“Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.” (1 Thessalonians 2:18 (KJV)

God has a plan for each of our lives, a plan that is for our eternal good and His glory.

We should not forget, however, that Satan has a plan for the believer’s life as well. His designs are for destroying our lives and testimony for Christ through sin, false beliefs, and poor decisions. Paul’s mention of “the wiles of the devil” in Ephesians 6:11 teaches us that Satan has strategies, methods, and schemes to make us fall or run away in the spiritual battle. Satan can’t take away your salvation (Col. 3:3), but he can destroy your testimony. Like a thief, he can also rob you of your joy in Christ and your assurance of salvation.

After establishing the church at Thessalonica, Paul had tried “once and again” to reconnect and visit them, but it had not worked out. The reason, Paul wrote, was that “Satan hindered us.” The Greek word for “hindered” is used of ‘making a road impassable.’  In the context of athletics, it meant cutting someone off during a race. In a military context, it referred to cutting a trench in front of an advancing army to prevent the enemy’s progress. Satan does the same thing in our Christian lives: he blocks the path, cuts us off in mid-stride to trip us up, or impedes our spiritual progress.

We do not know specifically what Satan did to keep Paul from going back to Thessalonica, but we do know that Paul attributed the obstruction to Satan himself. However, we see now how even Satan’s hindrance was part of God’s providence for Paul’s life. God allowed and used Satan’s opposition and brought good out of this roadblock which Paul perceived as bad.

As God did with the Cross, God accomplished His own purposes, using the devil to do so.

The consequence of Paul’s inability to go to Thessalonica was the writing of a letter, an important letter that became part of our Bible. This letter, in turn, has resulted in glory to God and, for the past 2,000 years, untold multitudes have benefited from Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians and have been blessed by its divine truths – wherein is the truth of our blessed hope of ‘the Rapture’ (4:13-18), to name just one. It was because Paul faced a satanic roadblock in his life that we have 1 Thessalonians to read. We do well to remember this anytime we face a blocked road or barrier in life that we perceive as bad, because God can work to bring something good out of it for His glory and our blessing.

This understanding of how God brings His already planned positive out of the Devil’s negative is further reinforced by Paul’s word here.

“And we know that all things [the good and the bad] work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Romans 8:28-29 (KJV)

- Adapted from Pastor Kevin Sadler -