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Counterattack Battle Plan
4
Strategies the Enemy Uses to Keep You Defeated
Do
you have a battle plan to counterattack the strategies the enemy uses to keep
you defeated? Don’t let the devil catch you off guard — you can defeat the
enemy every time!
Do you have a battle plan to counterattack
the strategies the enemy uses to keep you defeated?
If
you’ve ever served in the military, you know that no military
unit would ever dream of going to war without a battle plan.
What is a battle plan? It’s a strategy to
exploit your enemies’ weaknesses and to maximize your strengths so you can win.
If
you’re not in the military, perhaps you’ve never thought you needed a battle
plan — but you do because you have a spiritual enemy, Satan, who has waged war
against you.
As Christians, we know Jesus has already
defeated Satan for us (Colossians
2:15),
but that doesn’t mean Satan isn’t going to use certain strategies to try and
trick us into believing otherwise.
His
strategies are intended to keep us defeated and to take everything that is
rightfully ours.
This is where some Christians are deceived.
They say, “The enemy is already
defeated,” then lie down and take a whipping.
If we had no responsibility to stand our
ground against the devil’s schemes, then God would not have told us to “resist the devil” (James 4:7) or to use “the weapons of our warfare” (2 Corinthians 10:4, KJV), and He would
have had no need to give us “authority
over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19).
The Art of War is one of the
oldest and most successful books on military strategy, having influenced
military strategies for centuries.
The author, Sun Tzu, says, “He
who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be
captured by them.”
Forethought.
Have we been thinking and planning ahead for the devil’s attacks?
Or
are we shocked and dismayed when he uses his strategies to try and steal, kill
and destroy? Are we taking our role seriously, or are we making light of our
opponent?
We need to have a
battle plan, “so that Satan will not
outsmart us” and we do this by becoming “familiar
with his evil schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11).
It’s
what the military calls intelligence.
God has given us all the intelligence we
need to keep the devil under our feet.
Psalm
144:1 says that He trains our hands for war. He reveals the enemy’s strategies,
and then tells us the plan of counterattack.
Don’t let the devil catch you off guard. Be
prepared! Below are four strategies the enemy uses to keep you defeated and how
you can launch a counterattack — and win!
Strategy No. 1:
The Enemy Instills Fear
“God has not given
us a spirit of fear.” – 2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)
Fear is Satan’s primary weapon. It’s a
spiritual force that begins inside you, and it is totally destructive because
it robs you of your faith and peace. It keeps your focus on circumstances
instead of the promises in God’s Word.
That’s why the Bible commands 110 times to “fear not.”
It’s why, when Jairus needed healing for
his daughter and the circumstances didn’t look good, Jesus was quick to
instruct him, “Don’t be afraid. Just have
faith, and she will be healed” (Luke 8:50).
Jesus
was warning Jairus of the greatest enemy to his daughter’s healing — fear.
The enemy instills fear by challenging the
promises of God.
An excellent example of this is found in
Matthew 14 when Jesus invited Peter to come to Him on the water. “But when he [Peter] saw the strong wind and
waves, he was terrified and began to sink. ‘Save me, Lord!’ he shouted” (verse 30).
What enabled Peter to walk on the water?
His faith in the Word of Jesus. What caused Peter to sink? He saw the strong
wind and waves, and he was afraid. It wasn’t the wind and waves that defeated
him; it was his fear of them!
The Counterattack for Fear
1.Meditate
on God’s Word.
This is how faith that drives out fear is developed. The Word of God is the
sword of the Spirit.
2.Speak
the Word of God.
Use it to fight Satan every time he comes against you. Hold up your shield of
faith and quench all his fiery darts. Speak words of faith, and fear will
depart.
3.Rebuke
fear.
Whenever you feel fear trying to come on you, don’t stand it for a moment. Say,
“Fear, I rebuke you in Jesus’ Name. Now go!”
4.Pray in
the spirit. Whenever
you’re tempted to be in fear, anxiety or worry, begin immediately to pray in
the spirit. It will edify your inner man and bring supernatural peace.
Strategy No. 2:
The Enemy Lies to You
“He is a liar and
the father of lies.” – John 8:44 (NIV)
One of the strategies of the enemy is to
lie to you every day. Do you ever have negative and discouraging thoughts that
come out of nowhere?
Sometimes
they can be hard to recognize as the enemy’s lies because they sound like they
could be true.
However,
if you accept them as truth (or believe them even for a moment), you’ve fallen
for his sly tactic, giving him the upper hand.
The enemy knows your insecurities, and he
plays on them. He knows the fears you fight against, and he tries his best to
feed them by telling you lies.
Now,
the question is: Why does he lie to you? What does he get out of it? The answer
is this: access to your life.
He has come “to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10), and if he can get you into wrong
thinking, wrong believing, wrong saying and wrong acting, the door to your life
is wide open to him.
So, if you have any thoughts that are
opposite of what God says — thoughts like you aren’t going to be healed,
delivered, saved, prosperous, full of joy, full of peace, full of hope or
powerful in the kingdom of God — know they are outright lies straight from the
pit of hell itself.
You can’t afford the “luxury” of
entertaining the enemy’s lies. There’s too much at stake. Your health. Your
family. Your relationships. Your money.
Don’t
let the devil become your counselor in the areas of life that matter most. He’s
the father of lies and your greatest enemy.
Watch Gloria
Copeland and Pastor George Pearsons teach on how to defeat Satan’s attacks:
The Counterattack for the Enemy’s
Lies
1. Take every thought
captive (2
Corinthians 10:5). To do this, start lining up every thought with the
Word of God.
John 10:27 says, “My sheep know my voice” (CEV), so when you
hear another voice speaking lies, take those lies captive and throw them to the
ground before they ever have a chance to take root.
2. Respond
with the truth. You
can’t fight thoughts with thoughts, so it’s important to speak out God’s truth
when the enemy lies.
For example, if the
devil says, “You’re not smart enough for
that job,” you answer back: “Oh yes,
I am, devil. For it is written that I have the mind of Christ” (1
Corinthians 2:16).
Strategy No. 3: The Enemy Tempts
You to Sin
“Let no one say
when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil,
nor does He Himself tempt anyone.” – James 1:13 (NKJV)
God
will never tempt you to do anything wrong. In fact, He has given you every tool
to resist the devil so he will flee from you (James
4:7).
The
enemy tempts you to sin—and no one is exempt.
How does Satan tempt you?
Sometimes he’s obvious about it — tempting
you to lie or commit acts of immorality or another sin clearly defined as such
in God’s Word. But a lot of times, he’s subtler than that.
For
example, he may tempt you to think you are holier than others or that you’re
doing others a favor or your “Christian duty” by judging and exposing people.
You
might even start thinking more about your own feelings, needs and desires than
those of others.
That is how the devil tempted Jesus in the
wilderness (Matthew
4:1-11).
He
pulled out all the stops to get Jesus to abandon the path of obedience and keep
Him from what God had sent Him to accomplish.
When Jesus was in
the wilderness, “after fasting forty days
and forty nights, he was hungry. The
tempter came to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these
stones to become bread’” (Matthew 4:2-3, NIV).
Satan
came to Jesus when he sensed weakness and tried to prey on that weakness. And… he’ll
do the same to you.
The greatest danger in a believer’s life is
to ever think that you are above temptation. That’s when you’ve let your guard
down, taken off your armor, and assumed your work is done.
But the truth is “that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [in
fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour” (1 Peter 5:8, AMPC).
The Counterattack for the
Temptation to Sin
1.
Recognize there’s a way out
of it. “No temptation has overtaken you except what
is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted
beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way
out so that you can endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13, NIV).
In other words,
this is nothing new. Satan repeats the same old tired tricks, but God has
provided an escape.
2.
Answer the temptation with
God’s Word. When
Jesus was tempted in the wilderness to turn stones into bread, he answered
Satan with, “It is written: ‘Man
shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of
God’” (Matthew
4:4, NIV).
He didn’t ponder
Satan’s suggestion or entertain it. He didn’t phone a friend and ask for
advice. He immediately shut it down with the truth found in the Word. You can
do the same when the enemy tempts you to sin!
Answer back with
God’s Word, and do it quickly and confidently. Shut. Him. Down. Make him turn
tail and run the other way. It’s a counterattack he can’t defeat.
Strategy No. 4: The Enemy Stirs
Up Pride
“Pride leads to conflict.” – Proverbs 13:10
One of the most effective strategies the
enemy uses to keep you defeated is to stir up pride. Satan fell because of
pride, and he wants to take you down with him by getting you prideful. Don’t
let yourself fall into it!
What is pride? Pride is defined as “an
over-high opinion of one’s self; exaggerated self-esteem or conceit,
haughtiness or arrogance; self-esteem arising from one’s accomplishments or
possessions; an exaggerated idea of one’s own dignity or importance.”
That’s
just the dictionary definition, and it’s bad enough! But the Bible goes even
further in its description of pride by identifying it as one of the seven
things that God hates. Proverbs 6:16-17 calls it an abomination to Him (AMPC).
Satan knows pride is the path to
destruction and shame (Proverbs
11:2, 18:12), so he will deploy
tactics to get you prideful.
He’ll start whispering all kinds of things
you want to hear in hopes that you will become puffed up. He’ll say thing like,
“You know, you’re much better than those
other Christians. You have more ministry skills, and you live holier.”
If
you fall for this tactic, before you know it, you’ll be having an extra-high
opinion of yourself. You’ll be walking in pride.
How many times do we see believers get into
trouble because they get an overblown idea of themselves? They begin to think
they’re so smart and have it all figured out.
That’s
a sure sign they’re listening to the devil’s whispering. Then, the next thing
you know, they’re thinking they have to straighten everyone else out.
Instead
of just letting Jesus be Head of the Church, they feel like they have to step
in and do the job.
Once that happens, it’s just a matter of
time before conflict arises, and they fall flat on their faces in failure. Why?
Because the Bible says God resists the proud (1 Peter 5:5).
Watch
as Gloria Copeland and Billye Brim reveal Satan’s nature and character in this
video:
The Counterattack for Pride
1. Humble yourself. According to 1 Peter 5:5-6, being truly humble
means to submit to God and His Word. That means when God says something, you
believe it, no matter how foreign it is to your own thinking.
When God says to do something,
you do it. Romans 12:16-19 (ESV) gives us instructions on how we can be humble by
obeying God: “Live in harmony with one
another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your
own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable
in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably
with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God,
for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”
2. Be grateful. Keep a watch on yourself, and when you catch
yourself getting puffed up with your own greatness, repent and remember that
every good thing you enjoy and every bit of success you’ve had has come by the
grace of God and by His power.
3. Don’t judge other
Christians. The Bible
has a lot to say about judging our brothers and sisters in Christ because we
can end up being hypocritical. We are told repeatedly not judge or condemn
others, so that we will not be judged or condemned (Luke 6:37).
James 4:12 (ESV) says, “There
is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who
are you to judge your neighbor?”
When we stop judging others, and
start judging ourselves instead, pride goes out the window.
Are you ready to go to war
against these four strategies the enemy uses to keep you defeated?
Now,
you know that the enemy instills fear, the enemy lies to you, the enemy tempts
you to sin, and the enemy stirs up pride. Practice identifying his strategies
every day, and use God’s battle plan to counterattack and win!
At Kenneth Copeland Ministries, we’re committed
to help you live a life of victory by teaching you the principles of faith
found in The WORD of God that, when applied, will produce real change in your
life.
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