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October 7 - November 30, 2019
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.
Prayer is the portal that brings the power of heaven down to earth. It is kryptonite to the enemy and to all his ploys against you.
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
Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. (Eph. 6:11 nlt)
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 1—Against Your Passion
He seeks to dim your whole desire for prayer, dull your interest in spiritual things, and downplay the potency of your most strategic weapons (Eph. 6: 10–20).
Strategy 2—Against Your Focus
He disguises himself and manipulates your perspective so you end up focusing on the wrong culprit, directing your weapons at the wrong enemy (2 Cor. 11: 14).
Strategy 3—Against Your Identity
He magnifies your insecurities, leading you to doubt what God says about you and to disregard what He’s given you (Eph. 1: 17–19).
Strategy 4—Against Your Family
He wants to disintegrate your family, dividing your home, rendering it chaotic, restless, and unfruitful (Gen. 3: 1–7).
Strategy 5—Against Your Confidence
He constantly reminds you of your past mistakes and bad choices, hoping to convince you that you’re under God’s judgment rather than under the blood (Rev. 12: 10).
Strategy 6—Against Your Calling
He amplifies fear, worry, and anxiety until they’re the loudest voices in your head, causing you to deem the adventure of following God too risky to attempt (Josh. 14: 8).
Strategy 7—Against Your Purity
He tries to tempt you toward certain sins, convincing you that you can tolerate them without risking consequence, knowing they’ll only wedge distance between you and God (Isa. 59: 1–2).
Strategy 8—Against Your Rest and Contentment
He hopes to overload your life and schedule, pressuring you to constantly push beyond your limits, never feeling permission to say no (Deut. 5: 15).
Strategy 9—Against Your Heart
He uses every opportunity to keep old wounds fresh in mind, knowing that anger and hurt and bitterness and unforgiveness will continue to roll the damage forward (Heb. 12: 15).
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).
Satan is not God. And he is not God’s counterpart or peer.
he does have limitations—boundaries he cannot cross no matter how much he desires or how hard he tries. For instance . . . He can’t be everywhere at once (only God is omnipresent). He can’t read your mind (only God is omniscient). He is merely an illusionist, using cunning trickery to deceive and mislead (only God can work flat-out, unmistakable miracles). And last, but certainly not least . . . He’s running out of time (our God is eternal).
Thanksgiving is one of the most important aspects of prayer. It’s not just a means of warming up (or buttering up). It’s not just a preamble before getting down to what we really came to say. Gratitude to God for who He is and what He’s already done should thread throughout every prayer because ultimately His name and His fame are the only reasons any of this matters.
God’s real desire, in addition to displaying His glory, is to claim your heart and the hearts of those you love. So prayer, while it’s certainly a place to deal with the objectives and details we want to see happening in our circumstances, is also about what’s happening on the inside, where real transformation occurs. Expect prayer to expose where you’re still resisting Him—not only resisting His commands but resisting the manifold blessings and benefits He gives to those who follow. Line your strategies with repentance: the courage to trust, and turn, and walk His way.
Make your requests known. Be personal and specific. Write down details of your own issues and difficulties as they relate to the broader issue we discussed in that chapter, as well as how you perhaps see the enemy’s hand at work in them or where you suspect he might be aiming next. You’re not begging; you’ve been invited to ask, seek, and knock. God’s expecting you. He’s wanting you here. The best place to look is to Him.
“All of God’s promises,” the Bible says, “have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding ‘Yes!’” (2 Cor. 1: 20 nlt). You may not understand what all’s happening in your life right now, but any possible explanation pales in comparison to what you do know because of your faith in God’s goodness and assurances. So allow your prayer to be accentuated with His own words from Scripture, His promises to you that correspond to your need. (I’ll provide lots of options in each chapter to choose from.) There is nothing more powerful than praying God’s own Word.
We don’t recognize it’s him at first, working behind the scenes. We think the reason we’ve stopped praying is because—oh, “we just don’t feel like it anymore.” And sure—maybe, maybe, that’s the way it really is. But possibly, possibly, this lack of feeling is a clue that the enemy’s strategy has begun to take effect. He’s worked you down enough until you can’t seem to muster up the will to fight back, to keep believing for and praying about . . .
(2 Kings 6:1–7)
“One day the group of prophets came to Elisha and told him, “As you can see, this place where we meet with you is too small. Let’s go down to the Jordan River, where there are plenty of logs. There we can build a new place for us to meet.” “All right,” he told them, “go ahead.” “Please come with us,” someone suggested. “I will,” he said. So he went with them. When they arrived at the Jordan, they began cutting down trees. But as one of them was cutting a tree, his ax head fell into the river. “Oh, sir!” he cried. “It was a borrowed ax!” “Where did it fall?” the man of God asked. When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water at that spot. Then the ax head floated to the surface. “Grab it,” Elisha said. And the man reached out and grabbed it.”
2 Kings 6:1-7 NLT
https://www.bible.com/116/2ki.6.1-7.nlt
This tells me that being engaged in good, even godly, productive things is not an automatic guard against losing your cutting edge.
The presence of passion, faith, and belief in our hearts is a gift.
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)
Flesh and blood, skin and bones—those aren’t the places where your real struggles lie. The identity of your real enemy, once the Bible has weighed in, is clear as day. It’s him. It’s all him. It’s always been him.
we’re doing two things: (1) wasting precious time and energy that ought to be reserved and refocused on the real enemy, and (2) trying to fight ferocious spiritual forces by using weapons that don’t faze them in the least—weapons that aren’t even designed to hurt them. So the hits just keep on coming.
The disharmony and dysfunction that either blow up or simmer beneath your most valuable relationships are not coincidental.
Not an accident
Ephesians 6:10–11,
“A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.”
Ephesians 6:10-11 NLT
https://www.bible.com/116/eph.6.10-11.nlt
Truth is God’s standard—the unchanging, objective benchmark of the Bible by which we govern and align our lives. Righteousness means right living—the process by which we apply this truth to our lives and, by His Spirit, produce conduct honoring and pleasing to God. Peace is the deep, inner, eternal stability the believer possesses by virtue of relationship with Jesus, a sense of balance that’s not subject to external circumstance. It’s also the quality that enables us to live harmoniously with others. Faith is the application of what one believes—the process of putting feet to our beliefs and
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Through Christ, Satan has already been: disarmed and embarrassed (Col. 2:15) overruled (Eph. 1:20–22) mastered (Phil. 2:9–11) rendered powerless (Heb. 2:14) all his hard work destroyed (1 John 3:8)
asking God to help you pull back the curtain today—and every single day—so you can see when the devil is behind the argument, the frustration, the anger, the discord, the falsehood, the insecurity, the fear. Ask Him to help you take your attention and emotional energy off the people and circumstances where you’ve been directing them up till now and refocus them.
Praise: Thank Him for reigning in power and supplying you with the weapons of victory. Repentance: Admit where you’ve been angry and distracted, fighting all the wrong people. Asking: Ask for courage, for discernment, for patience, for diligence, for laser-like focus. Yes: Because the Lord is with you, and He will fight the real enemy through you.
