Have you ever lost your confidence just as you were about to take a risk for your dream?

It’s not your imagination. That wave of self-doubt, discouragement, or distraction is more than a bad day—it’s creative resistance. Understanding where it comes from (and how to respond) could be the difference between quitting and persevering.

IF YOU’VE EVER FELT UNDER ATTACK JUST AS YOU BEGAN TO MAKE PROGRESS, THIS IS THE EPISODE FOR YOU!

We’re exploring the spiritual reality of creative resistance—what it looks like, why it shows up, and how to prepare your heart for the battle that often follows a calling. You’ll hear personal experiences, biblical encouragement, and three powerful strategies for staying grounded when the enemy shows up loud.

Here’s what you’ll learn:
🧠 Why resistance shows up and how to recognize it
⚔️ Practical tools to fight discouragement, doubt, and spiritual attack
✨ The surprising truth that resistance reveals about you and your dream

If you've ever wondered whether you’re cut out for this dream or whether it’s even worth the battle, this conversation will reframe the struggle and help you stand firm.

You don’t have to fight alone. It’s time to surround yourself with a community of women who know the resistance will come and are ready to fight back, together!

Join the Dream Believers community for $40/month or $400/year (2 months free)

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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Dream Out Loud – practice talking about your dream with other dreamers

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The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Scripture:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
~ Ephesians 6:12 (NIV)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
~ Ephesians 6:10-11 (NIV)

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
~Ephesians 6:13-18 (NIV)

Enjoy This Episode?

Here are some others you might also like:

Ep 286: Top 3 Traps Standing in the Way of Your God-Given Purpose Apple | Spotify

Ep 222: How Resistance Can be a Clue That You Should Keep Pursuing Your Dream Apple | Spotify

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**The unedited transcript for this episode of *The Devoted Dreamers Podcast* follows:**

Have you ever wondered why things seem to fall apart the moment you start taking faithful steps toward a dream? Or worse, you lose your confidence or your perspective just as you're getting ready to take that big leap into something new.

Today we're talking about how to prepare for the resistance that comes with a calling. We're going to cover where it comes from, why it matters, and what you can do about it.

Hey, I'm Merritt, host of the Devoted Dreamers podcast. I'm a Christian life coach and I'm kind of like the Joanna Gaines for women of faith who have big dreams about how God might reorder the second half of your life so you can use your gifts and life experiences to usher in beauty, redemption, healing and service to others.

It's not a redesign of your home that we're working on. It is a brand-new way to live in freedom. Free from fear, free from second guessing yourself all the time. Free from the lies that the enemy has used to keep you quiet and playing small in the past.

Isn't it about time that more of us who believe in Christ started living that way?

I'm on a mission to engage 10,000 women worldwide to start taking intentional and purposeful steps that will bring their God shaped dreams to life. If you believe in Jesus and you see his work in your life and you're aware that you have been given beautiful gifts, talents and a life story that can serve and benefit others, maybe you're among those 10,000.

I hope that you are because you are here listening to a podcast about God shaped dreams. Maybe you're looking for a chance to see if your dream has legs or you want to try it on for size. Figure out if it's possible. You want to be inspired and encouraged that there is hope for what you have been dreaming all these years. And maybe you've been too fearful in the past or someone dashed your dreams with a comment that hit too close to home, or you just haven't had time to figure out how to proceed.

Well, my friend, let me tell you, this is your time.

If you're here listening to this, it is no mistake God wants you to hear this.

If you have big dreams for how he might use the gifts he's given you and the years of your life that remain and you have a dream that would serve others. Let's figure out how to turn that heart heartfelt, hidden dream into real, actionable plans with impact for God's kingdom work in the world.

Stay tuned. At the end, I will tell you how you can get involved in my community and start taking steps towards your God shaped dream.

So let's think about this issue of resistance. Maybe you start to take some steps forward in your dream, like you've already begun.

Maybe it's buying a website domain, something simple like that, or naming things isn't all that simple. I know, but buying that domain, it's like, okay, well at least it's a step. Or you've been dabbling in Canva to create some designs that represent some of the things that you've been thinking about or wanting to do. Or it could be starting to write that first chapter or the intro to your book, or devotional or making a connection with someone who's a little bit further ahead of you.

And whatever that thing is for you, you either begin to take that step or consider seriously taking that step. And all of a sudden you lose your nerve. You start to wonder, am I really qualified to do this? I mean, I don't really know what I'm doing and everyone else seems to know what they're doing, at least on social media. I maybe have no business pursuing this dream. You start to kind of freeze up and feel stuck.

Where does this resistance come from? Now there is such a term as “creative resistance.” There are several books out there in the world written on this topic. But these are the fears and doubts that come from within.

If you've read The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, this is how he describes resistance: “It cannot be seen, touched, heard or smelled, but it can be felt. It's a repelling force. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us and prevent us from doing our work.”

Now this is me. It's what keeps you procrastinating that thing that you know you need to do on your to do list, that thing that would actually move things forward for you. Steven Pressfield capitalizes the word and he talks about resistance as if it is a person, as if it has human qualities.

But from our perspective as believers in Christ, let's be honest, this resistance is often the enemy. You see, spiritual attacks often follow spiritual progress.

And I'm gonna come clean as I'm recording this right here. I am about to talk about something that feels kind of difficult to nail down. But I'm gonna fight my own internal resistance and talk about it, even if it feels imperfect. I've already prayed and asked God to cover this, and anything I might say that is incorrect.

But here's where I'm coming from with this resistance being the enemy of our souls. When God plants a dream, it is like a little seed. You don't even notice it at first, but it's there. There are little flickers of inspiration, sometimes a flood of ideas in the shower or in the middle of the night when you can't sleep. It's a spark of possibility. This dream might take years to become anything bigger.

Meanwhile, you're continuing to learn and grow. And as you spend more time with Jesus, your relationship with him and your faith deepen, and he calls you to abide in him. And you learn more about how to do that, how to return to him when you've struggled or fallen away.

And the dream, in the midst of all of this, this little thread of the dream might come in and out of your awareness. You're not even sure what to call it. But as it begins to take shape, as God nurtures it through your life experiences, which might be your hurts or your victories, he uses all of these things to shape and form you and to shape and form the dream.

And then what might feel like it's coming out of nowhere all of a sudden, there's more form to the dream. You identify a way to begin to take a small step. You want to write a page of that book or that devotional. You make a phone call and ask somebody to go to coffee with you to talk more about it. Or you try to start putting a name to this thing. And suddenly the imaginative way that you used to think about the dream has turned into something a little bit more concrete.

Like, I want to start a podcast, I want to write a blog, I want to create a course or launch a business, build a ministry, and wham. It's like a searchlight shining on the other side of the city. A signal to the enemy that God is at work here. And then Satan gets to work too.

Of course, he has no authority over you, he cannot have you. But his desire is to do anything in his power to stand in the way of any fruitfulness or progress that might have some kingdom purposes attached to it.

Now Pressfield, who's not a believer as far as I know, he has this rule of thumb for creative work. He says that the more important the calling, the greater the resistance you'll feel toward pursuing it. I think it tracks with the enemy's strategy to derail you.

If you're stepping out in obedience toward your God shaped dream, you've got to expect that the resistance will come. In fact, it is a sign that you're on the right track.

So why are we even talking about this on the Devoted Dreamers podcast? I think it's easy to misinterpret resistance as a personal failure, as if feeling resistance somehow also more deeply disqualifies you from this thing.

You thought you were on the right track and suddenly your feet feel stuck in quicksand. That feels like maybe it's your fault, right? That every move you take or make gives this sensation that you're sinking or stuck even further or really can't get out of this stuckness.

And the feeling inside might be discouragement, or you might think, I am ill-equipped for this. I don't have what it takes to do this thing that God's put on my heart. Or maybe the word for you is inadequate, I'm not enough. God hasn't given me what I need. And it's probably gonna feel like it's all about you being messed up or not actually chosen for this thing. Like maybe you heard God wrong or something.

But the reality is that spiritual warfare might be one of the clearest signals that we are walking in alignment with God's purposes.

And here's what I mean by that: As believers, we are in a battle, whether we recognize it or not. There are the spiritual forces of good that are of God, of Christ, and there are the spiritual forces of evil. And these are real. And the enemy hates anything that would elevate God, that would glorify God, that would make much of him, that would help people to see him more, that would point to Him. The enemy hates those things. And he can't loosen God's grip on you. He doesn't have that kind of power. You belong to Jesus, this much is sure.

But he will use tactics like discouragement, doubt, distraction and delays in an effort to keep you from making any progress that would elevate Christ or God's purposes in the world.

So instead of thinking when you run into a struggle, a battle, the quicksand, the defeating thoughts or voices, the discouragement, instead of thinking, “This isn't working” or “I'm doing something wrong,” we actually need to flip that on its head and think and ask, “What is God doing with this dream?” And “Is it something that is a potential threat to the enemy and his purposes?”

I'm going to give you a couple real life examples here. So a couple of years ago, I was invited to speak at a MOPS, Mothers of Preschoolers. It's been renamed now, and at this moment I can't remember the new name, but I was invited to speak at a MOPS group about 45 minutes away from my home.

And as I was driving to the event. I began to feel, like, physically sick to my stomach. And I kept asking myself, like, do I feel like I'm going to throw up? Like, what is happening here? My anxiety was off the charts. I was sweaty, I was shaking. And, you know, it's normal for me to feel nervous before I speak, but this was different. This was something else entirely. It wasn't just nerves. It took everything in me to not just turn my car around and go home and just call them up and be like, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna make it today. I'm sick. This was a pretty dramatic physical experience that I was having.

And as I looked back on it, and even the closer I got to the venue, I began to recognize this as a spiritual attack.

But the attack can also be more subtle, more quiet. Here's another example of a quiet discouragement. So I work alone most of the time, even though I share an office with my husband. We both kind of have our headphones in and we're doing our own things. I do have people around me. There are groups and individuals that I pour into, people who are my clients or in some of my community events. And I also have an assistant that I meet with a few times per month.

But the work, the work to lead and shape this business, that is on me—me and Jesus, of course. But this month of July, I've been feeling sluggish, not creative, kind of a lack of direction of what to do next. Some of that is grief, I'm sure, having lost my mom in May and things just really shifting in our household and me wanting to be present for both my dad and then my family, my kids. So some of that is grief. Some of it is summer.

But this, what I was feeling last week was more than the usual, more than the usual sluggishness, lack of creativity. And two weeks ago, when I sat down to pull together the remaining podcast episodes for this month, I just was blank. Just my mind was blank. It didn't feel like an attack. It felt more like writer's block.

But doesn't it sound like a tactic of the enemy, looking for ways to discourage? I mean, I have been at this podcast thing for nine years and 345 episodes as of today, and I hear new podcasters ask the question all the time, what if I run out of things to say? I have rarely asked that. Not at the beginning. I had so many things that I wanted to cover and so many people I wanted to talk to. But I found myself the other day saying, maybe I've said all there is to say on this topic. Maybe that's it. Maybe the well is dry.

And then I realized, as I looked through the catalog of 344 episodes, I have never directly addressed spiritual warfare head on as the topic of an episode. And that right there is this subtle tactic of the enemy to keep me from wanting to tackle this, to keep it from… I talk about it, I talk about spiritual warfare, I talk about the enemy, but never has it been the focus of an episode like it is today.

So if Satan can get you to believe that he's not real, that he's a figment of someone's imagination, or that you're not worth his time to attack, you'll start believing the discouragement, the dry season, the lack of creativity or motivation. You'll believe that that's all inside, that it has nothing to do with him. And that's what it was feeling like for me a couple weeks ago. But now that we see that there are at least two ways, kind of an overt anxiety producing way in my first example in the car, and a more subtle tactic that he might use.

Let's talk about, in either situation or anywhere in between, on that spectrum, what are the things that you can do about it? What can we do to prepare for the resistance or to respond to the spiritual attack that comes with having the calling of a God shaped dream?

I've got three R's again for you this week.

Number one: RECOGNIZE THE BATTLE.

We have to call it out. We have to say what it is. This is a battle for your mind and for your heart and for your dream. Know that spiritual warfare may show up through fear, through shame, through relational tension. You're just struggling to get along with your spouse or with your kids or with your parents or a sibling. It may come up that way.

There may be self-doubt, imposter syndrome, or there's a temptation maybe to numb or retreat, to pull away from this dream. But Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6:12 where the struggle comes from. He says, this is in the NIV: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

We must be aware of it, that the battle exists. We don't have to fear it. Why? Because of the next two Rs. So step one is RECOGNIZE THE BATTLE, call it out, see what it is, say what it is.

Step two is RESPOND BIBLICALLY with prayer and with truth.

So talk to God. Honestly, he will fight for you. Tell him what's going on, tell him where you feel discouraged or a lack of creativity. And then truth; write down or read or just dig into specific scriptures that you can stand on when the battle comes.

I want to go back to Ephesians 6, so right before the verse I just read for you a second ago. Ephesians 6:10-11 says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power”—in his mighty power—"put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.”

There is no question that there are schemes of the devil; there are schemes of the enemy. Paul is very straightforward in Ephesians 6 talking about this. He says, “So put on the full armor of God.”

There is so much about the armor of God that you can study in your own time. But I'm just going to quickly read through it and talk a little bit about these pieces.

In Ephesians 6:13-18 also, the NIV says, “Therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you have done everything to stand.”

Verse 14:

“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth,” that's God's word, “buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness”—that righteousness that was purchased by Jesus at the cross; it's his righteousness that you stand on, not your own. So it says, “with the breastplate of righteousness in place,” and verse 15: “and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.” This is confidence in the good news of Jesus and what he's bought for us with his death on the cross.

Verse 16: “In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith.” Faith, which is our belief in God. It is the barrier against attack.

And then it goes on: “the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation”—that assurance of your salvation in Christ; it offers daily protection and deliverance from your sin nature—“and then the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”—the Bible, and knowing how to properly handle it.

And then verse 18 says: “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayer and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people.

And speaking of the Lord's people—part three of this, RESPONDING BIBLICALLY to the spiritual attack—part three is wrapping yourself in community.

You were never meant to fight this battle alone. And in both stories I shared earlier, admitting the struggle to others, praying, asking for prayer, those were the things that helped me escape the attack and the bondage I felt in those moments. In the car, as I'm driving down the road, I called a friend. I asked her to pray for me and with me. And then when we got off the phone, I prayed fervently, out loud, arms waving in the air for every mile that remained of my journey to the destination.

I was calling on God for release and freedom from this excruciating anxiety that was threatening to take me out physically. And wouldn't you know it, when I arrived, I walked into the building, still shaking a little bit, but I began talking to the first woman I saw, the first believer in that room. And just like that, the anxiety began to melt away. And I was able to do the talk. And I didn't give in to that deep desire to turn around and go home. I kept walking forward, knowing I was covered in prayer. Even if I didn't feel protected in the moment, I kept walking forward. And that was the source of healing.

In the second story, I asked for help from a friend, actually from a listener of this podcast. Hi, Megan, if you're listening right now. And while I felt uninspired and discouraged, I was honest with her about my struggle. And that felt super vulnerable to admit to someone that I haven't known very long and who listens to my podcast, who I, you know, the people pleaser in me is like, I want you to like what I do. And I hate to admit that I'm struggling to do it today. And she responded back to me with, like, eight ideas that immediately sparked my creativity.

All I did was ask, like, hey, what are you working through right now as it relates to your dream? And, oh, the floodgates opened. Last week's episode was inspired by the conversation I had with her via email. This episode is inspired by the conversation I had with her via email.

I opened up, I responded and prayed and walked forward, even though it felt vulnerable to do so. I responded biblically to the attack that was coming towards me.

And then number three. So let's go back:

Number one is to RECOGNIZE THE BATTLE, the battle that you're in.

Number two is to RESPOND BIBLICALLY.

Number three is to REMEMBER YOUR AUTHORITY IN CHRIST. While the battle feels so real in the moment, we have to remember the enemy is already defeated. He has not won. Christ has won. You are not fighting for victory, but from a place of victory that's already been won for you.

So stay anchored in the word because your emotions are often going to run in a different direction. Your physical body might run in a different direction, but as you recognize the battle, as you respond biblically, as you remember whose you are and his authority over all evil, you realize the enemy doesn't have a chance.

My friend, if you have felt resistance, if you're feeling it right now and wondering if you're even cut out for this dream, I want you to know that you do not have to do this alone.

In fact, it is way better when you don't.

Inside the Dream Believers Community we talk often about the spiritual side of chasing a dream. It's in the DNA of this group.

Join Dream Believers this month for just $40 a month or $400 for the year, and you get two months free. And you'll find practical support, spiritual encouragement, and women who will pray with you, cheer you on, work alongside you, and remind you constantly of what is true.

My friend, the God of the entire universe is working to bring good and glorious dreams to life through you, through his daughters. So how do you prepare for the resistance that comes with a calling? You recognize the battle, respond biblically, and remember Christ's authority in your life

The fact that you feel resistance at all might be the clearest evidence of all that your dream matters.

Finally….

Daughter of the King,

You were made for a beautiful purpose, your identity and security rest in Him, as does your dream because the Lord is good and His ways are always good! No weapon formed against you will prosper because you belong to Him.

Until next week, stay faithful, keep dreaming and remember: trusting God with your next step doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be scary. It means taking the step anyway.

That’s what faith is.

You are welcome here among women braving those scary steps in faith, knowing our dreams matter because they are His.

Until next time,

I’m Merritt Onsa, your dream coach and sister in Christ, walking by faith, with you, in the dream.

Have a great week!

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