I want you to know that evil/wickedness never lasts (Job 8:13 and Psalm 112:10).

Yet the question remains: while it does last, how do you deal with it in a constructive, healthy way?

This article and the one following it answer that question.

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There is a healthy and an unhealthy way to fight evil.

When you fight evil in a healthy way, you not only survive its assault intact but you draw huge blessings and benefits out of it. 

On the other hand, when you fight evil in an ad hoc, ‘anything-goes’ way, you quickly become its victim.

And you will experience extreme suffering which can last for a long time.

If you use the guidelines in this and the next article, you will be able to counter evil in a healthy way.

And there will come a time for you when, after the dust has settled, you’ll look back on your encounter with evil and see that you’ve actually been able to draw huge blessings and benefits out of it.

Whenever you find yourself facing an assault by evil, I want you to remember these 4 things:

• The Lord does NOT want you to fear evil 

• The Lord wants your freedom from evil’s assault infinitely more passionately than you do

• The Lord wants you to remain very, very close to Him  as you fight evil

• The Lord wants you to dig deeper than the wickedness surrounding you as you fight evil

Remember that He suffered and died precisely to break the hideous power of the devil off your and my lives (John3:8).

Keep reading …and you’ll discover that you have everything you need to successfully neutralize, resist, fight and defeat the devil’s attacks in a healthy way.

What Do I Mean by ‘Fighting’ Evil?

I have deliberately chosen to use the word ‘fighting’ (evil) to denote that you must actively resist it.

I don’t want you to think that you can just sit back passively and watch evil happen.

Your survival and wellbeing require an active resistance on your part.

But an active resistance or ‘fight’ against evil does NOT mean that you engage in some sort of violent screaming match with it.

This would be un-healthy. 

 It would serve only to escalate the evil and draw you into its web.

Instead, ‘fighting’ evil means that you take consistent, deliberate, pro-active steps against it.

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The Very Good News About Fighting Evil

The Lord NEVER causes evil, although He might allow it (Job 1:12).

And when the Lord does allow it, He will ALWAYS use evil to your advantage —provided, of course, that you have made the decision as a follower of Jesus to align your life to His will. 

He does this by turning it into something BEAUTIFUL and GOOD for you (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28).

He never allows evil to have the last word in your life.

In fact, He makes sure you have the opportunity to draw huge benefits and blessings out of it.

These are benefits and blessings that perhaps you could not have arrived at in any other way.

But to make these benefits and blessings yours, you have to dig deeper than the wickedness.

In Part 2 of this article, you’ll find 14 guidelines to help you do that.

You Must Look After Yourself Very, Very Well

When confronting evil, it’s essential to know how to maintain the upper hand. 

Part of this is learning how to take very good care of yourself.

When you are in a crisis of any sort, and especially when you are battling evil, please know (and keep remembering) that the Lord wants you to look after yourself very, very well!  

You must be pro-active when it comes to your health —body, mind, psyche, emotions, and spirit.

You need to

• Get sufficient sleep

• Eat as healthily as possible (it helps to buy a nutritious, ready-to-eat meal now and again if at all possible, or ask a friend to cook you one)

• Enjoy sufficient leisure time

For example: enjoy a much-loved hobby; read a good book; listen to your favourite music; walk on the beach; cycle in the park; dance; enjoy your or a friend’s garden or a public garden; play basketball, hockey, tennis or any favourite sport; swim in the ocean; go for a run, climb a mountain, hike, snow-ski, or do whatever sport you love and have the required fitness level for!!

• Receive hospitality from close friends

• Give hospitality to good friends

• Take regular time to worship and praise the Lord 

• Ask the Lord to send you an experienced and wise Christian spiritual guide  of integrity to accompany you through your challenging times

The Special Combination that Ensures You Maintain the Upper Hand

Fighting evil does not mean that you should be preoccupied with evil.

That would be a very unhealthy way to deal with it!

Instead, soaking regularly in God’s love and peace, nurturing a boldness and confidence in God, seeking every day His guidance and wisdom, and sustaining an uncompromising resistance to evil, will neutralize, defeat, and enable you to draw blessings out of evil.

To accomplish this, you need to

• spend regular time in God’s presence where you can soak in His healing, nurturing love and peace
• not fear evil —not fearing evil is critical to defeating it! —but instead acknowledge and respect its reality
• remain calm
• utterly refuse to get drawn in by evil
• retain your inner peace and joy
• ask God every day for His protection from evil
• ask God every day for His specific guidance

My Own Confrontation with Evil

Twenty-six years ago, at the age of 48, I had to deal with a prolonged, brutal, highly organized, and unusually intense assault from evil.

Due to the nature of the particular problem facing me, the assault continued without let-up for 7 years!

During this time, I experienced many setbacks and discouragements.

And many times, I experienced the pull of my flesh over my spirit.

I was often sorely tempted to get even with the many people Satan used to threaten me and our daughters viciously and unashamedly at every possible opportunity.

I knew, however, that the Lord had provided me with a far better way out: namely to remove myself physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally and psychologically from the evil that assaulted us and from the persons it used.

I also knew that I needed to rely on the Lord for all the protection, help and guidance that would be required to overcome the Enemy and neutralize the hold he maintained over the minds, hearts, and spirits of the people he was using to launch and carry out his dreadful attack on us.

When the sheer intensity of the evil was especially wounding, my spirit would begin to feel overwhelmed.

On these occasions, I, like the psalmist, wanted nothing more than to fly away on the wings of a dove (Psalm 55:6). I just wanted to flee the never-ending chaos and intense inner pain.

At the same time, I knew that I was, after all, the daughter of the King, and I knew that the King’s sole reason for taking human flesh, for suffering, dying, and ultimately rising again, had been to bring me safely out of the kingdom of darkness and into His Kingdom of Light (1 Peter 2:9)! 

Yes, it was true that I had been brutally betrayed by the man I loved, the husband God had given me so graciously. It was true that he had broken his marriage covenant both with me and with God.

But I knew it was even truer that God was going to honour my desire to remain in His kingdom of light.

My victory over Satan and the folk he was using to destroy me and our 2 daughters took time.

You have to let your battle against evil take place on the Lord’s timetable, not your own.

This might seem harsh and impossible.

But here’s the thing.

Once you remain very close to the Lord, you don’t feel any particular urgency to get the battle done and over.

Why?

Because as you fight the battle with evil, you’re constantly aware that you’re standing on a completely solid foundation of Love and Strength.

You don’t panic.

You become increasingly aware that the Lord always has your back.

And with every period spent in the Lord’s Presence, I got closer to the Person whose vast love and supernatural strength enabled me not only to withstand but totally defeat the persistent, well-organized, ruthless evil surrounding our little family.

As a result, throughout the long years of my assault from the Evil One I never at any time felt abandoned or alone.

Lonely, many times. Alone, never.

Choosing Life

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came so that they would have life, and have it abundantly. 

John 10:10 New American Standard Bible (My emphasis)

This day …I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children might live.  

Deuteronomy 30:19 NIV

(My emphasis)

‘I came so that you would have LIFE.’

‘Choose LIFE.’ 

The thief, Satan, comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

Jesus comes so that you will have LIFE.

In my experience, there are two chief spiritual treasures that it’s Satan’s avowed intention to destroy.

The first is a your and my ability to experience God’s gift of love.

The second is your and my ability to enjoy to the full God’s gift of pulsating life —mental, emotional, spiritual and physical —that God has put at our disposal.

These two, the Lord’s gift of His love and His gift of life, are integrally related.

You can’t enjoy the Lord’s gift of life unless you are also able to experience His love!

The first antidote to evil, therefore, is to make a conscious decision to open up yourself more and more to God’s LOVE.

This is crucial.

The second antidote to evil is to make a conscious decision every day —sometimes several times a day when the battle gets really fierce —to choose life.

You do that most effectively by spending a few minutes each day in God’s presence, where you can soak in His love. 

And remember that this love is the Source of all life. 

Therefore, not even the fiercest, most ruthless, most well-organized attempt of the Enemy in destroying your life can ever succeed.                                  

26 years ago, when my husband suddenly abandoned our marriage of 26 years, his action set in motion a ruthless, highly organized, and unusually persistent assault on our family by the forces of evil.

In order to be able to bounce back from Satan’s assaults and regain and maintain Christ’s life and love within me, I had to remember to consciously and deliberately keep choosing life.

I could never have succeeded in doing this day in and day out without the constant support of Christ.

To get this support, I spent 15 -20 minutes almost every day in His healing presence.

Here’s a diary entry I made just 2 months after my husband abandoned our marriage:

I repeatedly experienced the pain today. Every time the pain hits, CHOOSE LIFE. 

The Lord also gave me the grace to realize that my decision to choose life could not be a one-time affair. 

It had to be re-affirmed continually.

One year later, I write in my diary:

I am getting fed up with my life being ceded to (other people’s) behavior. Somehow, I must never let that happen. It is WRONG. I must choose LIFE; and even if I think I am getting nowhere, I must believe that God will honor totally all my small efforts to choose (life); and at some time, I shall also FEEL the effects. 

‘…I must believe that God will honor totally all my small efforts to choose life…’ 

It was my resolve to trust that God would reward all my small, individual efforts to keep choosing life that ultimately rescued me from the tight stranglehold of evil’s assault and assured my victory.

Trusting the Lord wasn’t hard for me because, thanks to the daily few minutes I spent in His presence without words or thoughts,

I’d already established a genuinely strong relationship with Him.

You, too, will find that trusting God becomes much easier when you spend a few minutes each day in His presence.

You’ll discover that you’ll gradually come to trust the Lord in exactly the same way that you’d trust your closest, most dependable friend!

An Excerpt from My Own Story to Encourage You

Here’s a brief excerpt from my own story that will encourage you to keep choosing life when the going gets really tough.

 

It’s taken from my book, How I Learned to Let God Find Me in the Good Times and the Bad: A Spiritual Memoir. 

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As time passed, the Spirit would bring to my awareness the recognition that my decision to choose life was yielding results! 

I realized that my faith was getting stronger under the pressure of battle and that God’s gifts of peace and joy were continuing to deepen within my soul.

This signaled to me that the Lord was actively present in the very midst of the Evil One’s assault. It was this gift of His Presence through thick and thin that was the gift I always treasured —and protected —most. 

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Dealing with Your Inner Pain

In both of my life experiences with evil, the devil used the deep, raw pain inflicted on me and our daughters to try to wear me down.

Pain can wear you down.

If you don’t know how to deal with it, it can eat away at the life and the love that the Lord through His Holy Spirit has placed inside you.

It can strip you of your spiritual, moral, mental, emotional and physical strength.

You become weaker, less alive, and less able to receive and give love!

This, of course, is precisely the Enemy’s intention.

This is why you have to decide from the outset to keep choosing life!

Once you decide to keep choosing life, and know how to do so, you suddenly make life very hard for the devil.

You start to feel the power of evil’s attack dwindling and dissipating.

You maintain the upper hand!

It was my resolve to trust that God would reward

all my small, individual efforts to keep choosing

life that ultimately rescued me from the tight

stranglehold of evil’s assault and assured my

victory.