“I’m having trouble with this whole “Devil and his demons” thing. It seems a bit much.”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

John and I were having a coffee in Starbucks after our Alpha meeting and he seemed a bit tired and frustrated.

“You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”

“Yes, I do.” Then I shut up. Something was telling me to let him vent for a bit first.

John was shaking his head heavily. “It’s just so strange and hard to believe.” He paused. “Sofi and I watched The Exorcist the other day to try and get our heads around the idea of demon possession and the like.”

“And what was your conclusion?”

“It’s a bunch of Hollywood hocus pocus like a religious horror movie or something.”

“Well, I have to agree with you there.”

But John wasn’t finished. “The problem is that Jesus dealt with demon-possessed people a number of times. They seemed to know who he was.”

“That’s true.”

“But we don’t see that kind of stuff today anymore so what gives?” The frown on John’s face seemed to deepen for a moment. “It’s kind of a dealbreaker for me, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to believe in fairy tales and folk stories. If it isn’t real, then it isn’t worth spending my time on it, right?”

“I agree. In fact, that was my attitude right from the start when I was studying all this religious stuff. I told you about it last week. Remember?”

“Yes, I do. But we never talked about this whole spiritual world the Bible keeps talking about. How did you come to grips with all of that?”

“It wasn’t easy, I’ll admit. But I sort of took it as a complete package.”

“Whaddayamean?”

“Well, I started with the existence of God. The evidence was pretty conclusive, but I still had to ask the hard questions that came with that evidence.”

“Like what?”

“Remember that I said last week that it isn’t the existence of God that is the problem. After all, if God exists, then you still have to ask what He wants from you. That gets more dicey.”

“Yeah, I guess if God exists then you have to listen to him and obey him and stuff,” John said.

“Yup. I like what you said about listening to him. That’s what I mean about the complete package. If God exists, then I have to accept the Bible as true since that is where he is talked about and where he can talk to me.”

“He talks to you through the Bible?”

“Yes, the stories in the Bible about God are there to give me instructions on how to obey him and follow him and hear what he has to say to me personally.” I looked at John’s confused face and smiled. “Don’t worry about it too much right now. That will come in time.”

“I hope so. A lot of this is just so strange.”

“Well, that’s my point. If we accept that truth that God exists, aren’t we also accepting that the Bible is true and that a spiritual world exists?”

“I suppose so.”

“And even more, that there is a war going on in this spiritual world over the hearts and lives of real people like you and me?”

John just sat there staring at me, but I could see his mind working a mile a minute.

“This spiritual world is not in another dimension like you see sometimes on TV but is a part of our reality as human beings. We don’t see it because nowadays the demons seem to get more done by hiding themselves.”

“That makes sense.”

“Besides, I’ve never seen a demon-possessed person, or an exorcism and I doubt that you will ever see one in your lifetime either.”

“I’m happy with that.” John gave me his first smile of the evening.

“In fact,” I said, pausing dramatically, “if the Devil or his demons did show up that way, we would probably just fall to our knees and cry out to God, and he would be dealt with rather directly.”

“True.” Was that a smirk on John’s face?

“I mean, if the Devil and his demons exist and they are here to kill, steal, and destroy us, as the Bible says, he isn’t going to get very far with the direct approach. Jesus called him the “father of lies,” and he prefers deception to outright confrontation.”

“Yeah, look at what happened to his minions when they confronted Jesus,” John said. “Didn’t stand a chance.”

“Exactly, which is why we have to get a bit smarter about his strategies and schemes. Ignoring him and pretending that he doesn’t exist plays in his favor. We have to learn how to outfox the fox.”

“Outfox the fox?”

“Yeah, I made that up.” I laughed and got another smile from John. “What I mean is that when you take the Devil seriously and understand that he is trying to keep you away from Jesus and stop you from following him, then you can begin to fight him.”

“It still seems a bit like David and Goliath,” John said, the frowns returning to his face.

“Even worse, believe me.” I paused. “When you watched The Exorcist, were you and Sofi scared?”

John was quiet for a moment. “We didn’t finish the film. Halfway through we just turned it off.”

“Good for you.”

John looked up, his eyes wide.

“It’s just a bunch of Hollywood hocus pocus,” I said, “making a religious horror film for entertainment purposes just to make money. You told me that and I agree.”

“So how do we fight this spiritual war that you were talking about?”

“Let’s get back to the David and Goliath analogy, even though it is much, much worse and harder than that.”

“You’re not helping,” John said. His face got serious again.

“Well, we don’t play games with the Devil, or his demons and we are totally outmatched, no question,” I said. “Even David only won his match with Goliath because God helped him.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, go back and read the story again carefully and you will see what I mean.” I wrote the chapters in the Old Testament about David and Goliath on a piece of paper and John put it in his shirt pocket.

“The point is that we can only effectively fight against the Devil and his demons with the power of God which we get when we trade places with Jesus and become true children of God.”

John was nodding in agreement but there was a worried look on his face as well. I waited for him to ask me the question that was bottled up inside him.

“I haven’t decided to follow Jesus yet,” he said quietly. “Does that mean that I am unprotected?”

I was quiet for a long moment and then told him the truth. “Yes and no.”

Silence.

“No, you aren’t protected because you don’t have the Holy Spirit inside you yet which happens when you trade places with Jesus and start to follow him sincerely from the heart.”

John didn’t say anything.

“But, also yes, in the sense that my wife and I are praying for your protection and the Holy Spirit is obviously working on you to help you get there.” I wasn’t sure how to put it. “It’s good that you take the Devil seriously, but he isn’t the one that you need protection from. Not really.”

“Whaddayamean?” John sat up straight.

“You have to remember where you are in the process. Whether you like it or not, you are not on God’s side but on the Devil’s side, though it may not be obvious to you at this point.”

“I didn’t think it was so black and white.”

“It is from God’s point of view but, we humans, are mostly confused and deceived about our relationship with sin and evil. We accept that they are bad, but we are willing to do some of it if it means we can get what we want. Doing wrong things that we know are wrong just to get something we want is clear evidence that we are not on God’s side.”

John was quiet, thinking.

“So, if we are already on the Devil’s side, he is trying to keep us there and his strategies and schemes will be to make everything about God seem either trivial or unreal or just downright unbelievable.”

Nothing. No response.

“Once we are on God’s side of things, then we need protection from the Devil and his demons who will try to trip us up, make our lives ineffective and useless, and generally try to kill, steal, and destroy anything he can. But, as Christians, we have all the power of heaven at our disposal.”

“If you are on the side of the angels,” John said softly.

I shut up and prayed. This was in God’s hands after all.

Finally, John sighed and then asked, “What did you mean by outfoxing the fox?”

I looked at him intently and then just decided to give it to him straight.

“John, you are in great danger of not making it to the side of the angels. You have a decision to make, and the Devil is going to try and find every weakness you have, every doubt that may have ever entered into your mind, and remind you of every hypocrite who called himself a Christian just to get in the way of your progress.”

John was nodding his head, so I continued.

“You might think that the existence of God is unscientific when there is an incredible amount of scientific evidence backing it up and many, many scientists in the world are true believers.”

“Really?”

“You might think that a spiritual world is too hard to believe in when the evidence for it is everywhere or that a war for the hearts and minds of humankind is not going on all around us when that is the only true interpretation of the incredible evil and suffering and hurt that we humans inflict on each other.”

John nodded his agreement.

“But there is an even bigger problem than the Devil and his demons to worry about and that is your own sin and evil which is already deeply rooted in your heart and mind and has been there growing and influencing your every decision from the day of your birth.”

“What’s that all about?”

“The Bible calls it the “flesh”, but it really is that fundamental decision that we all make every day to decide for ourselves what is good and evil for us and nobody is going to take that basic freedom of choice away from us.”

“Hummph.”

“And then there is the problem of that same attitude in other people and when you get enough people together who agree about some sort of manipulation or self-interest or outright evil, and they systematize it into a political party or a war or even just into laws and protocols, we call that the “world.”

“So, I have to worry about my flesh, everybody else’s flesh, and the Devil and his demons as well?”

“Yup, and the Devil has gotten really good at manipulating people’s flesh, so there’s that too.”

“How does anyone even stand a chance? The deck is stacked against you.”

“And on top of it, God’s way of doing things seems unreasonable and most people are happy just to stay where they are,” I added.

“You’re not helping again,” John said.

I just smiled.

“So, what can I do about it?”

“Get help,” I said. “Ask God for help. He is more than willing. My wife and I will help by praying for you and trying to answer your questions as best we can.”

“Is that enough?

I was quiet for a long moment, not sure how to answer him. “The strange thing about asking for help is that many people don’t really want it.”

“What do you mean?”

“People want the pain to go away, they want things to go back to normal, back to what they are used to, but nobody really wants to change. In this case, the help you are getting is helping to change some pretty fundamental things about your life.”

“That’s what Sofi and her family want.”

“What do you want?”

“To marry Sofi and keep her family happy.”

“That’s not going to work.”

John looked up at me sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Can I be straight with you, John?”

“Of course.”

“In my opinion, it is great that Sofi and you want to get married and that you are using this as an opportunity to find out more about Sofi’s faith and commitment to God. But it can also be a major stumbling block for you.”

“A stumbling block? What does that mean?”

“It means that it can get in the way of you becoming a true Christian.”

“But that’s the whole point of why I’m doing all of this so that Sofi and I can be on the same page when we get married.” John’s voice rose a bit.

“That’s nice but it is nowhere near good enough. The real question is whether you will become a Christian whether or not you ever marry Sofi.”

Silence. John was shaking his head back and forth slowly as if to throw off a great weight. Maybe I went too far?

“So, are you saying that I should break off my engagement to Sofi and make a decision about God and becoming a Christian without her?”

“No, that would not be practical or wise.”

John’s entire posture seemed to relax in an instant.

“What I am saying is that you need to be aware of the deceptions of the Devil and that one, right there, is a big one. You aren’t doing this for Sofi or her family. You are doing this for yourself, or you shouldn’t do it at all.”

“Well, that makes sense.” He was quiet for a moment. “Is this what you mean by outfoxing the fox?”

“Well, it isn’t me but rather God who is the expert at turning the Devil’s tricks back on his own head. And he is rather good at it. But we must play along and do things God’s way otherwise we are on our own.”

“So, it’s like God is speaking to me through you today.” John looked at me intently.

“I suppose so. What matters is if you can hear him and what you will do about it.”

“Right now, I need time to think,” John said. He got up from his chair and threw down a few dollars for the coffee. “See you next week.”

I threw a prayer towards heaven hoping that I hadn’t scared him off and that he would come back next week.

Things were getting intense and fast.