When the enemy tries to prevent your purpose, he has a strategy.
So what’s a strategy?
A strategy is: a ploy a scheme, a plan to trick you and take you in another direction, away from what God has called you to do. I actually explored the word strategy in the thesaurus and was surprised to find the word: purpose. It says a lot about the enemy’s tactics – ways he intends to distract us from our purpose for our lives, and how we also must be prepared. If we don’t have a stratagem, we also fall prey to his advances.
But what does that mean, and how do we fall prey to his advances and what he places in our paths? What makes us so weak we are distracted away from our purpose? interestingly enough. a stratagemis: a plan, scheme, or trick for surprising or deceiving an enemy. In fact the dictionary describes it as ” a goal or to gain an advantage over an adversary or competitor.” In order to beat the enemy at his own game, we must have a plan for doing so.
First, he lies to you about everything you are not, in order to get you to agree with his plan for defeat. He will lie to you about your family and those close to you, to distract your purpose, he will devise a scheme to keep you off course and have you more concerned about others, than what God has called you to do, and he will plan an obstacle of defeat to discourage you from meeting your goals.
We must have goals. If we don’t have goals, we don’t attain the prize at the end.
What’s the prize? Your inheritance in the Lord.
So what’s a godly inheritance? A godly inheritance involves four major things:
1. Our material and spiritual security: it provides a long-lasting security that you will be taken care of , but in such a way that you will forever have security because of God’s plan to provide – not just land – but eternal wealth – and wealth involves an abundance of anything that also affects our worth and value.
2. Our sense of belonging – Your value is defined as your moral excellence. Your “spiritual qualities of (your) mind and character”; according to the dictionary. People of the same mind work best together. That’s why when we were younger, we were informed by our elders or persons who cared for us immensely to be careful to avoid people who did not ‘add to’ our character, but those who instead took away from our character. Where we do not have a sense of belonging, we do not have rest, we don’t have the capacity to endure, we do not feel supported and have anyone to whom we can show faithfulness in our relationships. The piece we often miss here is that persons who show us rejection, are not being loyal unto us, so we therefore cannot be faithful to the faith-less.
3. Our tribal identity - The Children of Israel literally wandered around the wilderness for forty years. In that period of time, they were foreigners in a land in which they were not familiar. God was literally trying to take them to a new land and new identity that did not involve bondage, but they resisted. Their resistance cost entire generation of people who resisted that thought life, and caused them also to fall prey to death. God wiped out an entire generation because thy failed to believe in the new identity in which God had planned to begin to create for them. This is critical to your esteem and worth. This is also a place where the enemy attacks severely, because if you ever really knew your worth and value, you just may do what Ephesians 3:20 says – ‘you might utilize all the power and value in side of you in order that God’s exceeding and abundant power might be exercised throughout the earth.’ The enemy literally banks your ‘power to produce ‘ not being in the kingdom of God - thusly, your worth and value is his main area of defeat and deception for you. This type of emasculation happened with several populations already in this life – African slaves brought to America with the Middle Passage, Native Americans, the Irish, and even Asians. They were stripped of their tribal pride and were foreigners in a new land, where adapting to a new identity was nearly impossible for them and they felt abandoned and rejected and as if they did not belong. The ploy and tactic of the enemy was to strip them of their culture their strength their purpose and to deceive them about their value in order that they did not thrive.
4. Our wisdom & spiritual generativity- a nurturing ability to provide ‘rest’ and peacefulness for the next generation that involves passing on wealth and resource that will last eternally. Only what God has can have eternal riches. The richness we have in Christ goes far beyond our own personal wealth and security in our salvation. It involves a reserve we can leave behind for the next generation that involves integral value and spiritual wisdom. This generation not only includes our children, but the next generation’s wisdom, values and sense of morality for the future.
Ephesians 1:17-19 explains it well: “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might.”
We have such a treasure an inherent worth to tap into. It is therefore pertinent we understand we must have a stratagem for his strategy and we must hold to the VALUE God has purposed in us from the beginning and be careful to secure this value for the next generation.
