It is one more commitment in my already overly busy schedule

There are two mistakes we make that lead us down this pathway in life. The first is to prioritize based on goals we have set utilizing our internal educational resources, but ignoring our spiritual life. The second is to quit believing that the devil is a real spiritual being who wants to keep you away from God's love. Together, these two mistakes prevent us from entering God's true rest, which is given to those whom He loves. For those whom He loves He works in their hearts to do what He loves. Yet, He respects us and never forces us to do what we do not want to. Otherwise, we would not be able to love. Freedom is a necessary context for love, but the proper use of freedom is the true expression of love.

I will deal with the second one first, regarding the devil. We may think that the devil is just some fairy tale made up to scare little children into being good, but the devil is portrayed in many religions. In the Christian faith the devil was not a late development of theology. In fact, the devil appears at the beginning of the oldest writing we have in the Bible, the book of Job.

He comes to God and persuades Him to let him test Job's faith. The devil appears at the end of the Bible as well, in the book of Revelation. The archangel Michael and the angels in heaven war with the devil and his angels who are rebelling. The devil loses and he and his angels are cast down to the earth. They are angry and decide to make war with the saints of God, here it means those who trust Jesus, as the book says.

These are elements that occur in the invisible, spiritual realm of existence. Keep in mind what Shakespeare penned in Hamlet after one of his characters saw the ghost of a dead relative, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies..." Also, remember that there are some things that we cannot see that we believe in based on what we have been told, like love, trust, belief, etc... However, I am afraid we interpret these terms in our imagination to mean the actions or the immediate feelings themselves and lose the real essence of them, which can only be seen over a longer period of time in our lives. Yet why do we not believe so easily in the devil? There is no doubt the ancients believed. Although he does not figure significantly throughout the Bible, there are particular passages that reveal his importance with regards to the Christian's walk with God. Try reading Ephesians chapter 6 and then tell me that the devil does not really exist, if you are really a Christian who believes what the Bible says.

This brings us to the first point concerning prioritizing. Our priorities reflect that we are actually atheists in our trust, even if we believe God exists. What I mean is that the real battle is not about whether God exists. The book of James tells us that even the demons believe He exists and shudder at the fact. If demons believe and we do not then we look like real fools, do we not? There is no serious question about whether God exists, but about what He is like and what His intentions are toward us. This is what the devil, in the form of the serpent (see Revelation for the equivalence that is made between the Serpent, the devil and the dragon) first argued with Eve in the Garden of Eden (see Genesis).

The real question is whether we trust Him or not. The demons were lied to by Satan when they were angels in heaven and convinced to quit trusting God. This turned their hearts away from Him and they made their priorities to reflect a rebellion against God. Now they are wandering the earth as lost beings, angry andwicked, with one main priority: to harm those who trust God. We must set our priorities to reflect and reinforce the trust we have in God before it is too late and that trust withers away.