The Whole Armor of God (VII)
Just as a soldier’s sturdy boots makes for balance and stability, putting on the shoes of peace as an armor provides a base, foundation, stability and calm confidence.
Just as a soldier’s sturdy boots makes for balance and stability, putting on the shoes of peace as an armor provides a base, foundation, stability and calm confidence.
The Warfare
Welcome back to the 7th part of this blog post series. In parts 1-6 we discussed extensively on the whole armour of God taking our reference scripture from Ephesians 6:11-17.
Today, just to tidy up the "The Warfare' bit of this series...
Warfare simply means engagement in or activities involved in war or conflict. It also means combat, struggle, conflict.
Ephesians 6:12 tells us the kind of warfare we're in as Christians;
"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood {contending only with physical opponents} but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this {present} darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) places" Amplified Version.
And 2 Corinthians 10:3
"For though we walk in the flesh {as mortal men}, we do not war after the flesh" NKJV.
Two obvious conclusions from the above scriptures;
1. The warfare is not against humans
I remember a dream I had most of my childhood; a woman tried to kill me several times in very subtle ways,always initially pretending to be friendly and motherly but with an ultimate intent to hurt me, which wasn't initially obvious. Considering the frequency of the dream, I decided to mark her face and possibly relate it to a physical being. One day, the scales fell off my eyes and I saw her exactly for what she was -evil, Satan's agent. I rebuked her to her utter shock, that was the last time she appeared in my dream :)
We're in a spiritual warfare and it is not against humans.
So no need to move about pointing accusing fingers at mere mortal beings. Yes, the devil can work through humans who make themselves available to him, but we do not fight back at humans or physical beings else we lose. There is a spiritual strategy for spiritual combat.
This is liberating for me also in handling everyday relations- sensitivity to understand when conflicts require spiritual handling is crucial- and I believe we can win every conflict irrespective of how they present, when we adopt a spiritual combat approach. There is so much peace handling stuffs that way :)
2. The warfare is against Satan & his gang.
Yes, the warfare is against the tricky cunning old fellow of John 10:10b-the thief and his gang! The one who came to steal, kill and destroy.
He is the ruler of this present world {to the blind and unbelieving), he commands principalities and powers of darkness of this age, the wickedness in the heavenly places and he still wields his powers among ignorant folks. But those who know know it that Jesus Christ totally DISARMED him at Calvary...Hallelujah!
"Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it".
Colossians 2:15.
For me therefore, the current status of Satan is Colossians 2:15, he seems to often forget that. As Christians we have a duty to remind him every time he pulls his old stunts.
In the concluding part, we'll look at the very interesting 'Weapons of Our Warfare'.
Till then....stay blessed :) and keep musing over Colossians 2:15.
My love always....