Things to Stop Saying to Yourself in 2020

“You spend so much time on your enemies instead of on me. Forget your enemies and focus on me.”

It was the statement the Holy Spirit whispered ever so gently to my heart one morning while I was letting the devil know under my breath that he had no place or say in my life. It was an enlightening statement, and one I don’t plan to forget.

I grew up partly in a church culture and era where binding, casting and rebuking the enemy was a thing. It is not unusual to have hour-long or all-night prayer marathon sessions focused on praying and stumping out the enemy. Each session is incomplete without jumping around and screaming at the top of the lungs to exhaustion, but I could never get into the physical and verbal theatrics or into the annoying repetition of phrases. So I spent a lot of the time praying under my breath while watching people symbolically knock their enemies out with a punch and a kick.

But the culture stayed with me. It didn’t necessarily consume me, but ever so often, I got caught up on the Enemy and my enemies. Constantly rebuking anything I didn’t want in lieu of acknowledging and redirecting my energy was a thing until that morning a few years ago. I had to learn to focus the bulk of my energy and mind on God and the blessings, instead of on the enemies and the haters. Cue Burna Boy’s “Anybody” — “I don…