Last week, when I came back from five days on the field, I woke up the next morning and found these negative thoughts about my family bombarding my mind. At first I mistook the thoughts for my own. But then I realized, “Wait a second; I don’t really think that – these are thoughts from the enemy.” I recognized a pattern – other people in the family had been voicing negative thoughts and the home just felt depressing.
“That’s it!” I said. “You’ve overplayed your hand now, hell. I defy you in Jesus’ name!” And so, I went on the offensive. I began to pray loud, aggressive prayers over my family. I gathered them and we prayed together. And I’ve been on the offensive ever since.
We have put on the armor of God. We have prayed. We recognized afresh that we don’t “fight against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of wickedness.” And we started to win. Peace came to the house.
But after a few days, the enemy counterattacked. He began to implement a divide-and-conquer strategy, hitting back where we’re still weak. In my last blog, I wrote about the thoughts my daughter was having. Where did
that come from? OK, I’m a target, so, devious adversary that he is, my enemy is not going to come after me directly and frontally, he’s going to try and to flank me. Too many Christian leaders, particularly parents, are caught up in their own ministry stuff and miss this wily maneuver. When their loved ones are picked off, it was a blind spot for them.
So, we have counseled and prayed. Karen and I have tenaciously stayed focused on this issue. We were up until 1 a.m. with Clint talking and praying about this. We have drawn other friends in to pray and advise as well. God said to our daughter, “Shut off the flow of garbage into your mind. Meditate on scripture. Worship me.”
Today we pulled out the Bible and started going through specific verses. Right now she’s upstairs listening to a worship CD. The fight is joined! We won’t be passive – we will defend our child. We will war for her in the spirit!
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What you said about the devil picking people off is so true! He often attacks me through hardships in others lives rather than my own, being aware of this is pivotal.
It’s such a good reminder that we aren’t fighting against flesh and blood… I need to continually put that at the forefront of my mind.