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Because this is war. The fight of your life. A very real enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your man, your child, your future. In fact, he’s doing it right this second. Right where you’re sitting. Right where you are.
Praying with precision is key. When we pray about the places where we seriously suspect the enemy is at work—that’s how we keep our prayers focused, not only on particular situations but on biblical truths that are consistent with maintaining victory in the midst of them.
You write out your prayers so you “won’t forget” . . . won’t forget who the real enemy is won’t forget the One in whom your hope lies won’t forget your real need and dependencies are and later, won’t forget the record of how God responds
We pray because our own solutions don’t work and because prayer deploys, activates, and fortifies us against the attacks of the enemy. We pray because we’re serious about taking back the ground he has sought to take from us.
Strategy 10—Against Your Relationships He creates disruption and disunity within your circle of friends and within the shared community of the body of Christ (1 Tim. 2:8).
Call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jer. 29:12–13)
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Luke 12:34)
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezek. 36:26 hcsb)
Do you see the promise? “I will give you.” “I will remove your heart of stone” and “give you” a heart that’s alive and tender again, one that’s beating and responsive again. Engaged again. Able to believe again.
If I were your enemy, I’d disguise myself and manipulate your perspectives so that you’d focus on the wrong culprit—your husband, your friend, your hurt, your finances, anything or anyone except me. Because when you zero in on the most convenient, obvious places to strike back against your problems, you get the impression you’re fighting for something. Even though all you’re really doing is just . . . fighting. For nothing.
there is something you can’t see working underneath the surface, controlling and manipulating what you can.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood [what you can see], but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places [what you can’t see]. (Eph. 6:12, with my additional comments)
Even in knowing the truth, we can lose sight of where these attacks are originating from . . . from back there, behind the curtain. And by failing to take notice and remember, it’s not hard then to lose our cool, our temper, and most of our self-control before we ever find our way back to ultimate reality.
