I have a confession. I have never been a big believer in the whole idea of spiritual warfare. Yes, I know it’s in the Bible. I believe that Satan is real. But, I guess I have always thought that if you tried your best to follow God and live by his rules that you were exempt from the whole spiritual battle. I am not really sure why I thought that. I know that Satan will tempt us and try to get us to disobey God. But, I am becoming more aware that this is not the only way he attacks. In fact, I am beginning to believe that those may be his weakest attacks. They are the weakest because we are expecting those, so we usually guard against them. I believe his strongest attacks are the ones on our minds. The ones where we begin to let our questions cause doubts. The ones where we let our fears paralyze us. The ones where we let the small things that don’t go the way we want in our every day lives to steal our joy. At the beginning, it seems to be a minor disturbance. But, it is like a cancer. What starts out as damage to a single cell in our body, if not caught and treated, can eventually spread and metastasize and take over our whole bodies. If these minor disturbances aren’t identified and treated as what they really are – an attack by Satan to steal our joy and cause us to turn away from the Lord – they can grow and take over our entire thought life.
I have allowed Satan to attack me. I have allowed him to plant fear and worry in my heart and mind and steal my joy. It started subtly. So subtly in fact that over time I just concluded that is just who I am. There is nothing I can do about it. But, not anymore. I repent for allowing him to have control over me. I refuse to allow him to steal what is mine any longer.
How can we stop these attacks? Unfortunately, we can’t stop them. In fact, the stronger we become in our faith, the more he is going to attack. When he attacks, we have two choices. We can defend ourselves or we can fight back. The Bible gives us lots of ways to defend ourselves. We can defend ourselves with the truth, by living holy lives, having a firm faith, and the assurance of our salvation. Being on the defensive is good, but when I am attacked, I want to fight back. When we are under Satan’s attack, we have two powerful weapons available to us to fight back. First, is God’s Word. Ephesians tells us that the Word of God is our sword that we can use to fight back. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that God’s word is alive and active. It is powerful! It judges our thoughts and attitudes. Our second weapon is prayer. Ephesians 6:18 says we can pray in the Spirit at any time and about anything. When we pray, Holy Spirit steps in for us and help us.
The Bible and prayer are basically our boxing gloves. So, I am putting on my gloves and getting ready to kick some ass. Watch out, Satan! You are going down.