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Along the way we will face obstacles and resistance. If we are realistic about the inevitable challenges, we will be better prepared to overcome them when they arise. We may need to do a new round of realigning relationships, reallocating time, or revising the budget. We may need to temporarily push ourselves harder than ever to break through the barrier before us. People may appoint themselves our adversary. Previous advocates may do a complete reversal and abruptly start trying to tear us down. Financial challenges can leave us scrambling to meet basic expenses, let alone invest in our destiny. Illness or loss may come and leave us reeling, ripped loose from the moorings we once knew. Logistics may frazzle us to a breaking point. Time may become the scarcest commodity of all. We may question ourselves, our destiny, our sanity. We may seriously entertain the notion that it just isn’t worth all the extra work and turmoil. If you hit that point, you are not alone, a lot of us have felt the same way. We worked our way out of the stress and the mess by taking a break and shifting our attention elsewhere until we could regain our bearings. We thoughtfully considered how to overcome each obstacle. Then we grabbed our hard hat and lunch pail and showed back up, to work hard once again. The changes we have to make to work through this difficult phase will not be permanent. We can be confident that whatever pain we are going through right now is temporary.
When we are birthing something new for God, the dark forces don’t want us to succeed. The greatest resistance we encounter can happen right before a major breakthrough. Problems are not necessarily a sign of doing something wrong, they can be a sign that we are doing something very right. Just because we have a new direction and increased self-awareness, it doesn’t mean our problems go away. In fact, they can actually get worse. The greater our destiny is, the harder the devil will fight against it. He will try to distract you, scare you, frustrate you, shame you, and wear you down, to get you to quit. If that doesn’t work, he’ll sometimes make one last major stand in an attempt to send you screaming in the opposite direction. He does this because he is God’s adversary. The last thing the devil wants to see is another piece of God’s kingdom being built here on the earth. If he can bully you into quitting, he’s won. He is the master of broken dreams and broken hearts. But you hold the ultimate advantage. You are a child of God. You have the Divine Warrior Spirit within you. God is sovereign ruler of the universe, the devil is not.
The devil likes to mess with you and make you think he holds more power than he actually does. When you rise up and take a stand on holy ground against him, he’ll back down. When he sees you can’t be lured away from or thrown off the road of your destiny no matter what, when he sees you have more staying power than he does, he will move on to someone else. This is not an easy or a pretty process to go through. Most likely you’ll emerge from it with some battle scars. Think about the story of Joseph in the Bible. He was thrown into a pit by his own brothers, he suffered betrayal, hatred, deceit, and multiple attempts to rip his destiny away from him. His scars became badges of honor because the devil couldn’t defeat him. It can be like that for you too. When you claim God’s power and protection, the forces of heaven stand alongside you and ensure that ultimately, you’re going to win. God doesn’t just give us back what we lost. He makes the enemy pay for messing with us in the first place. Stay faithful like Joseph, and one day you’ll be freed from the traps that were set for you, and you’ll discover that suddenly you’re standing firmly upon holy ground.
Until next time, I’ll be praying for you to see the difficulties you are enduring right now as the prelude to the flourishing finish of this chapter of your life. Keep the faith!
