It has always grated on me a bit over the years to hear Christians say things like, “Well, satan knew so-and-so was going to do great things for God and that’s why he tried to kill him.” (or did kill him) And they said it without providing any proof or a scripture that they based it on. In the bible, that is called a reasoning. Humans feel the need to be able to explain everything and answer every question, I suppose, especially in the face of tragedy. Now, after 30 plus years of knowing Jesus, I see  the Scripture that backs up my belief about this.

Let’s back up a bit. Growing up as a little Catholic girl, I learned three really big, long words about God. He was omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. These are three words not found as such in the bible. But these same attributes are there, just described in other words. Omnipotent is having all power and authority. Omnipresent is being everywhere at the same time. Omniscient is knowing everything.

The realization that the scriptures really do confirm that only God knows everything came to me one day when I was speaking 1 Corinthians Chapter 2 out loud. “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.” 1 Cor. 2:11. Verse 12 goes on to say “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

The point I want to make is that the spirit of man alone (and God, because, remember, he is omniscient or all-knowing) knows his thoughts. The devil is not omniscient. And because we have the Spirit of God living in us now, we can know God’s thoughts. Unless we speak our thoughts out loud, the enemy cannot know our thoughts. And let’s face it, we do speak our thoughts out loud a lot!

In the garden of Eden, after the fall of man, God promised the serpent there was One coming who was going to bruise his head, so you know the enemy was looking for him. There were attempts on Jesus’ life, but think about all the supernatural things that attended His birth and afterwards. There were words and angels and things Mary pondered in her heart. Cousin Elizabeth prophesied to Mary. When Mary and Joseph went to the temple, there was Anna and Ananias prophesying. Prophetic people who saw the baby said things. If the evil one was even paying a half amount of attention, all of this supernatural stuff would have caught his eye, and so he paid attention to this One who would “bruise his heel.” That’s why there were attempts on His life. That’s why there were temptations to make Him sin. But the whole plan of God was not understood by the devil at all, I maintain. He could see bits and pieces of it in the scriptures, like a puzzle coming together, but he had no clue exactly how God was going to rescue His mankind creation. I can see him studying the blood sacrifice that was first used to declare a man righteous and free from sin for the moment, and perhaps starting to get the picture. I’m not sure how smart he is. Sometimes he does really dumb things.

So because the devil is NOT omniscient, he is unable to read our minds. He does put thoughts there and most likely, watches us to see if we go for it. But he can only know things that come out of our mouths. There are things we should never say out loud and thereby give him ammunition. But he is absolutely unable to know what thoughts we think towards God, or what questions we ask Him.

Remember, “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?”