Blinding the Eyes of the Enemy - Part 2

Last week, we discussed how dwelling in the secret place is the key to staying hidden from the eye of the adversary in your life. Intimacy with God is the very thing that blinds your spiritual opponents. The life lived in the cocoon of God’s presence frustrates the enemy and thwarts his assaults against our families, churches and communities, as well as our health and finances.

Dwelling in the Glory realm is not an option for the believer. The secret place is a place of vulnerability both for you and for God. In this place of intimacy, you open your heart to God, and He opens His to you. It is the place where inmost secrets are revealed. Did you know that God wants to make Himself vulnerable to you? He is looking for a friend He can trust.

He said of Abraham: Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing? (Gen. 18:17). The mysteries of God become unhidden in the place of intimacy and friendship. As we draw near to Him, He pours out secret counsel and withholds nothing from us.

The opposite is true in the case of sin. Where there is hardness of heart or rebellion, God reveals nothing, but instead hides His face:

“Then My anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured. And many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’

“And I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil which they have done, in that they have turned to other gods” (Deut. 31:17-18).

One of the most prevalent “other gods” being worshipped today is the spirit of religion. Religion blinds us to the true things of God. He must hide His face from us when we pursue this false form of godliness. This was the same problem present in the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Jesus called them the blind leading the blind.

“And Jesus said, ‘For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.’ Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, ‘Are we blind also?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, “We see.” Therefore your sin remains’” (John 9:39-41).

Jesus frustrates and blinds religion. Religion, which boasts its haughty claim to “see”, is rendered sightless by the Son of God. Those who confess their weakness and utter dependence upon Him, they are the ones who receive sight for their blindness. The Pharisees, however, trusted in their own self-righteousness. They were so lacking in true intimacy that they could not recognize the God they claimed to worship, even when He visited them in the flesh. As the apostle Paul told the Corinthians:

“But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ” (2 Cor. 3:14).

Paul learned of his own blindness in a dramatic encounter with the Lord. In Acts 9, when he was still a Pharisee, Saul was breathing murderous threats toward the church on his way to Damascus, when suddenly the Lord appeared to him in a bright light, striking him blind for three days. When his eyes were miraculously opened and the scales fell off of them, he was a changed man.

Our vision stays sharp, and God is clearly revealed to us, not through religious exercises or activities, but through faith expressed through love. Jesus is walking through the circumstances of your life right now, but can you recognize Him?

To blind the enemy from your affairs is as simple as having the Lord revealed in those same affairs. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ that really matters, not the defeat of your adversary. You cannot have one without the other.

Have you felt blinded to the things of God? Have you experienced a season in which it seems God is hiding His face from you? This understandably leads to feelings of frustration or discouragement. This is how David must have felt when he said the following:

“Lord, why do You cast off my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?” (Ps. 88:14).

“Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my trouble; incline Your ear to me; in the day that I call, answer me speedily” (Ps. 102:2).

“Do not hide Your face from me; do not turn Your servant away in anger; you have been my help; do not leave me nor forsake me, O God of my salvation” (Ps. 27:9).

Consider also the lament of Job:

“Why do You hide Your face, and regard me as Your enemy?” (Job 13:20).

Many charismatic Christians would never confess their feelings of abandonment or hiddenness from God. While they prefer to maintain the talk of faith, they are unable to confess their heart’s true sense of discouragement. There are seasons in the course of every person’s life, where we feel that God has hidden Himself from us. This should not startle us nor cause us to panic. In these times when we cannot seem to feel or sense God, He is actually growing our faith and inviting us to a deeper walk of love.

If God seems more hidden from you than the enemy’s assaults, do not give up hope! Use this opportunity to grow stronger in your faith and in His everlasting love for you. The prophet Isaiah gives us keys in the hour when we feel God’s face is hidden from us. He says:

“And I will wait on the Lord, who hides His face from the house of Jacob; and I will hope in Him. Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me! We are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion” (Isa. 8:17-18).

In the season of hiddenness, you are not simply waiting for God to move on your behalf. This is the season where God is forging you to be a mover and a shaker. He is growing your faith so that you are no longer asking for miracles, but you become a sign and a wonder. When God was hidden from the patriarch Jacob, he wrestled and contended for the blessing. He did not give up. Sometimes your act of “wrestling” with God is as simple as resting in your faith. In the stillness before God, allow Him to draw you away to His secret pavilion:

“For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion; in the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock” (Ps. 27:5)

“You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the plots of man; You shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues” (Ps. 31:20).

Again, we are brought back to the secret place. Whenever your enemy cannot see you, the victory has been won. Intimacy is the Holy Spirit’s “cloaking device” that enables you to become invincible to your adversary. Once the deviant schemes of satan are exposed, he is powerless. His only refuge is the lie. Truth exposes the enemy’s weak underbelly. Let us commune with Truth. In the inner chambers of God’s heart, the brightness of His shining begins to surround you until your adversary is blinded.

Let us look at one more verse that is coming into fulfillment for the people of God, spoken through the prophet Zechariah:

“‘And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. In that day,’ says the Lord, ‘I will strike every horse with confusion, and its rider with madness; I will open My eyes on the house of Judah, and will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness’” (Zech. 12:3-4).

We are surely coming into a day when the nations will be gathered against God’s people. But this is not a time to despair or revert to paranoia. God will move on our behalf. Perhaps there are areas of your life where you have been blinded by sin – perhaps you have given entry to the adversary on some point of error. The fact is, God loves you, even in your immaturity! As a Christian, you have been grafted into His holy city. Your sin no longer keeps you in enmity with God, but has been washed away as far as the east is from the west.

God opens His eye on Judah. Judah means praise. A people of intimate adoration draw the eye of God, and the eye of God dispels His adversaries. When He gazes at you, suddenly, your enemies become God’s enemies. The horses in this passage represent the strength and abilities of your enemies, which are struck blind. The thoughts and schemes of the adversary are likewise struck with madness.

In the bridal paradigm of this end-time church, it is God Himself who will blind the wicked one and confuse our foes. Our battle ceases to be a striving effort as we bask in His pavilions, for it is the God of peace who will soon crush satan underneath our feet.