The One-Winged Angel of Temptation: Facing Your Sephiroth in Lent
As we have learnt from the previous blog posts, Lent is about spiritual discipline, a period where trials and tests come and where it is important to self-reflect, not just on them, but on how far we have come and how strong we are for staying the course.
By the third week, despite our victories, the journey still feels long and encumbered, this is when it is easy to give in to temptation. To allow the villains and demons in our lives to take hold.
Sephiroth, the One-Winged Angel from Final Fantasy VII, embodies the very nature of temptation. He is powerful but deceptive and relentless.
Just as Cloud Strife and the Final Fantasy VII party must face this particular foe, we must face our own Sephiroth during Lent. His presence will be felt and his whispers will seed discontent and he will work overtime to pull us away from God.
While temptation can be seen physically, the greatest challenges are actually from within. Mental, emotional and spiritual. Many biblical figures struggled with issues, Jesus himself was tempted in the wilderness by Satan and Cloud had to battle the endless whispers and deceit from Sephiroth.
The whispers to us will be mighty: “Turn back now, nothing good can come from this.” “What you’re doing is pointless, you may as well stop doing it.” “You’re not strong or powerful enough to succeed. Give up now.” I want to reassure you; these whispers are nothing more than distractions to take you off course from the great destiny in front of you.
The key to overcoming temptation is recognizing it for what it is. Sephiroth’s strength and status before and after his fall was legendary, but in the end, he was defeated. It wasn’t easy for the party, but they overcame impossible odds to achieve the victory.
Remember what is says in 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation is undefeatable.”
Every enemy has a weakness, every deception has a counter. So, how do you fight back? How do you silence the whispers, resist temptation, continue strong in your Lenten journey and ultimately achieve that victory?
Let’s take a closer look at the enemy’s tactics and the powerful strategies you can use to stand firm and emerge on top.
Recognizing Your Sephiroth: Identifying the Enemy
The first step to victory is knowing what you’re up against.
Sun Tzu once wrote:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
While this came from his book The Art of War and applies to warfare, this also applies to faith.
Christians are constantly at war and identifying the ‘Sephiroth’s’ is one of the most important elements of the battle. Without knowing the enemy, we face; we will find ourselves spiritually derailed and the fight to overcome becomes that much harder.
Ephesians 6:12: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world.
Cloud struggled to identify the battle he was in because he was constantly manipulated which made him question himself and made him struggle to identify the real enemy. His greatest challenge wasn’t fighting Sephiroth directly, it was realizing what Sephiroth was doing to him.
Physical prowess, very often, is not as strong as the mental side. If the enemy can’t wear you down physically, he will attack something more fragile, your mind.
Temptation, false accusations and even distractions can discourage us and weaken our resolve in the fight that is happening. But whether that is external, such as finance struggles, relationship problems or even past traumas, or even internal (depression, anger, insecurity, fear), once you identify what your greatest challenge is, you have overcome the most difficult part, because it makes it easier, not just on how to deal with it, but how to overcome it.
What is the greatest you are facing right now the Lent?
Identify your ‘Sephiroth(s)’, write it down. Besides that, write down: “I WILL defeat you!” Then repeat it over and over by saying it out loud and get it really rooted deep down inside of you. Because what you say is what you are working towards.
But before we can fight back, we must first know the enemy. Understanding his nature, his tactics, and how he operates is the first step to victory. This brings us to the most important question: Who, or what, is your Sephiroth?
Understanding the Enemy’s Tactics: How Temptation Strikes
Temptation hides in the darkness—don’t let it take control.
Once you know the type of enemy you face, you can then begin to assess it by working out its tactics.
Temptation and struggles aren’t just random, they are a pattern. It is important to understand them so you can prepare for the battle ahead. If we don’t recognize them, we will be blindsided when it does strike.
How do we do this? With a counter strategy. When the enemy strikes, we fight back in faith.
Below are some of the things that both Cloud and we have to deal with and how we can counter them.
Deception:
Sephiroth Quote: “There is only despair in your future.”
Cloud: Sephiroth may not look like a villain to Cloud at first glance. He was a legendary SOLDIER, a great mentor and a hero that others looked up to. Never did he or anyone else expect him to turn his back on everything and embrace the monster within him.
Us: Temptation rarely looks evil. This is the deception of the enemy. He disguises something that looks good or even desirable and his whisper tries to reinforce it. This could come in many forms:
Deception of Sin: “Just doing this one small thing won’t hurt you or anyone else.”
Deception of Doubt: “The reason this is a struggle is because God is not real.”
Deception of Loneliness: “Everyone has abandoned you, they don’t value you.”
Counter Strategy: Stay rooted into the scripture. The Bible is our battle plan, our guide and our shield. When attacks come respond as Jesus did in Matthew 4:4: “It is written.”
One of the greatest weapons God has given us is discernment, the ability to recognize deception before it takes root. If something feels off, it most likely is. If something contradicts the bible, that is deception.
The enemy wants us to believe we are trapped, that here is no hope, but in Christ hope always exists.
Doubt:
Sephiroth Quote: “You were nothing more than a puppet.”
Cloud: He had to constantly fight an endless internal battle with Sephiroth who was twisting truths and even manipulating his memories to the point where he struggled to distinguish what was real and what wasn’t.
Us: We will very often hear things such as: “You’re not good enough.” “Praying doesn’t do anything.” “God can’t hear you, he doesn’t care about you.”
Counter Strategy: Speak God’s truth over your life. When the enemy’s whispers come, speak Scripture. What you say reinforces your belief and the direction your life takes.
When the enemy says: “You are not good enough.” Respond with Ephesians 2:10 in the second person: “God has crafted ME and created ME, which means I am valuable to God.”
Cloud forgot who he was. Don’t forget who you are, what God has already done for you and don’t forget who he is.
Exhaustion and Distraction:
Sephiroth Quote: “Your struggle is futile.”
Cloud: Sephiroth didn’t directly engage with Cloud to begin with. Instead, he let other enemies, Shinra, the Turks and even Jenova herself wear Cloud and the party down before making his move. As a result, Cloud became more physically and mentally drained, leaving himself more vulnerable to Sephiroth’s attacks.
Us: The enemy knows a disheartened soul when he sees one, he is always waiting to pounce. He moves about like a predator waiting for his moment. When we are exhausted, we are more likely to give in and fall. We can begin to neglect things because we are too drained and distracted from our current situation.
Counter Strategy: Distract yourself with the good things in life. Prayer, worship, great friends. Put aside or get rid of anything that is distracting you from your purpose whether that be phones, social media, continuous entertainment. If you are exhausted, take a rest, but don’t make it a permanent, think of it like a pit stop. We must recharge the batteries before getting back into the fight. Every step of faith you take, weakens his hold.
Isolation:
Sephiroth Quote: “You have no one.”
Cloud: Sephiroth made him question his friends and whether they really did care about him. He was already a very withdrawn person, but that just made the enemy’s voice more dominant and caused him to give in more.
Us: The enemy likes to wear us down so much that he likes to cause us to hide away and alienate our friends. He feels that by getting us more alone that we are more prone and vulnerable to him.
Counter Strategy: When struggling, reach out to friends, to family, to others who you can trust and confide in. There is strength in numbers. Ecclesiastes 4:10 says “If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.” That’s what it means to have companions and a strong group of believers who walk with you.
Temptation is powerful, but it is not unbeatable. The enemy wants you to believe he is invincible, but that is just another deception.
Every villain has a weakness. Every temptation has a counter and every battle has a way to be won.
Even the most powerful villains fall when their weakness is exposed. The key is knowing where to strike.
Finding the Weakness: The Villain Is Not Invincible
A shattered, cracked glass symbolizes the breaking of deception, the fragility of evil, and overcoming strongholds in faith.
Before Cloud and his party engage in battle, they use specialist Materia to assess their enemy, analyzing its strengths, weaknesses, and even its immunities.
Once the part knew this information they could use their other elemental Materia, as well as their summons, special abilities and even their limit breaks to defeat the enemy they were facing.
One of our greatest struggles is the urge to rush in, expecting immediate results. But heading in without knowing an enemy is like trying to take a test without studying, expecting to pass just by showing up. Without preparation, you’re left struggling, unarmed against the challenge in front of you.
We need to take the time to analyse what is in front of us. That may mean talking to someone. To open up about a specific area you are struggling with. It may mean seeking professional help for issues that do require expert help.
As much as we want the victory, we can’t rush the process. We must take the time to make sure we have all the information we need before we can move into the actual battle itself.
Every enemy has a weakness. Some are harder to find, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The stronger the enemy, the more carefully you must search for its weak point—but once you find it, victory is within reach.
Recognizing the weakness is only half the battle. The real test comes next—will you take action? Will you rise up and fight? Cloud did not just identify his enemy’s weaknesses—he trained, prepared, and struck back. And now, it’s your turn.
Striking Back: How to Overcome Your Sephiroth
Victory is won not by strength alone, but by faith and perseverance.
Cloud doesn’t just fight, he trains, strategizes and prepares himself for the battles ahead. Fighting alongside his friends helps him achieve the victory.
Every battle he faces helps him raise levels, gain experience and be able to unlock more lethal moves, some of which he can use together with another ally for a more devastating effect.
Even before the fight begins, he and the party have to outfit themselves with the best equipment, equip themselves with the right Materia, make sure they have items that can heal health points and different ailments, they even need to choose who they are going to bring into the main fray and who fights from the backlines. It all makes a huge difference
Striking back is the only way to truly defeat an enemy, no matter how terrifying or strong it appears. Taking action is required.
Sometimes we don’t want to take action because we don’t know if we will succeed or we will emerge victorious. Even with all the information giving us everything we need; we can still be fearful of facing the enemy head on.
We can see many examples of people who had to face big problems no matter how scary they were. David had to face Goliath; Moses had to return back to Egypt where he murdered a man before fleeing to Midian. Jesus had to walk to the crucifixion knowing what was going to happen to him.
Doing just like the Final Fantasy party did will help you overcome your ‘Sephiroth’s’. Those One-Winged Angels may look scary, but even they can have their wing clipped.
When you surround yourself with other people, you are also filling them in, you are all putting each other onto the same page. This is the same when you fight together, using each other’s different capabilities for maximum devastation in the fight.
Even the most powerful enemies fall when faced with unwavering determination. Cloud’s greatest battles didn’t just test his strength—they shaped him into the warrior he was meant to be. And so it is with you. The fight isn’t just about winning—it’s about becoming stronger through the struggle.
The Final Victory: No Villain Lasts Forever
Every battle has an end—your victory is closer than you think.
After a long and brutal journey that took Cloud and his party across the world—through loss, tragedy, and brokenness, yet also through unity, friendship, and unexpected twists—Sephiroth was at last defeated.
The One-Winged Angel was no more.
As the subtitle says, no villain lasts forever.
The campaign was brutal, but the enemy was defeated. And so it will be with your struggles. Temptation, doubt, and the enemy will not win.
Cloud and his party stumbled. They nearly fell apart. One member left them. Another was brutally slain by Sephiroth. The journey was painful, and the cost was high.
And yet they endured. They pressed on. They did not give up.
And because they chose to stand together, fight together, and refuse to surrender, they emerged victorious.
And so will you.
There may be times when you stumble when you fall. But you are still in the fight and there will always be people in your life who will pick you up.
Lent may feel like a long battle, but in truth, it is your training ground.
The real victory is coming.
So ask yourself: What will it look like when I overcome this? How will my life change?
Hold that vision. Keep fighting for it.
I want to encourage you, whether you are standing tall or on your knees in struggle, do not stop. Keep going.
- The more you stay in the fight, the more temptation fades.
The more you persist, the more your struggles weaken.
The more you resist, the more the enemy loses his hold.
Until at last, he will have no choice but to watch you emerge victorious.
Stand firm. Press on. Face your Sephiroth in faith.
And in the words of Aerith Gainsborough:
“Stay strong and carry on.”
Conclusion: A Final Encouragement
No warrior fights alone—find strength in faith and community.
You may be feeling tired right now. You have fought many hard and tough battles. But here you are, still standing strong. This alone is proof of your faith and the strength of the fight within you.
The temptation was convincing. The Sephiroth whispers were strong. It tried to get you to give up, throw away all the hard work, and convince you that your faith was not enough. But you refused to listen. You did not turn back. Even when you stumbled, even when you felt week, you continued to stand strong and fight on. This alone means you have already won so many battles than you realize.
However, this war is not over yet.
Lent is about persevering. There is still lots of journey to go. But it is not one you are walking alone on. Just as Cloud has his allies fighting beside him, so too do you have God walking beside you and an army of believers fighting alongside you. This provides strength for what lies ahead.
The warriors and heroes of faith relied on Scripture; you also have that exact same weapon to guide you. Jesus overcame the wilderness using it, so will you.
The enemy wants you to believe you are powerless. That the struggle is permanent, that you will never experience victory, and that what you’re praying for is not meant to be.
But you now know the truth.
You know his tactics, you know his weaknesses and you know that every villain falls.
You are not the same person as you were when the journey began. You are stronger, more courageous, and wiser. The enemy who once tried to keep you down, now fears what you will become.
Take a moment now. Picture your victory.
You are not defeated.
You are not weak.
You are not alone.
You are a conqueror, not the conquered.
You are an overcomer, not the overcome.
You are a victor, not a victim.
This fight is yours to win. And you will win it.
God’s got this and so do you.
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