March 15, 2010
Expose the Enemy - Claim The Victory
I have found that the most vicious attacks on my family and myself come when I am exposing evil for what it is. The carefully crafted lies and deceptions take a lot of effort for the devil and when we meet him on his own turf and mess with his plans things can get downright ugly. I have found that if my mind is not solidly anchored in the Word and focused on God I almost instantly veer off at a high rate of speed and things quickly spiral out of control. I become overwhelmed and anxieties become unbearable. The devil tries to set up shop in my head. This world system is his and it is perfectly clear when I "get into it" with one of his toadies. The attack is vicious. This is especially true when their arguments have been defused through logic or I use their own argument to refute them. There is nowhere to go with the argument at that point and they get nasty, hostile and occasionally...violent.
My first tactic is to immediately acknowledge I am helpless in these (spiritual) matters on my own and I call on the Lord (Armor). Once engaged, I need to constantly stand back from these conversations and confrontations to make sure I am addressing them in a scriptural manner as Jesus did. I give myself pause to actually think about a rebuttal or whether one is necessary. The pause allows time for my emotions to diminish. Sometimes I leave silence fill the gap. My personal issue is being able to recognize in myself the same problems that I see in others. If I don't, charges of "hypocrite" confront me at every turn. Conversely, we need to realize when we are wrong or have misread the situation or we will inadvertently become the problem not the solution.
Increasingly I find myself being assailed every time I get into a situation where I am try to dispel myths perpetrated by people that are doing the devil's work but are calling themselves righteous. Some are within the Body. Unfortunately, the devil works through some of the things closest to me to distract me from what is primary or most important.
To one extent or another we are all pawns in the devil's game because we are all still victims to our sinful natures. Anyone that denies this is deceiving themselves. We do have power over this evil but and it its only through Christ. We need to realize what is happening when it is happening. Sometimes the damage is done by the time we realize it. As I was told when I was younger, you don't take a knife to a gunfight. Nor should we take material weapons and tools of our human nature to a spiritual battle. We need Christ. It is not so much a fight with the devil to gain ground so much as it is a million little battles of reclamation of what is rightfully ours through the blood of the cross. You only need to reclaim the victory that Jesus Christ has already won.
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