“Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case. We are ready to kill him before he gets here.” But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.” Act 23:15-16

Friends, there is no well-organized regiment that will launch attack on an enemy without first understanding its tactics. We learnt from the scripture above that Paul’s nephew only exposed the secret of the plotters because he understood their tactics. As Christians, we must understand the tactics of the waster before dealing with it. The waster in this case is the devil and his tactics are General and Specific

GENERAL TACTICS

1. Subtleness: Clever way of achieving what you want in life. So, for the devil, he is using clever way of unleashing wickedness and destroying destinies. (Genesis 3:1-7)

Effects of his subtleness include generational course (Genesis 3:16-17) and untimely death (Genesis 4:8)

2. Assigns agents in homes to cause wickedness. These are called household enemies. Household enemies are more dangerous because it is usually difficult to detect them. You lower your guards at home because you believe you are among people who love and care for you but Don’t be complacent because what kills the beans lives in the beans. (Micah 7:5-7)

Household enemies turn husband against wife and children, wife against mother-in-law, unleash hatred among brothers and sisters, initiate little children into witchcraft, etc.

Effects of this include, setback, constant failure, marital misfortunes, miscarriages, etc.

3. Disobedience (Colossian 3:5-7, 1 Samuel 15:23)

4. Lying & twisting of truth (John 8:44, 2 Timothy 4:3-4)

SPECIFIC TACTICS

1. SPIRIT OF PRIDE: There are many potentials that await us if only we let go pride and hold on God’s plan. (James 4:6 Proverb 16:18)

2. SPIRIT OF LAZINESS: Laziness has no place in the character of a follower of Jesus. If that is the case, then we must always be smart and pushful in our endeavors. (Eccl 9:10, 1 Timothy 5:8)

To attack the waster’s tactics, the weapons we need are described in Ephesians 6:13-18 and they include truth, righteousness, evangelism, faith, sword of the spirit and prayer.