By Oluwatobiloba Gideon Oludayomi
There is a question I asked God many years ago, in a season when nothing seemed to be working. I asked Him plainly, why is this happening to me. I did not get a lightning bolt answer. I got something better. I got understanding. And understanding, I have come to learn, is worth more than explanation.
That understanding is what I want to share with you today. It has quietly become one of the most transformative discoveries of my Christian journey. Since I became enlightened on this matter, I approach every challenge with more clarity, more calm, and far less confusion. I no longer fight blindly. I fight with information. And information, in spiritual warfare, is half the battle.
Here is the discovery. Every problem you will ever encounter in this life comes from one of three sources. It is either from God, from the forces of darkness, or from man himself. That is it. There is no fourth category. Once you can correctly identify which source a struggle is coming from, you already have fifty percent of the solution. The other fifty percent is obedience to what that identification demands of you.
Let us walk through this together, slowly, the way a father would explain something important to a son he loves.
This is often the hardest one for people to accept, because we have been trained to think of God only as rescuer, never as the one who allows the storm. But scripture tells a different story.
Hebrews 12 verse 6 says, "For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." This is not punishment born of anger. It is correction born of love. Think of a father who takes the phone away from a teenager who has refused to study for three months. The father is not being wicked. He is protecting the child's future from the child's present carelessness.
When God is the source of your struggle, it usually shows up as delay, discipline, or divine interruption. Your plans stall. Your timing gets rearranged. Doors you expected to open stay shut, not because God is against you, but because He is against the version of you that would walk through them unprepared.
The solution here is not warfare. It is not binding and casting. The solution is repentance and obedience. You do not fight your Father. You listen to Him. Psalm 32 verse 8 puts it beautifully, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go, I will counsel you with my loving eye on you." That is not the voice of an enemy. That is the voice of a parent.
I remember a season in my own life when business relationships kept collapsing, one after another, no matter how carefully I structured them. I prayed against enemies for months. Nothing changed. It was only when I sat quietly and asked God directly, what are you trying to show me, that I realized I had been building on compromise rather than conviction. The moment I repented and corrected my foundation, the pattern broke. God was not attacking me. He was refining me.
If your struggle is from God, stop fighting a battle that requires surrender with aggression.
Now this is where it gets serious, and where I must speak with the authority of someone who has studied this terrain closely, not casually.
The forces of darkness are not stupid. In fact, of the three sources, they are the most strategic. Ephesians 6 verse 12 tells us plainly, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." This is not poetry. This is intelligence briefing from the apostle Paul himself.
Here is something most people do not realize. The forces of darkness understand something about the human mind that many Christians have never grasped. They know that a man who is directly possessed can be delivered in a single deliverance session. The demon can be commanded to leave, and it must leave, because scripture gives believers that authority. Luke chapter 10 verse 19 says clearly, "Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you." Possession is loud, visible, and therefore, easy to confront.
But a man with a rigid perception, a wrong ideology, a stubborn mindset that he has built his entire identity around, cannot be delivered by another person's prayer. He can only be delivered by himself, through genuine surrender, or by the quiet, patient work of the Holy Spirit renewing his mind from the inside. That is why the enemy invests more energy in shaping thought patterns than in chasing possession. Possession draws attention. Deception hides in plain sight.
This is the subtle contention for the mind of man that scripture warns about. Second Corinthians 10 verse 5 instructs us to be, "destroying arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and taking every thought captive to obey Christ." Notice the language. Not every demon. Every thought. The real battlefield has always been the mind.
Consider this for a moment. A study by the American Psychological Association found that nearly seventy percent of chronic negative thinking patterns in adults trace back to beliefs formed before age eighteen. That means most of what shapes a grown man's decisions today was planted when he was too young to properly evaluate it. This is not a coincidence. It is strategy. The enemy plants early, waters quietly, and lets pride guard the harvest.
If your struggle is from darkness, the solution is spiritual authority combined with renewed thinking. You pray, yes. But you also read the word until it reshapes how you see. Romans 12 verse 2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Transformation is not a one time deliverance session. It is a daily renewal.
This is the one nobody wants to talk about, because it requires looking in the mirror, and the mirror is the most uncomfortable altar in the world.
The truth is, many of the struggles we blame on God or the devil are simply the fruit of our own decisions, delays, and denial. Galatians 6 verse 7 says it without apology, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap." That verse has no room for excuses. It is mathematics, not mysticism. You sow laziness, you reap lack. You sow dishonesty, you reap broken trust. You sow impulsiveness, you reap regret.
I have watched people spend three years praying against poverty while spending far more than they earn every single month. I have watched people pray for a stable marriage while refusing to deal with their own unresolved anger. The problem was never in the heavens. It was in the habit.
Here is a number worth sitting with. Financial researchers consistently find that the majority of people who receive sudden large sums of money, whether inheritance or windfall, lose most of it within a few years, not because the money vanished mysteriously, but because undisciplined habits consumed it steadily. The money was not cursed. The management was careless.
This is the most difficult struggle to overcome, because it requires humility before it requires strategy. You cannot deliver yourself from yourself through prayer alone. You need honest self examination. Proverbs 20 verse 27 says, "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts." God has given every man an internal lamp for exactly this purpose, to search himself, before he searches the heavens for answers.
The solution to self inflicted struggle is responsibility. Not shame, not self hatred, just responsibility. Own the decision. Correct the pattern. Rebuild with better habits. This is slower than deliverance and less dramatic than warfare, but it is the most sustainable transformation of the three.
Once you can correctly diagnose the source of a struggle, you stop wasting energy on the wrong solution. You stop praying warfare prayers against a discipline that only requires obedience. You stop blaming the devil for a debt that only requires budgeting. You stop blaming yourself for a delay that God Himself designed for your protection.
Discernment is not about seeing more, it is about seeing correctly. A man can look at ten problems and misdiagnose all ten, simply because he never learned to ask, where is this really coming from.
I will leave you with this. Not every battle is spiritual. Not every delay is punishment. Not every failure is your fault. But some are. Wisdom is knowing which is which.
Now I want to hear from you. Which of these three sources have you struggled to correctly identify in your own life. Was it a season you blamed on the devil, that was really discipline from God. Or a struggle you blamed on yourself, that was actually spiritual warfare for your mind. Drop your story in the comments. Someone reading this today needs to hear that they are not alone in this discovery.
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Oluwatobiloba Gideon Oludayomi is a life coach, a practical writer, and a versatile entrepreneur creating wealth solutions through agriculture, real estate, and enterprise. He is the Convener of the Dominion Guild Network, an ecosystem of high value individuals, young and determined to becoming an empowered generation. He is the author of "Build It to Last", "I Thought I Married a Wife" (a novel), and "Practical Love."
