“Bigger is found in Revelation, Revelation is found in the word and then the realization or you seeing that revelation manifest in your life is found in obedience.”
The title of today's episode is, ‘How to Avoid Being Blindsided by the Enemy’ and we're going to talk about this because this is something that keeps a lot of us from playing in the big leagues. We’re kept in the small leagues because we're spending too much time on avoidable turmoil or we're allowing the enemy to get away with way too much when we already have the victory over him in all of his schemes right. I want to talk about this today so we could get this out the way, again get your pen and paper because as we are going into bigger, there will be opposition, but the fight is fixed in our favor already it's just a matter of us exercising the authority that God has already given us.
The thing about the enemy is, he can't take away our salvation, right? He can't take away the fact that we're saved and when we die, we're going to go to heaven, he can't take that away. What he can do is play with us while we're here on earth and try to keep us from the life that God has for us, keep us from living our days and prosperity in our years in pleasure. He's trying to keep us from bearing much fruit, he's trying to keep us from a lie and a lot of us have big callings on our lives. I shared a bit with you guys about what we're doing with our media company, we are going into territory that the enemy has run rampant on.
I would be foolish to think that I wouldn't experience warfare and me experiencing warfare is not something I'm going to be scared of, but it's just something that I understand is going to come. I'm going to exercise my authority and exercise what God has already given me to push through it and get over it, so today we're going to talk about this. We're just going to park here, we're going to get this out the way because; we're not about to be played with this year okay and we're not about to get stuck with things that we could overcome by simply using the things that God has already given us.
Now, the scripture that we're going to be anchored in for this episode, y'all like the little pun anchor, Anchored Media? No? Okay, alright, cool I'm going to insert a laugh track maybe so I can at least have a little fake laugh for myself, so anyway the scripture that we're going to be anchoring for this episode is 1 Peter 5:8. I say this scripture all the time as this is one of the many that I use to govern my decision-making, but this one hit me differently recently.
It says to be alert and of sober mind some, translations say be sober and vigilant, some say be watchful, but this translation says to be alert and of sober mind; your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him standing firm in the faith because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of suffering. That was 1 Peter 5:8 and I read it to 9. Now, what stood out to me in this scripture that I’ve read and said many times that has never stood out to me before is the word ‘roaring lion,’ so again it says, “Be alert and of sober mind your enemy, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion.”
I was reading this book and the book was actually about and I’ll talk about it a little bit, the book was called ‘Becoming a Millionaire God's Way’ and I read it at the end of the year. I bought it a while ago, but God told me to finish it before 2019 was over so I read that whole joint in a week because I procrastinated, but I got it done right. So, the book talked about this scripture and it says that a roaring lion is loud, but so many of us how can we get blindsided by something that's screaming?
When a lion roars it's very loud, I mean if you YouTube roaring lion real quick I'm sure some type of safari video will come up and you could hear what I'm talking about, but a lion is loud and this was further magnified to me recently. We had a prayer call for the society and someone was sharing some things that she was going through within her family and so she was telling us just a dynamic in what was going on and sharing like her frustrations about it.
After I read this though in the book and I got that revelation my prayer has been, “God show me the things that I may be overlooking, allow me to hear the roars, allow me to see the roars in ways that I'm not paying attention.” So as the girl was explaining to us what was going on, God allowed me to see the scheme of the enemy right there and so I had shared this with her. I'm like, “this is so funny” because a lot of times we don't even see what he's doing and he's loud about it, imagine somebody screaming in your ear and you don't hear them because you're so consumed with whatever it is that you have going on.
Take a second to think about that, you're so concerned with the fact that “I don't have the finances that I want to have” or you're so concerned with the disappointment. You thought some things were going to happen last decade or in 2019 and they haven't happened yet that you're not hearing the enemy roaring in your ear by using your emotions to keep you stuck on what God didn't do as opposed to keeping your faith in the promise of what's to come. That's something serious right there when you allow it to sit in your spirit.
For me, even at the first part of this year it was a lot of like roaring going on in my life and it was more so a mindset and emotions, so for me, I'm like, “I'm not even an emotional person like that, what's going on, what is this?” Then there were these thoughts coming in like the enemy telling me things like, “Who are you to build a multi-million dollar company?” “You don't know anybody that's built a multi-million-dollar company before you think about that?” “This little black girl that's from wherever, you think that you about to go into this industry and make some type of difference? Please!”
This is the thing that the enemy is telling me and for a second there because I'm chilling, I'm all excited about the new year, I'm not being sober and visually and I'm not being watchful. I'm like, “oh my God, maybe I can't do this, how am I going to build out a multi-million-dollar company, I don't know anybody that's done that, I can't google how to do this, this is scary.”
All these things start rising up and then something switched to me one day and I was like, “Hold up, please I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I wasn’t supposed to be here and you mean to tell me that how am I going to get there? I don't need to know how I'm going to get there, but I know one thing, for as long as I continue to do what God called me to do I'm going to get there, so come harder.”
Simple as that and as these thoughts come up, I'm like, “no, I bind every thought that rises against what God told me, please don't try me devil, not today.” “And you may have had me in my feelings for one day, but I'm going to wake up and remember who I am and I'm not having it.” Think about this for yourself guys, like how is the enemy roaring and we're missing it, that's the thing about this scripture that's so good.
Peter is telling us to be watchful, he’s loud but you got to pay attention, if he says be sober and vigilant that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, he's telling you, “hey he’s loud, but you got to pay attention because if you don't you might miss it,” so the same thing for you guys.
I want you to get this in your spirit, how is the enemy roaring and you're missing it? For us to get bigger we have to stop missing it and we have to be sober and we have to be vigilant, so if y'all don't get anything else from this episode, the cliff notes version, the tweetable version on how to avoid being blindsided by the enemy is understanding that he's loud but you just have to listen.
Just in case you didn't get that I'm going to also give you guys three points on how to avoid being blindsided by the enemy.
You have to be free from illusion and if you look up the definition of illusion, an illusion is simply a false idea or a belief. Another word or another definition of the word sober is to be free from illusion and so I love this definition because the enemy, one of his tactics is to blow smoking mirrors, is to bring confusion.
How can you live a life that's pleasing to God and follow the principles that are written in the Bible if you're confused about it? He's very successful in that, especially with this generation, so the way that you avoid being blindsided by him is that you have to be free from any illusions. I remember seeing something, I think somebody did, I don't know what I saw, but I got frustrated because the question was, “what is keeping you from truly living a life from God?” Someone answered and I want to make sure I say it correctly, I hate to misquote people, and they said that “feeling close to God, but not really wanting to read the Bible” and that frustrated me so much.
It was honest, I appreciate any honesty, but it frustrated me so much because you cannot be close to God and not read his word; you can't. God says that “He and His word are one,” so how can you say that you're close to God and then disregard the Bible that doesn't make sense. You're close to a God, but it's not the one true living God and that's a very dangerous place to be in, because I don't know who you praying to or who are you listening to in your quiet time, but it’s not the big G okay.
It's the lowercase g and so that's a scary place to be, that's an illusion and the enemy especially, uses it with this millennial generation and this is so funny. Someone and I were talking about this Friday that the millennial generation, a lot of us are focused on building a relationship with God; we're breaking away from the religious structure and more so focusing on the relationship.
The danger in that is there's so much spirituality out there that if you don't have a true foundation in the Word, then you're going to get lost and you're going to get involved in this smoke and mirrors thing that's going to have you into new age practices and witchcraft honestly is what it all is. It’s going to have you in witchcraft unknowingly praying to that devil, unknowingly because you're not taking the time to open up the Bible and get to know God. You're not taking the time to get around wise counsel to teach you about the word of God, that rebellious spirit because of church hurt, because of religious structures and systems that do need to get uprooted and they will be.
Because I do believe God is fed up with people who are mismanaging their flocks and people who are damaging his people, but at the same time, the rebellion gets us all the way left to where now we're into some whole other stuff. We're picking and choosing what makes us feel the most comfortable and saying that that's God and that's not what it is. God is very clear about who he is, what we should do, the life that we should live and it's all outlined in the Bible.
The second we come across something that we don't agree with or something that holds us accountable to a lifestyle that may not be as fun then we try to go back into the spiritual stuff that makes us feel good. This is another illusion that the enemy uses and is very successful at. The illusion is what keeps so much of us stuck that we think that we could be involved in all of these things that we could copy and paste our definition of what it means to be a follower of Christ when that isn't aligned with the word of God and that keeps us caught up.
That allows the enemy to kill, steal and destroy the things that we're trying to build because we're not building them with the one true living God. I don't believe that the illusion that a lot of us find ourselves in is intentional, it's just that we're not fully committing to under to opening up the Bible and reading it.
For you to make sure that you're progressing and going into the big leagues like God wants you to, operating that powerhouse level that we've been talking about is you have to be free from these illusions. Another illusion is about money, like the book I read is called again, ‘Becoming a Millionaire God's Way,’ he spent a lot of the book debunking the illusion that you have to be poor to be a follower of Christ.
Debunking the illusion that Jesus was poor and so he talked about scripture, of course, he gave the scripture about the wealth of the wicked being stored up for the righteous. He used a bunch of other different scriptures to break down that illusion that you have to be poor or that money is bad. Of course, people who believe that you shouldn't be wealthy if you're a follower of Christ always like to say use the scripture for the love of money is the root of all evil.
But they twist it up to say that money is the root of all evil when in actuality it's the love of money that's the root of all evil and when God gives us money, it's not Christians when he gives us this wealth and things it's not for us to be out here flexing. But we could enjoy the fruits of our labor, we can enjoy the money that we have, but he gives it to us in abundance so that we could use it to advance his Kingdom.
The Kingdom should be way more wealthy than the world and so I love this book because he debunked that myth or the illusion to stay on topic here, he debunked that illusion that being poor is somehow righteous and so that's another example of an illusion. So, one of the things that I want you guys to do over the next week is to spend some time with God in prayer and say, “Lord what are some illusions that I’ve accepted in my life? What are some things that have been distorted from what you've intended them to be that I’ve accepted into my life?”
Because like I said, I don't believe that a lot of the illusions we get ourselves caught up in are intentional, but that doesn't give us an excuse to steal or perpetuate these things. We have to go back to God and ask for his correction, ask for his revelation, and for him to shine a light on the things in our life that are false.
You have to have a strategy if you want to break into bigger and be in the big leagues and not continuously take L's to the enemy.
Strategy is a high-level plan to achieve one or more goals under the conditions of uncertainty. It’s funny, this part stood out to me because as people of God we live in a constant state of uncertainty, we know the end so we're uncertain-ish. We know the end because we got scriptures such as, Jeremiah 29:11 that say, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans that are good and not for disaster, to give you hope in the future.” So, we know the plan is to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us hope in the future as it says in other translations, but we don't always know the methodology, the how, the details, or the ways that God is going to use to get us there.
Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us that, “My thoughts are not like your thoughts says the Lord and my ways are beyond anything that you can imagine for just as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts”. The scripture is telling us that, yeah, that I plan to prosper you, but you aren't going to understand my methodology behind doing it. So, if we go into faith then, the definition of faith Hebrews 11:1 says that “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
What this tells me is that we have the promise to prosper, the journey to the promise, we’re never going to get, but we have to continue to keep our hope and our faith that we will get there. And so that's why you must have a strategy because it's that uncertainty that the enemy is going to use to play around with you. That's where the illusions come in making you feel like you got to do something beyond what God told you to do to be successful, that you have to spend money on coaches or all of these things.
I'm not saying that those are bad things, but God has a plan and a methodology for us as individuals as well. The enemy may give you the illusion that you have to do what other people are doing on social media to be successful. And because you're not understanding the methodology or you're not understanding what God is doing, your faith is wavering. That's what the enemy is doing, he's taking attacks at our faith because if we had confidence in what we hoped for and if we had assurance about what we do not see we wouldn't have an issue with faith and we wouldn't have an issue with illusion.
The enemy is attacking our faith and that's why we have to have a strategy, the internet; this isn’t even a concordance, I'm reading this definition from Wikipedia, it's saying that strategy is a high-level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. We are uncertain about the way that God is going to get us to the promise, so we need to have a strategy so that we can continue to work, build and grow into the promise and the things that God has for us.
We also need a strategy to make sure that we're not falling victim to these illusions, to make sure that we're being watchful, that we're being sober and that we're being vigilant. The top strategy y'all, the most important strategy that a lot of us seem to be a little iffy about is obedience, it's as simple as that and the Bible is very clear.
You could go straight to Deuteronomy 28 and in the first few verses it'll tell you about the blessings for obedience and then after that, it'll start telling you the curses for disobedience. So, you want to know the strategy for you get into the promise and not falling victim to the schemes of the enemy, the strategy is to be obedient. The reason why I went over the fact that we know the promise but we don't know the process is because I need you to get comfortable with not knowing the process.
Once you get comfortable with not knowing the process and having real faith, which is confidence and what we hope for, assurance about what we do not see; once you get confident in that and what God said, the obedience becomes a lot easier. The reason why a lot of us aren't obedient is that we doubt what God said he's going to do or because we don't fully trust and that's a real thing for many of us.
I say this all the time, I'm big on honesty, identify what the problem is because then you'll be able to get to the root of it. A lot of us, our problem with obedience is trust, we don't trust God. So once you identify that you don't trust God you can then go to figure out why. It might be some brokenness, something that you may need to go to therapy for, whatever it is identify it and get to the root of it so it can be healed and you can get to being obedient.
If you struggle with obedience, I'm going to tell y'all straight up because again, we're going into the big leagues y'all, I'm going to be nice always, but at the same time, I'm going to keep it real with you. If you're struggling with disobedience, the enemy is going to play with your life; this year you have to get to a point where God says jump you jump, that you don't need a play-by-play to be obedient with what he told you to do.
It's in your request for the play by play is in, your request for 50 11 million confirmations is in your overthinking that the enemy inserts these illusions that he plays with your emotions and your mentality and he makes attacks at your faith. He's loud y'all, but we're not realizing it, and the way to combat that is to just simply do what God said. So this year I want you to practice just doing what God says and not thinking about it, just do it okay.
Another strategy is and of course, prayer is a huge strategy; let me tell you something, it’s nothing that I hadn't seen happen in my life thus far that has not first started through prayer and fasting. The strategy for prayer I pulled this from Priscilla Shira's book ‘Fervent’ and I just simply love this book; I'm always going to kick for this book. Priscilla, put me on payroll sis I don't need to be on payroll girl I'm going to keep selling this book because this book is just fantastic and it talks about crafting a prayer strategy.
The strategy that she talks about is when you pray that you need to cover these four bases; praise, so start your prayers just thanking God for everything that he's done right, just honoring him, worshiping him. Start it with praise then you repent, so ask him for forgiveness for anything that you have knowingly done or unknowingly done, but repent and ask for forgiveness, then ask for what you want. Submit your request to him and after that weigh in expectations, so they say yes, after that just thank him for what is already done and use the word to back you up.
If you're believing in God for financial inquiries then praise him, repent for anything, it may be the way that you've stewarded over your finances in the past for, God forgive me for not tithing, whatever. Then say, “God, can you please increase my finances” and then find scriptures that talk about financial increase. Thank him for what's already done which is the word of God, so that is a prayer strategy, I hope y'all write that down.
One more time you praise, you repent, you ask and then you thank him for what's already done, and be sure to include the word, write these scriptures down so that you can continuously recite them every single day. In her book she has cards in the back they are like perforated pages where you could tear it out and write the cards down. You can get you a little one-dollar notebook girl from Dollar Tree, whatever, and just write down the prayers and then just continuously recite those things that you're believing in God for.
Another scripture is Matthew 16:19, which says, “I’ll give you the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever you bound on earth will be bound on heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This is a strategy, God is telling you that whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven, so start binding and loosing some things in your life.
Job 22:28 says, “Thou shall also decree a thing and it will be established unto thee and the light shall shine upon thy ways.” Start decreeing things in your life; these are strategies, when you're in that process when you're in the journey to the promise which you're always going to be in. The Bible says, “We go from glory to glory,” there's never going to be a journey that you're finished with for as long as you have breath in your body. Once you get over this hurdle that you're in right now you're just going to enter into another process, getting to bigger is not the destination because bigger is going to have a bigger 2.0 or something after that that God has for you.
So, these are the strategies that we're learning now, that we're going to be able to apply, that's going to keep our faith. Remember the enemy is loud; he wants to attack our faith because if he attacks your faith he takes your confidence and assurance out of God and then that's where the illusions become effective. That's when those lies that he plants in your head become effective, but if you use these strategies you'll be able to resist the things of the enemy.
Another strategy is to be a proactive prayer and not just a reactive prayer so be proactive about your prayers and fasting, pray about things, pray against things so that they don't even happen. Don't wait till you get sick to pray, but declare your healing every single day, don't wait until something happens in your marriage to pray, but praying every day. I'm in a fast right now for marriages and the fast is for marriages, male family members, and then people with sons and I'm fasting and I'm praying for my marriage, my marriage not having any issues and we're not having strife in our marriage but I'm fasting as a proactive strategy.
My anniversary is this weekend, my wedding anniversary, for y'all who don't know we got married, we eloped and then six months later we had the wedding, but our wedding anniversary is this week. So that's a year that we've had the wedding, a year and a half since we've been married, but I'm not going to wait until I'm having strife in my marriage to pray and fast for my husband. I'm being proactive about that so the same thing for you, be proactive and not reactive, and then you can prevent things, the Bible says that “The prayers of the righteous availeth much;” the prayers of the righteous.
It says in other translations are powerful and effective; you can stop something from happening, that's why God reveals things to us so that we can pray about those things. So again, don't just be one of those people who get smacked in the face, and then you want to pray about it. Be proactive about it, it's in that prayer time as well that the Holy Spirit will reveal things to you that you could take care of right then and there and you never have to see them happen.
How awesome is that that you can just sit in the presence of God in prayer, he will tell you the enemy is loud. Sometimes, in the things that he's doing, other times God will reveal things to you then you can pray and stop whatever it is that that he's conspiring against you right there in prayer. That is such a huge benefit of being a believer and it's a strategy that a lot of us don't exercise, so again you guys, be a proactive prayer and faster and not just a reactive one.
Then tithing is a financial strategy, so the Bible says that if you bring all the tithes in the storehouse that he will rebuke the devourer for your sake. Tithing is an insurance policy that your finances will be protected, so that's another strategy that you can start implementing right now. I'm not telling you these things you guys because they sound good, I'm telling you these things because this is stuff that you can apply right now in your life to start seeing bigger, to start experiencing bigger, and to take your faith to new levels and to stop the enemy from playing around with you and your destiny.
RECAP:
How to avoid being blindsided by the enemy:
1) Be free from illusion, which also means to be sober and vigilant, which is the first part of 1 Peter 5:8 but be free from these illusions that the enemy tries to put in front of us.
2) Have a strategy. Some strategies include obedience, prayer strategies, binding and loosen things, decreeing things, being proactive in your praying and fasting, and also tithing as a financial strategy.
The last thing I wanted to tell you guys is don't make the enemy's job easy. What's interesting is, a lot of the time we make his job easy because the noise and the roars that we have and create in our own life eliminates his need to even interfere with what we got going on. He doesn't have to kill, steal and destroy because we're doing enough of that ourselves and a lack of obedience is the way that you make his job easy.
Thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode of The Blessed and Bossed Up Podcast!
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