Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
Matthew 4:3 “And the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’”
Sometimes the enemy’s attacks feel so powerful, and I feel so weak and powerless against them. I forget that the enemy’s tactics are limited. He only has two approaches – to remind me who I was, and to bring into question who I am now.
It is an easy thing for all of us to fall back into who we were. When I am driving to the store, I often without thinking start driving to my daughter’s house where I watch my grandchildren three days a week. It is such a familiar route that I easily fall back into making those turns without thinking about it. It’s the same with my flesh; it’s familiar to react and respond out of the familiar lies I believed and my way of coping with them. The enemy would love for me to stay there and be useless in the Kingdom, to be so focused on my old stuff that I can’t truly be useful. I need to remind myself through scripture what has happened. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come. The old me is dead. And my “job” is to renew my mind, remind myself in the truth of scripture that I am new, and not revive the dead me.
His other approach is to have me question my new identity. “Are you really a new creation? You just responded in a way that sure doesn’t look like that” Or “if you are a child of God, He would have taken care of that problem.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 says, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ”. Because the truth of who I am is stated by the God of the Universe, the Creator, the one whom I get to call “Abba, Father”, I get respond out of that newness as His child – destroying the arguments and opinions that are not His about me and take those thoughts captive to obey Christ. I get to stand on the truth, the freedom and the grace that He paid for with His shed blood.
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