In 1999 one of the popular movies of the day was “The Matrix.”  Whether or not you liked it or didn’t, there is an important message in the movie about living in two worlds…the one we see and the one we don’t. How true that is for us! We live in the seen and the unseen, but the problem for us is that it is so easy to live in the ‘seen world’ that we can forget the ‘unseen’ world is everywhere around us.

But, we must wake up! Not all in the unseen world is for us and some in the unseen world hate us and mean to destroy us.

In “The Matrix” Morpheus sums things up in these lines:

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

As believers we are called to be in the world, but not of it. That is harder than it may seem many days because we have forgotten why we are upended over and over again. We are image bearers and because we bear Christ’s image, the one who would seek to overthrow Christ would seek to mar and destroy us. You know who I mean. It is Satan, the one who gloried in himself and sought to ascend to the very throne of God, a star in the angelic realm corrupted by his own pride and lust.

We misunderstand his motives when he sneakily moves in the corners of our thoughts, distracts us from our times alone with the Lord, and creates doubt and despair that God is even in touch with what we are going through. We believe he is meant to tempt us and that is true. We believe he skillfully deceives and that is true even though we forget Christians are not immune to his devices to do so. We believe God will destroy him on the last day and that as believers we have power over him and that is also true.

What we do not fully comprehend is how much Satan hates us just because we are image bearers. He means to mar us and wound us in any way he can in the hope he can destroy us. What we do matters to him, but who and whose we are infuriates him.

As believers we are sealed until that day when Satan will meet his doom, but that does not mean we are immune to the ways he seeks to toy with us. We are not unlike Peter whose strong belief in the Lord was still eroded by the enemy devices. It is no wonder that over and over again scripture admonishes us to “stand” against the wiles of the evil one. Satan seeks to mock God by upending us, His image bearers.

Another of Morpheus’s lines in “The Matrix” bears repeating:

“There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” 

Peter learned that well, but he was sealed and the Lord had prayed for him that he would turn back to Him. The Lord prays for us as well so that when darkness overtakes us and we yield, we will turn back once again to Him.

As the world erodes and darkness deepens, the Lord has not forgotten us. His prayers for us are eternal.

Peter’s words say it best in 1 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.”

We cannot let the world be pulled over our eyes to blind us to the truth. We must wake up and then help each other to stay awake as well as we wait and watch for Him as watchmen on the wall.