Tactics

Today I recognized how the enemy will use anything to distract me & to accuse me.  If I let him, he can certainly take a disappointment, setback, or failure of mine and drag me miles with it.  I refuse to lay down to be tortured any longer; I'm here to fight. The examples I give here are  ways the enemy will begin to whisper lies into our lives. The idea is to recognize it and not allow it to settle in and take you for a ride.  As Joyce Meyer would put it, 'Think about what you're thinking about!'

For a few weeks now I've been working on the same task, working toward a finished 'product.'  Its completely time consuming and positively distracting, I'm ready to be finished. I've enjoyed the process of it for the most part, but now I'm praying for it to come to an end.  I think the Lord wanted me to get to the place where I could genuinely ask for the process of this particular task to be over with.  I'm tired of the distraction.  Today the enemy started to use it, taunting me that it will never end & further distracting me with it.  It figures... I realized today that yesterday I allowed the enemy to  distract me so much with it that it kept me all day long and into the night.   The Lord gave me peace about it getting completely finished... I just want it completely finished yesterday. sigh. so... I just need to move forward, stay focused on the time limits I have for each task at hand until its time for bed; not following the temptation to get utterly wrapped up in it so that nothing else can get accomplished. Even now its lurking over my shoulder to be done, I'm genuinely tired.
Resting in God as He carries me daily through it until I'm really done, letting Him fight my battles.

John 16:33 (NIV), "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world"--Jesus.

Further, the enemy will use my setbacks and failures against me, even things I'm choosing not to move forward in victory over.  It doesn't even have to be something God asked of me, it can be something I asked of me and the enemy will accuse me. At the end of February, I committed to not eat sugar until Easter in the hopes I would lose some weight.  The weight came off & the sugar eating began again. I said that the day after Easter I would go back to no sugar, more than a week has passed and its just getting worse.  I don't think the Lord ever has asked me to give up sugar, but the fact that I said I'd stop again gave the enemy a place to squirm in and accuse me of being a failure ... saying "look you can't even commit to that."  That just really makes me want to eat more, and if I don't rest in God's grace and instead allow the enemy to continue whispering to me those few words will pave the path to suicidal thoughts planted by the enemy.  Also, the fact is that I have an addiction to sugar and over eating that MUST be surrendered to God for any victory in this area to take place.  The Lord wants us to have victory in our lives (no matter how seemingly big or small); He LOVES us.

Going back to John 16:33. In her book, Thelma Wells defines overcome: "To overcome means to struggle successfully against a difficulty or disadvantage, to make somebody hurting you incapacitated or helpless, to break down somebody's normal self-control, to defeat somebody or something, especially in a conflict or competition; to win or be successful, especially in spite of obstacles.  In other words, God promises to defeat everything and everyone brought against you and me by the enemies of our lives and the enemy of our souls."

Ephesians 6:12, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."