I can geek out on interagency military and CIA collaboration shows like The Brave and Seal Team 6. While those are fictitious and quite enhanced compared to real life, I think there is something deep within us that longs to see what perfectly executed collaborative missions would look like. We are, first and foremost, spirit beings who have a soul that connects us to the natural realm, and we are encased in a human body that responds to the input from both the soul and the spirit.
We are highly complex multifaceted beings. Everything from having 11 systems seamlessly collaborating in order to help the human body function, to the facets of our soul and spirit, we, like our creator have many parts creating the one self. Think of yourself as the most technologically advanced multi-branch military, secret service, judicial, and executive organization in which each agency is required to interact with all of the other agencies in order for the whole government unit to properly function. You are highly sophisticated and, when operating in unity as intended at creation, you are unstoppable.
And yet, we are not taught or conditioned to operate as a cohesive unit.
There are some parts of your personality that are strong because you’ve overly relied on those parts of yourself in constructing your sense of identity. For instance, many men identify with their strength, integrity, intelligence, logical problem-solving, protective, providing parts of themselves in which they see themselves as the strong tower their family and employees can lean on. Many women, really identity with the nurturing, communicative, kind, helpful parts of themselves in which they are accustomed to being the emotionally strong one that their family and friends lean on for moral support and acts of service.
Now, I hope you can see through these sweeping generalizations, that no one is this simplistic and one-dimensional. Both males and female are far more complex and multidimensional than this. Males have sensitive, emotional, vulnerable, nurturing sides of them, and females have dominant, strong, fierce, bad-ass leader parts of them. The problem is when we overly identify with only a few sides of our personality, we under-develop the other sides of our personality.
Anything under-developed can become a liability.
If you were a government, and you were only funding your military but not supporting domestic infrastructure, your nation would be unstable. Or if you were so concerned with social services and not investing in your counterterrorism measures, you would be a sitting duck at the next time the enemy attacks. The enemy comes to kill, steal, and divide. He separates nations, ethnicities, relationships, and especially our relationship with ourselves.
Our ability to withstand attack depends upon 1) our ability to clearly communicate between agencies 2) our ability to positively collaborate between agencies. This brings me back to the enjoyment of interagency collaboration espionage shows. Since the moment of conception, you have been targeted by the most vicious terrorist cell– the enemy hates you because your Father God loves you enough to die for you. So, your enemy sets out to destroy you as a way to spite your Heavenly Father.
The enemy knows he cannot attack you with a frontal assault, as a strategist he has been studying the weak links in you in order to get you to turn on yourself. As he pokes at our weak points he laughs as he watches us destroy ourselves.
As with every terrorist attack, there are several tactics that are highly effective:
- Disconnect you from your natural resources
- Shut down your coms to cut you off from outside support – mistrust toward God causes your soul to take over control (effectively closing your spiritual eyes and ears so you cannot get intel from Holy Spirit)
- Use of psychological warfare to get you to turn on yourself (in group fighting keeps you from recognizing his nefarious killing, stealing, and destroying he is doing against you)
But fear not! We are capable equipped to take action.
First, we must honor and thank our defense mechanisms. That part of us has been working on behalf of our safety and we are so grateful for all of their efforts – even when it results in a defense mechanism gone wrong. Next, we can invite Jesus to meet and relieve these parts of self by rejecting their inner vows and judgments against the “shame” parts of self they’ve judged. This enables us to connect with and grieve the pain of the original wound. Finally, we are able to restore the original longing and invite this original need to be met.
You have been called and equipped to maneuver enemy attacks in your city, family, and inner world. Even when we get tripped up, believe lies, or lose a battle, we must not give up. It is in our very nature to seek victory even with defeat in the rear view mirror. Be at peace knowing the enemy tactic, and take action against it. We believe you can do it. Do you?
Hear more from Dr. Shannan Crawford on her Podcast “Unlock U with Dr. Shannan Crawford.“
Learn more about Crawford Clinics.
