You’ve been putting up with crap for entirely too long. It’s exhausting and overwhelming you. It has zapped your energy, stolen your peace, and robbed you of your joy. You’ve literally been living in torment because you don’t recognize the attacks of the enemy of your soul. And because you don’t recognize this crap as his crap, you don’t know how to battle it. And when you don’t battle it and decide to just live with it, you don’t live well. You live far below your God given potential. You live less than you could be living. You experience less joy than you could have. The light you could be in this world is dimmed. The purposes you’re here to fulfill are left undone.

Why? Because you’re putting up with crap instead of addressing it. You’re enduring the attack instead of fighting back.

It’s time God’s girls get fired up about this. I’m suggesting you get highly peee-oh-ddd about what enemy has been trying to do to you. I really wanted to say get pissed off, but ya know hate mail and all,I don’t have time for that today, so I’ll leave that there.

Why do you take the nasty insults from Hell and accept them as your truth? Why would you believe you’re not good enough? Why would you entertain the suggestion that God is against you? Why would you assume you’re broken and can never be whole? Why would you think your best days are already behind you? Why would you settle for believing you can never change and this will never get better?

Let me tell you why you would do that. Because it’s what has been poking at you your entire life. It’s been the continual whisper planting seeds of doubt and feelings of hopelessness. And you’ve been hearing it so long that it’s become normal. It’s normal for you to feel like this. It’s normal for your mind to be filled with these negative thoughts. It’s normal for you to talk yourself out of doing what you said you would do. It’s normal for you to end your days disappointed.

Have you been putting up with what you’re suppose to shut down?

May I remind you, the enemy talked to Jesus too. Satan tried to get in his head. He whispered lies to plant doubts. But Jesus didn’t put up with it, and neither should we! Jesus fought back, and so should we. How did he fight back? How did he shut down the devil, and evict him from the thoughts in his head? Let’s read the story.

Matthew 4: 1-11, “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

Why would God’s Spirit lead Jesus to this place for the purposes of being tempted by the devil? This was intentional. This was set up. Why? God was showing you and I, his beloved girls, precisely how to handle the poking and prodding for ourselves. He didn’t say, “do it like I say”, instead he said, “watch Jesus and he will show you how.” So, watch Jesus and see how to fight back and shut the enemy down in your life.

Verse 2-3 says, “After fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” This is a warning. When does the tempter come? When you are weak. When you are tired. When you are hungry. When you are lonely. When you are alone in your thoughts and in your feelings. And what does he tempt you with? Freaking bread. I love bread!

You will be tempted with the very thing that comes between you and the purposes of your life. Jesus was fasting and connecting with God, so food is offered to distract him. Maybe food distracts you too, because it keeps you stuck in a life where you don’t feel good, don’t look good, and don’t act good. He gets a whole lot of us with food, so we’re tripped up with being unhealthy and unhappy.

He also trips us up with fear, laziness, busyness. Honey, if he can keep you distracted, he wins. Sure he will offer you bread, or addictive scrolling, or alcohol, or pills, or never ending Netflix series, or toxic relationships, or a demanding work schedule. Whatever it takes to keep you distracted from the purposes you were created for. Whatever it takes to keep you feeling and playing little. Whatever it takes to overwhelm you, defeat you, discourage you, and distract you.

Jesus was hungry. I don’t know, I’ve never fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, but I once did a 10 day juice cleanse and I could literally smell bacon cooking 3/4 of a mile away. I was grouchy, irritable, and weak. Jesus must have been feeling some sort of way out there in the wilderness. The offer of bread must have been a direct shot to his heart and his stomach.

Verse 4, Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” What just happened there was precisely what God wants to show us about battling the tempter. Oh and that’s exactly what the enemy of your soul is, he is the tempter. There’s one way to battle him. It’s not to just take it. It’s not to play the victim and get pitiful. It’s not to curl up in a ball and cry about how unfair it is. No, girls, we gotta get fired up about this. How dare the tempter try and poke at you. How dare he try to distract you. How dare he try to dump his crap on you and make you accept it as your own.

Jesus talks back to the tempter, and he throws the truth at him. He quotes scripture. Jesus literally quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 as his weapon. The lessons God taught the Israelites when they were in the wilderness hungry, Jesus now applied to his hunger in the wilderness.

And that’s how we do it girls. We take God’s lessons to the Israelites, to Noah and Jonah, to Adam and Eve, to Moses and Joshua, to David and Peter, to Mary and Elizabeth, to Sarah and Esther, to the woman at the well, and the woman with the issue of blood, and the woman caught in adultery, the blind man and the crippled man … we take those lessons in God’s word and we apply them to our lives.

If God was with 3 guys in a fiery furnace, he will be with you in your fiery furnace. If God shut the mouths of the lions for Daniel, he can shut the mouths of the lions in your den. If God parted the seas for Moses, he can part the seas for you. If God supplied miraculous provision every morning for the Israelites, he can miraculously provide for you.

This is your weapon. This is how you fight. You don’t just take what the enemy throws at you. You don’t just lay down and accept his pokes in defeat. Do not be distracted. Do not be detoured. Do not be discouraged. Come back at him with God’s word!

What does this mean? This means you need to be in God’s word. You’re not going to know what Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery if you’re not in his word. You’re not going to know how he responded to a group of friends who relentlessly pursued Jesus for healing of their friend. You’re not going to know how Jesus provided for the single mom who had absolutely nothing left when the debt collectors were coming for her.

YOU HAVE TO KNOW!

Why? So you can come back at the enemy of your soul instead of putting up with his crap!

My husband is a man of few words, but when he speaks, wisdom pours from the deep places he has stored what God has revealed to him. When raising our kids, I often heard him say, “Put so much of the good stuff in, there’s no room for the bad stuff.” If you’re eating healthy, fulfilling meals every 3 hours, there’s no room for the hot fudge ice cream sundae and sprinkle doughnuts. If you’re drinking 200 ounces of water a day, there’s no room for 3 glasses of wine at the end of the day. If you’re filling your mind with God’s truths, there’s no room for the devils lies.

I can ramble off a list of God’s truths about me that would make your head spin! I know I am chosen. I know I am perfectly equipped. I know I am here for a time such as this. I know I am fully forgiven. I designed for a purpose. I know I am divinely guided. I know I am his beloved. I know I have a future filled with good plans by a good God. I know I am protected by his shadow. I know I am healed and whole and lacking absolutely nothing. I know God is for me.

Because I have all this packed inside of me, backed by God’s word, when the enemy comes at me with some temptation, there’s simply no room to accept it! I have no room for your lies. I have no room for your insults. I have no room for your doubts. Sorry Satan, there’s no space for you in my heart, in my mind, in my soul … It’s filled to capacity with all that God offers me.

This is what Jesus shows us when he is tempted. The tempter can’t have space in our lives when our lives are full of God. Jesus shuts him down with God’s truths. And then here’s what happened, verse 11, “Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.”

Do you need the devil to leave you the heck alone? Do you need him to get out of your head? Flood him out! Flood him out with God’s truth. Read it. Listen to it. Sing it. Think about it. Memorize it. Talk about it. Then the devils leaves when he sees there’s no space for him, and the angels come and attend to you.

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