Where Are Your Eyes?

Hey guys, so okay. After spending the last several weeks talking about the enemy, I need to tell you something. I do not want you to walk away from this series thinking about the enemy all the time. That would kind of defeat the purpose, right? We started this series because I wanted us to become more aware of what's happening around us spiritually. I wanted us to understand that every difficult person is not our enemy. Every thought that enters our mind doesn't deserve to be believed. And every voice that sounds spiritual isn't necessarily the voice of God. So along the way, we've talked about deception, accusation, and temptation. And last week we talked about what it means to be still standing when the battle has taken longer than we expected. And all of those things matter. But as we close this series, I think there's one more distinction we need to make because there's a difference between recognizing your enemy and becoming preoccupied with him. Hey, I'm Melissa, and this is my question for you. So we've made it to the final episode of our series called Behind Enemy Lines. And after spending this series learning to recognize the enemy and some of the ways that he works, I want to make sure we leave this conversation looking in the right direction. Because once you know there really is an enemy, and once you start recognizing some of his tactics, it can be very easy to start looking for him everywhere. Something goes wrong at work, and you're wondering if it's an attack. There's tension in a relationship, and you start wondering what's happening spiritually. A door closes or a plan falls short, and suddenly you find yourself trying to determine whether this is just life or whether something else is going on. And yes, sometimes there may be something happening spiritually that we need to recognize. And that's part of why we spent these few weeks learning to pay attention to the enemy. But if recognizing the enemy leaves us constantly watching for him, worrying about what he might do next, or trying to figure out whether he's behind every inconvenience in our lives, then somewhere along the way, our attention has shifted. Awareness was never supposed to become obsession. So here's my question for you. Where are your eyes? Now that you know the enemy exists and you're becoming more familiar with how he operates, where is your attention? Because recognizing the enemy was never supposed to make us focus on him. So stay with me. I'm going to go into a little bit of a story. It might be one that we're not as familiar with as some of the other Bible stories, but stay with me because I think it sets this up very nicely. Okay, so at this point in Israel's history, the king of Aram is at war with Israel, but something strange keeps happening. Every time the king of Aram makes plans about where his army is going to be, the king of Israel somehow seems to already know about it. So naturally, the king of Aram starts to get frustrated. He assumes someone in his own camp must be leaking information. But one of his officers tells him that isn't what's happening. There's a prophet in Israel named Elisha. Now, a prophet was someone God used to speak his message to his people. And in this case, God had been revealing the king's plans to Elisha. And Elisha would then warn the king of Israel. So the king of Aram decides that if Elisha is the problem, then he needs to find and deal with Elisha. His men discover that Elisha is at a town called Dothan, and the king sends horses, chariots, and a large military force to Dothan, where he believes Elisha is staying. They arrive during the night and they surround the entire city. Now, imagine being Elisha's servant the next morning waking up to this scene. You wake up, you walk outside, and you discover that while you were sleeping, an entire army surrounded the place that where you were sleeping, where you were living. I don't know about you, but I'm probably going to go back inside and make sure I saw what I thought I saw. But the servant knows exactly what he's looking at. And he turns to Elisha and asks the question most of us would probably ask. He says, What are we going to do? And I want us to pay attention to this part because the servant wasn't imagining the army. The threat was real. The soldiers really were outside, and the city really was surrounded. Sometimes when we talk about faith, we accidentally make it sound like trusting God means pretending that what we're facing isn't really happening. We tell ourselves not to look at the circumstances, not to acknowledge the fear, and to just believe for the thing that we're hoping to change. But Elisha doesn't do that to his servant. He doesn't tell him there isn't an army outside, and he doesn't suggest that if they had more faith, he wouldn't be concerned about what he sees. Elisha sees the same army. He just knows the army isn't all there is to see. So he tells his servant, don't be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them. Now, I have to imagine the servant looking around for a second and thinking, who exactly is us? Because from where he's standing, I'm sure it looked like the math just was not mathing. They were severely outnumbered. But then Elisha prays and he says, Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see. And God does. And suddenly the servant can see that the hills around Elisha are filled with horses and chariots of fire. And what gets me about that moment is that the circumstances didn't change when the servant's eyes were opened. What changed was what he could see. The enemy army didn't disappear. The danger didn't suddenly become imaginary. The servant simply became aware that what was against him was not the whole story. And I think that matters for us because there are things happening in our lives that are very real. We don't have to pretend otherwise. Faith doesn't require us to call something good when it hurts or act as though a difficult situation doesn't bother us. But faith does remind us that the reality we can see isn't the only reality that exists. The horses and the chariots of fire didn't suddenly appear when God opened the servant's eyes. God's provision was already there. The servant simply couldn't see it yet. And I wonder how often we do something similar. We look at what's happening around us and assume that what we can see is all there is. We know what went wrong. We know which door closed. We know what the doctor said or what our bank account says, what somebody did or what hasn't happened yet. We know all of those things. Those things are easy to see because they're right in front of us. What we can't always see is what God may be doing in the middle of those things. And I want to be careful here because I don't want to turn this into one of those messages where we say, don't worry, God is working, as though that guarantees everything is going to turn out exactly the way we want it to. Sometimes it doesn't, right? Sometimes the prayer isn't answered the way we hoped it would be. Or sometimes the door stays closed and the situation changes us more than it changes around us. Trusting God doesn't mean we know what He's going to do. It means we know who we're looking toward while we wait for the answer. And that's different. And this is exactly why I wanted to end this series behind enemy lines here with this message. Something can happen when we start learning about spiritual warfare. We become more aware, and awareness is good because we begin noticing patterns we didn't see before. We recognize thoughts we used to entertain without questioning them, and we become more discerning about accusation, temptation, and deception. That's growth. The problem comes when awareness quietly turns into some sort of a fixation. Because we start analyzing every setback, every conflict, and every uncomfortable feeling trying to decide whether it's an attack or whether the enemy is doing something we have to figure out. We've got to get to the bottom of it. What is he up to? And without realizing it, we can become more aware of Satan than we are of God. Think about that. We may still be praying and trying to be spiritually discerning, but so much of our attention is being consumed by what the enemy might be doing that we've lost sight of the one we're actually following. That's not where I want this series to leave us. I want us to be aware enough to recognize the enemy when we encounter him, but I don't want us to become impressed by him or consumed with trying to figure him out. Because the enemy is not the main character of this story, but God is. So let's go back to Elisha's servant for a moment. Before God opens his eyes, he sees the enemy surrounding them and assumes he understands the situation. But after God opens his eyes, he realizes the picture is much bigger than he thought. In fact, the enemy that had surrounded them was surrounded too. That'll change your perspective. And that's why I think one of the most important things we can learn about after spending this much time talking about the enemy is this faith doesn't require you to pretend the enemy isn't there. It reminds you that the enemy isn't all that's there, that there's something bigger than what you can see naturally with your eyes. There is a God who sees what you cannot see and knows what you don't know. He was present before the problem arrived. He is present while you're trying to figure it out, and he will still be God when this chapter of your life is over. That's where I want our eyes to focus. Because if all we learned from this series is how to recognize the enemy, then we didn't go far enough. The point of recognizing him is so that we stop being so easily distracted by him. When accusation comes, we can't we can recognize what's happening without following it down the rabbit hole. When temptation shows up, we can recognize what's being offered before we've already gone too far. And when a lie starts sounding like truth because we've heard it so many times, something in us can pause and say, wait, I've heard this before. I recognize this. And then instead of spending the rest of the day arguing with the enemy, we can turn our attention back to God. I think that's a sign of maturity. That's a sign of growth. It isn't pretending the battle isn't happening, it's knowing where to look while it is. I think some of us have lived as though our job is to keep one eye on God and one eye on the enemy, just in case. Just in case something happens, right? To know what the enemy is up to. We trust God, but we're also consistently checking the perimeter, waiting for the next attack and trying to stay one step ahead of the enemy. That can sound like vigilance, but eventually it becomes exhausting because you are never meant to spend your life watching the enemy. You are meant to spend your life walking with God. There's a difference there, friend. You can recognize that there is a battle without allowing that battle to become the center of your life. Your life with God is bigger than whatever you're fighting right now. There are people to love and work to do. There are ordinary moments to enjoy, conversations to have, prayers to pray, and places where God is inviting you to grow. So I don't want us to become so fascinated with spiritual warfare that we miss the life God has actually given us to live. And maybe this is where the title of this series uh takes on a slightly different meaning. We've spent six weeks behind enemy lines. We went there because we needed to understand some things. We needed to recognize who our enemy really is and become more familiar with how he operates. But we were never supposed to build a house there. We came to learn. Now we take what we've learned and keep walking with God. So let me ask you again, where are your eyes? Think about whatever has been taking up the most space in your mind lately. When you think about it, where does your attention immediately go? You don't have to deny what you see. Elisha's servant didn't need the enemy to disappear in order for his perspective to change. He needed his eyes opened wide enough to see more. And maybe that becomes our prayer this week. God, help me see what I'm missing. Help me see you here in this moment, in the middle of everything that's going on. Help me recognize when fear has narrowed my vision so much that the problem is all I can see. And remind me that what I see in front of me is not necessarily the whole story. Because sometimes the circumstances don't change first. Sometimes our vision does. So this week, when something gets your attention and you feel yourself immediately trying to figure out what the enemy is up to, I want you to just pause for a minute. You can acknowledge what's happening without making it the center of your attention. And then I want you to just ask God, God, where are you in this? Not because God is hiding from you, but because fear, frustration, and uncertainty have a way of narrowing our vision until the problem becomes the biggest thing in the room. Elisha's servant needed his eyes opened. And maybe we do too. Not so we can see more of the enemy, but so we can see more of God. So now before we close this series, there's one more thing I want to tell you. We may have finished with behind enemy lines, this series, but we're not finished talking about spiritual warfare. I want to go a little bit deeper because we've spent these last six weeks learning how to recognize the enemy. And once you recognize that you're in a battle, there's a pretty obvious question that comes next. The next question is probably, okay, so how do I fight? And I love that scripture doesn't tell us there's a spiritual battle and then leave us defenseless in it. In Ephesians chapter six, Paul gives us this picture of what he calls the armor of God. And if you've been around church for a while, you've probably heard about the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit. Maybe you've even learned about them as a kid, like we talked about in Sunday school. Maybe you have some familiarity around it. We're gonna jump right into it. And if you haven't learned about it, that's fine because we're gonna spend time in our next series going deeper. I want you to know what it actually looks like to wear these pieces of armor that the Bible has given us as a way to fight the enemy? What does it mean to live with truth when you're surrounded by lies? What does it look like when something is coming at you that actually hurts? How does peace become part of the way you walk through a world that constantly gives you reason, reasons to be anxious, reasons to be fearful? And what does it look like and what does it mean to use scripture as a weapon without simply throwing Bible verses at our problems? That's where we're going next. We're moving from recognizing the battle to understanding what God has actually given us for the battle. But we'll get there. For today, we're moving from recognizing the battle to understanding what God has actually given us for the battle. But we'll get there. But for today, I just want you to check where you're looking. Because after spending six weeks behind enemy lines, I don't want to leave you staring at the enemy. I want to leave you looking at God. So I ask you again, where are your eyes? The enemy is real and the battle is real, but neither one gets the final word. If you find yourself watching the problem, anticipating the attack, or wondering what the enemy might be doing, remember Elisha's prayer. Lord, open his eyes so that he may see. Maybe that becomes your prayer too. Lord, open my eyes. Not so I can see more of the enemy, but so I can see more of you. Until next time, keep asking. Keep listening and remember, the enemy may be in your line of sight, but he doesn't have to be the focus of your vision. Before you go, if today's question stayed with you, I'd love to keep the conversation going. Each week, I send a short email called This Week's Question, a Quiet Invitation, and it's a simple reflection to help you stay grounded, to pay attention, to dive deeper into God's Word, and to walk with God throughout your week. You can sign up at myquestion for you dot com, bringing you encouragement for your spirit and wisdom for your walk.