Know your enemy… The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
~ 孫武 (Sun Tzu)
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 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. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 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. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Ephesians 6
Oh beloved, it is true. We want to believe in the spiritual. But somehow the flesh gets in the way. Somehow we know that the spiritual is simply more real than the reality we perceive right now. But, we are afraid that people might think us weird to put everything into a context that puts our current existence into some lower order of being.
We, in our ignorance and pride, want to believe that all of our thoughts are own. And yet His Word tells us some very clear things about the new creation we are in Him – and the nature of the creation in which we live. He tells us that we now have the mind of Christ. And He tells us that we do not battle on a soulish (intellectual) or physical (flesh and blood) plane. We do, rather, battle on a field that is entirely more epic, and orders of magnitude more real than the gossamer-thin physical realm we inhabit.
And this is the play of those battling against us who believe: those forces of darkness would rather that they stay so invisible as to be assumed as non-existent. If they can get us to believe that the fiery darts they toss into our own minds are thoughts of our own, they can begin to get us to believe that even our faith is not so true.
And the division even goes further. As we listen to the darts of doubt flung our direction, we begin to look at those closest to us and begin to think that we can see their flaws so clearly – that we have so much insight into who they are – and what their motivations are. We, instead of simply loving the other, begin to believe that maybe that person is not so much of a friend after all.
And the play goes even further. As we begin to actually consider the darts as truth we have ourselves discovered, we begin to insulate ourselves from each other, to keep ourselves from getting hurt by all the ‘evil’ people around us.
Can we see it? The evil one really only has one weapon at his disposal. All the others have been defeated soundly at the cross of Jesus. The weapon is deceit. And the edge of that weapon is two-sided. The first edge is division. And the second edge is doubt.
Using the dividing edge of deceit, the liar can thin the ranks of warriors so as to isolate them and set them up for intense attack by the other side of the weapon. If a warrior is isolated from others, the fellowship of fresh brothers bearing each other’s burden short cuts the ability for the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus to be fulfilled. And once the warrior is separated, the enemy switches to the sharper and more insidious side of the blade. Hisses of “did G_d really say…” begin to echo in our minds.
And this is actually very good news.
What?
Yeah. The evil one will indeed overplay his own hand. He has no patience. He has no sense of balance or propriety. So, often, in sensing that he is about to defeat a foe he will hiss the same thing he said to Eve in the garden. And this is exactly when we can realize that it is not us thinking the thoughts, but another attempting to launch them into our minds. For, we have become convinced that Jesus is who He says He is – and that Love does indeed cover a multitude of sins.
So, when we look at another, or even at ourselves, and are tempted to seem them as wearing some evil mask – we must be willing to see that, most often, this is nothing but an overlayed facade painted on by the enemy. We must, instead, use the mind Christ has given us and simply choose to see people for who they are: beings intensely loved by an intensely Loving G_d.
But, what about when we fail?
This writer is seeing the vicious ‘bait and switch’ strategy of the evil one at work in our lives. The father of lies will launch evil thoughts or temptations into our minds through division and doubt – and we may react in a moment. i (like all of us) am guilty of moments of anger or despair or lust or fear…. But here is the truth. The devil takes a single moment of failure and says, “you are a complete failure, or that person is a complete failure.”
And this is a complete lie… Jesus says,
It is finished.
You are made new.
My grace is sufficient.
When you sin, I (Jesus) intercede for you.
Confess your faults that you may be healed, for you are already forgiven.
Said simply: G_d wins. Always.
So, beloved, the question for us is simple: Are we going to believe The Truth, or the bait and switch lies of the one who is already defeated?
The answer to this is very important for each of us.
