Every assignment of God has the ability to attract the attention of enemies. Enemies of assignment are the forces that come against you with the sole aim of causing you to abort your God-given assignment and, if possible, terminate your very life. Enemies come in different forms, colors, and sizes. Much as you may not succeed in stopping them from coming after you, it is very vital for you to be able to identify them and deal with them as they come. You can only overcome an enemy when you know he or she exists. It is pathetic to fall into the hands of an enemy you are not aware of. It is like wading innocently in a pond full of deadly crocodiles. Without doubt, you will become easy prey. Your ability to identify an enemy of assignment is therefore a major key in your quest to fulfill God’s purpose for your life.
The Enemy of Self
This enemy is the most detrimental to the cause of your destiny because it happens to be the most evasive and unnoticed of all the forces that will come against you. It is almost bizarre for anyone to think that he or she is his or her own worst enemy. The normal thing in life is to always look for an enemy without, an external enemy. You need to know this once and for all: Your worst enemy is your own self. You are the first and the best person to terminate your own destiny in God, and this can happen in several ways:
Procrastination. You can literally adjourn the execution of your divine assignment indefinitely through inaction, failing to take advantage of opportunities, laziness, and a laissez-faire attitude. Procrastination, they say, is the thief of time. The more you keep deferring the actions you must take today for your assignment to be accomplished, the farther you will be from ever fulfilling them.
Past defeats and failures
Your past defeats and failures have the tendency of keeping you from trying again if you permit them to linger on into your future. The only thing you are permitted to take with you into the future are the lessons learnt from them, if any. Paul said in Philippians 3:13-14: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Past victories and achievements
Dwelling excessively on your past victories and achievements can give you a false sense of fulfillment. Conquests of the past, much as they serve as valuable mementos, are also capable of luring you into thinking that you have arrived, when in reality you may not have attained even a fraction of your divine assignment. If you permit them, they will freeze your desire to push further, thereby stalling your progress in destiny. The most important lesson here is for you not to be stuck along destiny’s path but to start and finish your assignment. Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:7-8: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”
Your words
Words are like hinges. Depending on which direction you turn them, they can either open or shut the door to your success. Idle and negative words steer your entire life into destruction. We don’t live only by the food we eat but also by the words that proceed from our mouths. Wrong words will produce the wrong effects; the consequence of which is destruction. Words alone can start an unnecessary war. To avoid one, you must be careful to speak the right words always. Show me a man who is reckless with his words, and I will show you a man recklessly heading to destruction.
Your mind
Feeding your mind on junk can be very lethal to your journey into significance. This negative habit is bound to stand between you and fulfillment. Negative inputs will automatically produce a negative effect on your assignment. You cannot spend quality time listening to the wrong stuff, reading the wrong stuff, and watching the wrong stuff without making a shipwreck of your destiny. You alone can take control of your mind. You determine what you read, watch, and listen to. You can guide your mind away from the things that are fatal to your purpose in God. Faith in your assignment will only come by hearing, watching, and reading the right thing. Without a certain amount of faith, you can achieve nothing. Only your mind can set the limits to how far you can go. If you can perceive it, then you can attain it.
Your feelings
Allowing your feelings to entirely dictate the direction of your life could cost you your destiny in God. Feelings are not entirely unhelpful, but you must learn to not put your trust in them because they can mislead you. Esau allowed himself to be led by his feeling of hunger. His feelings misled him into exchanging his birthright for a morsel of bread and a bowl of lentils soup. The way we respond to our feelings will largely determine whether we have the requisite discipline to carry our assignments through. Assignment requires a lot of self-control, without which we are bound to fail. For example, allowing yourself to be led by your sexual feelings without self-control and sound judgment can cost you misery and a lifetime in jail.
Your attitude
It is often said that attitude is everything. Your attitude determines your altitude in life. The wrong attitude will certainly lead you into failure. If you trip and fall over, you can either choose to remain in that same position and crave for piety and attention, or you can choose to pick up yourself and get moving. Attitude is basically determined by your value system and your mindset. The wrong mindset produces the wrong attitude, which leads to failure.
Ignorance
Ignorance can cause you to abort your assignment midway in life. Your level of achievement in life depends to a large extent on how well-informed and knowledgeable you are .You cannot afford to be ignorant to the devices of your enemy; it always pays to know what your enemy is capable of doing. You cannot afford to be ignorant of divine principles; you will need to know and apply them in order to achieve your destiny in God. You will also need to know a lot about your environment. For example, you do not need to be an expert in economics, politics, or geography to fulfill your assignment, but being ignorant in these and other disciplines in your environment will mean going to work with a blunt tool.
The Enemy of Bad Influence
No one in life is exempt from the influence of other people. You are either under the right influence or the wrong one. Exposing yourself to the wrong influence will kill your destiny in God. You have no business fellowshipping with people who are not heading in the same direction as you. If you will ever achieve your God-given assignment, it will take your conscious collaboration with people who understand and appreciate the purpose of life. Bad influence can emanate from any direction. It can come from your friends, family, colleagues, etc. The way to deal with this enemy is to avoid their company (1 Timothy 6:20-21).
The Enemy of Poverty
Poverty is a terrible stopper of destiny. It is a curse that stifles progress and growth. It limits capacity and suffocates potential. The siege of poverty causes a king to live like a slave. It robs you of your health, sanity, peace, and human dignity. Because of the canker of poverty, billions of humans will spend their lifetimes struggling to barely survive. To live a life of basic survival is to live an unfulfilled and fruitless life. When the struggle for bare necessities becomes your main preoccupation in life, your assignment is in great jeopardy of being shipwrecked. When you should be reaching out to others, you will only be concerned about yourself. Poverty will make you selfish, self-centered, and inward-looking. A life that is egocentric is of no use to divine assignment. The issue of poverty is so crucial that delivering the poor constitutes one of the major components of Jesus’ assignment when he walked the earth. This is clearly captured in the words of Jesus in Luke 4:18a: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor . . . ” You must do all you can as a person on God’s assignment to stamp out the seed of poverty in your life.
The Enemy of Spiritual Bondage
Much as it is easily glossed over and trivialized, the demonic world is as active and vibrant as our physical world. There is a tremendous corresponding reaction in our physical world as a result of the activities in the demonic world. Many unsuspecting souls are stuck in the doldrums of life because of the oppression of invisible forces of darkness. People are bound by all kinds of demonic strongholds that simply cannot be wished away or broken by carnal weapons. Demonic forces are external forces that manifest through a variety of ways: They can come against you through people who are already possessed and who have availed themselves to be used by them for the destruction of unsuspecting souls; they can manifest through the observance of ancestral traditions that have been handed down from your ancestors; they can manifest in your life through adherence to certain unbiblical religious practices and rituals; they can manifest in your life through the consultation of mediums, palm readers, and the like; they can invade your life through meddling with occults; they can invade your domain through the handling of accursed objects; they can enter your life through the reading of demonic literature; they can also invade your life by watching and listening to unbiblical and immoral stuff. The demon of sexual perversion and lust operates easily through pornographic material and lyrics. The demon of rebellion operates in a similar manner. The list can be diverse and almost endless. The word of God admonishes us not to be ignorant to the devices of the enemy.
What are some of the symptoms of spiritual bondage? Certain destructive addictions could be orchestrated by the forces of darkness. Alcoholism, drug abuse, and sexual perversion are just a few. Chronic ailments, strange diseases, mental disorders, hallucinations, nightmares, strange occurrences, lack of progress in life, difficulties in relationships, fear, bitterness, and strife could all qualify as symptoms of demonic oppression. If they are not dealt with, your life can be terminated prematurely or reduced to the state of a vegetable.
Demonic strongholds are real. They must be dealt with holistically. This means that divine supernatural weapons must be applied, as well as corresponding lifestyle changes. You may be delivered through prayers and the confessions of biblical promises, but you can still be prone to the invasion of demons if the supporting habits are not terminated. Staving off the activities of demons will therefore require a two-pronged attack: applying biblical spiritual weapons and biblical lifestyle changes.
Copyright 2010 Kingsley Y. Amoah
