Spiritual Warfare:
The Contest that Isn’t
By Christopher J. Patton
From Adam the lie has been that God has lost. He is not in retreat but desires to win all. God is almighty, yet He has chosen to confound the world with the weak, small, and insignificant – such as the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, and His people of faith among the nations.
The sons and daughters of Israel became known to the nations as the Jews during the ancient Persian Empire when the land of Canaan was called Yahud. Yahud it has been and Judea it is properly and not Palestine, which is ever the ephemeral lie. The choice of Israel for the name of the modern state seems to be intentionally anticipatory of the re-gathering of all the sons and daughters of Israel to their homeland.
But these are only the issues of politics and terror, mere hints and evidences unclear of the true battle being fought for the wills of men and women around the world. Be not devoured, for there is an Adversary with allies. They compete to seek your natural power of life and to deny you an eternity of joy in the light of God, so that they may burn brightly for a time, times and half. . .
Those are the darkest days, but lo – the sun sets quickly, but glints also the silver trumpet soon to be sounded to call us to assembly or to war. You can yet choose to assemble, but once the trumpet sounds, it will be too late.
How does it feel to be free? Energized peace with a purpose not willed or chosen and a love that can forgive anything because the reality of one’s own forgiven freedom is so tangible. Deny it not, but believe. Ask, and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find the escape from judgment known as grace.
Every moment of life is a choice. Make it a consciously, or it will be made for you. That’s bad usually, because the powers that roam freely seek your destruction, these rulers we ask for ourselves or are asked for us by not living consciously. Even so, we must respond to the answer of our asking, or we lose that opportunity to be free. This is not to say that we cannot later change our intent. We learn from experiences, and God is gracious to allow us to do so. It’s just never the same as it might have been.
So what eternity awaits us? The alternative is a miserable death suffered.
The darkness falls, and I ask the Creator Savior of all for your life. Not for me, but for you, that you may know the depths of His glory and peace, the fullness of His love which overflows the heart of a person to blind all pain from the seeing eyes of our consciousness. As the gentle rain cleans us from the dust of doubt, so you must believe, that having no right to live, your loving God commands life eternal.
He graces this gift so that you can ask the lives of others as I have sought yours from the hands of the hunting angels fallen, which seek to devour you heartlessly without savor and brutally with bestial indifference. They seek to annihilate who you are as well as who you could be by faith in the Savior Creator, yet Son of the Father by the Spirit. By your graceful commitment and sacrifice of self, may you be found in Him eternally unique in person but conformed to the image of love as He defines it, made possible because of Yeshua’s bloody blood, the agony of His love for us.
12-1-2005
