Strategies of Satan

Why do people fall from the faith? What or who causes this?...1st Thess. 3:5 "I sent to know your faith lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labor be in vain." Poor Paul :( I wonder if there were other churches he started that died, walked away, and his efforts with them turned out to be in vain. In the parable of the seeds some of the seed was taken away by the birds, which was meant to represent satan and his demons. Satan tempts people to walk away from the faith all the time. How? Pleasure, money, love of this world, etc...he tried to sell us "fun" in the form of various sins that can slowly choke out our faith and cause us to become lukewarm Christians that Jesus said he will spit out of his mouth. We all have our own weakness, our own achilles heal, one of the seven deadly sins that we struggle with the most; be it pride, gluttony, lust, sloth etc. We all struggle with at least one and we always will in this life, our thorn in the flesh. So take the plank out of your own eye before you judge anyone else. Satan gets us to compromise with movies, greed, relationships etc. Like a frog in a pot of hot water he slowly turns up the heat, throws in more temptations and lies, until we are boiling in our own sin again, and we are dead again without even realizing it. He tempts, he cons, he lies to us; about God, ourselves and others. He tells us God doesn't really love us, others don't really love us. He isolates us so that he can prey on us; divide and conquer right? Every master of war knows that is the best strategy, because there is strength in numbers. So get in a small group! :) For your own protection. :) He knows how to strategize like playing a game of chess and he gets us in check mate. Which is when we need to cry out to God before it is too late and we are again entangled in his web of lies, no longer free, and imprisoned in sin. May God give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Amen! :)