Journey into Lightl

I have often been deceived throughout my Christian life in trying to perform my way into God’s good graces. I have often used unreliable people, my fluctuating performance, and harsh internal demands to tell me of who I was.

I have also largely missed the experience of God’s deep love for me. I have often sought people’s approval as a substitute for relying on God’s love.

I believe that Satan has been working with my flesh and the world to hold me in bondage to these sinful ways of viewing myself. Instead, I need to view myself the way God views me. “Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away; behold new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:16).

This is how Satan has been working since Adam and Eve. He tries to get us to reject the truth of God. Eve failed to rely on the truth of God’s warning and ate the fruit (Genesis 3:4-5). I have often failed to rely on God’s love for me as a gift and tried to earn it.

Paul says, “our weapons of war are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses” (2 Corinthians 10:4). What fortresses?

He goes on. “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

This is war, friends! This is where the fiercest battles are being fought. Satan is out to control our mind and our heart.

But some of you may not be convinced. Some of you may say, “I am not in a war. I am not a soldier.”

But you are!

We all are! God has enlisted us in his army to fight the good fight (2 Timothy 4:7). Our war is for the hearts and minds of people, including ours. God wants us to rely on his truth and to use us to lead people “out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

However, many of us are deceived into thinking that there is no war. We live life by human strength alone.

We show by our lack of dependence on God that we do not rely on the truth that

“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

We do not live in the reality that our “adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). We often do not accept the fact that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

So, how do you wake up to the war that rages around you and in you? How can you become a better soldier?

Ask God these questions. What did he say?