Giving Ear: Satan the Opportunist

Satan made an attempt on my spiritual life last night while I slept. Did you know he can enter our dreams? He thinks he is sabotaging, but God uses it to instruct our hearts. I've been reading a book by John Eldredge called Walking with God, a compilation of stories that demonstrate a lifestyle of being with God. Much of the book talks about spiritual warfare, which I have been experiencing in droves as God unearths the battle for my heart.

I read a portion about a dream Eldredge had in which he was imprisoned in his old job position. It was one of those heavy, disturbing dreams. The next morning at breakfast his son said, "I had the weirdest dream last night. I was part of a rescue team, and our mission was to rescue Dad from his old job."

Coincidence? I agree with Eldredge, not at all. He quotes Psalm 16: "I will bless the Lord who guides me; even at night my heart instructs me." If Satan's hosts are capable of assaulting us in the vulnerable state of sleep, it makes sense that God will also use dreams to instruct our hearts.

Here's what I dreamed:

I was with a group of strangers (apparently my friends) and ended up making out with one of the guys who had a girlfriend (this is the part where I try to cover by saying, "I had the weirdest dream last night"--hang with me). Wracked with guilt, I kept it to myself (a ploy of Satan, by the way). We all went to a theater, where a different guy, also spoken for, was attempting to touch me, and I was overwhelmed with temptation to let him.

His girlfriend noticed. And freaked in the middle of the theater.

He confessed his sins of infidelity, sending her into conniption. Then I stood up and basically began preaching to the audience, something like, "These are the secrets that keep us in bondage, the things we succumb to and are never freed from." I then confessed kissing the first guy and refused to be ruled by that shame and fear.

Someone from the audience, apparently very resistant, shouted, "Shut up and just go to church."

(Weird thing to say? I don't think so. Isn't that how we all operate in secret sin--shut up about it and hope our moral attendance is sufficient.)

"No!" I shouted back. "I don't want to just go to church. I want to live. I want to be free."

They all started laughing, and then I woke up with a stabbing pain in my right ear. It felt like a drill bit going into my skull through my eardrum. This pain I'd only experienced once before when I first tasted freedom. I listened to a friend talk into late hours and began to see the difference between truth and lies, and as I did, a spirit called Sabotage entered my ear with a fierce pain in an attempt to distract me physically. It was this pain that made me realize I was under attack.

You see, the dream was a construct of my old life. You will not know this, unless you are one of the few I have told, but I lived in sexual sin from age 13 to 16.
Secret, shameful, sabotage of my relationship with my Father.
I have had many sexual dreams, some so explicit it is impossible for my mind to create them. I'd attribute it to things that happened during the day, like a movie I watched, or physiological factors.

Now I realize Satan has been trying to tempt me back into that addiction through my sleep. Honestly, I don't know how I ever got out. It was the grace of God that freed me from that life, and his grace that has kept me from reverting.

So what did I do about the dream? Well I didn't ignore it this time. I asked God what it meant.

"You are still bound to that old life. Satan will not leave you alone until you tell him to."

I have been given Christ's power over spiritual enemies, power over my old life. So I prayed something like this:

Jesus, in your name, your holy blood, your death and resurrection, and the authority the Father has given you, I revoke the spirits of Sexual Temptation and Sabotage and bind them to hell where they cannot roam free because you hold those keys. I pull up the stake of my past lifestyle and break the agreement that I am not pure, because your blood covers me and now I wear your righteousness. I declare freedom from shame and guilt, and hold fast to the future you have promised me, one of purity. Thank you for instructing and protecting me in this dream.

When I finished, I realized the pain was gone from my ear. I am free.

This happenstance is in keeping with what God has been doing in my life--stripping away the patterns and habits of my old life, the old mode of thinking, the operation of moralism, so I can know his heart and live the life he originally designed.

Now we are getting to the battle against outside forces, the subtle attacks from Satan against my spirit and faith. As Eldredge says, Satan is an opportunist--it seems unfair, but the enemy doesn't play fair.

God's grace in this has made a world of difference.

My Father's Daughter

“Look not for the answers, but learn to love the questions themselves.” --Rainer Maria Rilke

 

The river knows its purpose--to move in the direction it was created for, sweeping this bend, bubbling over that rock, and soothing the souls of searching passersby. If the river could answer my question, it would tell me to move with the current.

The animals of the forest know their purpose. As they skitter from my path to the undergrowth, they forage for food and shelter, and safety from predators. If the animals of the forest could answer my question, they would tell me to survive.

My feet follow a beaten path down to the train tracks. I walk the ties to the horizon, under bridges and past construction workers and their machines. The train tracks know their purpose. To carry progress from one end of the world to the other, so the workers and machines can build and develop and advance. If the train tracks could answer my question, they would tell me to achieve.

Halfway down the tracks I get lonely and want a friend. So I call Moriah and tell her I wish she is with me, balancing along the other tie, talking about this journey. Would that she could answer my question, but she doesn’t pick up the phone.

I come to a switch in the tracks, flanked by a swamp where a cacophony of frogs calls my name. So I sit on the ties and wait. A man appears off a path on his bike and approaches, dismounting to cross the tracks.

“Hello,” I say. “How are you?”

“Fine.”

I am going to ask him what he thinks mankind’s purpose is, but he seems to know his, and it is getting on his bike and pedaling away. So I take the rail to the right, along the manicured golf course, where the crack of clubs shatters the silence and polo-shirted men find their purpose in retirement.

I find my Father at the bridge, where the Canadian Pacific Railway posts a sign forbidding trespassing on the tracks. I sit on the rail and my Father sits beside me, and we watch the geese preening in the overflow of the creek, listening to the birds gossip in the trees. My Father, knowing how much I love the sun, asks the clouds to part and bathe us in warmth. Its rays dance silver and green on the water and the tips of the worshipping trees.

“If you asked me the answer to your question,” he says, “I would tell you.”

“Father, what is my purpose?”

“To be my daughter,” he replies, “as you’ve known all along. Your purpose does not change, though your circumstances do. Like the river, though its banks erode and widen over time, the direction of its current does not change. Like the animals, whose environment changes with season, still survive. Like the train tracks, which rust through rain and snow, still take trains from beginning to end. Like friendship, though they come with goodbyes, the impact of the hello can never be undone. Though your life changes, and the future is unknown, untraveled, your purpose does not.”

“But what does that look like?” I ask. “Being your daughter?”

“Take my heart and fit it to yours. Make it unique. Then carry my love to the hearts of those who have forgotten their purpose. Though they build and achieve, though they hurry by on their bikes or in their cars, though they gorge themselves on recreation and thrills, they can never get away from the hunger in their hearts for fulfilled purpose.”

“I have other questions,” I say.

“I know. And you will learn to love them once you’ve realized that I’ve already answered the most important one.”

My Father kisses me with the sun, and I pack up my bag, turning away from the No Trespassing sign and all my questions, and retrace my steps toward the future.