You awake suddenly from a deep, sound sleep. Immediately, you’re very alert. You glance at the clock. It’s 2:37 a.m. Your heart is beating hard and your breathing is shallow and rapid, but you don’t know why.

Then you hear something. Down the hall. It sounds like voices. You try to slow your breathing, so you can hear better. Yes, it’s voices. They’re whispering.

You slip out of bed and tip toe down the hall as quietly as you can. The floor creaks and you freeze, hoping they didn’t hear you coming. After a minute, you continue. You haven’t been heard. Yet.

The whispers grow louder as you approach the room at the end of the hall. There’s a faint, flickering light coming from the room. It feels unusually cold.

You’re just outside the door now, which is barely cracked open. You can’t see anyone, but you can hear the whispers more clearly. There are at least two, maybe three voices. They aren’t familiar to you, but you can make out what they’re saying now.

They are talking about you, about how to defeat you. You hear them say that above all else, they must keep you from getting any closer to God. If you do, it could ruin everything.

You listen quietly as they discuss what to do. They debate many strategies, but finally settle on what they say has always been one of their most effective ones.

You’re a little surprised and somewhat relieved they chose it. You think it could have been a lot worse. The strategy they’ve chosen is distraction. They plan to simply divert your attention.

How do you think they’d do it?