Transcription
20 mistakes Christians make without realizing it. The enemy uses these against you every day.
There are things you can do as a Christian and the devil will be excited because he knows he can use it against you. These things are mistakes, serious and costly spiritual mistakes. Some believers do it without even knowing the consequences. Unfortunately, the enemy waits patiently for you to make these mistakes and hand him access to your life. Today you'll discover every single one of those access points. 20 mistakes, 20 doors, 20 things the enemy uses against believers every single day. Stay until the end because we are going to close every one of those doors in prayer.
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The Apostle Paul wrote something that every single believer needs to take seriously. In 2 Corinthians 2:11, he said, "Lest Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices." Notice that phrase, "We are not ignorant of his devices." Paul was declaring a standard for how the church should live. We should not be naive about how the enemy operates. Today that ignorance ends.
We are dividing these 20 mistakes into four categories. Mistakes of the mouth, mistakes of the mind, mistakes of the spirit, and mistakes of relationships and authority. Each category corresponds to a spiritual warfare vulnerability the enemy actively exploits. Let's go through them one by one.
Category one, mistakes of the mouth. Proverbs 18:21, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." This is not a metaphor. It is a spiritual law.
Mistake one, murmuring and complaining. This is perhaps the most common and most underestimated mistake in the Christian life. We know the story of Israel in the wilderness. They saw the Red Sea part. They ate mana from heaven. They drank water from a rock. And yet within days they were complaining. 1 Corinthians 10:10. "nor complain as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer." Notice that complaining gave access to the destroyer. It wasn't just bad manners. It was a spiritual open door.
When you wake up in the morning and your first words are about how bad things are about your boss, your finances, your body, well, your government, you are not venting. You are speaking an invitation to darkness. God calls it a sin, not a personality trait, not a coping mechanism, a sin that opened doors for an entire generation to die in the wilderness before reaching their promise. The correction is not suppression, it's gratitude. "In everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus." Begin to speak thanks where you once spoke complaint and watch what changes.
Mistake two, speaking defeat over your own life. There is a category of speech that is subtler than complaining and equally dangerous. It is the habit of speaking death over yourself as a form of casual language. He phrases like, "I'm so broke I can't even breathe. I'll never be good enough. This sickness is going to kill me. Nothing ever works out for me." These statements feel like honesty. They feel like realism. But the Bible does not call us to speak what we see. It calls us to speak what God has declared. Romans 4:17, "God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did." You are made in the image of that God. You have been given the power of speech and the enemy knows it. He studies your words because your words signal where your faith is anchored. When you speak defeat, you are not being humble. You are being faithless and faithlessness is a door.
Mistake three, using the name of God carelessly. The third commandment says, "Yes, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." Most Christians have reduced this to not cursing with God's name. But the original Hebrew is far broader. The word vain, shave, in Hebrew, means empty, worthless, without purpose. Taking God's name in vain, includes invoking his name with no spiritual weight behind it. Every time you say, "God told me," when God didn't tell you, that is taking his name in vain. Every time you say, "I'm covered by the blood as a ritual phrase with no faith in it," that is vain. Every time you make an oath in God's name, and break it, that is vain. This matters because God is not mocked. The careless use of his name does not just displease him, it removes the reverent power that should accompany the name of Jesus when spoken in faith.
Mistake four, cursing people, including yourself. Many Christians do not realize that they regularly speak curses. [clears throat] Not dramatic witchcraft style curses, just careless, bitter, frustrated words that carry the weight of a curse because of the spiritual authority behind the believer's tongue. James 3:9-10 makes this devastatingly clear. "With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so." When you say to your child in anger, "You'll never amount to anything." That is a spoken curse from a covenant believer's mouth. The enemy treasures those words. When you say about yourself, "I'm just not smart or I'm always sick or I'll always be poor." You are cursing the temple of the Holy Spirit. Repentance is available now. And then breaking these words in the name of Jesus is part of walking in freedom.
Mistake five. Gossip and idle words. Jesus said in Matthew 12:36, "But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment." Gossip is far more than a social sin. It is a spiritual one. When you speak ill of another believer, you are doing the work of the accuser of the brethren. The word devil in Greek is diabolos, the slanderer, the one who accuses. When you gossip, you partner with that spirit and idle words, meaningless, careless speech are still accounted for. The spiritual atmosphere around your life is partly shaped by the words you speak. Idleness in speech is not neutral. It is an invitation for the enemy to fill the space your words created.
Shri, we've just covered five mistakes of the mouth. And if any of those hit close to home, that's the Holy Spirit doing his work. Before we continue, take two seconds to subscribe if you haven't yet. And share this video with a fellow believer. You might be sending them exactly what they need today. Let's keep going.
Category two, mistakes of the mind. Romans 12:2. "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." The battlefield is always the mind first.
Mistake six, entertaining sinful thoughts. There is a critical difference between a thought entering your mind and you choosing to dwell in it. The enemy sends fiery darts, thoughts designed to start fires. But a dart landing on your shield is not a sin. The sin is when you pick up the dart and examine it with interest. See 2 Corinthians 10:5. "Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." The word casting down in that verse is the Greek word cathyo, a violent forceful tearing down. Paul was not describing passive mental hygiene. He was describing aggressive spiritual warfare in the mind. Most Christians do not take their thoughts captive. They negotiate with them. They entertain them. They revisit them. And slowly entertained thoughts become settled beliefs. And settled beliefs become behaviors. The root of most sins is a thought the believer chose not to arrest.
Mistake seven, doubt dressed as humility. This is the mistake many believers will feel convicted by because it is disguised as something godly. When a believer says, "You know, I'm not sure God will heal me specifically," they think they're being theologically careful. When they say, "I don't want to presume on God's grace," they think they're being humble. But listen to what the word says. James 1:6-7. "But let him ask in faith with no doubting. For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord." That is not harsh. That is merciful clarity. A God who tells you upfront that doubt produces nothing is a God who is teaching you to pray effectively. The enemy loves believers who mistake doubt for humility. Because as long as you are doubting God's willingness, you will never press through in faith to receive what he has already provided.
Mistake eight, unforgiveness. When this one is well-known but routinely underestimated in its spiritual consequences. Matthew 18:34-35. "And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So my heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses." The torturers, the Greek word is basanistes. Those who inflict torment. Jesus was saying that unforgiveness legally hands the enemy a warrant to torment you. This is not poetic language. Believers who carry unforgiveness often experience precisely this sleeplessness, anxiety, obsessive thoughts, physical illness, spiritual dryness. The connection is not coincidental. It is judicial. Forgiving is not saying what was done to you was acceptable. Forgiveness is removing the legal ground the enemy holds over your life. You are not releasing the person, you are releasing yourself.
Mistake nine, fear and anxiety as a lifestyle. The Bible contains 365 instances of the command "fear not" or its equivalent, one for every day of the year. That is not coincidence. God knew this would be a daily battle. Second Timothy 1:7, "for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." Notice the phrase "a spirit of fear." Paul was not describing a personality type or an anxiety disorder. He was identifying a spiritual entity, a demonic spirit that attaches to believers who tolerate fear. When fear becomes your default response to uncertainty, you are not just struggling emotionally. You are in spiritual agreement with a spirit God did not give you. And spiritual agreement is the same as spiritual invitation. The correction is not simply positive thinking. It is the renewing of the mind through the word, active declaration, and if necessary, deliverance prayer.
Mistake 10, pride and spiritual arrogance. You would think this one is obvious, but pride among mature believers is not always the loud, boastful kind. It is often the subtle conviction that you have outgrown the need for certain things. The believer who stops submitting to a spiritual covering because they feel they've grown beyond it. The Christian who stops genuinely listening during sermons because they feel they already know this. The prayer warrior who stops asking others to pray for them because they are the strong one. Proverbs 16:18. "Pride goes before destruction in a haughty spirit before a fall." The enemy's strategy with mature believers is never to get them to commit obvious sins. His strategy is to get them proud because pride isolates and isolation is the enemy's favorite hunting ground.
10 mistakes down and we are just halfway through. This is where the teaching goes even deeper. If this video is speaking to you, drop a comment below. Just type, "I close every door I've opened to the enemy." Let's continue.
Category three, mistakes of the spirit. John 4:24. "God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." Spiritual disciplines are not optional extras. They are the plumbing of your spiritual life.
Mistake 11. Treating prayer as a last resort. For many Christians, prayer is the emergency exit, the thing you turn to when everything else has failed. But the biblical model is prayer as the first response, not the final one. Philippians 4:6. "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." Notice the word "everything." Not just crises, not just terminal situations, everything. When prayer is a last resort, the enemy has months of uncontested territory in your life. Every situation you handle through human ingenuity alone without prayer is a situation you've invited the enemy into as a silent partner. Prayer is a real-time communication with the commander of the armies of heaven. Treating it as a last resort is like a soldier walking into a battlefield and deciding to radio for air support only after they've been shot.
Mistake 12. Neglecting the word of God. When there is a generation of Christians who are spiritually malnourished, not because they lack access to the Bible, but because they consume more social media theology than scripture. Hebrews 4:12. "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." The sword of the spirit is the word of God. Ephesians 6:17. When you neglect the word, you are going into spiritual battle unarmed, and the enemy, who has been studying scripture for thousands of years, will use it against you, just as he did with Jesus in the wilderness. The question is not whether you believe the Bible. The question is whether you know it well enough to use it.
Hey, mistake 13. Participating in occult practices unknowingly. This is the mistake that will surprise many viewers because it doesn't always look like what you expect. Horoscopes and daily zodiac readings, even for entertainment. Visiting divers, palm readers, or psychics just for fun. Using certain wellness crystals for spiritual purposes. Engaging with manifestation practices rooted in new age philosophy rather than scripture. Watching or participating in certain games that invoke occult themes in a participatory way. Deuteronomy 18:10-12. "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire or one who practices witchcraft or a soothsayer or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord." God does not grade occult involvement by intention. The word abomination, tova, in Hebrew, describes something inherently defiling. It contaminates the one who touches it, regardless of why they touched it. If any of these things have been part of your past or present, that is not a reason for shame, it is a reason to renounce, repent, and close the door. And we will do exactly that in prayer before this video ends.
Mistake 14, neglecting communion. The communion table, the Lord's Supper, is one of the most supernaturally powerful tools available to every believer, and it is one of the most neglected. 1 Corinthians 11:26, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes." The communion table is not just a memorial, it is a covenant renewal. It is a proclamation of the finished work of Christ. His body broken for our healing. His blood shed for our forgiveness. Paul wrote that many in the Corinthian church were sick and some had died because they were taking communion without discernment. The flip side of that sobering warning is this. When you take communion with discernment, with faith in regular covenant, there is healing, protection, and breakthrough in it. The enemy is terrified of believers who understand the power of the blood.
Mistake 15, living without a prayer language. For our Pentecostal and charismatic family watching, this one is for you specifically. Praying in tongues, your prayer language is not a badge of superiority. It is a weapon. And many believers have received it and allowed it to go dormant. 1 Corinthians 14:4, "He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself." Romans 8:26, "Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." When you don't know what to pray, pray in the spirit. When the enemy has confused your mind so you can't form words, pray in the spirit. When you are too tired, too broken, too overwhelmed, pray in the spirit. The Holy Ghost bypasses your intellect and prays the perfect will of God over your situation. A dormant prayer language is a weapon left on the battlefield.
Category four, mistakes of relationships and authority. Proverbs 27:17. "As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend." No Christian is designed to war alone.
Mistake 16. Dishonoring spiritual authority. There is a movement in modern Christianity that celebrates independence from spiritual oversight. Social media has made it easy to get teaching from hundreds of sources while submitting to none of them. And the enemy loves this arrangement. Hebrews 13:17. "Obey those who rule over you and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you." Spiritual covering is not a church tradition. It is a protective structure. When you dishonor, slander, or consistently undermine your spiritual leaders, you are not just being difficult. You are removing a layer of spiritual protection from your own life. This does not mean blind obedience or staying under abusive leadership. It means that a posture of honor toward those God has placed over you is a posture of spiritual safety.
Mistake 17, unequal yoking. Many Christians are living with their prayers partially blocked because they have deliberately yolked themselves to people who walk in spiritual darkness and they know it. 2 Corinthians 6:14. "Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness, and what communion has light with darkness?" This applies to marriage, and everyone knows that application. But it also applies to business partnerships, to close friendships, to covenant relationships of any kind. Amos 3:3 says, "Can two walk together unless they are agreed?" When your primary relationships are with people who reject the God you serve, your spiritual direction will eventually be compromised. It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.
Mistake 18, forsaking the assembly. Hebrews 10:25 is one of the most quoted and most ignored verses in the New Testament. "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching." Notice the phrase, "And so much the more as you see the Day approaching." We are told that as the end of the age draws nearer, gathering together becomes more, not less important. The lone Christian is the vulnerable Christian. The enemy targets isolated believers. He studies the sheep who have drifted from the flock. Crucial spiritual community is not optional fellowship. It is protective warfare.
Mistake [clears throat] 19. Sewing without expectation or giving with wrong motives. This mistake comes in two forms that are equally dangerous. The first form, believers who give to God's work out of obligation, guilt, or social pressure with no faith that God honors their giving. They give, but they never expect anything back from God and they never receive anything because faith is the currency of the kingdom. The second form, believers who give with manipulation, treating offerings as transactions to force God's hand or giving to be seen by others. 2 Corinthians 9:7. "So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver." Giving with resentment is sowing into the kingdom with a poison seed. E giving with manipulation is attempting to buy what can only be received by grace. Both are mistakes and both block the harvest.
Mistake 20. Not knowing your authority in Christ. We end where we should have begun. Because this final mistake is the foundation of all the others. Most Christians live as spiritual subjects waiting for God to do things they have already been authorized to do themselves. They pray for God to rebuke the devil when Jesus told them to do it. They pray for God to heal when Jesus said, "Heal the sick." They ask God to restore their peace when Jesus said, "My peace I give to you." Luke 10:19, "Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you." The Greek word for authority there is exusia, delegated legal power, the power of attorney. Jesus was saying, "I have given you my legal power to act in this realm." But delegated authority only works when you use it. A believer who does not know their authority in Christ is like a police officer who doesn't know the law. They can be present at the scene of a crime and do nothing because they don't know they have the power to act. Learn your authority. Declare it. Exercise it. The enemy is not afraid of Christians who don't know who they are. He is terrified of those who do.
We are living in an hour where the enemy has intensified his strategy. The book of Revelation describes a season when Satan comes down with great wrath because he knows his time is short. Revelation 12:12. One in that kind of hour, spiritual sloppiness is not just a personal problem. It is a liability to everyone around you. Your family, your church, your community. The mistakes we've covered today are not small. They are the exact same vulnerabilities the enemy has been exploiting in the body of Christ for generations. And God in his mercy is bringing them to the light. Because what is exposed can be repented of. What is repented of can be closed. What is closed cannot be exploited. This is your moment right now. Don't let this video end as entertainment. Let it end as transformation.
Prayer of repentance and restoration. If you are ready to close these doors, pray this prayer out loud with me right now.
Father God, I come before you in the name of Jesus Christ, and I thank you that your mercy endures forever. Lord, I repent today for every mistake I have made without knowing it. I repent for every idle and careless word I have spoken, for every complaint that left my mouth, for every time I cursed myself or others with my words. I repent for every thought I chose to entertain rather than cast down. For every doubt I dressed as humility. For every fear I allowed to become a home in my heart. I repent for any involvement knowingly or unknowingly in occult practices. I renounce every connection to divination, horoscopes, new age practices, and all works of darkness in the name of Jesus. I repent for unforgiveness. Lord, I choose today to release every person who has wronged me. I cancel the legal ground the enemy holds in my life because of bitterness. I repent for neglecting your word, for treating prayer as a last resort, for allowing my spiritual disciplines to decay. And Lord, I step into my authority today. I am a blood-bought, spirit-filled, authority-carrying child of the most high God. I cancel every assignment of the enemy against my life, my family, and my destiny in the name of Jesus. I close every door we identified today. I decree no access, no legal ground, no open invitation. The blood of Jesus covers every point of entry. Thank you Lord for this revelation. Thank you for the blood that never loses its power. I receive my freedom now in Jesus mighty name. Amen.
If you just prayed that prayer, something has shifted. I want you to know that freedom is not always loud. Sometimes it is a quiet, settled peace that tells you the door has been shut and the enemy has left the premises. Receive it. And now it is your responsibility to stay free. Review the 20 mistakes we covered. Write them down. Go through them one by one over the next few weeks and allow the Holy Spirit to show you which ones need the most attention in your life. The word says in John 8:32, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The truth you receive today is a weapon. Use it.
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And if you want to go even deeper, check the description for additional resources. Finally, download the ebook titled How to Become a Strong Christian, click the link in the description or pinned comment to download your copy now. Until next time, stay covered, stay armed, stay free. God bless you.