Therefore be shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

Depression.  The kind that isn't ongoing but lasts a few days.  Medically, I don't even know if that's possible, from experience I can tell you it is.

The days when you can't stop crying, where being alone is lonely, you can't make plans.  I'll go on Facebook and everybody is getting engaged or married.  People genuinely asking what I'm doing that day are mocking me and prying. I fear my life amounts to nothing, my thoughts are dramatic, I can't stop crying. I'm alone.

This can last for two or three days.  I'll lie in bed till the last minute because I can't find the energy to go to church, people's conversations are too loud, I want to get back to bed.

And then every time the Holy Spirit speaks to me, either in  my spirit or through somebody else and simply reminds me of something about to happen.  Something good, for the glory of the Lord.  Today it was the reminder  of youth camp starting tomorrow, where as a leader, I have the opportunity to be a vessel through which God's grace will impact lives.  And all of a sudden the sadness is exposed as an attack.  Once acknowledged, it begins to fade.  I can pray against it.  It starts to pass.

Let me clarify that this is a specific and short term attack that the enemy uses against me.  I do not suggest that ongoing depression will necessarily pass once acknowledged.  Rather, let this be a reminder that we are warned to be shrewd as snakes, for the enemy roams, ready to paralyze us in our service and seeking to steal our joy.  Sometimes, we have to ride out the attacks, sometimes we can pray and are delivered, but it is important to know the ways (whether big or small) Satan finds a foothold in our lives so we can expose and overcome them.