How Do I Know If I Am Under Spiritual Attack?

Question 08096

Knowing whether you are under spiritual attack is harder than most books on the subject admit, and I want to be honest about that before offering anything more useful. There is no diagnostic checklist in the Bible, no set of symptoms that appears only when the enemy is at work.

What Scripture does give us is a description of how the enemy operates, and that is more useful than a list of signs, because it lets us recognise the shape of something rather than tick boxes. It also keeps us from the two ditches on either side of this road.

Two Ditches to Avoid

C. S. Lewis put it memorably in the preface to his best known book: we can err by disbelieving in devils altogether, or by taking an excessive and unhealthy interest in them, and the enemy is equally pleased with both mistakes. I have watched Christians fall into each ditch and neither is a comfortable place to live.

The first ditch produces a believer with no category for the unseen at all. Every difficulty is stress, personality or circumstance, and Ephesians 6 becomes a metaphor. That person is genuinely unprepared when something happens that will not yield to ordinary explanations.

The second ditch produces a believer who sees spiritual attack in a flat tyre. Everything is warfare, every setback is the enemy, and the practical result is a strange kind of self importance: the devil apparently has nothing better to do than interfere with my morning. It also removes responsibility, because if the enemy did it, I did not. That is a comfortable arrangement in the short term and a disastrous one over a lifetime, since nothing ever gets dealt with.

How Scripture Describes the Enemy’s Work

Look at the vocabulary the New Testament uses and a pattern emerges. He is the tempter. He is the accuser of the brethren. He is a liar and the father of lies. He disguises himself as an angel of light. He has schemes, and Paul assumes we can be aware of them.

Almost everything in that list concerns the mind. Temptation, accusation, deception, counterfeit. The enemy’s chief work is on what you believe, and that gives us a far better test than any list of dramatic phenomena. If something is happening that pushes you towards a lie about God, about yourself, or about the gospel, you are dealing with the kind of thing Scripture calls spiritual attack.

Peter’s word is nepho, be sober minded, be clear headed, alongside be watchful. That is the posture. Not suspicion, not fascination, but a clear head that notices what is being suggested to it. A sober person is not a frightened person. Peter is asking for alertness, and alertness is perfectly compatible with peace.

Signs That Something Spiritual May Be at Work

With all those qualifications in place, there are patterns I have learned to notice over years of pastoral work. Sudden and disproportionate assaults on your assurance, particularly after a step of obedience, are one. A great many believers find that the day after they take a stand for Christ is the day they wake up convinced they were never saved at all.

Another is temptation that arrives with unusual specificity, aimed precisely at the weakness you thought was dealt with, at the moment you are least able to resist. Another is a strange and sudden reluctance to pray or open the Bible, out of proportion to anything in your circumstances. Another is conflict that erupts in a church or a family for no traceable reason, particularly when something good is about to happen.

I offer those as observations rather than diagnostics. None of them proves spiritual attack, and every one of them has ordinary explanations too. But when several arrive together and the timing is pointed, it is reasonable to consider that more than circumstance is involved.

What Is Usually Not Spiritual Attack

Now the other side, and I say this with real pastoral concern. Tiredness is not spiritual attack. Neither is a difficult season at work, a car that will not start, or a disagreement with your spouse about the finances. Life in a fallen world produces friction all by itself and requires no demonic assistance.

The consequences of our own choices are not spiritual attack either. If you have been sowing to the flesh for months, the harvest is not an ambush; it is a crop. Paul says plainly that whatever one sows, that will he also reap, and the sooner we own that the sooner things improve.

And I want to be careful here: depression, anxiety and other conditions of mind and body are not to be treated as demonic by default. They have physical, chemical, circumstantial and relational dimensions, and treating a person who is unwell as though they were under assault can do serious harm. See your doctor. That is not a failure of faith. I have written more on the distinction in my answer on discerning whether something is demonic or psychological.

What the Armour Actually Protects

It is worth looking at Paul’s list in Ephesians 6:14 to 17 with this question in mind, because the pieces tell you where the blows land. The belt is truth. The breastplate is righteousness. The shield is faith, and it is specifically said to quench the flaming darts of the evil one. The helmet is salvation. The sword is the word of God.

Every single item concerns what you know and how you live in the light of it. There is nothing in the kit for a haunted house or a bad dream. If spiritual attack were mainly about phenomena, Paul equipped us for the wrong war. The armour is designed for a fight over truth, conducted in the mind, and lived out in conduct.

The helmet is the one I would press. Salvation guards the head. A believer who is certain of their standing in Jesus has a protected mind, and a believer who is unsure of it is exposed at the most vulnerable point. That is why so much of what feels like spiritual attack turns out, on examination, to be an assault on assurance. Deal with the assurance and a great deal of the pressure lifts.

Why the Diagnosis Matters Less Than You Think

Here is something that surprises people. The response is very largely the same either way. Whether you are under spiritual attack or simply having a hard month, what you do is submit to God, tell yourself the truth from Scripture, confess anything that needs confessing, get around other believers, pray, and keep going.

Notice that the New Testament never tells us to identify the source before responding. James says submit to God, resist the devil. Peter says be sober, be watchful, resist him firm in the faith. Paul says put on the armour and stand. None of them asks us to work out the diagnosis first.

That is a mercy, because it means you can act rightly without certainty. The believer who is unsure whether this is spiritual attack or a rough patch loses nothing by responding as a Christian should in either case.

The Question Worth Asking Instead

Rather than asking whether you are under spiritual attack, ask what you are being pushed towards. Every temptation and every accusation has a destination. Follow the thought to its end and see where it wants you to go.

Does it want you to give up praying? To hide something? To stop attending? To conclude that God does not love you? To take a small step that will make the next one easier? That is the signature. The enemy is not interested in ruining your Tuesday. He is interested in your usefulness, your assurance and your holiness, and he takes the long view.

Once you can see the destination, the pressure loses a great deal of its force. It is very hard to be manipulated by a suggestion once you have named what it is trying to achieve.

So, now what?

Do the ordinary things, and do them stubbornly. Read Scripture even when it feels dry. Pray badly rather than not at all. Tell one trusted believer what is actually going on, because secrecy is the condition under which almost everything gets worse. Sleep properly, eat properly, and see a doctor if your body or mind needs one.

And take the promise seriously. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. Whether or not this season is spiritual attack, you are not facing it alone and you are not facing it from a position of weakness.

What is the thought that keeps coming back, and where exactly is it trying to take you? Write the answer down if it helps. Things that seem overwhelming in the head often look considerably smaller on paper.

Be sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.

1 Peter 5:8 to 9 (ESV)