"Know you enemy..." Ephesians 5:11
Continued from: Demons vs. You -- You Don't Stand a Chance, Part 1
Demons vs. You -- You Don't Stand a Chance, Part 2
Continuation of this five part series blog I will cover and inform all of the readers on an important aspect in the realm of spiritual warfare. In this part three I continue this discussion regarding the fundamental aspects of having a balanced aspect or approach so to speak when it comes to engaging demons as Christians.
From earlier we have learned that one must be very afraid of demons and that we also need not fear demons when we as humans are walking righteous with God. So when clergy speak about getting stronger in faith and resisting the devil, people often get the mistaken idea that it’s all about becoming more self-reliant on our faith or perseverance. That is completely false! Read Proverbs 9:10 to understand fear of the Lord is true knowledge.
Remember that God is zealous to be our all sufficient supplier. God wants all the glory for protecting us from demons and truly deserves it. God will never lead you into a mentality of thinking you are spiritually bold by yourself. However, God is going to teach you quite the opposite, which is that you are a powerless wimp who can’t do much of anything without him.
So then is the Holy Spirit trying to teach us how to out muscle demons? If that is not happening then what is the Holy Spirit truly teaching us? So to be honest here, the truth is this primary agenda from God with every Christian person is to strengthen their personal bond with Him. Therefore, spiritual warfare is not about conquering demons, it is about growing and drawing closer to God. Due to this agenda demons are never going to go anywhere near that bond.
Demons will always be raging against us humans and the closer we move towards God, the louder they roar against us. View if you can for a moment a climactic scene from a movie where the two people are staring deep into each other’s eyes. They are so intensely focused on each other and in tune with each other that they forget about the chaos that is happening around them, even if it is for several moments in time.
For those few brief moments, these two are in a world all of their own. This is what strong faith is about! This is not about huge bulging muscles, more so the tunnel vision in which an intense focus that blocks out everything else but God standing before us. Whereas we then become triumphant over demons by learning to ignore them.
A person simply can’t ignore them by thinking of nothing. However, we need to learn to cut off their access to us by intensely focusing upon God. Hence, walking with God himself. For our Lord Jesus said in Matthew 16:24 “Deny thyself and pick up thy cross to truly know me.”
In a hymn sung by the Christian group Hillsong it states to “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wondrous Face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.” Controlling our focus towards God is how we defend against and defeat the demons. Therefore the louder they scream into our ears, the more stubbornly we must intently focus our eyes, mouth and heart upon that which the Holy Spirit provides.
This is an absolute war of wills. In a strange manner this is about who can be the most stubborn, them or you. One cannot not try to drive demons away, instead, we must learn to ignore their unholy presence and focus upon the presence of the Holy Spirit. For it is written in James 4:7 “Resist the devil and he shall flee.”
To most people demons are extremely intimidating. Especially when they manifest in some physical form which our eyes can detect, people instantly panic and who wouldn’t? Some go so far as to think they’re ready to handle demons in person, because they never flinch at scary movies but that is far from the truth.
No matter how desensitized one has become by man’s impersonations of evil in movies and television shows, when the real thing manifests in your bedroom at night, you will go into immediate terror. Thus if the Holy Spirit were to let demons constantly come at us in pure forms, those of us would be too terrified to learn the lesson God wants us to learn.
Consequently the Holy Spirit introduces us to their nastiness in stages. This is done by carefully monitoring our level of exposure to them in very short bursts. Demons are masters of disguise and half the battle is just learning how to recognize their presence. Demons have the ability to plant thoughts in our minds, speak to us through other people and be hidden as well as the manipulation of our emotions and physiology to work in their favor.
Ever been home alone and suddenly you hear a creepy sound and the mind searches for a logical reason to explain this? When a logical reason cannot be determined, then instantly images of a spiritual intruder fill the mind and the heart begins to race as well as reactions to the human body. This is a well-known classic demon trick to fool us so that the demons can see how we will respond.
Demons are the ones who make the noise, they watch and interpret how you respond or react. They are the ones who will fill your mind with scary images. Demons are all about creating negative responses and cause distress to the human to react. Unfortunately this form of response from humans is what most people do.
In our next blog we will further discuss demons vs. you and how you don’t stand a chance!
Rev. Bradley Luoma
