For the first time ever you see fear in your own eyes. The face in the mirror looks as if it belongs to another person. Not you.
The warrior has been defeated. Although this is not the first time he's taken down, it's definitely the first time that the failure resonates in his bones and makes him tingle with a nameless fear. A fear of being defined by this failure. A fear of never getting up and fulfilling his potential for good. A fear that he is failure reincarnate.
The more he tries to stay ahead of the enemy, the harder he falls when he takes the wound. The more he wills to fight, the more unsparing the enemy's troops get. It is a war for his mind, and he's losing it. Big time.
Do you know how to corrupt a man? Give him exactly what he wants, and when he finds out that it is not what he want after all, blame him for the choice. That's where you are right now. You've made your choice, and it costs you double of everything you could have earned had you made a different choice... and every footing you have gained until now. Your strength, that is.
Now you're a dead man. You cease to live and have reduced to mere existing. Your strength has been tested against temptations that would have given you the opportunity to grow stronger but instead, like Adam, you chose to weaken.
Now peace has left you. Your soul is reproaching you day and night and even when you sleep, you could not rest. For sin has bound you and hold you hostage. There is no hiding place. You have fled from Him and so you have forsaken your only shelter in stormy weathers. Now there is only fear, fear, and more fear. Reproach, reproach, and much more reproach. All you can do now is curse, and even that is not what you wish you have left to do... Damn the choice! Damn the choice!
This maneuver of the enemy's is a huge killer app for many a young warrior today. They love it, they constantly seek it out, and they are bound by its spells. It has been brutalized and grotesquely transformed into an attacking beast, striking at men who are curious enough to look its way. They must be saved. They must be set free.
It's not an easy task. Maybe it's not meant to be. Nothing worth having ever is. It's a road on which heroes and villains are made before the last battle comes when each of us must take up our destined role.
Like it or not, we're in a freedom battle.
