Crushing Enemy Doubt Tactics through Faith, Ep 11
Welcome back! I am your host, Dawn Simmons and on this episode of Conquering Our Unseen Enemies we are going to be talking about how the enemy uses the spirit of doubt to deceive us into questioning our decisions and actions to lead us into inactivity. We will also discuss the importance of faith in conquering our unseen enemy of doubt.
The spirit of doubt is a creeper spirit. It doesn’t show up in your face, instead it slowly makes its way toward you taking every opportunity to exploit challenges around you to its advantage. It waits for a moment of weakness or takes the time to carefully craft circumstances to get you to a moment of weakness and then it begins to use your own words and thoughts against you. It takes innocent and mean-spirited things others intended and spoke toward you and twists them to create new meaning that will turn to attack your heart and mind. You don’t see it coming because it uses disguises making it appear the circumstances are against you when in fact nothing of the kind exists.
The spirit of doubt is dangerous because it is a counterfeit to logic and reason. It will use what you think is your God given ability to discern and counterfeit your process of decision making to drive you to do nothing rather than move forward. The spirit of doubt makes you think you are better off in your comfort zone, that no one will listen to you, that no one cares, that you cannot do what God has in truth given you the gifts to do and to do very well.
Doubt will frequently be the strongman, the leader, in demonization.
The spirit of doubt will parade alongside you as support, silently waiting for the moment to tell you how weak you are and pull you down so that you will listen to the spirit of doubt and believe it is trying to keep you safe. In those moments as it suspends you in doubt, it is opening the backdoor to your mind and heart and quietly waving in other demonic influences to come on in and get situated. With doubt as the strongman, getting rid of him is incredibly difficult because the person will question everything during the eviction process and that questioning allows that spirit as the strongman to remain.
So why does it work so well. It specializes as all demons do, but it specializes at worm holing its way through our faith. If we cannot maintain the integrity of our faith, it will crumble, it will be eaten away and what will you have left to stand on for support? Faith in our walk with Jesus is crucial. We have to protect our house, we have to protect our faith. No believer has ever had a life where our faith wasn’t challenged. We need, to a certain degree, to be challenged for our faith to build. Once we see victory after victory we get stronger, but still, most of us deal with that spirit of doubt somewhere in our life. Once it’s creeped into one area it moves into the other areas and we will see downward changes happen in our marriage, in our work, in our relationships and most importantly in our relationship with the Lord. For some it seems like the whole world is coming down on them and they cannot understand it or seem to find a way out of it. Unfortunately for some, it will lead them to thoughts of harming themselves and suicide. As a strongman, doubt is incredibly powerful and its aftermath can be devastating. Often times we think of the in-your-face demonic influences as the worst, but no. The in-your-face demons like anger, for example, are showing their colors then and there as they appear. You know they are there, they don’t exactly have the ability to hide because their nature requires an activity on their part to be revealed. We generally know when someone is angry even when they try to hide it. Doubt on the other hand, doubt hides and we can even find ourselves playing into someone else’s spirit of doubt and coming into agreement with them without realizing it.
Doubt erodes trust. Doubt destroys creativity. Doubt builds walls. Doubt shuts doors. Doubt ends friendships. Doubt ends businesses. Doubt breaks contracts. Doubt builds fears. Doubt conceals talent. Doubt shreds love.
Now that we are clear on who doubt is, have an understanding of how strong doubt can be and recognize the amount of destruction it is capable of rendering in our lives, what now?
We have briefly discussed the opposite of doubt is faith. I want to talk to you about faith. I want to tell you a story. It’s part of my story. I want you to know that I am where I am because I’ve had to walk through fire, I’ve been in the desert, I’ve had to use spiritual warfare to get the outcomes promised to me and I want you to benefit from it and do the same in your life wherever you may need it. So the story I am going to share illustrates the spirit of doubt attacking me during an incredibly stressful time. This situation required a level of faith I had not needed to access before in my 53 years of life. It starts with a YT video I did in February/March of this year titled, "3 examples of strength in the Lord". In it I talk about Job, Peter and Joshua. The discussion on Peter centered around his faith and strength in getting out of the boat and walking on the water toward Jesus. I wondered to myself what would I do if I had a “getting out of the boat moment”. What would a getting out of the boat moment look like today? I felt like I’d had a lot of challenges in my life, some pretty serious, some not so much but nothing that required me to have that walk on water type of faith and strength. Fast forward about 4 weeks later and I was working on a course I was about to record called “Moving Mountains thru Prayer”, now this is not a commercial for either of the YT channel or the course, but it’s important to the story. As I sat at the computer on a Sunday afternoon finalizing the course information, I got a text. My daughter in law was letting me know my son was in the ER, but it didn’t seem like anything serious, she was just letting me know. I asked the Lord about it and he said a few things I didn’t yet understand, but what I did understand was that he said my son would survive and he would be better than he was before. Looking back that should have registered with me a little more, but in the moment since the Lord said he would survive then it must not be anything I need to be concerned about. Within an hour my daughter in law called and she asked me to come to the ER. After I arrived, more tests revealed my son had a major stroke at some point within the last 12-24 hours and the blood flow to his brain was shutting down, he needed surgery immediately. He was then transferred to the stroke center at a hospital 10 minutes away. Because of the late hour and somewhat due to Covid, we were not allowed to go but we could see him the next morning.
He had an MRI on that next morning, a Monday, and it confirmed the severity of the stroke and a plan for surgery was set which would occur Tuesday morning. Surgery Tuesday went well, no complications, he was alert and able to move everything once he was awake. All seemed to have gone smoothly and it was just about recovery at this point. He was complaining a lot about pain, however and nothing seemed to work to control the pain. We left him that night at 7:25, just after the shift change so that we could talk to the nurse who would be watching him throughout the night. We, my daughter in law and I, were not allowed to stay with him. As we left, I spoke to him, but he did not speak to me, he seemed different. I remember clearly how he seemed to be looking at me, but not looking at me. I thought the medications were finally giving him some peace. The new nurse let us know she was changing his CT scan from the morning to that night so as we left he was being taken away for the CT scan. They made sure they had our numbers and would call my daughter in law with the results. To this day, well, I will never forget the look, that distant look.
We drove home, we only live about a mile apart. I had just settled into the couch and finished texting everyone to let them know the surgery was a success and thanking everyone for prayers. It was about 8:10. I sent the last text, I remember watching my arm as it came to rest on the couch still holding my phone and it rings. My daughter in law was calling and I answered the phone to “Dawn, we need to go back to the hospital, he is going back into emergency surgery and they don’t think he is going to make it”
This was not in alignment with what the Lord told me, so how could it be true. I couldn’t deny what was happening in the natural, but how could it be true. Did something happen that allowed the enemy access to my son’s life? It didn’t matter, I stood in faith on what the Lord told me and that was my truth and that was my son’s truth, no matter the doctors thought or believed.
I began to act as we raced back to the hospital. Everyone I had just texted got a rather fervent phone call. If you were in my call list, well you got a call too, as many as I could in the 10 minutes it took to get back to the ER. My daughter in law arrived at the hospital about the same time and we were escorted from the ER to ICU by a security guard. He took us the back way so we were not familiar with the path we were on and not really even focused on the walk. We were going through the motions and didn’t realize we were walking a back way into the ICU. Going the back way dropped us off almost directly at his room which we were not expecting, so we were not prepared for what we saw. As far as the doctors and nurses were concerned, he wasn’t going to survive and they were giving us our last minutes with him before he passed. He wasn’t conscious, he was intubated, he looked lifeless. He was positioned to be taken to the OR for an emergency surgery that was expected to take 6 hours, but we were well advised they didn’t expect him to make it. Again, that was not in alignment with what the Lord told me so I couldn’t understand why we were here. I only kknew I couldn’t believe it, I wouldn't believe it and I couldn’t allow myself in any way to come into agreement with what the doctors were telling us. My daughter in law had held up well throughout this whole process but the shock of what we walked into was taking its toll. We came into agreement together and rebuked what the enemy was trying to do and I prayed over my son from head to toe. The irony of me having just finished writing the course on Moving Mountains thru Prayer and here I was with this huge mountain that didn’t belong. I didn’t care what anyone else thought, my son was not dying that night, he was not dying from this, he was going to be better than he was before because that is what the Lord said, and the Lord only speaks truth. I stood there in that ICU room and I prayed over my son with everything I had in me. I was loud and I only knew one thing, Jesus had the victory I needed, and I was claiming it for my son. My daughter in law was worried I was too loud, but I told her we were bringing Jesus in this place and everybody in ICU needed Jesus and kept going. It was actually a faith-based hospital, so prayer was pretty usual there. One of the doctors kept telling us what we should expect throughout the night and he would end each sentence with “God willing”. After a few times of that I started saying, “He is willing” in response just to make sure his tentative statement wasn’t allowing doubt a foot in the door.
Nearly all the family in the area was allowed into the ICU waiting room and we all settled in for a long night. We told stories and cherished that time together. It wasn’t pleasant by any means but we were comforted by the Holy Spirit in that waiting room in ways I can’t share yet. Doubt was not allowed to enter into our time that night.
Prior to the first surgery I told the Neuro surgeon, Dr Oni, best in the world, that the Lord had specifically chosen him for this surgery. I have no idea if he is a believer, he looked perplexed when I said that but that’s ok, it’s true. The Lord showed me in a vision how His hands took over Dr Oni’s hands as the surgery began and then I could see the surgery begin. At the time the Lord showed me the vision it was during the first surgery, but the position of my son in the vision was not the position for that surgery so I was confused. As I waited during the second surgery, the Lord reminded me of the vision and it made sense because it was the position described for the second surgery.
My son made it through the surgery, he was critical for a week and remained in ICU for about 3 weeks, then transferred to rehab unit. It wasn’t easy, by no means was it easy. He had brain damage and that affects everything, but that was April. Today, September, he is considered a miracle by Dr Oni. He is back at work full time, he is playing golf again. This stroke happened in California but he was in escrow on a house in Texas during all this and he was able to move into his new house last month. You would never know by looking at him or talking to him that anything ever happened. That is the truth of Jesus. Faith can hold you up through all things. Faith can build you in your hardest days. Faith can tear down the plans of the enemy.
Let’s see what the Bible says about doubt and faith using the story of Peter I referenced earlier. Here we have Peter responding to the Lord calling to him to come out to him on the sea and join him. Peter did, but then lost his faith, his focus for a moment. In Matthew 14:31 we see Jesus respond in this way, immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” As I waited for my son in the waiting room during that second surgery, the Lord let me know that it was my time, my Peter moment right there. Notice that Jesus immediately responded to Peter and He will do the same for us. Also, notice that Peter was required to act in faith. If we let doubt win, we cripple our faith. It will inhibit our ability to reach for Jesus which is what the enemy is counting on as our response.
Let's look at another example Jesus gives us about faith and doubt. Matthew 21:21-22, Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
Listen, doubt is one of the strongest of the demonic strongmen. Our faith has to be bigger than the strongman and through Jesus it can be. It is a choice we make because of our relationship with Jesus. Never let the circumstances you see, dictate your outcome. If Jesus had done that, how could He have been resurrected? That required faith on his part, but we never talk about the faith of Jesus, do we? He had to have faith in His Father or He would not have been able to do any of the miracles, or stand up to the pharisees or prevent a woman from being stoned just by His words. I say this a lot, but if you take nothing away from this podcast, take away the thoughts of Jesus and the level of faith He had to have to live out his life. If He can do it so can we. He was human just as we are. Trust Him.
This episode was emotional for me, it brought back a lot of memories both painful and amazing.
As a side note, I want to share that I am also putting a link in the notes. It's a link to this past week's message at my church with my pastor, Jeff Rodriguez. The message was about discouragement which ties closely to doubt. It is the best message I have ever heard in my life. If you don't currently have a church family, consider trying my church online to get your feet wet and until you can find a Bible Based church in your area.
Ok, let's do our recap:
Top show points to remember
The spirit of doubt is a creeper spirit. It doesn’t show up in your face, instead it slowly makes its way toward you taking every opportunity to exploit challenges around you to its advantage
The spirit of doubt is dangerous because it is a counterfeit to logic and reason. It will use what you think is your God given ability to discern and counterfeit your process of decision making to drive you to do nothing rather than move forward.
It specializes as all demons do, but it specializes at worm holing its way through our faith. If we cannot maintain the integrity of our faith, it will crumble, it will be eaten away and what will you have left to stand on for support? Faith in our walk with Jesus is crucial. We have to protect our house, we have to protect our faith.
As a strongman, doubt is incredibly powerful and its aftermath can be devastating.
The opposite of doubt is faith. Faith can hold you up through all things. Faith can build you in your hardest days. Faith can tear down the plans of the enemy.
Referencing Matthew 14:31, Peter was required to act in faith. If we let doubt win, we cripple our faith. It will inhibit our ability to reach for Jesus which is what the enemy is counting on as our response.
doubt is one of the strongest of the demonic strongmen. Our faith has to be bigger than the strongman and through Jesus it can be.
We need to have the same level of faith in our lives that Jesus exhibited in His.
We encourage you:
· To have an active Bible reading plan, it will be helpful in gaining wisdom and understanding and it is required for the gift of spiritual discernment.
Link to sermon of my Pastor Jeff Rodriguez discussing discouragement.
Listen here: https://clovermedia.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/store/d65d8052-295e-4d8e-a3aa-4862bf146eb3/5da769fbcf/audio.mp3
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