In the dim light of a college dorm room I sat in a chair bent over struggling to breathe trying to figure out what was happening to me. Oppressive words were being spoken over me as the feelings of isolation and darkness gripped me. It felt as if there was a giant invisible hand that held my whole body in its grasp squeezing me tighter and tighter leaving me struggling for breath. I was paralyzed unable to speak or move while the intensity of this moment grew. The oppressive words continued to be spoken trying to tear me down and make me feel of little self worth.
I began to utter the name “Jesus” in my heart and mind, coincidentally the squeezing grip around my body began to lessen to the point I was able to speak the Name aloud, “Jesus!” I began to pray and steadily the grip gave away, the oppressive words, and feelings of darkness and isolation left. I sat there bewildered and rattled trying to figure out what had just happened to me. I reached out to my girlfriend Mikaela who was attending the same college and is now my wife and I began to share with her what had just happened to me as she was also a Christian. She looked at me and said “I think you just went through spiritual warfare.” With a confused look on my faced I responded, “Spiritual warfare? What is that?”
For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12 NLT
This led to the start of my journey in Christian faith to understand what spiritual warfare was as the following week after this experience I sat down with a campus minister sharing my experience in seeking to further understand what happened to me. This took place when I was 21 years old and I began to wonder, “How have I never heard of spiritual warfare or any teaching on this in church?” I grew up in the church all my life and at this point had already read the entire Bible. I began to explore the Scriptures and found that spiritual warfare is a reality that every Christian faces and many in both the Old and New Testament experienced this.
Despite this truth in the Bible, many Christians today (particularly in Europe and North America) are unaware of the reality of our warfare that occurs every day in the spiritual realm, in the unseen world as Paul shares above in Ephesians 6. What is more startling to me as the older I become the silence from the church on this subject continues to echo from generation to generation. I do want to be clear and upfront, the goal of this blog is not to speak negatively of the church for this silence, but rather my goal with this blog is to sound the alarm in proclaiming that this silence cannot continue!
Before continuing to share my experience and the reality of the silence in the church on the subject of spiritual warfare, I am aware that there are those who can be reading this blog and perhaps scratching your head asking, “Okay, what is spiritual warfare?” as perhaps you were like me at 21 wondering what is this and why have I never heard of it? Well I am glad you asked and lets explore this together shall we. First though we need to address the origins of spiritual warfare and where does it come from. The origins of spiritual warfare lie with Satan (the evil one, the devil) as he opposes God and seeks to destroy God’s people.
What is spiritual warfare? There are many ways of answering this question and I will attempt to answer it in a simple and straight forward manner. The simplest way I answer this question is whatever God stands for, Satan stands against and will attack these Christian doctrines, commandments, teachings and the list continues. So some examples, (1) Jesus commands and teaches us to love our neighbors (all people) as this commandment began in the Old Testament, Satan does not want us to love our neighbors. (2) Jesus teaches us to spend time in prayer with God to learn and grow deeper in our faith with him. Satan does not want us to spend time in prayer with God or to learn and grow deeper in our faith with him. (3) The Bible teaches that fellowship and relationships with others are an important part and function of the body of Christ, the church. Satan stands against fellowship and relationships as he would rather people be isolated and alone.
Then there are more direct examples of spiritual warfare such as (1) spiritual attacks like what I shared at the beginning of this blog of physically feeling something was squeezing me leaving me unable to breathe along with oppressive words with feelings of darkness and isolation. (2) Possession by an evil spirit/demon(s) as there are many passages in Scripture of this occurring such as in Jesus’ early ministry where Luke 8 tells us that of the women that followed Jesus, Mary Magdalene was one whom Jesus cast out 7 demons from. (3) Physical sicknesses/health can also be a result of spiritual warfare as we see this in the story of Job. Jesus believed and taught that the enemy can at least cause some illnesses. He did not teach that all illness is from Satan, but that some may find its source in the spirit world. The story of Job fits well with this. (4) Temptations to act in a wrong/sinful way can be another direct example of spiritual warfare, but this requires more discussion that I will touch on later in a future blog because this one is a bit more tricky than the previous three.
What does spiritual warfare look like? Often spiritual warfare can be phrased as bizarre, crazy or just doesn’t make sense. I have listened to some pretty crazy stories of spiritual warfare, one story I had heard was a child in a family was screaming in terror as she was seeing flying monkeys fly around her as her parents were bewildered and contacted a minister to try and figure out what was happening because “it didn’t make sense.” Here is another story from a minister/author I know…
I have a friend I will call “Z,” who works at a large plant here in Phoenix with a team of five others. He joined one of our service intercession teams and was participating well. But shortly after Z started joining us for intercession, he began to experience an intense attraction to a woman at work who was not his wife. He had worked with her for years, but after he joined our prayer team, this temptation manifested itself. He was not sleeping at night and was filled with guilt. The situation had become desperate. We met right away, and he told me his story. Again, it appeared to me to be spiritual warfare, mostly because of the timing of the outbreak. We walked through the concepts of spiritual warfare and prayed together.
I pointed out the timing of the trial to Z so he could see the connection between his new role as a prayer warrior and the temptation. I forwarded him a spiritual warfare prayer that has proven most helpful to many in similar situations. He made the decision to pray that warfare prayer a couple times a day and promised to stay in touch. Within a week, the problem had greatly diminished and he was doing much better. Within a month he was back to normal. - “Threshold” by Paul Covert
Satan is able to manifest himself in many different ways as he has different tools at his disposal. Another example of what spiritual warfare looks like was several months ago a member in our house church (life group/small group) was dealing with spiritual warfare being nightmares at the same time several others in our house church were. We were gathering online via Zoom this Wednesday evening because of Covid-19 rulings and as we were talking about the spiritual warfare one of our members was experiencing, he interrupted the conversation and said, “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I feel a dark presence behind me with a knife above me.” We immediately began to pray for him calling upon the name of Jesus to protect and bind the evil spirit(s) up attacking him. After we finished praying the dark presence was gone and he was feeling more at peace.
Prior to the prayer I had been asking him questions to root out the source of where this spiritual warfare might be coming from. Questions such as, “Has something changed recently in your life? Did you recently buy or bring something into your apartment? Do you feel this source coming from a certain direction in your apartment or perhaps even outside of your apartment?” He stated he felt like it was coming from a corner of the room, but there was nothing there besides his night stand I believe it was. Then in the midst of our prayer the Holy Spirit reminded him that he had been playing a free trial of a mobile game on his phone that had magic/creating spells and he had went ahead and purchased the game recently that gave even more access in the game to do these sort of things and that was when he began to experience the nightmares and this specific kind of spiritual warfare with the dark presence. Once he realized this, he immediately uninstalled the game from his phone and the spiritual warfare tied to this ceased.
One of the most helpful books I have read on spiritual warfare is a book written by David Butts called, “The Devil Goes to Church: Combating the Everyday Attacks of Satan” that is really good about discussing what spiritual warfare is and how prayer is one of the most effective weapons we have to counter Satan. David shares the following…
Spiritual Warfare is not a topic to be played with. It is a serious matter… When we speak of spiritual warfare, we are not so much focusing on that which is weird or strange, as we are simply facing the reality of our situation and discovering better how to pray. Darkness is never dispelled by shouting at it, but by allowing light to shine through it… The Bible teaches, from beginning to end, of the existence of the invisible world, the world of the spirit. A world of angels and demons… We can go through life believing Bible stories, but never expect to see the reality of them in our own lives. - David Butts
My wife and I have had the opportunity to teach several international classes on spiritual warfare at Acta Bible School here in Stavanger, Norway that is a part of the church ministry where we presently serve and work at. Each year there is a new group of students and spiritual warfare is one of the subjects my wife and I will teach on for that day. I always begin the teaching with asking, “Have any of you ever heard of spiritual warfare?” Every time thus far not one hand has gone up in response to my question. It continues to draw me back to asking, “Why doesn’t the church talk about spiritual warfare?” We see it throughout the Bible from beginning to end and how Jesus encountered the invisible realm a number of times throughout his ministry in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Jesus’ focus was not on the kingdom of darkness, but on God’s kingdom. Every time Jesus encountered the invisible realm of spiritual warfare he would stop long enough to counter the distraction or minister to the person in need and then he would immediately resume his teaching on the kingdom of God. Jesus sets an example for us in how to deal and combat spiritual warfare. Often the “Armor of God” in Ephesians 6:10-20 is the first or only passage pointed to when teaching on spiritual warfare, but there is much more that Scripture can teach and help equip Christians to combat spiritual warfare.
Recently my wife and I have been ministering to a Christian lady in our house church who is in her mid 50’s on the topic of spiritual warfare as she has grown up a Christian all her life and has been through an incredibly difficult and challenging past year. She herself was unaware of spiritual warfare until recently and now she exclaims how knowing the existence of the invisible world, the world of the spirit, has helped explain so many things in her life she previously didn’t understand. One of the greatest and most powerful tools Satan has over the church is our being unaware of his schemes. No one trains, prepares for battle and goes to fight if they believe there is no war or enemy to fight. I am afraid of how deeply this may be ingrained in the church.
“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil.
He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
1 Peter 5:8 NLT
I do need to say that there are churches and ministries leading the fight when it comes to combating spiritual warfare just by simply teaching and training their congregation in acknowledging the existence of the spiritual realm. That alone is such a huge step in just being aware of the enemy’s schemes because Satan no longer is an invisible enemy when the church, the body of Christ becomes aware of his strategies and tactics.
One of my favorite conferences I love to attend is called the “International Conference on Missions” (ICOM) held annually in the U.S. Typically between 6,000-10,000 believers from around the world gather for several days in fellowship and communion together. Every year that I am aware of for the past several years, there has always been a workshop on spiritual warfare. And every year I attend one of these workshops on spiritual warfare the room is packed. I recall one year there was not one empty chair left in the room, people were standing along the walls of the room and even more were outside the double door entrance to the room doing their best to listen. Why doesn’t the church talk about spiritual warfare?
If you are a pastor of a church reading this blog, a staff member, a board member, a missions team member, congregation member, an elder or deacon of a church. Sound the alarm, ring the bell, or pull the fire alarm and say, “I believe spiritual warfare is really something that we need to talk and teach on.” This could take the form of a Sunday sermon series, a Bible study group, a Sunday school, or small group discussions. Too many Christians in the church, in the body of Christ are suffering as a result of spiritual warfare and many have no idea that this is the source of the battle they are facing.
It is our responsibility as the church to go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and that involves teaching about spiritual warfare. No wise platoon leader sends his troops into battle without knowing who the enemy is, their strategy, tactics or what kind of weapons the enemy is expected to have on the battlefield. The same is for the leadership in the church in take the role of preparing, informing, training and equipping members of the church to be able to stand “against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places” as Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12. In Jesus Christ victory is ours as Jesus himself has overcome the world. Paul writes the following in Romans…
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed ever day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow - not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below - indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:35-39 NLT
Paul is convinced as an apostle of Christ that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. He gives a list of things and in this list we see it also entails spiritual warfare, “neither angels or demons… not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love” as written in verse 38. Paul declares, “Overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us” and how reassuring this is.
I am going to draw this blog to a close, but in next months blog I intend to tackle the question of, “Why doesn’t the church talk about spiritual warfare?” As you have read in the blog we have coincidentally touched on this question a few times, but I want to directly tackle this question in expressing my experience and thoughts on this. I intend to do a blog series on spiritual warfare from now going forward for the next several months as more is to come. Blessings