A Reminder of WHO We Are Fighting Against

For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12)

I need to be reminded often that the battles that I often fight are not with flesh and blood.

I hate liberalism. I love liberals, but I hate liberalism. To me, liberalism is for cowards and weak minded-people. Nevertheless, my battle is not those who hold to liberalism, but against spirit of liberalism.

We need to learn that everything that is spiritual is not necessarily good. There is spiritual righteousness and there is spiritual wickedness and the devil is an evil spirit. He is unseen and therefore he is all the more dangerous. Do you know what the devil loves to get us to do? He loves to get us to wrestle with flesh and blood. Why? He wants us to believe that our enemy is flesh and blood (people), and as long as we’re fighting with flesh and blood (people) we’re not fighting with principalities and powers (i.e. the evil spirits behind misguided and rebellious thinking).

Do you remember when Peter tried to keep Jesus Christ from going to the cross in Matthew 16? Jesus was informing His disciples about how He was going to Jerusalem to be crucified. Simon Peter stepped forth and said, “Not so! This will never happen to you Lord.” Do you remember how Jesus responded to Peter? Jesus said to Peter: "Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's” (Matt. 16:23).

You might be thinking, “What a terrible thing for Jesus to call Peter, Satan. Jesus did not call Simon Peter Satan, Jesus called Satan, Satan. Jesus was wise enough to know that it was not really Peter but the devil who had prompted Peter to say what he did and try to keep Jesus from His mission of going to the cross. So rather than fighting flesh and blood (Peter) Jesus went to the root of the matter (Satan himself).

So many times when we have a fall out with somebody else we want to argue with that person and fight with that person rather than attacking the devil that causes that person to act and think that way. Would be to God that we have the insight to see that our battle is not with flesh and blood, but it goes deeper. Our battle is against the spiritual wicked forces of the devil who is behind the sinful thinking, abortion, murders, rape, lust, kidnapping, lying, greed, stealing, rebellion, extortion, and whatever else is against the will of God.

Misinformed people are merely the vehicles of which the devil uses to spew his venom of toxicity.

Therefore, knowing this, we need to fight the spiritual with spiritual weapons and not with carnal or fleshly ones. This means, we war against the devil and his demons in prayer and using the Word of God as our sword, along with a pure life. We are not talking about a perfect life, but a pure life – a life that is surrendered completely to God.