I am prone to depression and, when I fail at something important (small or large), I can dive in quite easily to some pretty severe self-abasement. The Lord's enemy knows this and plays it up for all it's worth. He can't snatch me out of the Lord's hand, but he sure can snatch a day out of my hand by nudging me onto the path of fear and self-loathing.
Today a brilliant thing occurred to me: whatever the Lord's enemy says, the opposite must be true. If he says the Lord doesn't care about a particular issue I'm dealing with, this in fact means that the Lord is desperately interested in setting this area of my life right. ...If he says that the Lord is expecting perfection from me, it means that, on the contrary, the Lord asks that I come to Him completely empty-handed. ...If he says the Lord loves someone more than He loves me (for example, someone who had the sense to begin listening to Him sooner and therefore took fewer wrong turns), this means that the Lord treasures me and is not looking at my wrong turns or weighing out how many years or days I've listened to Him, He's just rejoicing that I love Him so deeply and ache to learn His ways.
This realization is powerful! The enemy is the father of lies, but God is truth. Yes, the enemy mixes truths in with his lies in order to deceive those who might not otherwise listen. He says I'm not always faithful or obedient to the Lord, and he is correct. Every day, in fact. Yet the enemy will never say, "Go talk to Jesus about this and repent." He will say, "You need to prove yourself to God, or God will be against you." I have fallen for this lie countless times.
So here it is, the easiest plan ever, which makes it right up my alley. It's not just a matter of not listening to the lies, it's a matter of listening to them with a discerning ear, to hear the incredible, sweeter-than-imaginable truth they are so desperately trying to disguise.