Our Struggle Is Not Against Flesh and Blood – Part 1
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power . . . 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” (Ephesians 6: 10 – 13; 18 NIV).
What is happening in America today, and around the world, is being played out, right now, in the heavenlies – the supernatural realm of the unseen real – where powers and principalities of darkness are in a titanic war against God’s angel armies. Our battle is not against people – it is against the forces of evil in the heavenly realms. What happens there is manifested here – the struggle in the heavenlies ultimately plays out in our world. Satan hates God, His creation, and His people, especially the Church. It is this hatred that is fueling the world-wide heavenly struggle, which is already releasing evil into our nation, cities, and even the Church.
What We See Today
Lately I have been praying about the spirits of fear, intimidation, and lawlessness that are manifesting more than ever before (at least in my lifetime) in American society. I asked Jesus, “What’s going on? What is happening to this nation that was once free, but where expressing a patriotic opinion will get you in trouble, where violence in cities is widespread and barely condemned by some politicians, where buzz words like ‘cancel culture’ are gaining support, and where religious freedom is now being characterized as a “shield for hate speech”? What is happening when the word ‘problematic’ is being used to censure books like ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, the ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’, the books of Jane Austen (“too white”), Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and even the play ‘Hamilton’? When will the Bible be declared, by this movement, ‘problematic’? America is becoming a place where “evil is called good and good evil”; where people put darkness for light and light for darkness (Isaiah 5: 20 NIV).
I sound like Habakkuk, who said to the Lord:
“How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in righteousness, so that justice is perverted” (Habakkuk 1: 1 – 4 NIV).
During this prayer time, Jesus told me, “The spiritual darkness you see now out in the open in America is rooted in decisions made decades ago. The lawlessness you see in your country is the tangible manifestation of the sins that have permeated America for generations including sins (the usual suspects) like abortion, racism, idolatry of all types, atheism, the Marxist takeover of colleges and universities in America, pornography, and sexual immortality. America has replaced the fear of the Lord with an arrogance that defiles all you touch”.
This spirit of lawlessness can be traced back to the 1950s – when a widespread belief in God began to be replaced in America by the slow but inexorable collapse of the nuclear family, Sunday worship was abandoned for shopping and sporting events, God was slowly removed from every sphere of society, and worship of Jesus was replaced by worship of ‘sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The ‘chickens are finally coming home to roost’.
Is the time now the end of an age, or will the disease, disruption and violence die down in a year or two and we will get back to the ‘normal’ life we knew just last year? My guess? No, ‘Normal’ is the past. A new age is beginning. It will be birthed in disruption and violence, which will increase, but I believe out of it will come a life of intimacy with Jesus greater than any of us (His followers) have ever known. Jesus is birthing a new bride. But in the meantime, we are at war.
As Paul makes clear, we are called to this struggle – but the struggle is not against people. It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. We must not capitulate and walk away from God and our faith or become apathetic and retreat from the struggle. We have a role to play – it is our struggle, our battle, just as much as it is God’s. We are to stand firm in the face of evil; for example, evil like a potential Marxist takeover of America, even if it is rooted in the sins of America. God used Babylon – the Spirit of Lawlessness – to chasten Judah and prepare them for a new season. In response to Habakkuk’s tirade against God, God told Him this:
“Look at the nations and watch – and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own” (Habakkuk 1: 6, 6 NIV).
A Prophecy
Yikes!! Is God going to unleash that over America? Is God going to send the Church in America into exile? But, even after being conquered by the Babylonians, the Israelites taken into exile practiced their religion and refused to bow to Babylonian ideology and idols (think Esther and Daniel). In exile their faith and their Church survived, and maybe even flourished. If God is going to exile His Church it will be for His purposes and glory. Perhaps exile will do away with the apathetic, powerless Church and produce the ‘true Church’, the ‘real bride of Christ’; a church whose commitment to Him is passionate and powerful – releasing Holy Spirit power into the world with signs, wonders, and miracles for all to see. It might be an underground Church that looks nothing like the Church in America today – the true Church that will advance the Kingdom of God in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
The members of that true church will walk in their true Kingdom selves – filled with light; not just talking about power and the fruit of the Spirit, but living that power and being that fruit. When the light of Jesus in these believers connects with the lights in other believers, those lights will be amplified, shining both into the darkness around us and into the heavenly realms, calling down angels to war beside us. For some this vision is naive – the true church will still be made up of people, and people are messy. True, but God is shaking and sifting the church. He is creating a new thing and the ‘old’ – churches that align themselves with a Marxist culture and turn from the Kingdom of God – will wither and die or worse.
War in the Heavenly Realms
While our battle or struggle is fought in this world, the landscape in which the fighting occurs is not just in this reality, but also in the unseen real – in the supernatural, heavenly realms. Like Elisha showing his servant the angel army (2 Kings 6: 17), our spiritual eyes need to be opened. What happens there will be manifested here. It is important to protest and struggle against injustice in this world, but for true Godly change to occur here, there must be supernatural victory there. Yes, we know that Jesus won the victory over evil when He was resurrected, but Paul tells us the struggle against evil is ongoing.
So, how we measure victory in the heavenly battle, or the skirmishes or firefights that make up that battle, will not always be measured in ways that are seen. We do not measure victory in terms of how many arguments we win, how many of our enemies are humiliated or shamed into joining our ‘cause’ or silenced, how many protesters we can put on the street, how many buildings are burned down, what the polls say, or whether ‘our guy’ wins the election. Those ways are man’s ways and ultimately satan’s. In most cases, we will not even ‘see’, with earthly eyes anyway, when we (or ‘our side’) have ‘won’ a victory, because the battle and therefore the victory, when there is one, occurs in the heavenly realms. What looks like defeat in this world, is often a great victory in the other.
Nothing Is Wasted
Still, there are victories all around us, if we take the time to look. A kind word to a stranger, helping a neighbor move a couch, resting in the beauty of God’s creation for a few minutes at the end of a difficult day, planting a tree, cleaning a bathroom, walking with a friend in their grief, telling your Mom, “I love you”, weeding a garden, quietly worshiping God, or taking time out of a busy day to pray. In some mysterious way, all of these release God’s Kingdom on earth and in heaven because they make this world a better place, and bring Jesus’ coming a little bit closer – they push back the darkness and defeat the power of evil.
Nothing is wasted! God uses all of these things and more to advance His Kingdom – to pull down demonic strongholds in our lives, our Church, and our Nation. On the other hand, fear, despair, and anxiety feed the power of evil.
Our Weapons
But still, there is a struggle to fight, there are demonic strongholds that must be destroyed for God’s Kingdom to advance (think Jericho). What are our weapons for the pulling down of strongholds? They are not of this world:
“For though we live in this world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world . . . they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10: 3, 4 NIV).
They are Kingdom weapons given to us by God, wielded by Kingdom men and women when we enter into and live with Jesus in the Kingdom of God – they are the “full armor of God”, they are spiritual weapons designed to defeat the power of evil in the spiritual, heavenly realms.
Most fundamentally our most powerful weapon to defeat evil is Jesus Christ – every weapon we have flows from Him or is connected to Him. “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me . . . for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12: 9, 10 NIV); and “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1: 27 NIV).
When Jesus lives in us, the Holy Spirit, and God, our Father, live there also. Through the triune God living in each believer, we have access and the permission (expectation) to use the power that raised Jesus from the dead (Ephesians 1: 19, 20) for the purpose of spiritual warfare. We release that power through worship, preaching and teaching, healing and delivering, reading the word of God, prayer; good works rooted in love and grace; repentance, our Spiritual Gifts, and more.
I know prayer is powerful, able to change the world. But what about these others. For example, is worship a weapon? Can peace and joy be weaponized? See Part 2 of “Our Battle Is Not Against Flesh and Blood”.
In the struggle,
John