Hidden Plan to Distance You From God

The enemy wants your heart. He wants to control it and looks for a way to get in and take away the controls from you. If he can get in, he will make your close relationship with God a distant one. He doesn't mind playing the long game, until he gets you to doubt God's love, mercy, faithfulness, and good plans for your life. Here is one huge way he starts doing this.

As soon as you are born, he looks for the Father-figure in your life, and wants to make that relationship look furthest from what God is like to us. The enemy knows when a man mirrors our Father. It's what the enemy wants men to be least like. He knows God has given men the ability to train their children into knowing what a true and healthy Father-child relationship is like. If we can grow up experiencing what a godly father figure is like, it allows us to easily understand and transition into our relationship with God as our Father.

He will also use other people closest to you to make you think false things about yourself. Deep rooted things that we believe to be truths about ourselves that God would never say about us. Things like, "No one loves you", "No one wants you", "You aren't worthy of love", and the list continues on. Or he will use strangers to influence you to be how he wants you to be. They will say things like, "Why are you so ____?" as if it's not okay to be the way you are, or to make you believe you are the way people judge you to be and you now stop growing and just fall into that label.

What are all of these things doing to our heart? They are all making us feel insecure, and there are two options we can go from here. We can become aware of these things and learn the truth about God and what He knows about us to be true. We can experience the greatest form of love and satisfaction available to mankind. Or, we can live out our lives adding to the pain by making poor decisions in life that the enemy will only use to reaffirm those lies that he planted as a foundation in us to keep us from believing there is a Father whose love is reachable and lasting forever.

We shut down when things go sour in our earthly relationships. For good reasons, we can distance ourselves from danger. But the enemy would love nothing more than to close our hearts to God as well. In our attempt to protect ourselves from real evil in this world, if we aren't careful to bring those things before God, we will close our heart from God too. And that's where the enemy feels he has won. And don't for a second believe that's where he will stop. He won't seize until he completely destroys a person in this world. He is a thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).

So what can we do if we find ourselves having drifted into option 2? Well, what did the enemy come to steal, kill and destroy? The same verse finishes by Jesus saying that contrary to the thief, he has come to give us life and for us to have it in full. First step is done. We know there is a spiritual warfare that will not stop until we are in the presence of God for all eternity. The next step: ask God to reveal the lies that you are believing and operating on in this life. Next, take them to your Father believing He will know and communicate what your next steps should be.

The worst thing we can do is doubt that we have a healthy Father-relationship with God available every second of each day. That is going to take faith. Reject the "daddy issues" or "father wounds" and push through them. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us to help us do this, ever since we became followers of Jesus. There's so much goodness waiting for you. You have no idea. I pray your heart melts again in the presence of your Father.