The Enemy Within

In Psalm 84 Asaph is considering an impending attack from Israel's enemies.  He lists them all, nation by nation, talking of their plans to wipe Israel off the map and take their land.  He's praying to God for help and protection and asking God to deliver His people from this threat.

I was thinking about the condition they must have been in.  Nations preparing to battle.  Fearful of the future and seeking God's protection.

It's hard for us to understand the feelings and thoughts that must have been pounding in their hearts and heads.  We are at relative peace.  I wonder sometimes because I've been watching shows like 24 and Jericho and The Walking Dead and they make you wonder if we really are at peace.  But at least for normal Americans like me, I do not feel threatened.  I don't think my way of life is going to end any minute.  I'm not fearful of the end of life as we know it.  It's hard to understand the feelings Asaph and the people of Israel must have had.

Then something occurred to me.  We are not threatened by external enemies who want to crush us, but that doesn't mean we are not threatened.  Our enemies don't have names like Moab, Amalek, Philistia or Ammon.  Our enemies are named Lust.  Greed.  Fear.  Hate.  Anger.  Depression and hopelessness.  These enemies aren't physical but they are just as real and just as able to destroy us.

Satan uses these internal enemies to attack us when we are at our weakest.  They lay in wait until we are tired, fed-up or stressed out.  Then they attack with no conscience.  No feeling.  No compassion.  Satan's plan is and always has been to steal, kill and destroy.  He'll do that anyway he can.

So Asaph's prayer can still be our prayer.
"My God!  I've had it with them!  Blow them away... Knock the breath right out of them... bring them to the end of their rope and leave them dangling, helpless."

I may not be attacked from an exterior, physical enemy but I am attacked - this week in fact, so this prayer is personal for me.  God, do to my internal enemies, the enemies of my mind, my peace, my hope, my faith what you did to the national enemies of Israel.  Destroy them and let me stand.