So what is discernment? Well, let's first look at what discernment is not. We often hear quoted in relation to discernment this verse. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

1 John 4 .1. Now there's quite a bit on discernment out there. The question is, is it biblical? So in my research, I found that a lot of it is not. And I want to show you some of the most popular teachings surrounding discernment and why they are off.

Three Spheres of American Evangelicalism

Now in my mind, there are three main spheres of Christianity in evangelicalism today. There are many branches and denominations within these, but it's just my way of making distinctions. I tend to, you know, study these branches and denominations, and then I'll categorize them and place them in one of these three spheres.

And there can be mixing of teachings and blendings of doctrine within these, but it's foundational teachings that are found within these three spheres that help me differentiate between these. And it's these three spheres that I want to present to you, and then I want to look at and present to you what they teach about discernment to help you understand the falsehood within it.

So let's dive in. The first I want to look at falls within what I identify as progressive Christianity. Progressive Christianity is not Christianity. I'm just going to flat out say it there. But it calls itself Christian for practical and moral reasons.

The main teachings within progressive Christianity revolve around the philosophy that God is love and that God resides within his creation. So other popular religions can easily be imbibed within progressive Christianity because of this foundational belief.

New Age, Unitarianism, mysticism, and other paganistic religions flow freely within progressive Christianity because these fundamentally believe that God resides within creation, that man is essentially good, and love is the outflow of God and the good that is within man.

Now, I state that to lay the groundwork for the first teaching that comes from Ruth Haley Barton on spiritual discernment. A little info on Barton. She is a very popular author who has written much on spiritual disciplines and what is a popular teaching within New Age and progressive Christianity known as the true and false self.

Barton and other teachers in this type of religion or this type of sphere take on certain psychological teachings that the true self is connected to the divine and the ego suppresses that divine. It's a battle between the true self and the false self, and the goal of religion, or a relationship as they would call it, is to rid oneself of their ego and find the true self.

The ego is all that a person takes on to submit to social, ethical, and certain moral standards. So that's why you can see there's this kind of pushing out of the ego, identifying these social, ethical, and moral things that suppress our true self, and therefore it's a rejection of, eventually, a rejection of ethical and moral standards to be able to arrive at the true self or to self-actualize as psychological terms could be played out there anyway.

But where do spiritual disciplines come in? Spiritual disciplines is a very Christian mystic type of teaching. It's highly important in Christian mysticism. And that's where I would put Barton if I took...

I place her under the progressive sphere because progressive Christianity takes on and imbibes a lot of Christian mysticism. That is the more religious act, the spiritual act in it. And Christian mystics do teach and understand this true self, false self.

It's very big. Also, you hear that talk in New Age as well. So again, this kind of idea that things are overlapping. But I would put Ruth Haley Barton more in the Christian mystical section within the bigger, broader, progressive evangelical sphere.

So she teaches a lot about spiritual disciplines. She's written several books on spiritual disciplines. And as you will see, specifically spiritual disciplines such as silence and solitude are where you can access the true self, how you learn to know the true self, the divine within.

And so you'll see her bring these in as something essential to grow in discernment. But for today's topic, I want you to ask, as you are listening to this, what is it we are exercising discernment on, or what are we discerning?

How does one discern? And why do we discern? So these are going to be three questions that I want you to keep in mind as I present these clips to you. And I will draw them out as I go throughout this episode.

But those are the things that I want you to know that I'm focusing on when I'm listening to something, a teaching about discernment, is what are we exercising discernment on? How does one discern? And why do we discern?

Ruth Haley Barton and Progressive Christian Mysticism

So in this first clip, we'll see what her definition of spiritual discernment is. So let's listen in.

The first question would be, like, what is spiritual discernment? And why is it so important for us?

Well, there are lots of ways you could talk about spiritual discernment. And when I use the word discernment, I'm always talking about spiritual discernment. Spiritual discernment has to do with the Holy Spirit, you know, being guided by the Holy Spirit.

And that word means something to me. The word spiritual means of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. So I will talk discernment, but I mean spiritual discernment, which is by definition being willing to be guided and finding ways to open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Ignatius has a definition that I really like, finding God in all things in order that we might love and serve God in all. So he's one of the fathers of the church. And that definition is very, very simple, very meaningful.

And it has to do with alignment, really. And that is aligning ourselves with God's purposes and being willing to, you know, move in that way.

Okay, so we can see here what Ruth believes spiritual discernment is, that it is centered, we are to discern on identifying where the Holy Spirit is active and moving. This answers the first question here.

What are we discerning? The Holy Spirit. She gives us more, which is very helpful to her understanding on the deeper teaching of what and why we need discernment.

I have another definition that's my own because it has a few more components to it. If you'd like me to offer that up. It's an increasing capacity and every word makes a difference and I'll unpack it a little bit, but an increasing capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity of God, both in the ordinary moments of our lives and in the larger decisions of our lives.

So the word increasing capacity is my way of saying nobody gets perfect at discernment. Nobody is perfect at discernment, but we can increase our capacity. So that phrase really matters to me. Increasing our capacity, even though none of us will be perfect at this while we're on this side of heaven.

An increasing capacity to recognize and respond. So to recognize means that I become aware of God's presence and what's happening spiritually speaking in a moment. But we all know that we can recognize it but not respond.

And so Jonah is someone in scripture who definitely recognized the voice of God in his life, but he actively resisted that voice and he said, no, I'm not going that way. I'm going my own way. And so it's one thing to recognize it.

It's another thing to respond and to align ourselves with what God is doing. So to recognize but also to respond and to follow whatever it is that we're hearing from God. So to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity.

So the presence is that awareness, that consciousness of God's presence as our ultimate orienting reality. And we can grow in our capacity to experience ourselves to be in that presence, you know, and to recognize the fact that the presence of God is here now.

So, you know, to recognize the presence and to know that I'm always in that presence. I can never fall out of that presence. God's presence is the air that I breathe. It's the water that I swim in. But then also there are moments when God seems to be up to something, you know.

So we're able to recognize, oh, it's not just the presence right now. It's that God's active and I can recognize God's activity and I can move with God's activity. I can participate in what God is doing.

So there's the habit of being aware of God's presence. But then there's also the ability to recognize when God's up to something and to align myself with it. So, you know, the presence and the activity of God, both in the ordinary moments of my life.

So that's the habit of discernment. That's beginning to recognize God's presence and God's activity in all the ordinary moments of my life. But then there are these large decisions in our lives, too, where we say, I want to make this decision in God.

This decision is of such magnitude. So getting married or my education or, you know, you know, serving in a particular place and vocation. What to do with a marriage that may be struggling or not working.

All those kinds of things are those major decisions of life where there are actual practices associated with discernment that we can enter into when the decisions are of such magnitude that we know we want to make our decisions in God, clearly guided by God.

OK, so according to Ruth Haley Barton, spiritual discernment is increasing our capacity to identify the works of the Holy Spirit in the minute and major experiences of our lives. That would involve daily activities and even major decisions that one might need to make.

And why do we need to discern? Well, in essence, so that we can respond and align ourselves with God's will. She wants us to understand that we can learn to not only identify God's presence, but his activity so we can participate in the presence and activity.

She clarifies that the presence is always there, though I would differ with her on her teaching that God's presence is the air we breathe, the water we swim in, etc. Just so you know, ladies, this is a heretical view of God coming forth from the pantheistic teaching within Christian, within progressive Christianity.

Or this can come from, at the very least, a panentheistic teaching on God who is described as being in his creation. The Christian teaching is that God is a trinity, one God, three persons, each with an active role in creation.

God is not creation, nor is he in creation, but is an uncreated being, wholly separate from his creation, but very active in and with his creation. Active in even the smallest particle to the largest form of his creation, keeping it and sustaining all of it.

This next clip goes into her teachings on the practice of discernment.

So speaking of practice, yeah, so like, what does that look like, unpacked, like kind of concrete?

Well, the first of all, the first movement in a discernment practice is the most challenging one, and it is the prayer for indifference. Indifference to anything but the will of God. Not apathy, but I am indifferent to anything but the will of God.

And that movement right there is really challenging to us as people. It's very challenging to the false self to want to open up to God's will versus my own. And so when we know that we're entering into discernment, we begin to pray for the gift of discernment or the gift of indifference.

And indifference is, you know, something that gets given. It's a gift. It's not something that we can accomplish for ourselves. And you might wonder, where do you get that idea biblically? And I go to Mary, the mother of Jesus, who, when the angel came to her and began to describe God's will, she said, Here am I, the servant of the Lord.

Let it be with me according to your will. That is by definition a prayer of indifference. She was indifferent to matters of personal comfort. She was indifferent to how other people would view her. She was indifferent to the matter of convenience.

There would even be pain, you know, as God's will was revealed and unfolded in her life. But she was indifferent to all of that. She said, I'm passionate about God's will. And so whatever it is, let it be with me according to your will.

She states here that one must ask for indifference to the will of God. Basically, the desire to do nothing but what God wills. She sees this scripturally in the life of Mary and Jesus and believes it is essential to putting discernment into practice.

Now at this point, because I have two other teachings on discernment that I want to present to you, I'm not going to tackle the problems with her teachings here just yet. But I do want to make a point here.

I think that every Christian is actually given this gift when God creates a new heart, makes one a new man and gives the Holy Spirit to grow them in God's grace. That gift is one of the things that separates us from unbelievers, as we, because of Christ and the gospel, now desire to do God's will.

The question is, where do we find that will? Is it through discerning the presence of God and where he is active in our lives? Or is it more objective than that? Did God write down all we need to know and do in an actual book?

That is what is clearly missing from her teachings here. She will, of course, mention scripture, but only in context to use it to quote-unquote penetrate our lives. Scripture being God's revealed word and will is conveniently left out of this discussion.

Now, this next clip is where she emphasizes the importance of silence and solitude in cultivating discernment. To her, true discernment starts with discerning the true self from the false self, so that we can align our true self, of course, with the will of God.

This is a mark of maturity in a person, according to Miss Barton.

Once you get past that, then you pray the prayer for wisdom. You enter into the place of really quietly trusting God for God's will in your life. If you're practicing solitude and silence in your life in an effective way, and by that I mean you're practicing solitude and silence in such a way that you are able to be with God with what is, and you're able to notice what's going on, spiritually speaking, and you can bring your discernment into your solitude and silence, where you're accustomed to listening for the one true voice in your life.

That true voice, if it's true, will at times really challenge us in those false self spaces, and will challenge our own agendas, and will, by God's grace and through self-examination, maybe even reveal to us what parts of ourselves, and this might sound harsh, but hear it gently, where there might be something in me that needs to die in order for the will of God to come forth.

The prayer for indifference takes us to that place. Is there something in me that needs to die in order for the will of God to come forth in my life? That's a place of real spiritual wrestling versus just choosing what I think I want.

Now, we're talking right now about a very mature kind of spirituality. It takes a lot of spiritual maturity to engage with God's will at this level, so I almost want to say don't try this at home. Don't think that this is going to be something that can come about in your life if you haven't done some of the other things that are necessary.

So, for instance, a really healthy process of self-examination in one's life where I can actually tell the difference between my false self and my true self so that in a discernment process, I can actually choose what's truest rather than choosing just what will make my false self feel comfortable.

Now, there's some fine nuance in there. There's a lot of maturity that needs to be there. The first thing we have to be able to discern spiritually is between what's true and what's false within ourselves, not what's true and what's false in this decision, not what's true and what's false in the world out there, but to learn to discern what's true and what's false within myself.

That's one of the most important first steps in discernment, and that's spiritual maturity. You're really growing in your maturity when you're able to discern what's true and what's false within yourself.

Okay. So, according to Ruth Haley Barton, a popular teacher that I place within Christian mysticism because of our teachings regarding the divine within and the use of spiritual disciplines to connect with that divinity, spiritual discernment is discerning the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life and experiences by first implementing the prayer of indifference to first discern our true self from our false self so we can align our true self with God's active will.

So, again, keep in mind that what or who we are discerning according to what I deem the Christian mystics teaching on discernment is the Holy Spirit. By the use of certain spiritual disciplines, silence, solitude, and prayers, this is the how, so that, the why, we can align ourselves with God's will.

Christine Cain and Purpose-Driven Discernment

Now let's look at our next Christian sphere, the purpose-driven, seeker-sensitive Christian sphere. For a little background about this clip, it's from the popular TBN show, Better Together. Better Together is a show hosted by typically Laurie Crouch, wife of Mike Crouch, the president of TBN, and host of its own popular show, Praise.

Mike Crouch actually hosts that show. Better Together brings in some of the most popular female speakers in Christianity today. It, in my opinion, is the quintessential women's ministry show that exemplifies the mass teachings of purpose-driven theology in the evangelical sphere today.

In this specific episode, Laurie Crouch, Christine Cain, Havilah Cunnington, Stephanie Eich, and Jada Edwards are discussing the importance of discernment in achieving your calling. In the episode, Christine Cain tells the story of how her ministry, A21, which fights sex trafficking, how that ministry came about.

She uses the story to explain why discernment is important for the Christian.

One day we were walking through the streets of Greece, and I just stopped, like full-on just stopped, and my husband said, like, what's wrong? And I went, something is off. Now, I'm not given to doing something as dramatic as that.

And we had not yet totally started A21, but we were looking for where are we going to put an office? And I just stopped and I went, there's something not right here. And he said, Christine, what do you mean?

I said, there's just something not right. And it looked like just normal businesses. It was a strip mall. It just looked like normal kind of some food stores and just some different retail outlets. And as we went, I said, I think we need to go and get some help.

There's just something going on here that shouldn't be here. Anyway, to cut a very long story short, we went, we got the authorities and found out that in that strip mall that looks so perfect, looks so good on the outside.

Actually, there were several brothels that were operating and there were many women that were the victims of human trafficking that were behind that. And you go, well, what was that, Chris? What made you just decide that?

I want to say, you know, in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 10, Paul talks about discerning, distinguishing between spirits, discerning between spirits and having the spiritual gift of the discerning of spirits.

And I think this is one of the gifts that in our day and age, we are not walking in in the way that we should. This sense of being able to discern by the Holy Spirit what actually is going on. I'm talking in every situation, from reading your social media to walking out in society, to things that are happening in our homes with our children, with our spouses, with our friends.

We are so quick to react in the flesh and just kind of react to what's happening on this level, on the natural level, because in many cases, and I know there are those of you, some of you, you've been watching this every day and you've been thinking, I don't even know if I believe this stuff that they're talking about.

Does this really, really happen? Well, this one will show you. You've seen so much of the chaos in the world, so much of the pain, so much of the suffering. So many things are going on. And there are a lot of natural causes for a lot of the pain and the suffering and the injustice that is going on.

But if we ever forget that behind a lot of what is happening on the earth today, there are spiritual forces. The scripture talks about that. For we do not war against flesh and blood, but against powers, against principalities.

That means whatever situation we walk in, you have to understand there are two things happening. There is what we see with our eyes, the natural realm, but there is a supernatural realm that is operating.

Okay, so we're still keeping our three questions at the forefront of our mind to see how these women answer them. What are we discerning? How are we discerning? And why are we discerning? According to Christine Kane, discernment is used to decipher what is going on in the spiritual realm.

She says that there is a physical realm, but there is a spiritual realm that is behind the physical. So what are we discerning would be the works of the spiritual realm that we come across in our day-to-day experiences.

If you and I do not learn to hone the gift of discerning of spirits that is available to all of us according to the word of God in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, then you know what? We're going to have a lot more conflict in our lives than we need to have.

We're going to walk into a lot of situations that we don't need to. And you end up going, how did I get here? And had we asked the Lord at the beginning for the gift of the discerning of spirits, we would have picked up very quickly.

There's something off here. There's something not right there. You know, my child is not really possessed by the devil. There is something going on in this situation. You know, maybe. And I think we would stop a lot of our own heartache.

I think a lot of our arguments at home would actually take a backseat if we understood how to do this. Now, I've had to hone this gift because I, if you know anything about me, I'm kind of like Joan of Arc.

Man, I'm going to pick up a sword. I'm going to go for it. I'm going to run so far ahead of God. I haven't even asked God if He sent me. I haven't even asked God if I'm going into the pit of hell. I'm like, I'm going to go charge hell with a water pistol.

Let's go. Okay, that is me. And I have had to learn in order to survive in life and not be taken out by the enemy. The Bible says there is an enemy and he walks around the earth seeking whom he may devour.

May I suggest that if you and I learned to hone the gift of the discerning of spirits, you would learn to go, oh, not today, Satan. No, I'm not walking into that trap. I am not taking that bait. I am not going to buy into that argument.

No, I'm not going to jump into that argument on Twitter. I am not going to jump into that argument at home. I'm not going to make that phone call. Or before I make that phone call, I'm actually going to ask God, what is going on here?

Lord, what do I need to know? And now here's our why. So because the devil goes around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, and she uses a statement from scripture to convey that Satan wishes to trip us up or devour our purpose or accomplishments for that day.

If we honed our spiritual gift of discernment, we would be able to see the spiritual side of the experience to be able to reject the devil's deceptions or misleadings. A side interjection here regarding this verse that she quotes.

First Peter is all about submitting to authority and suffering, that when we Christians receive sufferings in this world, and we will, we are to stand firm in the faith, stand firm not in the faith that we will accomplish our purpose, but to stand firm in the gospel, and the promises that God will work out, even our suffering for our good and his glory, that he will save, he is faithful, and he will return to judge all in which we in Christ have escaped the wrath to come.

So Peter, in the final chapter of First Peter, here is encouraging the shepherds to guard the flock and the young to be sober-minded and self-controlled. Verse 5. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

So the devil is not wishing to devour your purpose, but to actually devour you by taking your faith. And we resist him when we are firm in our faith, when we humble ourselves and become sober-minded, knowing that suffering comes to all who want to follow Christ.