Priority One: Keep in the forefront of your consciousness that it’s all about God’s glory. That’s the root cause, and final end, of everything that matters in this world.
The primary objective of spiritual warfare is killing your fleshly nature. You want to be less worldly, less inclined to view things from a fleshly perspective. That includes the emphasis on being conviction-led, and keeping the mind in subjection to the heart. Let this world go. It’s not what you do in this world that matters, but how and why you do it.
So, in pursuit of a greater divine awareness, you’ll run across things that provoke your spirit. The next question is: What should you do about it? What does God want from you at that point? What does that burden signal to you about your own soul? Keep a clear eye on the defeat of the flesh when you ask that question.
The other day I was provoked about something. I felt that someone had gone too far in blaspheming the Lord’s name. Take a moment to consider that this is any action that pulls God down to the human level, or elevates man to God’s level. It need not be a direct insult to God, but one that is implied by elevating the flesh and insisting it’s a matter of divine revelation. In other words, there are a great many things fallen humans do that insult God, but when does it seem to cross into the domain God gave you?
It can include a matter of someone for whom you are praying, as another burden from the Lord. This was the case for me a couple of days ago; someone I was praying for had crossed the line into blasphemy, and it was a particular blasphemy that I had warned them about some time ago, and which others had warned him quite recently. He forcefully rejected the rebuke.
Since this person never listens to such things, the issue becomes a matter of bringing a curse upon themselves. They were opening the door to demonic presence in a rather significant escalation. At this point, I knew in my heart that I had some authority from God to pray about this matter, to kneel before Him in expectation that He would act.
It was not as if I was “calling fire down on the man’s head” in the sense most people think of it. Rather, I was asking God to pour out His cleansing power on my domain, particularly wherein this fellow was a part of the grant from God. Do you see how that works? I was asking God’s wrath to fall on me. Wrath is a two-edged sword — it cleanses the righteous and the destroys sin. I wanted God to destroy the sin in that situation, and I was willing to have my own sin clobbered in the process.
In such a prayer, you can bet the Lord will answer to the affirmative. Count on it. His wrath did fall into my life. It had nothing at all to do with this specific insult to God. Wrath is often impossible to logically tie to the thing that invokes His wrath. You have to be sensitive enough to recognize that some hassle you are facing is spiritually tied to the thing you prayed about, often in defiance of what makes sense on the human level. So I went through some inexplicable hassles this morning, but when I bothered to spend a quiet moment praying, it hit me that this was the hand of the divine Punisher extracting his due for something he frankly lost somewhere else.
I decided I was quite willing to pay that price on the human level for a victory in the divine matters about which I prayed. It signaled to me that our Enemy was not happy with my prayer request, but had no choice in the matter. Further, it signals that this fellow who had insulted God was going to receive his measure of wrath, as well. I don’t have to know how it turned out for him, though it’s likely I’ll see some of the results later. The honest truth is I don’t know enough about his life to estimate what it will do to him.
My real goal is that this fellow repent. My mind realizes this is highly unlikely, but it’s the righteous goal of my prayer. I’m willing to repent and bear the pain of sorrow for nailing my fleshly nature to the Cross, a job that demands frequent repetition. How it turns out for that other fellow is not in my hands at this point. If he does not repent, it will cost him, and it’s unlikely he’ll make the connection until he does fall on his face before the Lord.
Thus, I have reached into the Spirit Realm to claim something that God says I can have. It will have a real-world effect. I wanted no part in selecting what his consequences will be, only that they be quite real and substantial, matching the depth of his sin. If the sin is destroyed, and he clings to it, he will also be destroyed.
There’s no cackling revenge here. I’ll be proud of my Father’s power in me, but I’d much rather win over a professing believer from his sin. It’s not about me or him, but the message of God’s glory. That’s always in my best interest.
This is the Christian Mystic way of “cursing” someone who did wrong.
