Spiritual Warfare, Part 2
StreetWise - May 2014 by Paul Hazelden
Dear friends,
In the last StreetWise we were talking
about spiritual warfare and how
important it is for us to avoid the two
traps of practical atheism and magic.
The good news is that the Bible is full of
relevant and helpful teaching on this
subject. Of course, the hard bit is to put
all this teaching in to practice.
Spiritual warfare is not just for the
spiritual elite. We are (all of us) at war
with the devil, whether we recognise it
or not. Shutting our eyes to the fact will
not make the enemy go away or
prevent him from harming us. There
really is unimaginable evil in this world,
and our response to it matters.
The battle is the Lord's. Jesus has
already won the victory: our job is to
stand firm in Him. Ephesians 6, the
classic passage about spiritual warfare,
is very clear on this point: take your
stand against the devil's schemes (v.
11); you may be able to stand your
ground, and after you have done
everything, to stand (v. 13); stand firm
then (v.14). We don't need to go looking
for the enemy.
We are not fighting flesh and blood.
Other people may oppose us, but
(whatever it feels like) they are not our
enemy - only people being used by the
enemy.
Submit yourself to God and resist the
devil, then he will flee from you (James
4:7). Resisting the devil is no use if we
are not submitting to God. The authority
and power are His, not ours, and they
are given us so that His will and not
ours can be done.
The way we fight is to live as a
Christian. The spiritual armour is
simply getting on with the Christian life:
living, loving and serving as He
commands, enables and empowers us
to do.
Paul talks about spiritual warfare right at
the end of Ephesians. This is not
because he has suddenly remembered
some new and important area of
teaching and has to squeeze it in, but
because it summarises everything he
has been teaching us about salvation,
the gospel, prayer, faith, truth and
righteousness in the rest of the book.
The hard part is to put all this teaching
into practice. But that is what we are
here for: to love the unlovely, to see
God's grace and love changing the lives
of vulnerable people, and to stand firm
against all the things which would seek
to distract us from this task.