So many people are just finding the Lord, and learning the Truth about the spiritual condition of this world, not only about the physical plane, but the fact that there is a spiritual realm where beings, both benevolent and malevolent, that are invisible to us, who are not only major participants but extremely influential in all that goes on around us.
This is a hard pill to swallow for most, and can lead to a type of fear that puts more stock in the powers of the malevolent than in that of the benevolent. The evil spirits tend to try to use this to put fear in recent converts and those who learn of this reality in many ways. They want to intimidate and take away the peace of the person just coming to the truth, to make them fearful to take up their arms and go to battle.
Because they know you've been given infinite power over them.
You also realize that many of the people you cared about were nothing short of vessels of demonic spirits who never had your well-being in mind. They were abusing you, cheating on you, sabotaging you at their every move. All they ever did was malevolent trickery against you. You look back and realize that you were their slave and object of abuse and this, too, is a hard pill to swallow because you feel so ashamed you allowed that to happen, but the hard truth is, for most people, this is the world they grew up in: scapegoats to demon-filled bullies mascaraing as family, friends, teachers, coaches, bosses and co-workers.
When you first come to this reality it's easy to freak out. But you can't.You can’t panic.
For men, you can’t be a “woman,” but you don’t have to be God either.
For women, you can’t be a child, but you don’t have to be a man.
You can’t be hysterical.
You can’t let yourself be overwhelmed.
You have to trust.
You have to begin to see these newly learned about problems as challenges that God and you can:
- Bring to resolution in the immediate or over time, and that you can
- Supernaturally receive the patience to wait on God for resolution.
You must begin to see relative discomfort as something temporary: either you, with God’s help, will adjust to and learn to abide the ebbs and flows of the discomfort until see your situation improve, or God will bring an immediate solution, at which point the problem is resolved with no endurance required.
This world will always present challenges, discomforts, types of sufferings, delays and waiting.
You will be extremely blessed in many ways and you will suffer tremendous need for resolution in others.
Focusing on you needs and resolution of your discomfort to the exclusion of recognizing the blessings in your life will cause you to lose faith in God, because all you will see are the problems and, in the end, it is possible you will even falsely blame God for them, unthankful for the blessings you do have while your mind exists in a state of delusion that the circumstances of your life are:
- Worse than they are,
- Unresolvable, or
- That God is not even on your side nor does He even even care (did not God care about Abraham and Sarah while they waited decades to have a son?)
THE DELUSION OF PERFECTION IN THIS LIFE
Another delusion to be reckoned with is that at any point in your life, that EVERY THING in your life could be entirely perfect. This is one of the "sells" of the NAR movement and the prosperity gospel. And this is a delusional message meant to keep your eyes focused on the "blessings" of this world (read: materialism), rather than on the God who sanctified you. It's a red herring and a side track.
And it's true, though, that there are times when we have that experience that all is right in the world and we can’t even see the challenges. In those moments we are often actually blinded to the imperfections of life, and in this blindness, we have this belief that none exist, or that a state of being can be realized where there are no challenges, no discomforts, no sufferings.
Ignorance is indeed bliss, but this state of mind is not reality, and demons use these moments in time when things do go wrong, and potentially horrible circumstance occur, to get you to think you need your life to be “perfect” again, as you ignorantly thought it once was.
But it never was fully perfect, as this system can’t allow for such a state being, marred by sin and entropy as it is.
And certainly the presence of the enemy of our souls, even and especially during the best of times, was constantly scheming to rob, kill and destroy us and what we perceived to be our “blessed” circumstances.
I’ve read many testimonies of people saying they found out their spouse was cheating on them for many years before they discovered it. All the while they thought their lives and their marriages were as good as they possible could be.
That was only true from the perception of the abused spouse, but were things indeed perfect, or was ignorance just bliss?
I am not saying these things to try depress anyone with regard to the condition of their lives, only to bring up that this is an EVIL world from which we expect way too much.
It’s this expectation of perfection, which can NEVER exist, that Satan uses to bring about depression, sadness, grief, and ultimately self-destructive behaviors and actions that lead to our own demise ACCORDING TO HIS PLAN. But this is NOT God’s plan for us.
The resolution of this, to have peace in this life, is to know the truth of our existence, ACCEPT IT, that this life will continuously be presented with challenges from the Satanic kingdom, and the realization that God has given us every means by which to deal with and OVERCOME it. There is rest in this knowledge, and this is why knowing THE TRUTH will MAKE YOU FREE.
Knowing you are always on the winning team when you repent and make things right with God is A TREMENDOUS comfort.
And most importantly, recognizing that your perception of this battle is often colored by circumstances that skew the reality of that victory. You must have the faith to believe that what God gives you to pray and speak forth is coming to fruition, even if the circumstance bely that fact. It all comes down to whose line you’re going to believe, Satan’s or God’s.
Will God’s Word prevail in your heart and mind? If it does, you can have peace, love and joy even in the worst circumstances this horrible sin stained world has to offer. If you believe Satan’s narrative, you will indeed go down the slippery slope to depression, sadness, grief, self-pity and all the gamut of self-destructive beliefs and practices that allow Satan to rob, kill and destroy your life.
The battlefield truly is the mind.
Also, knowing that this world is completely temporal, that there’s an expected end to this system with a replacement that will no longer give place to this evil, is the basis of our faith: that we are just sojourners passing through a kingdom that is not ours, but helping each other to escape it, together.
THE TEMPORAL NATURE OF THIS REALITY
Holding onto the things of this world, relationships, idols, money, position, fame, perceived stability, is a moot point because of the temporal nature of this reality.
You will die or the very heaven and earth itself, this system, will die. Thank God that place singed and tarred by sin is going to end.
Either way, the death of ourselves or this system is inconsequential, for what replaces it is so much better.
People who fear always put too much stock in
- This life, this world, in deluded (to varying degrees) fantasies of the achievement of perfection in this system.
- The maintenance of the current circumstances in which they find themselves: they do not want to fall back or lose what they’ve gained, rather they want to gain more from their current position. But at the very least, they desperately want to hold onto their current position.
- In other poeple
- In the things they have
- Having control
But we, as Christians, relinquish our control to God whereby gaining the peace, love and joy which are what we really want, not control, but having those fruits of walking in obedience to God gives all the feelings of control one needs. It is the ultimate in freedom.
THE INITIALLY HARSH REALITY REGARDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF DEMONIC ENTITIES OUT TO ROB, KILL & DESTROY YOU
One thing demons do when the reality of their existence and purposes becomes known of the Christian is to overwhelm him or her with a desperation to bring resolution to their completely banishment from the Christian’s life.
The Christian wants to live a life completely free of any sort of demonic influence, to create his/her own world where the possibility of interaction with demons and the problems they present no longer exists.
They want the movie version where the deliverance or exorcism (Cathoic word) is completed and those demons are banished never to be given ground again.
They also make themselves appear to be so powerful, ugly, fearsome, like that of horror movie characters, that they cause the Christian to fear any sort of engagement with them, as if the Christian could possibly lose those battles, and at best be hurt severely and at worst die a gruesome death.
But the reality is, until Jesus returns and casts them all into a bottomless pit for the duration of His millennial reign, they are here in the heavenly spiritual realm, all about us. So are the angels of God, and of course, the Holy Spirit. There is an ongoing war happening every second of every day for the souls of men.
This is the situation we find ourselves in.
There’s no fruit in being afraid of this, or being overly consumed by the proposition.
This is “the hand we’ve been dealt.” It is what is is, as they say.
So what we do is accept the reality and simply trust God to:
1. Keep us from the evil.
2. To know that we do not have to fight them every second of every day, but when He leads us to
3. That He will give us the discernment to know when to battle and the all the weapons and strength necessary to win every battle.
4. That all we have to do is open our mouths against these demons and they are crushed under our feet, like a crunched up scorpion or serpents head would be if we stomped on them relentlessly with some nice reinforced steel toe work boots.
CONCLUSION
It's time for us to learn what the reality is, accept it, and play the hands we've been dealt using all the weapons and giftings God has given us.
We must put aside fear of this reality and run headlong into dealing with it, or else we will live lives of delusion that will lead us to lives of fear, depression and self-destruction.
