Battlefield

"Nothing will have a stronghold on you that is not an area of focus in your life. The only reason it has taken that place and gotten highly exalted is because we focus so much on it." - Beth Moore

     According to Albert Einstein insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  By this definition I am totally insane, but I think I belong to a huge club.  If you don't think you are a member, how many times have you pushed the same button on the remote, stereo, computer, etc thinking "this time it will work".  We won't even talk about the amount of pressure you apply to the button or how it increases with each push.  I will mention though, at one time in my life I repaired cell phones and our most popular model was a very thin, fit in your shirt pocket style.  I was constantly forced to tell grown men that they had pushed the buttons too hard and damaged the innards beyond repair.  I usually had to prove it by showing them. 
     According to the Bible the battlefield for spiritual warfare is in our mind.  We must change the way we think to become more like Christ.  The more we do this, the less vulnerable we are to the enemy's whispers.  This is hard.  I have pitched a fit or two over this.  In my recovery I had to face the fact that I was insanely trying to obtain a different outcome using the same method and choices repeatedly.  I tried to find happiness in a bottle of rum over and over.  I tried to find security in the same emotionally unavailable man (different face) over and over.  I tried repeatedly to solve the same argument by yelling and screaming the same way I had the last time.  Nothing changed.  I am in the process of learning everything over again.  So I put down the bottle, closed the door on relationships and I'm really trying hard not to argue.  You can't expect perfection. 
     I'm trying to go to Him like a small child, but it's difficult packing all this baggage.  In writing my story I have been able to drop a few bags.  I have read several books, listened to many sermons, had many conversations with the pastor and at the end of the day I can say I gave up and asked God to do it.  It's too much for me.  Apparently He is working on it.  People have told me that my face has changed in the last year.  I don't look as angry.  They have seen more change in me than I see.  I believe this is because I tend to focus on the failures.
     (Still don't think you're a member of the insanity club?  How many times do you look in the fridge expecting something different to be sitting there on the top shelf?")
    How do you change your thinking?  I've been thinking the same way for 47 years.  It's obvious that all repeated behavoir is a cycle.  Drinking for instance, started with drinking.  I was usually going to have one or two.  Then I would decide to have one more and one more and one more after that.  I usually wouldn't realize I had gone too far until I woke up some place strange, like in the car with it running, on the floor in front of the dryer, in a strange house, or maybe once with my head pressed against the base of the toilet.  Then I would try to get through the day, promising God if He helped me, I would never drink again.  Depending how much I drank or where I woke up I would go a few days, maybe a week or two without drinking and then a friend would call or I would get angry or the Ford emblem would finally fade from my forehead.  (It was a great reminder.)  The next thing I knew it was four o'clock in the morning and I was teaching my friend to speed shift on our way to visit her ex-husband.  (I never did figure that one out.)  I did have to figure out where to stop the cycle and I decided it was to not pick up the first drink.  If you don't stop the cycle soon enough you watch your kids run around in those same circles.  The man thing, I have a lot more mind battles before I even go there.
     So why do we push that button, or our spouses buttons, the same way over and over expecting change? 
     I may think differently than a lot of people, but this is what I believe.  God made man in His image.  I don't believe God said, "I want a brain tumor in this one, just one arm on that one, this one blind and that one deaf."  I believe all those defects are from Satan.  I don't like the word "defect", but I think that's what Satan meant it to be.  Just like with Job, God allowed it.  And just like Job, it was nothing he had done.  It was not punishment for being bad.  With each situation God decided either a full healing, an early death or for some, they live with the defect.  I believe His decision is based on how much good and glory will come of it.  I believe the people He allows Satan to affect are chosen by how they and their families will adapt to the situation.  I know parents who have children born with diseases who have raised them in such away that they have become an inspiration to many people.  We can't possibly see the whole picture.  He is all knowing.  I also believe that Satan goes after the biggest threats.  If he knows that Bob is going to be the next Billy Graham, he plants the seed of cancer.  The next question is "Then why did Billy Graham not have cancer?"  Somebody prayed over him?  Satan can't get us all?  God said "No, this one will give me more glory untouched."  I think it's a compliment to be tormented by demons.  Obviously if they are trying to keep me drunk, depressed, isolated, or discouraged enough to stop me from God's will, they must be nervous about His plan in my life.
    If the enemy can get a young couple to fight every time they leave church, maybe they will stop going.  If every time a man wants to volunteer at the homeless shelter the devil convinces him that he is not worthy, he will stop thinking about it.  Maybe situations like these seem too petty for the enemy to waste his time, but it's easier to stop them in the beginning.  Keep a drunk drunk so he doesn't help the next guy get sober.  Keep a cheater cheating so the guilt will keep him from sitting in church with his wife.
     I have had enough of a taste of what the enemy can do to believe that the voices of schizophrenia are demonic and manias of a bi-polar person are caused by demons.  They say there is a fine line between genius and insane.  Is it because they are too smart for the enemy that he pushes them over the line?  In the book "The Bondage Breakers"  Neil Anderson talks about the mentally ill and people with MS walking out of the office healed after they worked through steps given in the book that include forgiveness.  This takes the enemy's power away.  They attack the nervous system.  When I am under attack, my body twitches and jerks and I remind myself of a friend of mine who was bound to a wheelchair with MS.  
     If you think about it and if this is true, it's good news.  We have the power in Jesus name to remove demons and restore lives.
     Is this giving Satan too much credit?  Or not giving God enough?