Discouragement an ancient hidden weapon of The Old Serpent

One the greatest weapons that is seldom used to disqualify us from our destiny is thoughts or the darts of discouragement that the enemy is shooting our way.

He knows that nothing more than discouragement can brake us and that is why, he often will use this concealed weapon of his mass destruction against us.

Satan in his warring strategy always sees the kingdom potential in us that is why he uses discouragement as a strength braking weapon towards us.

Satan knowing the word of God many times would counterfeit God’s voice in bombarding us with false rumors and discouraging thoughts and by exaggeration and false reports he dilutes our thoughts to zaps all our positive energy called faith in us.

His greatest attack is on our love for God and by misrepresenting God’s word to us, he ensnare us in to believing his lies as being the truth of God.

The enemy very well knows once he captures our minds and thoughts, he has captured us.

Therefore he knows the scripture that says

“before he would rub his victim he must binds the strong man first.”

Satan knowing the way man thinks , is the way he will live out his life, there his initial attack is on the identity of us believers, trying to pollute them with negative thought about both others and then about us, this way he wages his war against us.

The enemy knowing the strength of our success being our faith, by observing us and our lives he often throws discouraging obstacles before us in hopes to keep us from our future victory in Christ.

He always shows us the so called impossibilities through our weaknesses, then keep us from our Christ given victories by throwing at us discouraging thoughts of fear and hopelessness.

The Old Testament book of Nehemiah is an awesome picture of such a secretly enticing work of Satan through his own vessels to stop the progress of God’s people in building the walls of Jerusalem.

Nehemiah’s challenges are the most profound picture of such a nasty assault against the rebuilding of the wall. Though they lasted for a very short periods, yet he was able to confuse and halt the work for a season, yet we see the completion of the wall as a promising

Point in them all.

In studying the book of Nehemiah especially chapters 4 to 6 I remain amazed on the amount of profound truth that is hidden in those words.

One of which caught my eyes last week that was in chapter 4 of the book and I would like to quote it from the NSAB version.

The chapter four starts as the work is ridiculed by the wicked men instigated by the enemy. In verse 5 The scripture says the evil men started to demoralized the builders and then tried to stop the work of the building. Even in this that in verse 10 they said …

“ Thus in Judah it was said the strength of the burden bearers is falling and yet there was much rubbish”.

When Satan sees our progress in the work of the rebuilding of the walls of our soul he starts to throw our own confessions of our faults at us, when we are just finished confessing them to the Lord for rebuilding of those walls. This is called condemnation.

He first leads us through the enticement of sin to be accused of wrong , and then with false rumors he comes in through the wicked and false witnesses to demoralize us before men and ultimately hits us again with false accusations that comes from the pit of hell itself to discourage us.

And when all of this could not take the joy from our lives he starts by listening to our own confessions before God and then he in turn act as God to confuse us by more condemnation to completely ridicule us in order to stop us from progress in co operating with Holy Spirit in the work of rebuilding of our lives in Christ.

Church he is a true imitator and complete counterfeit. His plan is to eventually still and kill our joy and hope in God, to make us completely give up on God and His work in and through us. Yet in it all God works it all for the good of us who are called according to His plan purpose of His Kingdom.

Though He is very diligent in all his pursuits, yet praise to God our Lord who is identified as the Lord of Hosts in this book also, since He is always a step ahead of Satan and his wicked plans.

The book of Nehemiah has shown me a great details of the strategies of the enemy and God’s triumphal victory over them.

By His grace The Lord has taught me how to ignore the uproar of the enemy and his laud tumults in my head, and how not to go along with the accusers, or not to listen to their false accusations while I am busy building with God. I have received grace to see how to ignore the demoralized accusations of the enemy in exchanges to God’s promises in Christ for me. Not only that I have been thought by grace how to only trust God by praising Him in the midst of it all.

The most amazing lesson being to give heed only to the voice of His grace through my personal and corporate warfare.

Sometimes it might seem to us we have no more energy, faith, hope or love left to continue and that is exactly where Satan wants to find us, but by God’s grace we are learning to overcome his fiercest attacks on our minds.

When he comes masquerading as our brethren or even as our family members, we must recognize him and his voice in the midst of it all, or other times when he would use the word of God to condemn us or even by our own confessions before God he uses them against us , even then we need to pull his mask off by the strength of God given grace in exposing him to his face.

When he wants to dilute God’s response even in turning the truth of the scripture into a false damming accusatory voice, we need to turn to the proven character of God in opposing him through the same weapon called the double edged sword of God to silence his nagging voice.

One of the greatest examples of the Old Covenant is When King David’s mourning time had finished by hearing the news of the death of his first born from his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. The Bible says he got up eat and washed up and anointed himself and refreshed and went to the house of the Lord to worship Him.

You see the devils plan is to keep us in our discouraging state hoping to defeat us there and to keep us there for ever, even in spite of God’s forgiveness. Satan wants us to doubt on God’s faithfulness in promising us that if we confess our sin He is Just and faithful to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

King David took God’s word and accepted the heavy consequences of his sin, yet he made a choice to move on with God and believe in His restorative grace and forgiveness.

A great spiritual fallacy we are all guilty of , just like Joseph’s eleven brothers.

Having said all this I should say the story of the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda in John chapter 5 is coming to me this entire week. I always had a miss understanding about this story in the way Jesus questioned this man. “ Do you want to be well? ” I always thought what kind of a question was that? Or what was this man’s real problem? Soon I started to believe his problem was lack of willingness to obey, but just now I see it completely different.

I now believe it was because the enemy had him there captive to discouragement and Jesus’s question was I believe this

“ Are you willing to stand up from this discouragement by which Satan has you bound all these years and believe in Me and My miracle working power?” Otherwise it was a little cruel question from such a loving and caring God.

Many time it is our respond by faith that is the answer to our misery.

Many times we too like prophet Elijah even after many miraculous victories is performed even by our own hand doubt God and His everlasting love for us and upon a loud cry of the enemy in a voice of threat we too fall in place of discouragement, even in the face of no involvement in a particular sin. It is just the state which the enemy finds us in our weakness of faith.

In it all Church I pray that the Lord will give us an awesome overcoming faith in this area too to pass the obstacle of discouragement in the face of our current challenges , personally in our own lives and collectively as a Church.

May we be granted a new vision from the Lord to see this giant under our feet forever too.

May we be strengthened by the Lord to continue in our walk despite all obstacles and all negative and discouraging voices around us, spiritually and physically .

And as I was reading an article today from the famous preacher and pastor who inspired me to bring this subject to you said in his word about discouragement and I quote….

“Yes Joshua and Caleb were both ready 40 years prior to their entrance into Canaan and had to endure the inability and unbeleif and mistrust of Israel, yet they never became fully in captivity of utter despair and their first faith brought them in. “

May God’s everlasting grace accomplish in us His full measure of trust in Him.

May we find empowerment through God’s grace and love to silence every negative voice of discouragement around us that wants to see us fail in our pursuit of Him and His heavenly Kingdom.

May the good report we brought in by faith when we first believed rise in us to silence the nagging voices of the ene