Strategy 2

Your Focus

Fighting the Real Enemy

If I were your enemy, I’d disguise myself and manipulate your perspectives so that you’d focus on the wrong culprit—your husband, your friend, your hurt, your finances, anything or anyone except me. Because when you zero in on the most convenient, obvious places to strike back against your problems, you get the impression you’re fighting for something. Even though all you’re really doing is just . . . fighting. For nothing.

Fervent prayer relies on focus.

Focus clears away dead space and clutter. It’s what sharpens the images in your photographs, capturing the detail and highlights you want to remember, while pushing less important things to the background or cropping them out altogether. Focus minimizes distractions, lowering your risk of being blindsided. It keeps you from being preoccupied, from overlooking important facts that would’ve been readily obvious if you’d only been paying better attention. Focus protects your goals and dreams from being consumed in small bites, stolen right out from under your nose in twenty-minute segments of compromise.

And focus is the antenna that prayer helps to keep raised and alert, making you keenly aware if somebody’s trying to play you for a fool.

And your enemy—for his strategy against you to work—is dead set on being able to succeed at just that. On fooling you. Faking you out. Pulling your eye toward a side stage on the theater platform, diverting your focus, trying to convince you that the main issues in your life actually originate over there, anywhere, or with anyone except where they really do. He wants you focused on things that are physical and visible instead of where the action really is. “Pay no attention,” in other words, “to the man behind the curtain.”

Reminds me of one of the more creative displays I’ve ever seen at the annual trunk-or-treat kids’ festival a church in my neighborhood hosts during the fall. One guy connected a large, flat, wooden tabletop to the side of his pickup truck, cut five to six medium-sized holes in it, and draped it with a curtain. Sticking up through those holes was a family of wiggly, happy, hand puppets. Kids were standing in line to climb up into the truck bed to try bopping the puppets on the head with a big, cushy hammer before the figures ducked and disappeared down the hole and out of sight.

Whack-a-Mole—the church parking lot version.

One little guy, however, no more than five years old, got tired of waiting. Bored with the shenanigans, he slipped out of line, ambled around to the side of the truck for a better look, and then—for whatever curious reason—grabbed a handful of that curtain and yanked it clean off the playing surface. Suddenly, instead of six cutesy puppets swaying playfully in the evening air, there were three grown adults with both arms poking up through bare wood, a puppet on each hand, their identities immediately revealed.

Even the under-ten crowd got the message that night: there is something you can’t see working underneath the surface, controlling and manipulating what you can.

And in Ephesians, one of my favorite books in the Bible, that’s exactly what the apostle Paul tries to tell us:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood [what you can see], but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places [what you can’t see]. (Eph. 6:12, with my additional comments)

Hear that again: 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.

But in the rough-and-tumble of life’s exhausting pace, we can quickly lose touch with a passage like Ephesians 6. Even in knowing the truth, we can lose sight of where these attacks are originating from . . . from back there, behind the curtain. And by failing to take notice and remember, it’s not hard then to lose our cool, our temper, and most of our self-control before we ever find our way back to ultimate reality.

The Ephesians of Paul’s day didn’t need much convincing of the fact that their real problems weren’t on the physical side of things. These first-century Greeks were mostly pagan, of course, and the spirit world was very much alive in their cognizant awareness. So as God drew men and women to Himself from among this pantheistic culture, these early believers in Christ were already well-schooled in the reality of spiritual entities at play in the world. Today, however—in Western culture, at least—our innate tendency is to underestimate Satan’s power. Even his presence is sometimes imagined as make-believe, no more than a phantom wearing a red jumpsuit and a pitchfork, a monster hiding in the closet. We’ve made him no more than a caricature instead of the treacherous, conniving, hell-bent, personalized menace he truly is. As a result, we sort of give him room to scheme and scare at will, while we run around firing off at anyone and everyone except him. But if all we’re doing is whacking at the nearest, most visible symptoms every time they pop their head up, 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.

Because our focus is all off.

And that’s exactly what your real enemy is counting on.

The real enemy isn’t your husband. Or your teenager. Or your brother’s wife. Or your mother-in-law. Or the weather. Or the traffic. Or your sweet tooth. Or whatever powder keg of frustration really gets under your skin and sets you off before you can think straight.

The real enemy—the capital-E “Enemy”—

Well . . . you know who it is. And you simply cannot keep letting him go unchecked while you throw money and anger and logic and psychology at your problems in a vain attempt at overcoming or outsmarting them. In order to live in victory, you must call the enemy’s bluff, pull the curtain back, open up your spiritual eyes, and remain continually aware of the one who’s truly behind a lot of the stuff you’re always blaming on your circumstances, your upbringing, your boyfriend, or whoever. Even on yourself.

In prayer you can do it differently. You can maintain this level of focus. Because prayer, perhaps more than anything, is meant to be an eye-opening experience.

Prayer is a reminder to yourself, as well as a declaration to the enemy, that you know he’s there. That you’re on to him. When you bring your concerns and fears and irritations to the Lord in prayer, you’re aligning your weakling spirit with the full force of God’s Holy Spirit. Instead of continuing to fail by taking the battle into your own hands—and taking the battle to the wrong people—you’re joining instead with all the power of heaven to take your fight directly to the source of the problem. You’re following the armies of the living God right into the field tent where your enemy is cooking up his craftiest designs against you, and you’re busting up his strategy closet—making sure he knows that you know that you know what he’s up to.

I’m not saying, now, that every bad, uncomfortable thing that enters your life is automatically oozing up from the pit of hell. Sometimes simply the nature of the world in which we live can bring “tribulation” out of the woodwork (John 16:33), and sometimes the reap-what-we-sow consequences of our own actions can put us in challenging, arduous positions (Gal. 6:7). The Bible tells us that God is sovereign enough to employ any device necessary to draw our hearts back to Him, whether He’s wanting to uncover hidden sins . . . or teach us lessons in trust . . . or refine us and prepare us in whatever way He deems fit in His all-wise, all-loving mind (Judg. 3:4; James 1:2–3). But God (by contrast to the enemy) wants us to know He will use any measure to help us and grow us, even if it calls for the temporary pain of those measures. He wants us to know we can trust Him even with difficulty and discipline, or with the unavoidable happenings of life on a fallen planet because He promises to work “all things” together for our good and His purposes (Rom. 8:28).

The devil’s deeds, however, are so unlike this. They’re almost always accompanied by darkness and deception. Cloak and dagger. Smoke and mirrors. He “disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). Success, to him, means stirring up discord in your home, your church, your workplace, your neighborhood, and doing it in such a way that no one’s even aware he’s been in the building. He knows our natural, physical response is to start coming after each other instead of him—attacking, counterattacking, pointing fingers, assigning blame—while he sits out in the driveway monitoring the clamor inside, fiendishly rubbing his hands together, admiring just how adept he is . . . and what easy targets we are.

The false ideologies of the culture (obsession with appearance, perceptions of worth, the redefinition of the family, all of it) have not been developed by chance. Don’t believe it for a second. The temptations that appeal to your specific desires (and the fact that they appear at your weakest, most vulnerable moments) are not accidental. The disharmony and dysfunction that either blow up or simmer beneath your most valuable relationships are not coincidental. None of these things is a matter of happenstance. They are his deceptive tactics (and that of his evil entourage), being stirred up in the heavenly realm and then manifesting themselves in the spiritual realm.

And I say if he wants to keep pulling this stuff, then we’re pulling the gloves off. And putting the armor on.

And focusing it all on him.

The apostle Paul, in Ephesians 6:10–11, wrote words that are worth memorizing and regularly reciting to ourselves: “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might” by putting on the “full armor of God” and thereby becoming “able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” And here they are—the needed weapons and protection for actively defeating the real enemy (vv. 14–17)—the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of gospel peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, better known as the Word of God.

That’s some tough stuff there. Heavy metal. But look beyond the creative, warlike imagery to see the real staying power behind each piece of battleground equipment:

• 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 living in light of it . . . in practical terms.
• Salvation is both our eternal security with Christ, as well as the full inheritance we’ve been given because of our relationship with Him. It includes our blessings, status, and identity—everything we’ve received that enables us to live victoriously for Him.
• The Word of God is His present, relevant, personal Word to us for today. The Bible may be an old Book, but God’s Spirit makes it fresh, new, and alive for us.

When you resolve to use these weapons—weapons that are “not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction” of the enemy’s plots (2 Cor. 10:4), you can cut him off at the pass and hit him where it hurts.

And again, the one weapon that ties this whole ensemble together, the one that activates and infuses our armor with the power of God Himself . . . is prayer. Prayer! “Pray at all times in the Spirit,” Paul said (Eph. 6:18). The original word translated “at all times” in this verse is kairos, which refers to specific times, precise occasions, and particular events. In spiritual warfare, as we detect enemy activity and deploy the various pieces of armor, our prayers need to be fervent and specific, strategic and personal, tied to the specific needs arising at that specific occasion. That’s the kind of prayer that energizes the armor of God for maximum effectiveness, prayed “with all perseverance and petition for all the saints” (v. 18). Pray for you. Pray for me. Pray for all of us, he says, that we’ll live with the curtain pulled back, able to spot the real enemy when we see him. And through the bold, mighty name of Jesus, pray that we’ll live with our armor on and not let Satan’s otherworldly forces wreak their havoc in this house, in this heart, on this day.

That’s called being focused and strategic in prayer.

And it works, I’m telling you. Physical weapons may work in physical battles. Stuff like . . . trying harder, getting up earlier, moving across town to a new neighborhood, making him sleep on the sofa, giving her a piece of your mind. But this ain’t no physical battle we’re dealing with, no matter how much you may wish it to be, no matter how much better you’d feel if life was all five-senses and manageable. We are at spiritual war. So we need spiritual weapons.

And in prayer—in Jesus, with these weapons—guess what: you win! In fact, you’ve already won! Victory is already yours. 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)

Now you can just walk in that victory and claim what is rightfully yours. Dressed in the armor of Ephesians 6 and committed to the practice that activates our spiritual power—prayer—all you need is one bullet, trained on one enemy, tracing his one path as he skirts around corners and slithers up through the ductwork, finding any little rat hole he can squeeze through.

Nice try, devil. But your tricks are no good here. We’re shutting you down. Shutting you out. Praying with full voice where you can hear us loud and clear.

Now hear this—

Get. Gone.

Call to Prayer

Some of the Scriptures I’m about to share with you are the kind that help rip down the veil of secrecy between the physical world and the spiritual world. They’re almost like 3-D glasses that you wear into a movie theater to help you see the film the way it’s been created. Without the special lenses everything looks fuzzy and out of focus. Flat. Distorted. You think you sort of see it but not really—because the naked eye is not able to process the visual information of a 3-D movie and put it together in a usable form in our brains. It’s all just blurry. A headache. But when you slide those glasses on, you’ll see what you were always intended to see. The whole world suddenly comes alive. The villain is right there, in your face. Can’t miss him. The texture and layering and perspective—ahhh, so this is what it’s supposed to look like. This is how it really is.

Once the unseen enemy is exposed and comes into clear view, you can lift your focus away from the people, places, and events that have always seemed like the main culprits of your human dramas and stop wasting your energy on methods that are ineffective and, honestly, flat-out exhausting. Instead, you can lift your eyes to Jesus—who has always known who the real enemy is, and who knows this so-called enemy doesn’t have a pinkie’s worth of power against the One who clipped that imposter’s wings on Calvary. And because He did, Satan doesn’t stand a real chance against you now. Not after that.

So build a prayer strategy against the one who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” but who meets His match in the matchless One who came that we might have life “and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Personalize your prayer by 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. Let verses like these be your guide as you write . . .

I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38–39 nlt)

He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come. (Eph. 1:21 nlt)

God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:9–11)

I will exalt you, Lord, for you rescued me.

You refused to let my enemies triumph over me.
(Ps. 30:1 nlt)

Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy.

Though I fall I will rise;

Though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me. (Mic. 7:8)

Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me;

You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies,

And Your right hand will save me. (Ps. 138:7)

By this I know that You delight in me:

my enemy does not shout in triumph over me.
(Ps. 41:11 hcsb)

Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,

And let those who hate Him flee before Him.
(Ps. 68:1)

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. (Matt. 6:13 kjv)

The Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. (2 Thess. 3:3)

Truly, our enemy is going to pay for what He’s done and is doing to us, for daring to pick on the children of God.

So whether with Scriptures like these or with others that the Holy Spirit calls to your attention, take a stab at writing down your own prayer strategy to help you remember the name of your real enemy and—most importantly—remember the Name above all names.

• 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.

And be encouraged by what one prophet of God told the people of God on the eve of battle centuries ago . . .

Thus says the Lord to you, “Do not fear or be dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours but God’s. . . . Station yourselves, stand and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out and face them, for the Lord is with you. (2 Chron. 20:15, 17)