10 Challenges Every Dad Must ConquerSample

Day 8 You’re fighting the wrong enemy.

Identifying the true enemy

Life is full of many “dangers, toils and snares” that constantly frustrate our efforts to survive during our days under the sun. You need to understand while there is an enemy, that enemy is NOT your wife, not your kids, and not even culture.

My wife or child interrupting me is not something I “just have to accept”. This is something I can address and put a stop to. “Will you just leave me alone?!” 

With the right facial expression and the right tone of voice, that’s all it would take for my wife or interrupting child to take their problem someplace else and finally just give me some peace and quiet. 

But, just think about what has now happened in the fallout. Think about the wedge that has been placed into that relationship. 

Think about the root of bitterness that has been planted in that person’s soul. Think about the witness I have compromised before my family to whom I am supposed to be a model of their Heavenly Father (Eph. 3:15).

This is precisely what Satan wanted all along.

And in my weakness, I failed to see the spiritual realities behind what was happening in the moment. I misidentified my enemy and misdirected my response. 

The Apostle Paul says, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood” (Eph. 6:12). 

Satan is well aware of this reality. He’s had thousands of years to observe, research and learn from human behavior. He knows precisely how small tweaks of details here and there can affect our emotions and cause us to react. 

There will be attacks. There will be snares. There will be nakedness, danger and sword as the enemy comes at us with any and every combination he can muster of the world, the flesh and the devil. But we do not go alone. We go having been given the promise “I am with you” (Matt. 28:20) by the One who said, “Take heart, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Have you identified your real enemy yet?