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Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4, ESV).
I suggest we all read Sam Storm’s book Understanding Spiritual Warfare! Why? Because spiritual warfare lies behind the difficulties most of us are going through right now.
Not knowing or practicing the elements of spiritual warfare, we become vulnerable to attack and unable to defend ourselves.
Spiritual warfare is real, as Sam Storms writes. . .
It is quite simply impossible to ignore the vast amount of material in both the Old Testament and New Testament that speaks of Satan, demons, and Christian men and women’s incessant battle with the temptation and oppression they try to impose on us.
I’ve listened to Christians who believe in demonic warfare indicate that they don’t worry because Jesus dealt a crushing blow to Satan through the cross. And that’s true, as we read in Colossians 2:15. . .
Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Yes, from the perspective of eternity, evil is defeated, but just like our sins are forgiven, yet we still sin, the devil is defeated, but we still experience demonic attacks. The Apostle Paul writes to believers in the first century. . .
In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one (Ephesians 6:16).
Sam Storm warns in his book. . .
Spiritual warfare is all-encompassing. It touches every area of our lives, our families, our relationships, our church, our neighborhoods, our communities, our places of employment. There is virtually no part of our existence over which the Evil One does not want to maintain or reassert his unhealthy and perverse influence.
I don’t know about your thoughts, but if I’m walking around a dark world with personified evil hiding behind most bushes, I want and need the light of the Gospel!
My library contains many books on spiritual warfare, but most were written in the 70s and 80s when the topic was current among believers. So, I was excited to read Sam’s book this summer. It’s a relatively recent book (2021), but an important one with the topic of the demonic diminishing in priority today, as the more progressive thinking in churches causes many believers to smirk at the idea of spiritual warfare.
Yep, most churches walk in the dark without a flashlight.
I think Storm’s book sums up the situation well. . .
One of Satan’s primary weapons is the lie. He is committed to deceiving you into believing you are not what, in fact, you are, and that you can not do what, in fact, you can.
Spiritual warfare involves actual attack, but those frontal assaults are more effective if the evil one has first convinced us to believe lies about him and our ability to gain victory!
Let’s remember, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).