THE SIFTING SIEVE

You must understand that if Satan could kill you, he would kill you, but you see he has to ask for you.  That’s the significance here. Jesus said, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked for you, he has made a request for you."  You ought to thank Jesus that there is a protective barrier between His own, and Satan and demons. If there was no dynamic of permission, if there was no dynamic of God’s sovereign authority making Satan accountable you and I would be dead, dragged through the mud, suffer all kinds of humiliation, so that the enemy could exalt himself.  

The process of sifting has everything to do with the obliteration of the wheat’s head and the process of sifting that wheat will either yield that which is useless or that which is useful-it depends upon which part is saved. The sifting separates useful wheat from un-useful wheat, which is the chaff. The whole idea of the process is that you blow away that which is un-useful, which is the chaff. Satan desires to sift or blow away what is useful and save that which is un-useful and then put un-useful in your face.

The idea of the head or the wheat in the sieve is that it takes the head of the grain apart. It breaks the wheat up into pieces and thus we have our English idiom, taking someone apart or making people into pieces.  Satan desires to break us down into useless pieces.  He wants to destroy the believer’s usefulness and render our lives as chaff or waste of the wheat. Think about it! Have you been sifted lately? What useless thing was obliterated and what useful thing was declared dead?

Prayer: Dear Jesus, You afford Your sons and daughters a level of protection and we thank You for Your covering that keeps the enemy at bay. Thank You for the whole armor of God that protects us from the wiles of the evil one.  If we are to be sifted Lord, we pray that we will endure and that our faith will not fail. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
By Pastor Wayne Cockrell
Taken from “Failed, But Jesus is Not Finished”