You Cannot Resist What You Do Not Recognize

Have you ever heard the narrative in your head that goes something like this?

Just look at the way they avoid eye contact, they do not like you…
You can’t trust anyone … people will always betray you…
You have nothing to offer, just stay home and watch church on TV…

The enemy knows he can’t change your heavenly destination, but he will still try his best to incite offense, unforgiveness, unreal expectations and a host of other lies to keep you out of fellowship with true believers.

It had been eighteen months, and I was still struggling to forgive the younger pastor and his wife. My husband, Ross, invited them into a church merger with the hope of leaving a legacy—passing the baton of leadership after shepherding the congregation for nearly four decades. What was supposed to be a five-year gradual transition turned into a swift and painful ousting. The congregation never saw it coming and was not asked for a vote, but simply told, “If you don’t like it, you can find another church.”

I knew forgiveness was nonnegotiable. I knew the Word: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26–27). I cried out to the Lord, asking Him to help me forgive from the heart. But my heart wasn’t cooperating.

In the quiet of my prayer time, I was reminded of the verse: “[Your] battle is not against flesh and blood …”

That familiar verse from Ephesians 6:12 (HCSB) echoed through my spirit, and suddenly, pieces started falling into place. The young pastor’s home, purchased more than a decade earlier, was once occupied by members of the very organization that had stolen everything from me twenty years prior. That wasn’t just a coincidence.

Parallels between the manipulation and control I’d experienced when the false shepherd conned me out of my publishing company became clear, and I understood how this younger pastor and the board had pushed my husband out.

When my publishing company first went out of my hands and into the hands of the false shepherd in 2010, my salary had been slashed in half without warning. Now the elders did the same to Ross, with no notice.

It wasn’t long before I was demoted to menial tasks despite my role as cofounder of a twenty-year-old, $3.5 million company. And now, Ross, founder of this nearly forty-year-old church, was told he could preach only occasionally and would be allowed to gather the seniors every other week and oversee life groups.

Continuing to compare my crushing betrayal and dismissal and the way my husband was treated, I thought about the final blow in my thirteen years of spiritual abuse. It came in the form of a cease-and-desist letter and I was threatened with legal action if I didn’t pay a tax bill my former publishing company owed. And in this present-day situation? A certified letter arrived, barring Ross, his family, and me, from even stepping foot onto the church property the day before he was supposed to officiate a memorial service. This was the very building they inherited in the merger, a $6 million facility, and Ross was labeled a traitor.

That was my aha moment.

I recognized the same spirit. The same thief. The one Jesus exposed in John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” All at once, I could see the truth: This wasn’t just about people behaving badly—this was spiritual warfare. It was as though the scales dropped from my eyes as I connected the dots.

You cannot resist what you do not recognize.

In that moment, forgiveness became possible because I recognized the source. I saw how that same arrogant, accusatory, condemning, deceptive spirit was at work again deceiving those who were once friends and filling them with evil suspicions. It wasn’t personal anymore. It was war.

While the parallel between Ross’s situation and mine is not exactly the same, the fact remains: the origin was. The same accuser controlled both betrayals. For the first time I could finally forgive from my heart, responding not with bitterness but with grace.

James 4:7 rang louder than ever: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Forgiveness slammed the door shut on the enemy’s access. And I realized how easily we open it back up, through offense, through pride, through withholding grace.

Second Corinthians 2:10–11 says, “And what I have forgiven, if there was anything to forgive, I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.”

But what if we are, indeed, unaware?

The eighteen months of struggle with unforgiveness as Satan outwitted me came to an end. The dots connected as I recognized the potential for Satan’s victory, his influence on my heart. My eyes opened to this truth.

If we don’t recognize the enemy’s tactics, we will fall for them every time. Offense becomes a foothold. Unforgiveness becomes an entry point. And before we know it, our lives, marriages, ministries, and families are under siege.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, and John 10:10 is still true: The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full, (NIV). As we begin to recognize the lies the enemy brings, we are able to take those thoughts captive and stand firm against his schemes!

by Athena Dean Holtz