Summary

Have you ever wondered, what does a spiritual attack actually look like? Suddenly your home feels heavy, you are snapping at your kids, walking on eggshells with your spouse, and feeling completely overwhelmed by stress. It is incredibly frustrating, and you likely want to know if you are just failing as a mom, or if the adversary is actively targeting your family.

You are in the exact right place! In this episode of the Arise Women of God podcast, host Tamara K. Anderson is joined by Licensed Clinical Social Worker Wendi Christensen to expose the hidden signs of spiritual warfare in your home. Wendi shares that the single biggest sign of an attack is when you suddenly feel like you are "not yourself," leading to uncharacteristic snapping and anger. You will learn how to run a HALT vulnerability scan (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) to identify predictable windows when your guard is down and the enemy is likely to strike.

Tamara also dives into the Old Testament story of Nehemiah to show how spiritual attacks often masquerade as highly appealing, exhausting distractions to pull you away from the great work God has for you. Discover how to use a "Not-To-Do List" to protect your peace, recognize the "illusion of permanence," and step off the battlefield to cast out anger in the name of Jesus Christ!

Episode Takeaways

• The Biggest Warning Sign: The number one sign of an attack is feeling like you are simply "not yourself." If you are suddenly acting out of character (like intense, irrational bickering over something minor), the enemy is likely using anger to attack your relationships.
• The HALT Vulnerability Scan: The adversary strikes when your guard is down. The HALT acronym stands for: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. When you or your child hits a HALT threshold, it is a predictable window for the enemy to cause a sudden blow-up.
• The Nehemiah Principle (Exhausting Distractions): Spiritual warfare isn't always a direct assault on your faith. Like Nehemiah's enemies begging him to stop building the wall, the adversary uses exhausting distractions (even "good" things) to pull you away from what matters most.
• The Illusion of Permanence: The enemy loves to wipe out hope by causing "cognitive myopia." He convinces you that a temporary problem (a bad grade, a rough week) is permanent and will never change.

Free Resource: A Woman's Guide to Spiritual Warfare

Get our free A Mother's Spiritual Defense Guide: 6 Empowering Steps to Fortify Home & Family downloadable pdf here: https://www.womenwarriorsoflight.com/A-Mothers-Spiritual-Defense-Guide

Reflection Questions

• When you start snapping at your kids or spouse out of character, do you usually blame them, or do you recognize it as a targeted spiritual attack?
• Which of the HALT triggers (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) makes your family the most vulnerable to sudden arguments?
• Have you ever fallen for the "Illusion of Permanence," believing a temporary trial was going to ruin your family forever? How can you cast that lie out this week?

Host & Guest

Tamara K. Anderson @tamarakanderson

Wendi Christensen @wendichristensencounseling

Transcript

https://www.womenwarriorsoflight.com/blog/what-does-spiritual-attack-look-like

Hey, my friend, have you ever wondered, what does a spiritual attack actually look like?

Because suddenly your home feels heavy, you're snapping at your kids, walking on eggshells with your spouse, and feeling completely overwhelmed by stress. This can feel so very frustrating.

And perhaps you want to know if you're just failing as a mom or the adversary is actively targeting you and your family. Well, my friend, you are in the right place.

And by the end of today's episode, you will know the warning signs of a spiritual attack, how to run a halt vulnerability scan, and how to protect your home's spiritual temperature. Stay tuned. Ordinary women, extraordinary faith. When God calls, we say yes. Hello, and welcome to the Arise Women of God podcast.

I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson, and joining me today is the amazing Wendy Christensen.

Wendy is a licensed clinical social worker with over 30 years of experience, and she is here to help us spot the hidden signs of spiritual warfare in our homes. But first, let's begin by Wendy explaining the single biggest sign a spiritual spiritual attack is happening in your home.

A spiritual attack can look like many different things, but I would say the number one thing I see is you do not feel like yourself. And that's what I hear people tell me, and that's how they describe it. I don't feel like I'm myself. I feel different than I normally feel.

When somebody says that, then I that's always a key. Something's going on and they're probably being attacked. Am I off? Am I misdirected? This isn't how I normally respond.

This isn't how I normally react or act. You're probably being attacked. So that's the first thing.

Overall, you might find yourself constantly bickering, walking on eggshells, snapping, maybe at your husband and your kids a lot, missing the reality that the true enemy isn't in. It's not really your family members. It's actually Satan working on you, and that's causing you to be angry and mad at your family members.

In fact, I had this recently on a couple of days ago where my daughter and I were arguing over clothes. And we never argue. We actually have a great relationship and we get along really well.

But she had had some stresses that had been bothering her for the last couple of days, and I had been trying to help her work with her. And so I was asking her some questions and she started getting mad at me. And I thought, she doesn't get mad. She never gets mad at me.

Like, this doesn't normally happen. And then I was starting to get angry and frustrate with her because of the way she was acting. And I didn't want to have anything to do with her.

In fact, I was like, I got to go for a walk. So I left and went for a walk. And I thought, what is going on? This is not typically like us.

And then as I went on my walk and started breathing and getting a little bit of those good endorphins going, I started realizing, ah, Satan's attacking both of us. And so when I got back home, I was able to have a conversation with her and I'm like, okay, Satan's working hard on both you and I.

Let's look at why he's working on our relationship. And a big part of it was because she is going through a big change in her life right now. So she's under a lot of stress.

And so of course, when you're under a lot of stress or something big is happening, Satan is going to weasel his way in and he's going to attack. So it's kind of like this.

You're doing this vulnerability scan where you're checking to go, okay, what's going on that is different or might be happening differently than what we normally are experiencing. Scanning for predictable times when your guard might be down, realize that that's another time that he's going to attack.

So something that's helpful in those moments is to initiate something called a halt acronym so that the word is halt. H A L T. Am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I feeling lonely? Or am I feeling tired?

So when you or someone in your family is hitting that halt threshold, it isn't just a physical low point. It can be a predictable window for where spiritual attacks can come in and be sudden, irrational, and cause a blow up.

So sometimes hunger can do that. We call it being hangry. There's really a thing where Satan can come in when you're feeling hangry and attack you even more when anger comes.

Like for us, we could tell it wasn't something I could see, it wasn't something that was normal for both of us. So I was able to step back and go, he's using anger as a tool against us. And this is not a typical normal thing. Look at that loneliness.

Did you know that loneliness is the number problem we deal with not only in the United States, but in the world? It's a world epidemic now where Satan will come in and he'll use that as a trigger for you or for your family members or especially tiredness.

If we're tired, everything is going to kick in and it's going to be twice as bad as it normally is. That's why new moms are attacked so much. They don't get a lot of sleep.

And so Satan's going to come in there and he's going to cause them to feel more anger, more shut down as a horrible, like I'm a horrible, awful person or mom or get. Get really angry at the people around them. So look at those kind of. Do a vulnerability scan and look around and apply. Okay.

Is there something going on that's halting me from moving forward and stopping me?

That halt scan is such a powerful tool. So often when we are tired or overwhelmed doing good things, our guard drops and we get pulled into unnecessary conflict.

This reminds me of a powerful story in Nehemiah 6:1:4. While Nehemiah was actively building the protective walls the city of Jerusalem, his enemies realized they couldn't breach the wall by force.

Instead, they sent him repeated messages begging him to stop working and come down to meet them in a nearby plane. Nehemiah recognized the trap and sent back this declaration. I am doing a great work so that I cannot come down.

Why should the work cease whilst I leave it and come down to you? A spiritual attack, my friends, doesn't look like a direct assault on your faith.

It looks like a highly appealing, maybe an exhausting distraction designed to pull you or me away from what matters most, God, our connection to him and our families. Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed because you were doing too many things?

Sometimes good things can distract us from the better things God has called us to do. Many years ago, a mentor introduced me to a tool called the not to do list. And it has changed my life.

Basically, you list out everything, taking up your time, and then you prayerfully evaluate each item to see if you should keep, delegate, change, automate or eliminate it. There were times I was prompted to eliminate things I loved.

Like when God told me to stop doing a radio show with two of my friends, I actually cried. But the key is recognizing that when we are too busy, we leave ourselves open to those halt low points where the adversary strikes.

So what other subtle tricks does the adversary use during an attack? Let's head back to Wendy as she exposes emotional triggers.

He can also use mimicry of trauma triggers, which these are when spiritual attacks often masquerade as old emotional or psychological trauma triggers. The difference is a normal emotional trigger usually has a clear, logical link to a past wound.

Well, I remember in seventh grade I had this major trauma. We moved and I had to start all over with a whole new friend group. It was really, really difficult.

Whereas an emotional trigger that comes out of the blue that doesn't make sense is from Satan.

That just basically is from Satan, where he's just like, hey, I'm just going to come in and I can tell that they're feeling overwhelmed, and so I'm just going to attack when they're weak.

A spiritual attack often feels like that sudden, unprompted drop in the room's temperature, almost that spiritual temperature that's been going on and leaves everyone feeling instantly paranoid or defensive for no logical reason. Like my daughter and I going, what is going on? Where you don't normally fight like this.

There was a little bit of a clear, logical, like, she's going through some stressful times and moments, but we really couldn't link it to anything else specifically. So that's kind of an example of looking around and going, is there even anything to link this to? Or is this just coming clear out of the blue?

And then lastly, the illusion of permanence.

A classic psychological symptom of an attack is a sudden onset of cognitive myopia, where the enemy makes a temporary problem, like a bad grade or a really rough week feel completely permanent. Convincing that mom or that child that it's always going to be this way and it's never going to change. He's wiping out hope.

And Christ is all about hope. But Satan will come and that adversary will wipe out hope completely.

So if you're feeling completely overwhelmed, disparaging, this is never going to change. That's an illusion of permanence. It's always going to be this way. That's what the adversary wants you to believe. That is so not true.

So anytime you're feeling any of these influences, cast it out. Figure it out. Take a deep breath, look at it for a minute. I went for a walk, right?

That was something that I did to help me to calm down, to get back into a better mind shift.

Then I came home and I. I said to my daughter, let's cast out the spirit of anger and let's repair what's been going on, because I want to be on the same page with you. And that's exactly what we did.

Oh, my dear sister, when you feel the room temperature drop or when the enemy whispers that your hard season is permanent, remember who you are and whose you are. You have the capacity to step off the battlefield, take a breath, and command the spirit, anger and confusion to leave your home.

In the name of Jesus Christ, I testify that Jesus Christ is our strong tower.

When you align your heart with him, clear out the unnecessary busyness and stand guard over your family, no scheme of the adversary can prevail against your household. If you are ready to fortify your home, run your own halt vulnerability scan and reclaim your energy.

Wendy and I want to put a powerful free resource directly into your hands down in the show notes below, click the link so you can download our free digital guidebook A Mother's Spiritual Defense Guide six Empowering Steps to Fortify Home and Family Inside the bonus section you will find our Complete not to Do List template to help you prayerfully eliminate good distractions so that you can focus on the great work and God has for you and your family.

You'll also find our Home Sanctuary Audit to help you adjust the spiritual temperature of your home and our word for Word cast out the Adversary Prayer Script. Download your free copy today and step boldly onto the wall of your home's defense with Jesus Christ by your side.

Oh my friend, you are not in this battle alone. Stand with him and by him, and until next time may you arise and do it God's way. God Strong.

If today's episode helped you feel a little closer to God, please like and subscribe.