Walking With Bruised HeelsSample

Heel Bruiser

At the beginning of the Bible, God gives the serpent ultimate consequences for deceiving Adam and Eve and causing them to fall into sin. In Genesis 3:15 GW, He directly tells Satan, “I will make you and the woman hostile toward each other. I will make your descendants and her descendant hostile toward each other. He will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.”

This prophetic verse holds God’s powerful plan to restore our severed relationship with Him: Jesus, who defeated the enemy for good by dying on the cross and being raised from death. Jesus crushed the head of our enemy, even after Satan bruised His heels.

You see, bruised heels in Scripture are a metaphor for any injuries inflicted on us by the evil one. Harsh words, fear, shame, lies that Satan whispers into our minds, deception, circumstances that cause heartache or grief, abandonment, insecurity, abuse, addiction, sickness—essentially any wound meant to harm us is a “bruised heel.”

And just as he bruised Jesus’ heels on the cross, our spiritual enemy will also bruise ours. He’s the Heel Bruiser and he’s after us.

Satan wants to trip us up and make us veer off course. He wants us to go backwards and get stuck in shame, bondage, and guilt. He’ll continually strike at our heels, trying to inflict a wound that keeps us from moving forward in our walk with Christ.

The good news is that Jesus will heal our bruises and remind us that God will use for good anything that the devil meant for harm. Romans 8:28 tells us that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” His spirit is in us and goes ahead of us, leading us forward. In Christ, we’re growing, not shrinking back.

Let me break this down for you: When we accept Jesus as our savior, Satan can no longer have our souls. The poison of a snake—its killing power— lies in its head. Through Jesus’ perfect sacrifice on the cross, he crushed the head of Satan, removing his power over our lives and fulfilling the prophecy in Genesis.

When we acknowledge who God is and surrender our lives to Him, Satan is unable to touch our souls for eternity, which makes him furious. As a result, he’s after the “soles” of our feet. His goal becomes to steal, kill, and destroy our physical life, because in Christ, he can’t have our eternal life.

However, we don’t have to be afraid. Deception is Satan’s oldest trick, but we’re not powerless against it. When we belong to Christ, the Bible tells us that absolutely nothing can snatch our souls from His hand. Through Him, we have the power to crush Satan’s head in our own lives, too.

We have divine tools given to us by God to defeat the evil one and his attempts to wound us. We have God’s Word guiding us and we have the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of Jesus, living inside us, teaching us, and leading us.

Satan may bruise our heels, but in Christ, we have the ultimate victory!