If you’ve ever played anything competitively, games, sports, etc., you’re probably familiar with the idea of studying your opponent and looking for a weakness you can exploit for your own gain. In most sports, it’s finding a way to score more points than they do. In a game, maybe you’re trying to achieve something faster, accomplish a goal quicker or make it to the finish line before they do.
The more time you have to study your opponent, the better your strategy and often, the greater your chance of victory. Most professional athletes that participate in team sports spend days on end watching game film of their opponents, looking for ways to enforce their own will on the opposing team.
Going up against someone who has spent considerably more time studying you than you have studying them puts you at a competitive disadvantage. It allows them to find ways to get past your defenses and try to seize a victory.
Imagine if you were competing against someone who didn’t just have more hours or days studying your strategy and defenses but had thousands of YEARS.
That opponent might find ways to get past the front door of our conscious mind and sneak in the back. Or, as more often happens, they might find a way to have us invite them right in – creating a Trojan Horse of sorts that we willingly accept with open arms.
How does this happen? It’s simple actually, the enemy has learned to mimic our own voice. No, this doesn’t happen out loud, it happens in our thoughts. Temptations to sabotage our own life uttered on words we barely recognize as anything more than our own ideas, desires and impulses because life has us to distracted to apply discernment to our own mental motivators.
If the enemy can do this, he can slide all sorts of sabotage through the gates of our very souls.
But, there’s a defense to stop this. A way to prevent these things from ensnaring us and letting the enemy win.
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. John 10:27 (NLT)
How do the sheep know the voice? They listen to it daily, seek it hourly and crave it every single minute.
When we become so familiar with His voice we can’t mistake it, then overlay it on our own, the voice of the enemy stands out like a black thorn bush infesting a field of wildflowers.
The obvious difference in the voices becomes crystal clear.
So, starting today, strive to familiarize yourself with the voice of the Shepherd. Know every tonal inflection, every syllabic nuance, every pitch change, timber variance, every whisper and every shout.
By doing so, you’ll bar the gate and prevent the Trojan Horse from passing the walls of your mind, infecting your heart and ultimately achieving victory over your soul.
HE DESIGNED ME 