No one is immune to spiritual warfare. It does not matter how many years you have been in ministry or how long you have known Jesus Christ. As long as there is breath in your body, you have an adversary. Now, I am not saying this to exalt the devil. He can never be equal to God. I am saying this so we are not ignorant of the enemy’s devices (2 Cor. 2:11). I want to share something with you that the Lord shared with me a few days ago as I faced some warfare.
I woke up from a dream early one morning that can only be explained as a spiritual attack. As I pondered on elements of this dream, arguments and imaginations raced through my mind that were contrary to the truth of His Word. I believe if we are honest, we all have engaged in the battlefield of the mind at one time or another. When we shed light on these areas with transparency and humility, the darkness is pushed back, and Christ is given proper place in our lives.
Revelation in the Warfare
My immediate response was to worship the Lord. I got on my face, and I pressed into His presence. Years before my mind was renewed by the Word of God, my response would have been much different. Not only would I have entertained the lies and attacks, but I would have stayed in a place of self-pity and Victimville, population one. When you become properly equipped by the Word and the Holy Spirit, you will respond contrary to previous history.
In that moment of worship and refocusing on the One Who deserves my full attention, the Lord spoke this to me,
“Get the snake out of the garden, and make it history, not his story.”
When He said this to me, it stirred my spirit. I had a choice, just as Adam and Eve did. Yes, I had chosen worship as my warfare, but I also chose to kick the snake out of the garden and make it history. This is not the devil’s story. Your life is to be a written epistle testifying of Christ. It is His fragrance you release, and it is His testimony you bear. You are His locked garden and fountain sealed, and you have authority over the serpent. We must stop allowing the snake into such a pure and holy place. How will you respond?
Keep It in Perspective
You see, the enemy will try to make your life all about him. He wants to be enthroned, and when we remain in that victim mentality instead of being more than an overcomer through Jesus Christ, we oblige him in his pursuit of exaltation without realizing it. When we entertain his notions and accusations, we consider eating from a tree that is forbidden, and we turn the garden into a battlefield. But when we address the serpent, and we place him under our feet as the body of Christ, we send him slithering out of the garden, and we run to Abba as we hear Him walking in the cool of the day. He does not have to ask, “Where are you?” because our identity is intact.
I am not naïve enough to believe we do not have to engage in spiritual warfare. We must simply understand that the enemy does not have permission to set the atmosphere in the garden, which is us. When we read about the garden in Genesis, our focus tends to shift onto the fall, and we forget what was intended from the beginning. We magnify the serpent while diminishing intimacy with God. The devil needs to be addressed, and once he is addressed, he needs to be removed swiftly and with the authority given to us by Christ.
I encourage you to not allow the devil to turn you into a battlefield when you were made to be God’s garden. Your life is not his story. You have eaten from the tree of life, Jesus Christ. Do not permit the enemy to write chapters in your life. You have two options in moments when the snake hisses imaginations and lofty opinions in the garden. You can make it his story, or you can keep it as history, and go on from faith to faith and glory to glory with Christ. {eoa}
Dawn Hill is a Christ-follower and a freelance writer. She writes a blog called “Lovesick Scribe.”
This article originally appeared at lovesickscribe.com.
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