The Battle Is Raging – Thoughts On Spiritual Warfare pt. 4 – It’s Personal, Baby!

I was sitting in my bedroom one evening while Jeff was out being Jeff, leading a Bible study or hanging out with some university students.  I was home taking care of our three little ones and in an instant I knew there was evil in my children’s bedroom. I ran, RAN to their room, knowing I wouldn’t SEE anyone, but also knowing I would FEEL something. It was a spiritual thing, the presence of evil hovering over and near my babies. And I went all Mama Bear (you mothers out there know what I’m talking about) and whipped out the only weapons I had – prayer and scripture. I won’t go in to too many more details of that night except that I did battle on behalf of my little ones in the spiritual realm. It confirmed to me something I knew before but really KNEW afterwards…The enemy isn’t afraid of getting personal.

If you’ve seen any superhero movie, you know the drill. In the middle of some big battle in a city center, the enemy nabs the superhero’s one weakness – the love of their life. Lois Lane to Superman, Mary Jane Watson to Spiderman, Roxanne Ritchie to Metro Man (From the underappreciated Megamind) – using them as a hostage or bait. In so doing, the villain refuses to fight fair, to keep it professional and to deal with the superhero directly. The villain gets personal, bringing in innocent family members and escalating the stakes immeasurably.

It would be great if our enemy would fight us in the neutral places. If he would deal with us directly. But he isn’t afraid of grabbing those we love, those innocents in our webs of relationships and using or even harming them in the battle. He has no sense of decency, no sense of fairness, no sense of reasonable boundaries of conflict. He is like the terrorist who doesn’t care what level of collateral damage he brings, as long as his message gets through. When I became a believer, whether I realized it or not, I signed up for battle. I became a combatant. If I am to grow in my faith, I expect resistance. What I didn’t realize is that this means it also puts my kids, my marriage, my friends and those I love in the crosshairs. It’s personal, baby!

This forces me to trust God, not just with my own life, but with those I love – and this escalates things exponentially. I’ve found that I don’t really mind trusting God with me, but with my babies? Sometimes I’m not so sure. This reveals an area of my faith that requires some work. Funny how when Satan decides to use a tactic he is sure will work, it actually forces more spiritual depth in my life. It becomes Romans 8:28 in full color in my life.

In addition to those we love, he hits us  in our most personal of issues. Those things in the deepest parts of us.  That we almost NEVER reveal to others. You know what they are. They are the places covered in shame and embarrassment and humiliation.

The alcoholic parent. The words from a loved one that cut to the heart. Rejection by someone who should love you but chose not to love you. Guilt over a past mistake. The addiction. Shame from something done to you that was so unspeakable you can’t…well, speak about it. The sin that has conquered you again and again and you have to hide it just to cope.

The enemy goes here every time. To the most personal and private places, knowing that if He can break our hearts, He limits how well we love and trust God. His phaser is most definitely not turned to stun.

He  also knows that hitting us here automatically drives us to isolation, away from the protection of the body of Christ. Since we don’t want anyone to know the ammunition He is using, we put ourselves in an even more vulnerable place by trying to face him alone.

He is the villain who gets personal.

The Battle Is Raging – Thoughts On Spiritual Warfare pt. 3 – Feelings Aren’t Always Our Friend

2 Cor. 10:5  We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 

They say that the longest 18 inches is the distance between our heads and our hearts. Anyone who has walked any distance and depth with Jesus knows the truth of this.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what we know. We may know our circumstances are temporary. We may know that God has promised to take care of us. That He is working things our for our good. That there is never a moment when He isn’t in complete control. That He loves us. Wants us. Is willing and able to care for us.

However, sometimes the way we feel at a particular moment trumps what we know. We feel things like: This is hopeless and will never change. Maybe God has other more important things to do than take care of me. Maybe things are just going to go badly this time around. And maybe I deserve it. Maybe He isn’t who He says He is, that He only takes care of me because at this point in our relationship He is contractually obligated and not emotionally engaged.

You get my point.

Emotions aren’t bad. God gave them to us and they are part of how we bear His image. They can bring great joy, connect us to others and Him in ways that our heads just can’t. But because of their great power, they can be dangerous. Sometimes our feelings aren’t in touch with reality. When this happens, all that power can explode. And someone is probably going to get hurt.

Left unchecked, our emotions can push, pull and squeeze us into some very dark, very scary, very dangerous places. They can lead us to make really bad decisions. They can hurt us in a way that a thought just can’t.

And as a result, I think our emotions are a primary battlefield of our spiritual enemy. If he can get us to feel a certain way, we just may walk away from what we know. Sometimes He pushes our emotions. Leads a train of thought into the arena of fear, hopelessness, insecurity, anger, sadness. Our emotions can drive us to do things very contrary to what we know.

Which is why along with engaging the enemy on the battlefield of the heart, we’ve got to also engage him on the battlefield of the mind. We’ve got to internalize scripture and the promises of God, rehearsing the stories of how He’s provided for us before and proven His trustworthiness.

When those truths are embedded in our minds, they eventually lodge in our hearts and disrupt the flow of emotion that threatens to overwhelm. Truth acts like a wall of protection, like an anchor holding us fast, like glue that keeps us right in place. We can cling to it when we feel like the ground under us is shaking. And it holds fast.

The Battle Is Raging – Thoughts On Spiritual Warfare pt. 2 – Preying On The Weak

1 Peter 5:8
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Peter knew a bit about our enemy, the devil. Luke 22:31 says, ““Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat.” What came next, the trials and the bitter disappointment of Peter (previously known as Simon) at the realization of how weak his faith was, must have been devastating. When Peter calls the devil a roaring lion, I’m pretty sure he was speaking from experience. In response, I think of one particular aspect of a lion’s hunting style.                                            

They love to prey on the weak in their weakness. Lions don’t go hunting bull elephants in the prime of their lives. They hunt babies. The old. The sick and dying. Those caught in unexpected difficult circumstances. Those with no protection. Who are alone and vulnerable. Those who are stuck in their weakest moments.

The devil follows the same pattern. He waits for us till we are tired. Till we are sick and in a moment of crisis or defenselessness. He loves to pile on when normal circumstances go abnormal. I sometimes experience very dark, very terrifying and realistic dreams that just feel spiritual. I can’t explain it any other way and in talking with those in ministry and missions, I am not alone. I almost always experience them in relation to a concentrated teaching season or when there is another significant spiritual event going on in my life. The timing is significant. He comes for me when I’m sleeping. Stressed. Not expecting it. And he attacks where I am most fearful, with images and emotions that rock me to my core. Not fun. Not even close.

And he is merciless. He doesn’t let us call a timeout to catch our breath. Spiritual battles rarely get fought when it is convenient. They are fought while everyday life goes on, in the margins of time that our other responsibilities allow. He doesn’t care if you’ve got other important things to do or other stressors that are occupying your emotional energies.  

So, my application for today is a greater awareness of when I’m weak. Am I excessively tired or sick? Is there another crisis on the horizon? Is there something of spiritual significance on the calendar coming my way? Being aware of these weak spots can give me a heads up on potential attack, allowing me to prepare.

I can’t always help being weak. But I can help being weak and alone. Or being weak and eating right. Or being weak and being intentional about my quiet times and making sure I am curling up next to my great big old lion of a daddy (Jesus) who promises to take care of me in my weakness. 

The Battle Is Raging – Thoughts On Spiritual Warfare pt. 1

Eph. 6:12 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.

I am about to begin on something I know is dangerous and potentially foolish. I want to write a series of posts about the reality and ugliness of spiritual warfare. Why do I say it is dangerous and potentially foolish? Well, it is so easy to get misunderstood on this topic and people think you are weird or worse. Then, if you believe in the spiritual world described in the Bible and that there are dark powers out there with the intent to harm (and I do), then this is inviting spiritual attack. For example, I sat down to write a few of these entries this morning and had a sheet of paper with some notes on it. I left it right here. Now it is gone. Hmmm.

For the record, I am not one of those folks who is always ascribing every bad thing to demons and Satan. I know Satan isn’t omnipresent and that honestly, he has much bigger fish to fry than me. In fact, if the powers of evil that are out there never paid me one bit of attention, I am a big enough sinner on my own that I could get in to tons of trouble with out any help at all. So this topic isn’t a part of my everyday experience as a follower of Jesus. (From here on out, when I refer to Satan or the devil, I could also mean general powers and principalities and spiritual forces of evil described in the scripture above. Not necessarily him specifically.)

And yet…

There have been things happen in my life that smell spiritual. The timing of a challenge is too coincidental. The way my thought life feels as if it is being pushed down a dark road, almost beyond my control. They way a conflict erupts between me and someone else (oh, alright, I mean my husband) at such a critical time. Evil dreams haunting me at pivotal moments in my life. Injuries or sickness that don’t make sense. You know what I’m talking about.

One or two of these events, randomly spread out and I would just chalk it up to coincidence. Stuff happens and it is a crazy world out there. But the pattern over the years, the real life stories of others with much more knowledge and experience than I and the clear teaching of the Bible lead me to the conviction that there is a spiritual world out there and as a believer in Christ, it is my enemy.

Therefore I’m going to write about it a bit for the next few weeks. Hope you’ll come along for the ride.