How to Minister to Person Who is Deceived by Satan

What is ministry  

Every member of the Body of Christ has a ministry and is a ministry.  The ministry is Christ in us, the hope of glory.  Only God is Good.  Only He can minister (serve) in an effective way.  When we minister to those who have not yet been born again, we respond to the leading of God in the moment.  We hear His voice.  He directs us.  Faith comes to us by hearing His utterance.  Faith gives us access to His grace, His free gift of righteousness.  His righteousness ministers to the spiritually dead person, breathing God's life into that person.  You have yielded your members to expressing the words of God, but it is not you.  You are acting as the oracle, the mouthpiece of God.  That person is hearing the utterance of God through you as you yield to the Holy Spirit.  That is ministry.  Anything that is self-generated is not ministry.  

We have been redeemed in part.  Our spirits have been redeemed and joined to God's Spirit, and we sit with Him in the spiritual realm.  Part of our minds, hearts, souls, have been transfigured through the obedience that is by grace through faith.  And, in this part of our being that we call "our ministry" we are resting from our own works.  We now just yield to the Holy Spirit and allow the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.  We have ceased from our own dead works of self-generated "filthy rags" righteousness.  We allow God's free gift of righteousness to work the works of God through us as we yield the members of our bodies to Him.  That causes a progressive dying to the flesh and transfiguration of our mind into the mind of Christ.   

The flesh is that part of your being that is still under the influence of Satan and the worldly influences, including false teachings, the winds of doctrine.  The flesh is that part of the soul, mind, heart that is still in bondage to the body.  Paul tells us that we are waiting for the redemption of our bodies.   

How to minister to Error

 
(in order of importance)  
 
 How to minister to person who is deceived by Satan: First, draw near to God. Listen to Him. Trust Him. Obey His voice. 1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready [prepared] always [without ceasing] to give an answer [reasoned response] to every man who asks you for a reason of the hope that is in you with gentleness and respect: Note, that this verse starts by instructing us to sanctify the Lord, God in our hearts. This is holiness. Holiness comes by grace through faith and is real, not make-believe or human-manufactured holiness. This verse states that they will ask you. When someone asks, their mind is somewhat open. They will ask if you have joy, peace, love, long-suffering, gentleness, humility, meekness, goodness, faith, wisdom, and inner strength (Christ). They will not ask if you are grouchy, unloving, short-tempered, easily offended, rude, proud, pushing for your way, naughty, immoral, doubting, foolish, and lacking inner strength. It is the Anointing that ministers. Christ is the ministry. You must walk in the Spirit to minister the Spirit.

How to minister to person who is deceived by Satan: Second, discern Christ the Body. Walk in love and submission to the members of the Body, especially Scripture-based authority. When you see yourself as part of a many-membered Body without meaning outside of the Body and that Body being Christ the Body, then you see Him as He is. This is what changes you. Every gift, ministry, office, and order is important. Go in the strength of the Body. Be aware of the presence of Christ the Head and Christ the Body wherever you go. If you see all of this, you walk in the full authority of the Body of Christ.

How to minister to person who is deceived by Satan: Third, understand faith. The real conflict between those who are in error and the Christian who is ministering by the Spirit is over faith. It is over faith regardless of whether the person is Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, Evolutionist, or what their belief system is.  Don't ever forget this fact. You will almost always find that unbelievers don't even know what faith is.  Most Christians don't know what faith is either.  Faith only comes by a personal revelation of God. Your faith, if it is faith, involved you coming to know Jesus. You may have had to overcome some lies that were bound up in your mind; perhaps someone answered some of your questions.  However, only Christ can overcome such things.  Somewhere in this process, God spoke to you, and you acknowledged Him rather than your own flesh-controlled mind.  No one can accept Jesus unless Jesus has personally revealed Himself to them.  

 
• The person who is deceived by Satan may deny the possibility of this.  If they do, it is generally because they believe in the power of the human mind.  They at least believe in the power of those human minds that happen to agree with them. They have an unfounded "faith" in the human mind.  The person who is in Christ believes in Christ, the One Who wrote the Bible and reveals His truth through the Bible. The person who is deceived by Satan will question and be skeptical of God. The follower of Christ believes and honors God.  
  
 
• Everyone has a worldview.  Most people think their own personal worldview has something to do with reality. To make matters worse, most people don't even know that there is such a thing as a worldview.  They think that they are relating directly to reality, unaware of the fact that they are filtering everything through their worldview.   
  
 
• When you get to the basis of any worldview, you run into the problem of circular reasoning.  Logic is a valuable gift from God, but it runs out of steam when you get to the root basis.  For instance, the root basis of Atheism is the unsupported claim that there is no God.  The presupposition of materialism is simply the root basis stating plainly: "We accept as an Axiom that cannot be challenged that there is no God." The Atheist always has trouble admitting this and will present many so-called "proofs" for the non-existence of God.  If you take the enormous amount of time to dig to the depth of the hidden assumptions, you will find that every one of those so-called "proofs" has been derived using the premise of "no God."  Using this premise as the base, the Atheist seeks to prove that God  doesn't exist. This is circular reasoning. The Christ followers, on the other hand, has as their root basis, not the Bible, but the God who wrote the Bible and reveals the Bible to them. This the Rock spoken of in Scripture. The wise man built his house on the Rock.  It is solid and cannot be moved. The person who is deceived by Satan is building on made-up assumptions, which is like building on sand. They are rationalizations, carefully hidden and covered with many calculations and magician's patter.
 
• The Rock of revelation can be challenged by one argument:  "If God reveals to every Christian, then why are there denominations and arguments over doctrine?"  The answer is simply this:  1. Human weakness will automatically add to Scripture and take from Scripture, so we must keep our minds open to God so that God can correct us.  2. God knows our weakness and has built safeguards and offices into the Pattern of the Church to keep that doctrine pure and to allow for His perpetual unfolding of the meaning of Scripture by revelation.  Without those safeguards and offices, the Church is subject to winds of doctrine.  
  
 
• Deep down, every unbeliever has a knowledge of God.  When you run into an unbeliever who absolutely refuses to hear the truth, you have met a person who doesn't want God.  They are rebellious and do not want to acknowledge God. They do not want to hold them in their knowledge. How do we know? God has revealed it. If they accept the concept of God, they do not want Him to be what He is and they do not want to submit themselves to Him.  That is the cause of the resistance.
 
• Christ the Body is not based on a worldview.  There is no base assumption for the true Christian (Christ one).  The true Christian believes because of the utterance of God.  God speaks to the Christian and the miraculous ability to believe the truth (faith) comes. Faith (supernatural belief) cometh by hearing and hearing by the word [literally, utterance] of God. God tells the Christian that the Bible is without error, that it really cannot be broken.  This is not circular reasoning.  This is revelation.
 
• An unbeliever or a weak Christian may claim that God didn’t reveal or that God cannot reveal, but the claim is not rational. The claim is based on a presupposition.  Whatever that base presupposition is depending on the unbeliever's or weak Christian's worldview.  Worldviews that deny the power of the True God to reveal or deny the authority of the Bible, which was written by God, act as filters to filter out reality.  If an unbeliever weak Christian claims to have knowledge that God didn't reveal to you and that God didn't write the Bible through those men who penned the words of the Bible, the person is claiming to know all things including the personal spiritual experiences of every person who has ever lived.  In other words, the unbeliever or weak Christian is claiming to be God.  That is insanity.
 
• You may also find that the unbeliever or even a weak Christian wants to define faith in a way that is contrary to Scripture.  The unbeliever does this in order to argue, to cause confusion over the meanings of words.  The weak Christian does this because they are in error.  Remember that the unbeliever is blind and deaf to the spiritual realm.  Immature Christians are also dealing with a high level of blindness, and, sometimes, they think that they can see.  As Jesus told Nicodemus, unless a person is born again by believing in Jesus, they cannot see the Kingdom of God.  And the natural mind cannot receive the things of God.  Even after a person is born again, their vision and hearing is determined by their spiritual maturity.  That is the reason for God's safeguards and offices.  
  

How to minister to person who is deceived by Satan: Fourth, Pray: How often we forget to pray. When you are going to talk to a person who is deceived by Satan, prepare with prayer.  As you are talking to the person who is deceived by Satan, pray.  If they do not believe, ask them if they would be open-minded enough to accept Christ if He actually revealed Himself to them in a real way.  If they say that they that are open-minded, then ask if you can pray for them.  If they consent, pray right there that God would reveal Himself to them in a real way.

How to minister to the person who is deceived by Satan: Fifth, be effective. Initiate, enquire, invest, and influence.

 
• Initiate: Make contact. Start a conversation. Be winsome. Let the love of God be shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost.
 
• Enquire: Care about others.
 
 
• Question statements, sarcasm, and rhetorical questions.  Only answer honest questions.
 
• Even though you may know that a person is affiliated with a certain type of belief system, you do not know what that person believes until they tell you. Whoever answers a matter before hearing it, it is a folly and a shame to him. Proverbs 18:13 There is a lot of variation out there. The carnal mind can go anywhere.
 
• If they make untrue statements, hear them out.  Ask how they know that statement is true. When they tell you how they know, they will give a basis. When they give a basis, ask how they know that--how can they be so sure that their basis is solid?  They will answer with the basis of the basis.  Ask how they know that that answer is valid.  Continue to drill down to understand their reasoning until they become less emphatic or even questioning. What makes them so sure?  Ask if you can see their data and research?  With a person who depends on anything but revelation from God, you will eventually get down to the point where they either use circular reasoning or just become irrational. With many of the Eastern Religions, Mormonism, New Age, UFO Cults and some other false religions, you may find that they actually have powerful demons (spirit guides) speaking to them and telling them things.  This is a form of revelation, but demons lie with enough true facts mixed in to make the lie sound plausible.  Make every effort to avoid embarrassing the person who is deceived by Satan when it becomes apparent that they are not being rational. Give them respect. Protect their dignity. They are creations of the Amighty, All-wise, God.  Avoid "you" talk. Don’t say, "You are wrong." It might be bette to start something like: "Would you like to know the way that I see this? Avoid saying, "I disagree, and here is why..." Instead, say, "Would you be willing to hear my thoughts on this?" Don’t let yourself be tempted into saying something like, "You aren’t really making any sense." A better approach would be, "Help me to understand that."  Rather than pointing out, "You have violated the rules of logic," try, "So are you saying (paraphrase back what they just said in a way that makes the violation of logic clearly visible)?"
 
• If they become aggressive or angry, draw them out.  This is a spiritual battle, and the spirit of an angry or disrespectful person will try to project itself on you.  Don't allow yourself to be drawn out of the anointing and love of God.  Listen rather than argue.  Ask clarifying questions.  If you look to Jesus, He will ask questions through you that help to get the unbeliever to the place that Christ wants for unbeliever at this time.  God will ask the questions through you to build up the immature Christian.
 
 
• Invest: Invite them for a meal, a home sing-along, or a Bible study. Pray for them when they have problems or are sick.  If they have a sick child, ask if you can come to their home to pray for the child’s healing.  Help them in any way that you can.  Show them love.
 
• Influence: After you have listened, you can ask, "Would you like to know my reasoning for believing (your view of whatever you have been discussing).
 
 
• This cannot be effective if you allow Satan to trick you into getting upset?  If you yield to Satan, you will minister the wrong Spirit.  
  
 
• Have confidence that God will give you a word to say.  If you don’t know what to say, then listen until God gives you a word.  When God gives you a word, say it.
 
• Concentrate on what Christ does in you and in His Church today.  Concentrate on God's awsome power today.  No one wants to hear a sermon, but people will tend to listen if you talk about your experience with Christ.  It is often much more effective to tell of experiences, yours and other people's, rather than trying to explain philosophically or theoretically.  People can understand what happened to other people and then apply it to their own lives.  Emotional or competitive intellectual debates are seldom helpful to anyone.
 

How to minister to the person who is deceived by Satan: Sixth, Don’t get bogged down.

 
• There is much evidence for everything that God has revealed in the Bible.  There are scientific facts and laws that support Scripture and make beliefs that are contrary to Scripture look silly.  This is true of all branches of observational science, including archaeology and historical document research, etc.  Even though this is the case, do not make the evidence the center of your argument.  Make Christ the center of your argument.
 
• Keep in mind that it is the Spirit Who ministers, not humanity. Don’t lean on your own understanding.
 
• When you use evidence, use it for answering real questions. You may have to answer some questions, so you should learn as much as you possibly can about how the Bible is attacked and why those attacks are foolish. The sincere person will hear your testimony with joy. God may send you to expose some lie of Satan that has been holding the person who is deceived by Satan in bondage.
 
• Remember that the person who is deceived by Satan who persists in unbelief does not persist in unbelief because they need more information. They resist because they are resisting the Holy Spirit. The scoffer will be unaffected by your arguments from evidence. If you show the person who is deceived by Satan that their logic is faulty, they won’t be convinced. They will find some rescuing mechanism even if it makes no sense. If you demonstrate to them that they have no evidence, they will say, "We will find some one day." If you show them the odds against their argument, they will say, "That means there is still a chance." Some of them even create an infinite number of parallel universes in their minds and then claim that they have now proven that the impossible has to happen given an infinite number of chances.  There is no limit to the foolishness when someone doesn't want to submit to God.  Remember that it is not the lack of evidence that keeps them from believing.  They don’t want to believe. Those who reject light do so because they love darkness.
 
• Young people who leave Christ in College generally do so because of peer pressure, lack of commitment to Christ, and the lure of sin.  It is not because of the evidence, although they may have been raised in a compromising church that teaches an inconsistent and confusing message.  Many churches teach that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, yet some parts of it are not true or can't be trusted.  Others teach that the Bible is a book of fables.  This type of lie, repeatedly told to a young person who is growing up, makes it pretty easy for the young person to reject Christ.   
  
 
• The reality is that there is no real evidence against God or the Bible.  The scientific and historical evidence greatly favors Christ, but it is the Holy Spirit who works on the heart and brings a person to Christ.  Facts and logical argument cannot do it.  If the person who is deceived by Satan is resistant to the Holy Spirit, they will not receive any answer you may give, but be ready to give the answer anyway.  You never know.  If the person has heard a lie, use evidence to show them the truth.  A sincere heart will listen.  When a person who is deceived by Satan will not listen to the Holy Spirit, God will not force Himself on them.  That person is not rejecting you.  That person is rejecting God.  
  

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We believe the Holy Scriptures teach:

• The 5 apostolic ministries (Ephesians 4:11)
• The nine gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8-10)
• Local congregations overseen by elders and deacons (Titus 1:5)
• Every member having and being a ministry in the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:11)
• Being led by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14)
• The gathering together of the Body of Christ (Genesis 49:10, John 17:21)