Spiritual Warfare: A Defeated Foe

Spiritual warfare is part of the salvation package. Whether it is our own flesh or the world that seems to have us down for the moment, the Bible is very clear that trouble really only has one base source: the devil. He sends fiery darts of doubt and afflicts with illness and circumstance. He also accuses and torments through other people and our very own thoughts. But the Bible is clear about something else, too. God is in control. Nothing happens without God’s say-so, and greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. This was made all too clear to me one night, in the bathroom of all places, with a very visible lesson about the devil’s eventual destiny.

The Object Lesson

It all started with a terrible, no good, very bad week. There were troubles coming from the outside in the form of stress on my job. On the inside, my own thoughts seemed to be turning against me. Spiritual warfare is definitely increasing in these last days, and at that moment, I was losing the battle. I remember making the comment to my pastor’s wife that Sunday night at church that “The devil is kicking my hind end, and I’m helping him!” I asked her if she knew what I meant, and she assured me that she did and all too well.

Later that evening as I got ready for bed, I was running some water to get it hot enough to wash my face. Honestly, I was kind of beating myself up. I remembered all the times and ways I had gotten it wrong that week. I got a washcloth out of the cupboard and turned back around. Just then, a fly that had been busily bumping into the mirror and the window just a moment before slammed into me. It bounced into the sink and swirled harmlessly down the drain. In my spirit at that moment, I heard the words “defeated foe.”

What I Learned

To say that this put things into perspective for me is kind of an understatement. Satan, also called Beelzebub, or Lord of the Flies, has gone down. I realized that I had been giving the devil way too much credit. He had entirely too much power over me and my life. Instead of assuming that there was nothing I could do to get out of an endless stream of negative thoughts and an assembly line of bad choices and unfortunate events, I should have remembered that the only power the enemy has over our lives is the power we give him (through sin or agreement with his lies) or that God allows for His purposes.

After all, Luke 10:19 tells us that God has given us “authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means harm us.” We aren’t fighting from a losing position. We shouldn’t be cowering, beat down from the battle. Romans 8:37 says “We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us,” so we should be fighting our spiritual warfare with the sword of the Word held high and the knowledge of who we are front and center in our minds: we are children of the Most High God.

Ephesians 6:12 reminds us that “…we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” But those powers, rulers, and hosts have nothing on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The devil has been defeated. Now it’s just our job to remember it.

If you like object lessons, try Message In the Moisturizer: We Can Choose Change. Bad choices shouldn’t trap the child of God. Or, try 3 Last Days Object Lessons From Shopping. Please sign up to receive my blog in your email inbox. You can find that at the upper right of your screen (or at the bottom on a phone). Also, check out my YouTube Channel where I read the blogs out loud.