Journal Entry: Introduction to The Ways of The Enemy
A new pattern began to take shape in my journaling around this time. I was still expressing what I was feeling and experiencing—especially the negativity and struggles—but I no longer allowed myself to go into pity parties about it. I began exercising what Scripture teaches in 2 Corinthians 10:5, taking every thought captive in obedience to Jesus Christ. I committed to giving thanks to God in all circumstances, even when things felt unclear or overwhelming. I started ending my journal entries with prayers, surrendering my thoughts and plans to God. It was in this practice of prayer and obedience that I began to experience transformation—not by denying hardship, but by refusing to let the enemy’s script define my narrative.
Journal Entry Dated: July 24, 2022
I am hard on myself. If I don’t go into a pity party, then I go into being too hard & demanding of myself and expecting perfection. God loves my weaknesses because that is where His Grace is great. No need for pity parties. I have God’s grace and His strength, promises, and Word. Wherever the enemy wants to take me, there’s God because I am His child, and He is in me and living through me. I will not go anywhere the devil is trying to lead me. Every time I do anything in my own strength, I open a way for the enemy to attack.
I keep not being who I want to be. That’s what triggers the pity party, the thoughts of failure, and short comings. My desires versus my reality. My strength is my obedience, thirst, and hunger for growth and learning. I have what God can work with. God is working in my life. Exercise patience.
Father, Lord, I am filled with incredible plans, amazing dreams, and fabulous visions–I return all of them to You. (I listed everything I had going on and envisioned; it’s a long list) All the plans are Yours. Only return what you want from me. Return them with clarity and what steps to take. I will obey and pray to do the works according to Your will, specifications, and desires.
Perfectionism and Pity Parties. Bondage of The Enemy.
That entry revealed a deeper understanding taking root in me. I was beginning to see how the enemy operated—not just in temptation, but in thought patterns that led to discouragement, defeat, and distraction. I was no longer blindly rehearsing the enemy’s script. I was recognizing it.
The fiery furnace of trials and the renewing of my mind with God’s Word made me aware of a default internal script that had played for far too long—one the enemy was all too eager for me to repeat:
“I never get a break. I keep failing. I’m doing everything right but nothing’s working. Why keep going? No one sees how hard I’m trying. I have no one to support me.”
It felt true. It felt justified. But it was a trap. That script wasn’t authored by God. Those pity parties—while emotionally familiar—were rehearsals of defeat, not declarations of faith. They gave me a place to land emotionally, but not spiritually. They bound me to a false identity and kept me from seeing what God was doing in me and through me.
But it wasn’t just self-pity the enemy was using to keep me stuck. When he couldn’t drag me into a pity party, he pushed me into perfectionism. The voice would shift from “Poor me” to “You’re still not enough.” It was a different mask, but the same goal: bondage.
The enemy is just as satisfied when we are beating ourselves up as when we are feeling sorry for ourselves. Why? Because both postures keep us from grace. Both keep us self-focused instead of God-focused. The need for perfection becomes a weapon the enemy uses to keep us striving in our own strength, never resting in God’s. It leads us to judge ourselves harshly, to expect flawlessness, and to see our weaknesses as disqualifications rather than invitations to experience God’s power.
Pity parties are the enemy’s bait. And that default internal script? That’s his playbook.
He doesn’t need us to curse God—he just needs us to accept a narrative that contradicts God’s truth. His bondage is often subtle, wrapped in emotional reasoning, self-criticism, and spiritual exhaustion that sound like our own voice.
But I began to interrupt that script.
Instead of replaying “I’m all alone,” I declared, “God is with me and goes before me.”
Instead of sinking into “I’ll never get ahead,” I stood on the promise, “God will supply all my needs according to His riches in glory.”
Instead of echoing “I can’t catch a break,” I turned to “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”
This wasn’t just mental positivity—it was spiritual warfare. Taking every thought captive became more than a concept. It became a daily discipline.
Every time I chose gratitude over grumbling, truth over self-pity, and obedience over perfectionism, I was stepping out of bondage and into the freedom Christ had secured for me. I wasn’t just avoiding the enemy’s lies—I was silencing them with the Word of God.
But the enemy wasn’t done with me. I learned that he doesn’t just go away when his low-level lies stop working; he comes in with the next level of attacks. In a future post, I’ll share how this process led me to identify the strongholds those lies had built—and how God was training me for the battles to come.