Spiritual Warfare

I use WAZE, on my iPhone, to navigate the road ahead any time I leave town. With a large army of fans, it provides real-time traffic updates with fun and imaginative voice prompts. My latest prompter is Christina Aguilera. My favorite warning is, “Hazard reported ahead, life is full of obstacles it’s how we overcome them that matters”. It seems like hazards in life are an everyday occurrence. Some are physical, some are emotional, many are spiritual. It&rsquo…

Listen The Sirens were three mysterious women who, according to Homer’s Odyssey, lived on an island. Whenever a ship passed by, they would stand on the cliffs and sing. Their beautiful song would tempt sailors closer and closer until eventually they were shipwrecked on the rocks below. Odysseus was curious to hear the Sirens’ song but was well aware of the dangers. He ordered his men to tie him to the mast as they approached the island and then to plug their own…

Listen Morgan Snyder asked this question in his book, Becoming a King; What is the Enemy’s plan for your life? It’s an important question for each of us to ask and keep asking. There are daily strategies, cultural strategies, and geographical strategies set up by the Enemy to “steal and kill and destroy” us (John 10:10). And then there are brilliantly and deviously crafted personal strategies that take into account our stories, our woundedness, and…

Listen Spiritual warfare wasn’t much of a category discussed in the church I attended as a youngster. Unless we talked about Satan’s effort to tempt Jesus immediately after His baptism, that was pretty much all the merit given to the battle in the unseen world. Truth is, that Satan and his minions are real. Their main mission is to sideline believers from the calling God has placed on their life. To distract us all from an intimate relationship with Him. Here…

Listen I’m a few days into a Bible Reading Plan on the YouVersion app authored by Sheila Walsh. She remarks in one of the 7 days of the devotional: “Can you imagine a world without guilt, shame, or regret? We know this is too good to be true in the world we live in. But this is exactly what Adam and Eve experienced.” It is hard to imagine, but what a delightful thought it is. Then sin entered the story and we all hid behind our fig leaves. Guilt, shame,…

Listen So, we bit the fruit . . . then what? We were thrust into a world at war. Paradise was lost. But not forever. Genesis 3:23 describes it: “The Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life”. God is so loving, even in our disobedience, that he…

LIsten My father served in the Army during World War II. He rose to the rank of Master Sargent at lightning speed, being promoted to an Administrative NCO for an Ordinance Group at his post in Luzon, New Guinea. He was honorably discharged after the Battle of Luzon. A land battle of the Pacific Theater of Operations of World War II by the Allied forces of the U.S., its colony the Philippines, and allies against forces of the Empire of Japan. The battle resulted in a U.S.…

Listen It stars Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando. Set in the Vietnam War, *Apocalypse Now* is a 1979 epic war film. The use of the word ‘*apocalypse’* is based on the popular misunderstanding of the word as ‘destruction’. The Greek word *apokalupsis*, translated ‘revelation’ (Revelation 1:1), is made up of two Greek words – *apo* (out of) and *kalupsis* (‘hiding’). The word actually means ‘*disclosure’*. In the…

The Ephesians passage warns about spiritual strongholds created in our lives when we let “the sun go down” on something. Note that in this case that something isn’t necessarily sin. Paul says, “in your anger do not sin,” so anger does not equal sin. Anger can be a very appropriate reaction to life’s injustices. Nonetheless, failure to deal with that anger (letting the sun go down on it) clearly gives our enemy an opportunity to create…