EVERY DREAM HAS ITS DETRACTORS!

Every dream has its detractors.

An enemy sleeps when you work and works against you when you sleep, his/her compass bearings are always pointing in the wrong direction.  Our anxiety is caused by our expectation of good from evil.  We expect sweetness from bitter sources, and in the end we are disappointed not by the enemy but by our own expectations.

Enemies disrupt your good work because you threaten to expose their laziness by succeeding where they fail.  They never operate from a foundation of strength but always from a position of weakness.  Saul was afraid of David"s successes that is why he became his enemy, ^{1Sa 18:29} “Saul became still more afraid of him, and he remained his enemy the rest of his days.”

If you lose sleep over your enemy your focus is misdirected, your energy wasted and your success delayed.  You ignore the essentials and concentrate on non-essentials.  You spend more time building high fences for your security instead of exploring opportunities for expansion and growth. 

One of the best ways to deal with enemies’ is not to lavish them with the attention they expect but to ignore them and pursue your dream as competently and as completely as you can: that in fact is more piercing than a confrontation.  Just go about with your business as if they don’t exist, if they disrupt it, pick up the pieces and try again.  Many years ago, Rudyard Kipling wrote in a poem called “IF,”

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build’em up with worn out tools

Yours is the earth and everything in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a man my son

The enemy’s best weapon is to instil panic and panic always leads to discouragement, discouragement to abandonment.  His/her highest objective is to see you throw out your dream.  Enemies enjoy sowing weed where others sow seed.  The challenge is how you respond.  When enemies’ disrupt your good work you need to be sober enough to make a good decision for the next step, you need to be calm because sometimes it is a matter of life and death.  Remember the Farmer's advice in the parable of Christ, when the farm workers wanted to rush into the fields and uproot the weeds, the farmer decided against it, “While you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest.”  If your decision is based on your emotions, you must prepare for commotion not promotion.

Enemies’ are usually faceless; if you remove the weed they may return to root out the seed, letting the seed and the weed grow together increases your chances of a good harvest.  It may look chaotic at first but when the blades shoot up and the ears begin to grow, a trained eye can separate the wheat from the weeds.  If you rush in, you may play right into the hands of the enemy.

Sometimes we destroy our good work because we want to rush in and fight the fires, but some things are best defended by the test of time.  For a while, everything may appear green and we can’t tell the seed from the weed, but in the end the seed is not the weed, and the difference in the blades will be obvious and crystal clear for all to see.

Good and evil may exist side by side but eventually truth triumphs.  Pharaoh called his magicians to turn their sticks into snakes like Moses did, but eventually the snake with God swallowed the rest.  Truth does not need to be defended because it can defend itself.  It may take a while for the aura of a lie to die down, but eventually it must give way to the sterner character of a truth that never gives in to the popular demands of time, because truth is vindicated in the unfolding processes of time.