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| Spiritual Warfare |
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| Spiritual Warfare: It's beginning and nature: We need to be aware of the war we are in. God has given us a number of tools to use in the battles. He won the war himself, but we still have to fight personal battles to make sure we stay on the winning side. To make an analogy, think of a war that is already officially won. One side is officially in power. However, the other side still tries to hold on to it's prisioners and strongholds. In order to do the winning side harm, the enemy uses persuasion to get individuals who own land and goods to give him ground, so he can own part of the territory and continue to do damage. Each of us, as human beings and children of God, owns a certain amount of "land." That land is the earth, our lives, and our souls. We can choose what we do with it: we can honor God or we can dishonor him. Dishonor and breaking away from God takes our "land" out of unity with God, out of the protection of God, thus leaves it as an open doorway for our enemy to use what ever we have. In Genesis, God gave mankind authority over the earth. (Gen 1-2) They had an enemy even then. He came in the form of a serpent, and used persuasion to talk the people out of the protection of God. He suggested they should be suspicious of God, that He was keeping them from something good, and that they were able to "be their own gods." (See Genesis 3) Once they broke from God, their lives, souls, and the earth were left "open" and unprotected (both immediately felt this "nakedness" and covered themselves). The first manifestation of the enemy's presence in their souls was the shame, confusion, and fear they immediately felt. The soul is the mind, emotions, and will. When the break from God happened, ground in their souls was turned toward favoring the enemy. They were ashamed of being "exposed," became confused about what to do about it and ran from God out of fear. The consequences of this turn from God and the giving over of ground to the enemy had consequences. The ground was cursed and produced undesirable "fruit." The good fruit that had been a gift at first, would only come through work and trials. The other part of the curse was that people would "rule over" each other, which gave way for things like patriarchy, slavery, and tyrrany. It also made procreation a pain instead of a joy. The good news in that area is that God provided a covering, or protection for the land that was exposed. Genesis shows how God made the people body coverings out of animal skins. |
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