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If indeed there is a Devil, why does he care so much about writers? Writers are a bunch of pale intellectuals who have only pens, pencils and keyboards to fight with.

The Accuser has plenty to fear from writers because they wield one of God’s strongest weapons: words. With words God created the universe, with words God let humans know him, and with words God still calls us and loves us. Words are God’s tool of love. Jesus himself—love incarnate—is called the Word.

So the Enemy knows he’s up against an army of writers trying to change the world, and he brings to bear his own big guns to stop them.

One of his ploys is to accuse the writer of being an impostor. In the writer’s head appear these words: “You can’t write a book about that. You have no credentials in that area. You know nothing about it. People will see through you immediately and know you are an impostor.”

This is enough to stop many writers. We may be insecure of our authority in the first place, and we surely don’t want to be called out as a charlatan!

Another ploy is the “already been done” attack. It comes at the writer if she makes the mistake of browsing her own genre in a bookstore or on Amazon. The Enemy says, “No one will read your book. There are a billion books on that topic already. Look! That one has a great cover. Wow, that one’s really thick; lots of research there. Better switch topics. Or just quit altogether.”

The writer quivers on the knife-edge of defeat. She fears wasting her time on a book that will never compete in an already flooded market, and she fears being detected as an impostor, should any reader be fool enough to open her book.

How can Love overcome the onslaught of such an adversary? Tune in next week for a possible answer.