In the trenches
Posted by Adam Desmond on February 21, 2010
This week my daughter and I were working on experiencing God’s pleasure and enjoying spending time with us, so I asked her what her favorite part of the day was. “Recess!” was her immediate response, so I asked her to try to focus on God being there with her during recess, enjoying watching her play, then ask after recess if He had fun.
When I got home from work I asked how it went, and the results were very interesting. She usually plays with one of her good friends, and for some reason on this day my daughter got upset and treated her friend badly. When I asked why she got upset, she said she didn’t really know.
I began to suspect that there was more to this than simple little girl fickleness, so I asked her to pray about what happened today and ask God why she got so upset with her friend. This sent her into a very uncharacteristic reaction, getting very upset and saying that she didn’t understand what it was I was asking her to do.
I believe that our daughter was experiencing spiritual warfare.
If you haven’t listened to the excellent sermon John Young preached on how we are blocked from hearing from God, I’d highly recommend it, because it helps to identify many of the reasons why we sometimes have difficulty hearing from God. One of them is spiritual warfare, and I don’t believe we see just how often this affects our walk with God, and indeed our everyday lives.
One factor that helps to identify this as spiritual warfare is the uncharacteristic and disproportionate reactions. When we are being attacked, it isn’t just that we believe a lie, we are pushed into reacting to that lie. It is a very active attack in most cases, though I’m sure that some people experience very subtle and passive attacks. Now, an important distinction here is that we aren’t forced to react. This isn’t possession. But spiritual warfare can be extremely persuasive.
Buddy tells a great story about going into the Marines. Everyone told him that the Corps would break him, make him into a fighting, killing machine. He didn’t think that was possible, so he said that he would do everything asked of him, but keep his mind separate, knowing that he was only playing along.
It didn’t work.
The conditioning did exactly what it was designed to do, creating in Buddy a perfect soldier, capable of following orders even when he didn’t think he could, even when he didn’t understand, even when he disagreed.
When we allow spiritual warfare to shape our minds, we are submitting to this same kind of “persuasion.” We forfeit our ability to control our actions willingly, if perhaps unknowingly, and become very much like the soldiers on the battlefield that simply obey orders.
The good news is, we don’t have to let ourselves be controlled – our God can and will deliver us from this warfare. But many times we need help to identify it. In our families, this is easier to spot, as we’re often more open, more “ourselves” around those we care about the most. But sometimes we feel the need to shield ourselves from our church family. We put on a mask around others, and it becomes difficult to see what’s going on behind the facade.
I’m especially guilty of this, I tend to be more introverted, so it’s easy for me to give polite responses when asked questions, and I’ve taught people not to expect much in conversation from me, so I give fewer clues that things aren’t going well than others. But when it comes to this, we are all called to be protectors of our brothers and sisters. We should press when we get the polite and appropriate answers to the standard questions of “How’s it going?” or “How was your week?” It reminds us to take a look at ourselves and that gives God an opportunity to show us things that we’ve become desensitized to over the course of the week.
Let’s commit to using our time before and after church to guard one another’s souls, and watch for signs of spiritual warfare. It is so much more prevalent than I think most of us are willing to admit. As Peter said, our adversary is prowling like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
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