The Enemy Within

There’s a saboteur living in your midst, closer than you might think.  And I don’t mean the devil.  Usually this saboteur is something of a sniper, choosing a perfect hiding place from which to shoot at you while remaining safely hidden.  Snipers can have an incredible affect.

For example, when the battle for Stalingrad was almost lost during W.W.II, a few Russian soldiers came up with a plan to get so close to the enemy that while killing them, they would go undetected.  Wearing German uniforms, carrying high-powered rifles and their daily ration of half a chocolate bar, the starving and desperate soldiers set out from their last remaining stronghold and crawled through the sewer system until they were well behind enemy lines. The Germans did not expect such an attack, so they hardly batted an eye when men they didn’t know walked past, even joining them in their own food lines. "Must be one of ours," they thought.

Two Russian snipers, Nikolay Yakovlevich and Ilyin Vasili Zaitsev (who was made famous by the movie, “Enemy At The Gates”), killed 896 men, many of them high-ranking officers.  There were two other effects:  1) the Germans were demoralized, and began to distrust themselves since they didn’t know from where the attacks came.  “Who’s killing us?”  2) the success of the Russian snipers invigorated the Russian army, which not long after mounted a successful counter-offensive and won the war.  For a while the Germans didn’t know anything about this enemy that came from amongst them.  It was months before they used the same strategy, and sent snipers against the snipers. 

For a while now, we haven’t known anything much about the enemy that comes from amongst us either.

You have to know that the enemy that hinders you is not you—you are not your own worst enemy.  But unless you know that you are not the flesh and take precautions against the flesh, you’ll be demoralized by your losses, you’ll feel poorly about yourself in your defeats and failures, and you won’t trust yourself because you’ll believe that you are the problem.  You’ll believe that you are the one who is blowing it all the time. And, in some way, the enemy will be invigorated because you'll be motivated against yourself.

When God dropped the new-creation-you into your vessel, for the first time you were no longer found in the flesh.  You’re outta there!  You are now in the Spirit because you are now spirit.  You’re in union with God (1 Corinthians 6:17), and the way for you to live now is by believing, knowing and trusting Him, which keeps you in step with the Holy Spirit.  That’s important because you’re family.  Yes, you’re family!  This is the new way forward in Him, the new normal for every born from above, Spirit-made-alive, Christian.

If lately you’ve been thinking that you are your own worst enemy, or as though you are God’s biggest trial and difficulty(!), then think again—and let the truth guide your thoughts.  You are not the problem and you are not in the flesh!  You’re you—Spirit born, new creation, stunning daughter or son of God, recognized throughout the heavens.  And that’s pretty fantastic.

Romans 8:9-14  However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. 10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. 12 So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— 13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

And that’s you.

(This is a transcript of a May 2013 video, “The Enemy Within,” and is for those who might rather read than watch.  To see the video and others like it, click http://youtu.be/XoXejuAEpIA.)