Your Place in the Spiritual BattleSample

Your Place in the Spiritual Battle Day 2 – Avoiding Warfare

Quite some time ago, I was out of town for training for my new job. I was driving back from getting another drive-thru dinner with my radio on scan, looking for some good music to make the ten minutes back to my hotel go by a bit quicker. As a new station popped up, I heard “Everyone should have a container of holy water by their front door to use for this.” Not music but certainly something intriguing enough to catch my attention. The man I assumed to be the regular host asked his supposed guest for other ways to avoid spiritual warfare.

Somewhere in the middle of his list was mentioned having Jesus in your heart. This was said in the same manner with the same emphasis as everything else. One more item in a list of items of equal importance. I should also note, in this list of ways to avoid spiritual warfare, reading the Bible wasn’t mentioned, but keeping it nearby was. As if the presence of the thin, gilded paper and heavy leather binding were enough to deter demonic activity.

I turned off the car shaking my head. I couldn’t believe the lack of emphasis on being a follower of Christ. As I sat at the little dark brown desk in my hotel room to eat, it occurred to me. They had everything completely backwards. They would have been better to have left having Jesus in your heart off the list all together. After all, as mentioned yesterday, being a Christ follower drafts you into the war.

Really the only way to avoid spiritual warfare is to stay off the enemy’s radar. If you don’t want to have to fight, don’t give the enemy a reason to attack you. He may not like you, but that doesn’t mean he would have reason to put effort into you. There are several countries that don’t like other countries, countries that believe things contrary to what others believe; but they don’t attack them, until they do something to provoke them.

If we don’t provoke the enemy, he will leave us alone. Even if we claim to follow Christ, his attacks will most likely be minimal. Just enough to get us to stay in the barracks. After that, he doesn’t have to worry about us. If you want to avoid spiritual warfare, stay away from the Bible, stay off your knees, stay off the enemy’s radar, and you’ll be just fine.

Of course, the Bible calls us to war. Jesus told us to go out and do all the things He did and more so. If we are truly following Christ, we should be dead center in the middle of the radar screen. The enemy should know our name and see our commanding officer is Christ. Our name should be on his hit list. And while that may sound scary, we must remember we have already been guaranteed victory. 1Corinthians 15:57 tells us, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In the upcoming days we will explore this war in more depth, learning our role in the war and strategies on how to fight the war.