There is a weapon the Enemy uses against us day after day, often without us even noticing – a power many of us may have once known he had and been able to guard against, but which many have forgotten or dismissed.
It is a weapon he fires against all, a weapon every person must confront whether they acknowledge it was the Enemy who used it or not. The weapon was passed into his possession some time ago, when man & woman fell from their perfection into darkness.
The weapon is us – our essence, our core, and as I like to describe it, our heart.
Some would not call it a weapon, as it implies the Enemy created it. But let me say transparently that I use the term ‘weapon’ to mean an instrument that can and has been used for harm or control over us, and that has not at all been created by the Enemy – merely used by him.
Let me explain how it is used: at some points in any person’s life, tragedies occur, no matter how great or small they appear. Scars are inflicted upon us, having mass implications for the rest of our lives. I’m not meaning anything necessarily physical (though in some cases physical harm is involved), but a scar against our core.
I’ll give an example:
8-year-old Billy heads home from school one Autumn day, excited about the after-school piano lessons his teacher talked said would be starting soon. He’d seen his older sisters play piano at home, and had always wanted to be able to play as well as them.
He runs in the door, flings his school bag off, and runs to the backyard shed, where he finds his dad. ”Dad, guess what?” He shouts excitedly. “Mrs. Taylor’s teaching piano lessons! Can I go, Dad? Please?” He looks up at his Dad, his little heart beating excitedly.
And Dad looks down with a humiliated expression on his face, and says, “Piano lessons? Why would you want to do something as faggy as that?”
Billy grew up to be a football player, never to touch a piano or express his passion ever again.
This is just an example, and I’m certainly not trying to make any generalizations here. We all experience these sorts of scars in different ways and at different stages of life. Some people are merely scratched by the Enemy in their youth, and are truly scarred in their adult life (I use the word ‘merely’ loosely – all attacks by Satan are tragic).
But God wants to redeem our core, our hearts. He fights the Enemy on a day by day basis, and as much as the Enemy might want to make us think otherwise, God wants to fight for us… and with us.
But more on that later.
My focus here is that we’ve forgotten the Enemy meddles with hearts. We’ve forgotten that the Enemy not only works against us on a daily basis within us and outside us, but that he inflicts damage that can impede us for a lifetime.
And not just our passions or our occupational future. People are gagged, abused, and broken. They are, metaphorically, kicked around, beaten, stabbed, burnt, tortured and imprisoned.
But there is still hope.
I use the word 'heart' to mean our core.
