Spiritual Warfare 02

Spiritual Warfare is simply the quintessential metaphor for being a Christian. This is the biblical image of serving an ANE feudal master as newly adopted into His household. We are striving to claim the fullness of being His child, with a particular focus on bearing fruit for His domain.

This is the image inherent in Ephesians 1; Paul uses the term that should be translated as “economy” rather than “fellowship.” But more importantly, it conjures the image of an desert sheikh seeking to build up His household wealth and influence. We seek to make Him famous (AKA, glorious).

But His greatest treasure is His people, His household family. And it is only natural that He seeks their welfare. However, it works by allotment; we each have a certain collection of inherited blessings that belong to us. We increase His domain’s wealth and influence — His glory — by how we reclaim and occupy the lives He has given each of us.

So the biggest problem is not Satan, but His children who resist His will, who do not engage the mission to reclaim their lives from Satan. The Devil is a feudal punisher under God’s authority. There is no outside agency here; God owns it all. The biggest problem is that His children keep running off outside the boundaries, and the only way He is going to keep us inside the high privilege of His blessings is to appoint the Devil and his demons to wander the outside and capture the children that won’t stay home.

The demons are permitted to entice you outside the boundaries. If you fall for it, then they gain access to your life. That we are all born in sin means that we start that way, captured and enslaved outside the boundaries. God calls to us to come join Him inside the boundaries of His household. We spend the rest of our lives struggling to get back inside of Eden, the divine household. The first thing we face is the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of the Lord. That Sword is also the Cross; it must impale our souls and kill the fallen fleshly nature.

And it’s by our own hands that the Sword/Cross pierces us through. Otherwise, it won’t happen. If we don’t turn that weapon first on ourselves, we can’t use it at all. The domain of Satan in our lives is that fleshly nature. That’s the limits of his power to operate. Thus, our commission is to spend the rest of our lives constantly recapturing the fleshly nature that will not stay dead, will not stay on the Cross. As long as we are burdened with a mortal existence, that is the image under which we live. We keep denying the fleshly self; we keep nailing it to the Cross.

Yes, our God and Father operates this way. He keeps the Devil out there in the Fallen Realm and the demons can use all sorts of tricks to draw us out. As soon as we step outside, we discover that our fleshly nature has come down from the Cross and has followed us out there where it can rule and “live” the existence it desires. It is the prime ally of Satan in our lives, that zombie of fallen desire that takes over our lives so quickly.

There are a host of fallen people out there who remain surrendered to Satan. They are victims, too, but we cannot allow them to appeal to our fleshly nature. They all have demons running their lives. On some rare occasions, those demons will seek to step over to our fleshly natures, to give the zombie a little extra strength to hold us back from returning inside the boundaries. The most common path through our awareness is subtle, a matter of operating in the background through temptation. However, sometimes it’s far more open and direct, with the demons welcomed consciously. That’s when things get spooky.

But whole business can be spooky for us when we are perceptive enough to see it. We are wired to sense this directly, to know when something is less a latent response and a more in-your-face taunting from the Darkness. No two of us will see it quite the same way. What taunts you and I in the face may be shrouded to someone else. That’s because no two of us are called, commissioned and empowered to respond in exactly the same way. How you are supposed to influence someone else may well be different from how another believer gets the job done.

So, a critical element in defeating Satan’s grip is knowing the boundaries of which believers are supposed to be on your team, and which believers are supposed to be on some other team. Don’t work with believers who disrupt your commission. It has nothing to do with what they intend, and everything to do with what God intended. He has children we should avoid for reasons He never explained. But this becomes a critical element in Spiritual Warfare. You must pull in the harness with those who pull as you do, whose manner of service complements yours. If you team up with the wrong people, you simply give Satan new openings to interfere.

This, too, can be contextual. This time you work with them; next time you don’t. It may well be permanent, but you must be wise enough to recognize what God wants you to do. That’s one of those tests of faithfulness. You need to know who belongs to your spiritual clan, and who does not. It’s not a question of whether they belong to the Kingdom, but whether you have any business working alongside each other at that moment.

It’s not that there is only one path for all back toward Eden. Rather, there is only one path for you. The Lord will post signs that you should recognize as parts of the dominion He would grant you. “Explore this area! Come and occupy!” Sometimes, once conquered, you might well be asked to pass it off to another, or simply leave it behind for someone to claim it later. You might be asked to remove stones, while another will plow, and yet another plant the seeds.

Not every act against Satan’s dominion stirs epic visions. Just removing a badly placed stone is an act of Spiritual Warfare. It brings some portion of God’s promised blessings closer to reality for you or someone else. But their welfare is your welfare, because it all belongs to the King and His Kingdom.

This is the parable of Spiritual Warfare.