I spent some time this morning thinking about heaven. I thought about what it would be like to see the face of Jesus. I pondered on the overwhelming joy that would flood my soul as He embraces me and welcomes me into everlasting perfect communion with Him.
And then it happened...our adversary distracted me. The enemy reminded me of the struggles of this life. Satan told me to quit daydreaming of fairy-tales. That is what spiritual war is all about. When you begin to think on the beauty and wonder of God, Satan quickly tells whatever lies he can tell to rob you. He is a roaring lion whose only desire is to devour you. He wants to kill you, steal from you, and destroy you. We must be vigilant because he will use whatever means necessary to distract you from the wonder of God and the purpose of life.
One of the main things that our adversary uses is people. We know that the Word of God tells us that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12) but often times Satan will use people as human shields. The enemy will hide behind people and make you think that they are your enemies. They are not.
I have not been in ministry for a very long time comparable to some pastors but I have been for ten years. In my time in ministry, I have found that when God wants to do big things, Satan feels threatened. Our adversary will pull out every weapon in his arsenal to stop us from being used of God. One of his most devastating weapons against us is divisiveness and dissension. He will use mundane things to drive wedges between people. He will destroy relationships over trivial nitpickings that should not, and in fact, do not really matter. The adversary does not have to create major rifts between people to create chaos. All he really needs is a toe-hold. All that is really needed is for us to open the door for him by allowing differences of opinion to matter more than they really should. When we think of spiritual warfare, it seems that we often think of doing battle with strong demons. It is a lot more subtle than that.
Our God is a big God with big plans. Satan is a big adversary with big plans. Satan is not an enemy that should be taken lightly. Although it seems that he may not be waging all out war on us...I can promise you that he is. His battle plan is to wear us out by winning small skirmishes. We may think that these are no big deal until we realize that we have let him have victory on so many small skirmishes that he has won some major battles and is nearly winning the war. As they say, hindsight is 20-20. So wage war on him every day. As an individual and as a part of the corporate body of a church, determine daily that Christ will have the victory. Do not let him win any more skirmishes in your life and in your relationships. Get along with people for the sake of the Kingdom. Again, I have to reiterate that we as believers have more in common with each other than what the enemy would have us believe...because we have Jesus in common. Put aside your differences. Be united with the body of Christ. Realize that the enemy is cowardly and is hiding behind those people that you think are your enemies. Do not allow him the pleasure of hindering the plan of God in your own personal life or in your church because of trivial, nitpicky, non-sensical differences that will not matter in eternity.
As believers we know that the war has already been won. We know that God is victorious. We know that we are more than conquerors but we have to realize that although Satan has been defeated, he has not given up on taking as many down with him as he can. The Normandy invasion in 1944 has been infamously called D-Day. We know that this took place on June 6, 1944 but do you realize that, although the war was essentially won by the allies on that day on that bloody beach, skirmishes continued to rage on for nearly another year until what is known as V-Day (or Victory Day) in May of 1945? The Axis powers knew they had been defeated but they kept trying to inflict as much harm as they could until the bitter end.
The War has been won for us when Christ stormed the beach of death on Easter and proclaimed victory over the grave but our V-Day is still in the future when Christ leads his battalion to end Satan once and for all in the valley of Megiddo. Until then, keep fighting and realize that the person in the trench (or in the pew) next to you is not the enemy. In fact, they are your battle buddies. Don't weaken the war effort by fighting skirmishes with your allies. Join forces and flank the enemy together with the sweeping death blow of love and unity.
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