Acts 2:35 (ESV)
“…until I make your enemies your footstool.”’
Power of deception binds us in our mind. The enemy sure knows where to begin his battle. He targets and invades the mind as he nibbles through bit by bit for some over the years while a big blow of attack crashes in for others. Just as God employs our natural senses to communicate with us, Satan uses the same tactics. Sight and sound lifted the spirit of the 120 disciples during the Pentecost. The doom and gloom images are painted in many cultures to falsely inform us that we are utter losers. In order to survive being subdued in sufferings, we have to appease the enemy.
One such image was rooted in my mind since childhood until the Lord liberated me fully by his saving grace and precious blood. The feet of a fierce strong warrior god stepping on human beings signalled to many including myself not to defy him in any way. Fear gripped my heart for the longest time as I was taught the ways of idolatry. As a little child following my parents to the temples, I had a hate-love relationship with the ritual. Hated the morbid, hopeless and helpless feeling which oppressed me. “Love” the act of piousness inherited through the generations, which much later I recognized was an utter deception. How could I love the gods who oppressed me yet demanded my worship? The mind manipulation was inevitably so strong for many to keep bowing down to such a horrid oppressor.
Even after I was saved and had known Jesus, much effort was put in to intentionally uproot this deceptive thought that subtly played with my subconscious mind. That strong visual image coupled with teachings of old had etch deeply in the cognitive stem. Many people fall prey to this mind game. The enemy plays with our mind and grinds in different thoughts in different people using our past as his manipulative playground. Many surrender as subjects under his feet like this image of my childhood.
No wonder…Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)
The truth is the enemy is our footstool! Not the other way round. In some homes, when folks sit down the footstool is a lower piece of seat to support the feet so that it provides relaxation of the feet, making it less tired with better blood circulation. This is the image God wants to instill to our
mind as we uproot the lies of the enemy that tell us we are under his feet. No! We’re not under his.
Reject those thoughts.
Remove the formed negative patterns in our mind.
Restore the mind with the truth.
Rest our feet on the enemy and subdue it!
Quit surviving under our sufferings. Begin thriving in our triumphs.
Practise and Pray:
● If you feel like a loser, today read the verse again.
● Declare aloud the power of this truth.
● Decree that the enemy is your footstool (by calling out every single cause, circumstance and condition that seek to imply to bind you under the enemy’s feet). Yes, I said “imply” because it is not true. It only seems like it because you allow it to be. You gave the enemy the right to choke your life out when you should be resting fully on his neck as God made us more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:37)
● Read aloud the same declarations in Joshua 10:24; Romans 16:20; Matthew 22:44.
© Pr Selina Khoo Lim, Gateway City Church, Penang. 12 May 2020.