The Christian life is one of spiritual battles. Day in and day out, we are called to stand firm on the spiritual battlefield, clothed in the full armor of God. Scripture does not try to hide the intensity of the battle, nor does it suggest that our enemy plays fair, but it does remind us of several important promises about the warfare in which we are engaged. First, all throughout the Bible, we see that the battle belongs to the Lord. It is Him who goes before us; it is Him who defeats our enemies.
If you’re anything like me, being engaged in the spiritual battle against our enemy can actually be quite stimulating and energizing. When we engage in evangelistic outreach, through both the conversations we have with strangers as well as lost friends and family members, we can find ourselves encouraged and ready to continue pressing forward. That engagement on the spiritual battlefield causes us to constantly be looking for new and different areas where we can take the conversation; we are constantly evaluating and choosing which strategies and arguments to employ based on the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Because we know we have the Gospel, we can go forward in the sure hope that God’s word will not return void, that it will accomplish every single thing our Lord intends for it to accomplish (Isaiah 55:11)! When I know that I am going to be engaged in this part of the battle – the battle to push back the lostness that surrounds us – I get pumped up! The intensity of the battle is not diminished; the weight of the task before us does not lessen. However, we can find encouragement to press on when we know our battlefield is in the enemy’s territory.
There is another battlefield, though, which is just as much spiritual as the one I just described. Unfortunately, though, the invigoration of that first battlefield is missing from the second. And where is that second battlefield? In our own camp. Infighting. Friendly fire. As energized as I might find myself going into spiritual warfare with those who are in the enemy’s camp, I am completely drained – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually – when I know that I am about to step foot on a battlefield that is part of our own territory! We’ve seen the horrible consequences to accompany a battle where we shoot our own wounded. We’ve seen the intense hurt that can result in people being wary of the church and has even led to some in the ministry to drop out. Those battles result in believers being utterly sapped of their strength. Now, I am not talking about those battles in which we contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3); we cannot shy away from those battles, though how we participate in them will look very different. No, these are the battles where believers allow their sinful hearts to cloud their focus on Christ, diminish their love for one another, and trivialize the unity of the body of Christ. When all our strength is focused on trying to avoid the friendly fire of our brothers and sisters, we are removed from the battlefield God would have us be standing upon. Just something to think about…
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