Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Praying for a change of mind amid spiritual attack


Discouragement and distress can often be rooted in spiritual attack, which by the very nature of it comes concealed.  A spirit of negativity, of dejection, of despairing, of a heart grown sick; these are all indicators of a mind askew — a mind that has forgotten the power in the grace of God.

There are all kinds of legitimate reasons why we end up in a head space where we’re forlorn in spiritual attack — captive to despondency.

Perhaps you’ve been serving and sowing hard and long, and you see little fruit.  You’ve become exhausted.  You may have become overwhelmed with the litany of conflicts that spell h-a-r-d-s-h-i-p.  There’s the possibility you’ve been misunderstood, betrayed, even scapegoated.  Perhaps it’s one disappointment after another.  Or, it’s the passage of months, years and decades and there’s no let up.  Finally, fear that grips like dread.  And there are more...

Often, it’s the case that injustice lingers, and the patterns aren’t changing.  Possibly worst of all it’s your sowing in kindness, patience, gentleness and compassion is met with judgment, anger, harshness and insensitivity.

Yet, all this and whatever more has seen you cornered and defenseless in spiritual attack.

Much of spiritual attack feels like we’re cut off from the Source of life.  Some of it can be from plain forgetfulness.  A lot of it comes from the temporary belief that we’re cursed in a particular portion of our lives.  And some of it comes from the triggering of trauma — those patterns of thinking that have attached themselves to us.

Praying about crisis leads us to ‘pick up the phone’, so to speak, with God.  We need to interact and be encouraged.  Having others pray for us is a potential pivotal turning point in getting our thinking rightly oriented.

To hear someone or others pray words of truth that are encouraging is like wind under the wings of our hope.  Within minutes at times, we can find we’re freed of the mental fog and feeling joy, hope and peace again.

When it comes to getting free of spiritual attack, there’s no substitute for another person or other people who speak words of encouragement to us through prayer.

Spiritual attack is met at its source through a change in mind.  A change in thinking is what’s needed.  And a prayer of encouragement is often the spiritual key to such change.

Photo by Samuel Berner on Unsplash

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