By Janie Baer
Your enemy wants to separate you from your faith so that you live only by your intellect where he can keep you just surviving. In faith you are not dealing with your intellect for you are living out of the spirit realm accessed by your faith. So out of the spirit realm God has made a way so you can have some things beyond your natural ability and have it now by faith.
Satan brings negative circumstances when you step out on the Word of God to destroy your faith in God and His Word. And if you look long and hard enough at negative circumstances, they will drain your faith. So every day it is good for you to get into the Word and feed your faith even for a little while and get faith flowing again. Faith comes from hearing and hearing and hearing the Word of God. It is not like you get some faith from the Word today and you don’t need to get any tomorrow. You nourish your body every day to keep it healthy and working properly. You can’t feed it once a week, once a month or once a year and expect it to be healthy. It’s the same thing with faith, you have to meditate the Word of God every day to keep your faith healthy and flowing.
Satan tries to separate you from your faith in the Word of God by looking at your circumstances around you just like he did with Jesus’ disciples, recorded in Mark 4:35-41. Jesus finished His teaching on faith and how faith can be stolen by natural circumstances and then His disciples allowed Satan to steal their faith from the lesson when they encountered a storm when they got into the boat. They did not keep their eyes focused on the Word that was preached nor did they pay any attention to the living Word who was in their midst but rather accused Him of not caring for their safety.
How many times have you failed to meditate the Word and your faith is not flowing and you accuse God of not caring about you or had thoughts He didn’t care what was going on in your life?
The disciples failed to focus on the message Jesus had just preached to them, before entering the boat, about planting the Word in their heart so that when the storms of life come they don’t steal the Word and their faith. They got into fear and fear replaced the faith from Jesus’ message and if it had not been for Jesus they all would have perished.
Notice what Jesus did, he arose but he didn’t start dipping out the water from the boat like His disciples were probably doing. Instead He spoke to the wind, the unseen.
The unseen is usually the thing that causes the seen to act up. Through His finished work at Calvary, Jesus has given you the authority and the ability to deal with the unseen world or what we call “the root of the problem”.
Satan tries to separate you from your faith so that you will perish and not get to the other side with your faith in tact and have manifestation of what you believed for. Thank God you also have Jesus with you to encourage you as you go to the other side with your faith. But you, like Jesus, must also use your God given authority over the unseen world, the root of the problem, so that you experience victories that come out of the storms as well.
Your enemy works hard to destroy your faith, so you need to recognize some of his strategies to destroy your faith. He uses fear, hopelessness, mental assent, condemnation, insecurity, inferiority, sense knowledge, ignorance, unbelief and doubt.
Fear tolerated means your faith will be contaminated. Fear is not of your spirit but comes from the outside. You must not tolerate any fear. No fear is good for you. Fear is not good for your faith.
You don’t have to fear anything including death. You must not allow fear of death into your life. Heb 2:15 says the children of Israel had a fear of death and all of their lifetime they were subject to bondage. Realize this, you are not afraid of flying, you are afraid of dying. You are not afraid of heights, you are afraid of dying; and on and on I could go with that. These thoughts of fear are thoughts the enemy plants in your mind and mine so we open the door to fear of dying and then we have entered into the bondage he wants to create in our lives as well.
Satan uses condemnation to destroy your faith so you must not tolerate condemnation at all. Romans 8:1 tells you there is now no condemnation to you whose life is in Christ Jesus. Jesus took ALL your condemnation when He hung on the cross of Calvary.
God cannot condemn you since Jesus took ALL your condemnation. God and His Word will never condemn you but they will bring conviction to you of things that are sin or are contrary to the Word of God and the will of God in your life.
You can tell the devil when he comes around you with his condemnation that Jesus has already bore all your condemnation, guilt, and shame as a result of your sins.
The enemy of your soul knows if you receive his condemnation then faith can’t work for you. That’s why it is so very important for you to know who you are in Christ, that you are this new creation in Christ that is holy in the sight of God because of the blood of Jesus. So just mention the blood when condemnation shows up. You can be as bold as the Apostle Paul and declare, “I have wronged no man”. You must not look back at your past and take on shame and guilt and inferiority and past insecurities or it will destroy your faith.
The enemy of your faith is a bully and a con man. He will try and get you to give up hope that faith is working if it takes some time and get back into the senses where he can control you. Realize when things look their worst is really when faith is working the best for you. So develop an intimate relationship with God by spending time with Him, soaking in His presence and spending time meditating His Word, which is your faith builder. You must realize there are times when nothing in the natural will indicate that you heard from God and situations at times may look the worst they ever have. He uses the senses to deceive you just like he did in the Garden with Eve and the bible says he will use the senses to deceive the whole world Rev 12:9. So during these times of the testing and trying of your faith and when things look their worst is when you resist the devil by testing everything by your faith, your sixth sense, and refuse to place your faith in the other five senses. Your enemy can’t deceive you when you operate out of faith your sixth sense.
Satan’s strategy is always to bring you bad news, make it look like things are not working out like you believed or that things are looking worse than they were. I believe Jesus words to you today would be, “Fear not but only believe and it will turn out just as you believed, spoke and acted on. Don’t let fear keep you from believing that faith is out there working on your behalf right now, no matter what it looks like, sounds like or feels like. Nothing in this world can stop faith from working for you but you. Believe, make an unqualified committal to faith, act and speak like it has happened and you can be sure you will see faith work it out. That’s the job of faith, to work for you.”
Satan’s strategy is to get you into having a pity party for yourself and inviting all of your friends and family to go over how bad every thing is. That’s when faith will stop working for you because you just laid down your faith and took up discouragement that leads to you to no courage so that you sink into a well of fear.
These hard times are not when you should be telling others about how hard it is but rather you should be telling them how good and faithful God is to you. Recall the many times He came through for you! Don’t talk about the bad situation but declare to others how you are going to come out of the situation.
Declare right now, “God is bringing me out! No matter what is happening, I am coming out now! The devil is bringing back my money! I am released from infirmity in my body now! I receive a good marriage now! The law of faith and the supernatural force of faith have brought me out now! I count this all joy. I’m not coming out of joy and letting go of patience so that it can do its perfect work and I come out of this wanting nothing! I shall not be ashamed! I am the head and not the tail. The devil is a liar and his lies are not going to separate me from my faith because I am coming out right now! The only defeat I will experience is when I place de feet on the head of the devil.”
Allow the Holy Spirit help you to speak further in faith and give you the actions of faith you need to do right now.