Watch Out! Your Enemy, The Devil Is Trying To Get You!

We are admonished in 1 Peter 5:8 to stay alert for our enemy the devil, is looking for someone to eat. I like that Peter doesn't say that the enemy is eating up people, but "looking" for people to eat. He then goes on to say that we are to resist him in the faith, and not to be surprised that Christians all over are going through the same thing.

And this is not an isolated incident either. This is an all out attack on the believers in Jesus. And the devil is not even subtle in how he is going about it, no he is patiently waiting and watching for us to slip up somewhere so then he can attack and have us for lunch. One of the biggest problems that I see lately is that most Christians don't even act like the enemy is real, much less that he is working hard to devour us.

Today if you talk about the devil and what he is doing, most of the time people just roll their eyes and say, "Oh man, you're one of those wacky Christians." People just want to dismiss the fact that we have an enemy and that he is trying to steal, kill and destroy. They will chalk up bad things happening to circumstances, being in the wrong place at the wrong time or just coincidence. I think the saints in the Bible had a little bit better grip on this subject than we do.

Look at the lion in the picture I put in my blog. Do you notice how well he blends in with his surroundings? I mean you can see him there, but if you just took a casual or quick glance you might actually miss him. That is how the enemy works too. He blends in with society in such a way that you can actually miss him at work. In John 10:10, Jesus tells us how the enemy works; he steals, kills and destroys, that is what he does.

We were told by Peter to stay alert for our enemy. Staying alert does not mean take an occasional glance, it means:

1) to watch

2) give strict attention to, be cautious, active

a) to take heed lest through remission and indolence some destructive calamity suddenly overtake one.

We have to be the ones looking for the enemy, no one else can do it for us. And this is not to say that we have to be cowardly, or fearful while looking for him. After all we have the blood of Jesus, the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives to counteract the works of the devil. But we have to be watching for him to be able to confront him, and not be caught

unaware.

We need to pay a little bit more attention to things in the spirit, and not get caught forgetting to pay attention to this fact that we have an enemy and that he is trying to trip us up. We are most definitely in the last days, and the return of Jesus is closer than any of us probably realize. But this does not mean that we need to go into a docile, holding pattern mentality. We need to stay alert, and be on guard for the attacks that the enemy will try on us.

While the enemy may have a bulls eye on our backs, we don't have to be his victim. Spend time in God's Word daily, pray and seek the face of God and then listen for the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit to make you aware of what is going on around you in the spiritual realm. The enemy cannot get us if we are aware of him coming. He is a coward, and chooses not to face us directly, because he knows that in a full out frontal attack on a Christian he will be withstood. But if he can trip us up and cause us to sin, then he can pounce on us once we are down.

And listen, if you've slipped up and sinned, don't stay there. Get up, turn to 1 John 1:9 which says that if you will confess your sin to God, that He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sin and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Doing that puts you right back on your feet and in right standing with God which keeps the enemy from munching on you.

Understand this too, once you have confessed your sin to God, he forgets it and will not remind you of it again. But when you hear that condemning voice in your head telling you how bad a person you really are, and how much you blew it this time, know that that is the enemy trying to trip you up again. You need to forgive yourself as well. The devil would like nothing better than once you've asked God to forgive you, for you to continue to beat yourself up about what you did. It's forgiven, now dust yourself off and go get back out there.

Our enemy the devil may be like a roaring lion, but that's all he can really do, roar. He can only eat up those who will let him. Get 'em up folks, let's go out and whip the enemy today!

How Long Is The Battle Supposed To Last?

I think it would be a fair assumption on my part to think that you the reader understand that everyone has challenges in their lives. And that no one is exempt from them either, regardless if you are a good person or a bad. Whatever you want to call it; karma, reaping what you have sown, or just the way of the world, the truth of the matter is no matter what, everyone faces battles in their lives. So we better prepare ourselves.

So with that thought established let me move on to my thought: "How long is the battle suppose to last?" Really, I think this is a fair question to ask, because unless we have some idea of how long we must stand and fight, we can and will lose hope and eventually lose heart. And when there is a loss of heart, morale goes down and men cannot fight as well and then defeat is just a hands breath away.

I really enjoy movies which depict men having to battle overwhelming odds and come out the victor. Scarred, battered and bruised maybe, but victorious over their enemies. The really interesting thing is that it doesn't usually happen in a half an hour. But that is what has happened to us in America anyways isn't it? We watch 30 - 60 minute television programs where by the end of the show whatever conflict started at the beginning will be completely resolved and everyone loving each other again.

Transition that reality (Which really isn't, but our minds want to think it is.) into your own personal family life and see if one of your conflicts with your teenager resolves itself in an hour. In our home, they usually lasted 3 - 4 hours with all of us going to bed exhausted, and very rarely had any agreements having been reached. It usually was several days before we had everything back to normal.

When we try and put these unrealistic expectations on ourselves, we end up being set up for a fall. I think that this is one of the ways that the enemy uses to get us to lose heart. I mean think about it for a minute; you read God's Word that healing belongs to you, you get faith to believe for your healing, then the cold that has latched itself to you decides to stay on for 4 or 5 days. Isn't our first thought, "Why isn't God's Word working?" Well who's to say that it's not. After all where do you see in the Bible that healing comes with a time frame?

I read in the Word that by Jesus's stripes I am healed, (1 Peter 2:24) but I don't see in there where it states that my physical symptoms leave the moment that I pray and believe. You see this is where we miss it the most. We see in the Bible stories that Jesus did something and in an instant the people got what they needed. Then we think if it doesn't happen for us that way, we didn't get it. And nothing could be further from the truth!

We do receive our answer the moment that we believed and prayed, but that doesn't mean we will actually see the manifestation of it right at that moment. We may actually have to fight the good fight of faith. (1 Timothy 6:12) Just because we are fighting the good fight of faith, does not mean there isn't going to be a fight. Fighting the good fight of faith just means that we are fighting a fight that we will win. (Some times immediately, and some times eventually.)

You see, what the fight of faith actually is, is the fight (Within our minds.) to believe that what God's Word says is true, regardless of what everything else around us is saying. (To our physical senses.) I would say that the fight could go on for a while. There is nothing written in stone as to how long we must endure and fight the good fight of faith, just that we are to fight it, never surrendering.

So what are you going to do now? I know that I am going to continue to fight to believe that what God's Word says is true, regardless of what my physical senses are telling me. You know, I'm pretty sure that men fighting on the battlefield don't quit fighting with the enemy if they are unable to vanquish them in just a few hours. No, they keep fighting with everything that they've got, because the moment that they quit, they die. So let's learn from that example and fight to believe with every fiber of our beings. Well there's that, get 'em up folks, and let's go whip something for the Kingdom!

Demoralization

There is this little insidious tool that the enemy has in his arsenal that he likes to use against believers. I have experienced this to a certain degree in the last few months and I can tell you that it is subtle and creeps up on you like a snake in tall grass. It's called "demoralization" and it can kill you if you let it. The definition for demoralization is, to undermine the confidence or morale of; dishearten. Let me explain what I mean with an example from my own life.

As you know if you have read my blog for any length of time, I am a Christian, a born again believer in Jesus Christ. This does not mean that my life is without challenges, not at all. Every life has its share of them, so to think that just because I'm a Christian will exempt me from problems is just not true. I have been walking with the Lord for a long time now, and I had, while I was in the shower yesterday this thought, (While coughing and hacking up a lung.) "Oh come on, are you kidding me? I'm going to have congestion and the mucus fun now? What the heck? It's just one thing after another!" And then my heart sank within me.

I'm no novice at this Christianity thing, I may not be a father in the faith yet, but I'm no novice. I realize that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, (Matthew 5:45) but for some reason I felt demoralized standing there in the shower. It seemed as if everything that I had ever wanted to do for the Lord was slipping through my fingers like the soap bubbles off of my body. I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, and I wanted to whine a little bit. (Yes, you heard my correctly, I wanted to whine.) I finished getting ready for church and my bride, daughter and I left to go meet with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We attended both services yesterday and I am so glad that we did. The first service was good, and my friend Daniel Shirley brought forth a strong word from the Lord about how the stone had been rolled away and that we should stop living under the law, and live under the grace that Jesus purchased for us. But it was during the second service, while Daniel was preaching that he made a comment about something my Pastor David Emigh had taught him. He said, "Preparation time is never wasted time, unless you waste it." And that made me sit up and take notice.

For a while now, I've been trying to understand the movings of the Spirit of God in my heart. There is something on the horizon for me and my family, but I'm not quite sure as to what it is. I've been searching, and asking but as of yet it is still a little hazy, the clarity has not come yet. And while I await the clarity, it seems that there has been one thing after another that has assaulted my heart for quite some time now. The death of my son, business appearing to not go as well as it used to and my not knowing where it is that God is leading me and my family right at this moment, and yesterday the fact that God's provision for my health was not where I wanted it to be. All of these things have been sucking the life out of me, and the real problem is that I have allowed them to.

You see here in lies the problem, it's not really the subtle attacks of the enemy that are major issue, it's the response that we give to them. The Bible teaches that the power of life and death are in our tongues (Deuteronomy 30:19). So when the attacks come, what are "WE" doing with them? Do we take a que sara, sara, whatever will be will be attitude? Or do we look a little closer into God's Word and find out what His provisions are for the thing we find ourselves in and take action?

Daniel and I were talking last night at dinner and he made the comment to me that after the sixth day, God quit creating. He put His creative power in mankind, and it is now up to us to create using our mouths. We really do have what we say, so what we need to be saying is what God's Word says about our situations, and not what we feel like saying. I've heard people say quit telling God how big your mountain (challenges) is, and tell the mountain how big your God is. And if we'll do that, then the weapon of demoralization will not have any effect on our lives.

Okay, so there's that...get 'em up folks, let's go out and whip something for the Kingdom today!