November is the culmination of the political season in the United States, as votes are tallied for various candidates up for election. Many will cast votes, passionately believing they’re endorsing the right person…the right thing. But what many will fail to acknowledge is how often their interpretation of the right thing is influenced by one thing: Opposition Research. It’s the term given to the in-depth investigation of a political opponent in an effort to dig up dirt, discrediting the person now for what they said or did then. And it’s not a tactic that is reserved simply for the political realm. Our Enemy—the Accuser—uses the exact same strategy to keep us out of the future God is calling us towards. So how do we fight against the facts of who we were and what we did so that we can become who God has in mind?

Sometimes the greatest hindrance to seeing God’s faithfulness in the present is because it doesn’t look the same as it did in the past. The Enemy is cunning enough that He’ll recall God’s work in your past—but only so that you will compare it to what you’re experiencing in your present. We need to be grateful for how God worked, but ready to trust a foreign way.