Fearless

I don't normally talk about spiritual warfare with my friends. It is not because I don't want to, but it is more so because I don't feel that they want to. I suppose that it comes down to beliefs and understanding of it and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. This is odd for me as I am a very honest person on many topics. The other night I was sitting in a bar getting to know someone who I have known for many years and this conversation topic came up. It is funny, first of all, how God works and also who I was having this conversation with. 

My understanding of the spiritual realm comes from when I was in high school. My friends favorite pastime was to go "ghost hunting" in abandoned houses. To most high school students this was a thrill to go somewhere that they weren't supposed to, but to me it was an invitation to darkness. As time went on, I started to realize that if we were going in order to be terrified, the devil would use that to his advantage. I knew that through fear I was putting myself in direct line of spiritual battle. I was opening myself up to all sorts of attacks from the devil.

Though I started to understand the spiritual realm and warfare during high school, it never became much of a conversation topic. There were always those random times when it was brought up and I chimed in, but other than that it stayed hush hush. It doesn't make sense to me that we don't talk about it more as we live in the middle of a warzone. We talk about our struggles and sins, but completely disregard the outside forces that are fighting us. We make sense out of demons that people see or the oppression that is heavy on people as they can't sleep at night. We admit that there is bad in the world, but when it comes to the army that is rising up against us, it becomes a difficult conversation. 

The reality of the matter is that there are forces out there. There is something that we are fighting against and we should not just ignore it. We ignore it because ignorance allows us to get by without having to fight. We don't have to deal with something that "we don't know" is there. We are called to fight the battle and to live our lives in the name of the Lord. By not ignoring the fact that there is indeed a spiritual war going on, we are becoming tools of the devil. He wants us to be ignorant to it as he can do his best work in ignorance. It is our call to rise up and take this on. We should be open, willing to talk, and ready to come together as a body to fight against it. 

Fear is of the devil and to live this life in ignorance is showing that we are fearful. The truth of the matter is that the war has already been won. We have been shown how this all goes down in the end and that is how we should fight. We should fight with confidence that the Lord has already taken this all on. He has already won this for us, it is our job to now step up. It is funny how God brings on conversations like this through the most random people. This is a conversation that I don't have with my closest friends because I am nervous to, but I can talk to someone who I barely know about it. It is funny how he stirs up things in us through the most random situations.