When it comes to spiritual warfare, God has already given us victory. We can overcome because Jesus overcame. Some people will blame every problem on Satan and his demons, while others ignore the spiritual realm altogether.
Both are dangerous. The best way to approach spiritual warfare is to find a balance be- tween owning our mistakes and staying aware of the temptations around us. In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul explains how we should fight this invisible battle for our minds:. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Your life is a waste of space. Resist the devil [stand firm against him], and he will flee from you. When we give our lives to Jesus, we become subject to God and we receive the power of the Holy Spirit. The same power that lived in Jesus now lives in us! Yes, angels and demons exist in our world today. Angels are spiritual beings created by God Colossians Demons are former angels that were cast out of heaven with Satan Revelation Each day when we wake up we have the choice to either serve our flesh, which is our sinful nature, or listen to the Holy Spirit.
What we give our time to will determine our success in the spiritual battles we face each day. This can mean spending time reading the Bible, choosing to worship when everything is going crazy, and set- ting aside time to pray. Jesus is our ultimate example when it comes to resisting temptation. Each time Jesus was tempted, He responded by quoting Scripture.
Purposes to save us and glorify his name, and promises about our lives and about his holy character. Satan and his spiritual forces oppose all of that. In non-Christians the enemy and his forces will attempt to thwart salvation Luke and encourage sin Ephesians Their primary tools for this opposition are lies Genesis ; John and temptations Matthew Given that dramatic and mildly scary context, Scripture has two valuable promises for us, one ultimate and the other immediate.
The other promise is that we have immediate assistance available to us. If this is not you—which is to say, if you are a Christian brother or sister who constantly seems to be getting cut, bloodied, or wounded by the jabs and thrusts of the enemy and cannot understand why—I have difficult and exciting news to share: there is armor available to you. Learning to put it on will likely be hard work, but the best of your spiritual life is in your future.
You are not meant for weakness. Spiritual Warfare in Mission. Find a Chapter. Study the Bible. Skip to main content. November 13, Blog Categories:. I think he wanted acceptance among the academic elite, and to suggest that you believe that there is truly a being—a personal, thinking, willing, choosing being called Satan, with a multitude of demonic hosts to serve him—it was a threat to his standing in the minds of academia.
But all this other stuff just seems extraneous. Where did Satan come from? Who are demons? Where did they come from? Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel And I dig into both of those passages in depth in my book. Ezekiel 28 may be alluding to it. We know he was created—Colossians 1, verses 16 and 17 says that God the Son created all things. John 1 says very much the same truth. But when and how Satan rebelled is really somewhat of a mystery. They want answers. Same way with Adam and Eve. The important thing is—that was Satan.
Therefore, he had to have been created, and had to have fallen prior to Genesis 1. We just know that they did. There are a lot of theories out there about the origin of demonic spirits. That they fell when he did. Some say they still can. I find that hard to believe, given that Paul talks about the elect angels in his letter to Timothy.
But undeniably, you simply cannot read the Bible and dismiss the reality, the activity, and the threat posed to the church of Jesus Christ by the demonic spirits. I have several chapters in my book based on the Book of Revelation.
And I think most of the descriptions of these locusts, and these scorpions, and this million man army—I think are all references to demonic spirits unleashed throughout the earth, designed to destroy the church of Christ.
That, as Paul said, this is the warfare that we are in. There are unseen forces of evil that are very much engaged against the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and his saints.
And to not recognize that is to put ourselves at great peril, and open us up to the realities of spiritual warfare. I mean, I think sometimes we are able to discern the difference. We have to…for example, you know, Ephesians 6 talks about these flaming darts of the evil one. One of his flaming darts being hurled in your direction.
Another, I think, of the indications is—we simply have to pray. We have to ask for discernment. Now, anger there, Paul was attributing to fallen human flesh. He said—this is a sin that you need to address. So it would appear that the sin of anger and unforgiveness—and you could probably insert any other kind of sin into this text—is due to our willful, fallen inclinations.
He can pour gasoline on it. He can aggravate it. And just one other thing I want to say, too. So we have to embrace both of these truths. We have to hold them. And when people do, they kind of fall off on a ditch, like you said, on either side and it makes their thinking about God and Satan askew in unhelpful ways. But what about actual demon possession? What does that mean? Is that still happening today? You alluded to something before. How can we understand this as Christians?
It has come into the vocabulary of Christians largely through the influence of the King James Version. It is found in a number of contemporary English translations. So I prefer to use the language of demonized. And I fear that when we use the words demon possession, it just conjures up images of, you know, Linda Blair in the Exorcist, you know, vomiting pea soup and her head twirling around. So the attack can come from without.
You know? What matters is how you respond to it. So the major debate here—and I have an entire chapter in the book devoted to this question—is whether a Christian, a born-again believer, can be demonized or indwelt by a demonic spirit. Nor is there a text that explicitly says that one can.
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