Webster defines hijacked in this way; to steal or to commandeer. Have you ever felt as if your true self, the one that God made you to be, has been commandeered? Stolen? Hijacked?

You’re not alone.

Ever since that fateful day when we surrendered to an enemy that was hell bent on tricking us into submission, we’ve been struggling to get back that one thing that was stolen from us. That one thing is simply the knowledge of our true self as we desperately look to recapture what’s been commandeered, our identity as God intended it to be. We have an identity, but it’s a fake one, littered with lies and unbelief’s about who God says we are, and what the enemy keeps whispering in our ear.

“In the mythic story of The Lion King, the lion cub Simba is separated in his youth from his father through a murder engineered by his uncle, Scar, the character symbolizing the evil one in our story. Scar arranges for the cub to be caught in a stampede of wildebeests, knowing that his father, Mufasa, will risk his life to save his son. He does, and Simba is saved, but Mufasa is killed. Scar then turns on Simba and accuses him, at such a vulnerable and desperate moment, of causing his father’s death. Brokenhearted, frightened, racked with guilt, Simba runs away from home.

This is the enemy’s one central purpose—to separate us from the Father. He uses neglect to whisper, You see—no one cares. You’re not worth caring about. He uses a sudden loss of innocence to whisper, This is a dangerous world, and you are alone. You’ve been abandoned. He uses assaults and abuses to scream at a boy, This is all you are good for. And in this way he makes it nearly impossible for us to know what Jesus knew, makes it so very, very hard to come home to the Father’s heart toward us. The details of each story are unique to the boy, but the effect is always a wound in the soul, and with it separation from and suspicion of the Father.”^[i]

Satan has been largely effective at doing just that. Creating suspicion and mistrust. Wounding us on the inside by firing darts on the outside. Perhaps from birth, likely from fear and intimidation from other wounded people. In all cases the effect is devastating. It takes its toll over a lifetime leaving us with regrets and an inability to sort out what’s real and what’s fiction.

Henry David Thoreau reminds us of the reality of this fictional and evil conundrum in saying, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.^[ii]” Most men (and women) go through their lives wanting more but accepting less. Accepting a life that is mediocre and lacking passion. Can you relate?

It’s out of misdirection in the believer’s life that we can relate. Misdirection coming from an enemy that hates us and will do nearly anything to hijack our cause. Hijack our identity. Child of God is who we are but there’s much more to our individual calling than sitting on a hillside waiting for Jesus to return.

Our typical response is to get busy in an effort to cover the desperation that Thoreau refers to. After all, if we can prove ourselves worthy of our existence then the temporal rewards are at least some consolation in this battle between the seen and unseen. The spoils and plunder from the battle give us some sense of accomplishment and the world applauds. The treadmill we land on in the process brings exhaustion with no peace or rest for our soul.

In The Ascent to Truth, Thomas Merton says: “We look for rest and if we find it, it becomes intolerable. Incapable of the divine activity which alone can satisfy [rest]…fallen man flings himself upon exterior things, not so much for their own sake as for the sake of agitation which keeps his spirit pleasantly numb…[The distraction] diverts us aside from the one thing that can help us to begin our ascent to truth…the sense of our own emptiness.”

It may seem insurmountable at times, but God has equipped us with all the necessary tools to change our perspective. To change our pattern of thinking and acting. To change the entire trajectory of our life if we so choose.

[i] John Eldredge, Fathered by God

[ii] Henry David Thoreau, Walden