So, as I sit here in southern Romania, there is one thing for sure everyone has seen and felt since we have been here.
Spiritual warfare.
You can feel the darkness all around and hear stories from the pastor of the people he has encountered who are demon possessed. It’s there. The darkness wears on the body, it makes you tired, it turns your attitude sour if you aren’t constantly praying for God to guide you and be in control of who you are in Him.
It’s the same exact thing I experienced in Vermont a few years ago when I did a missions trip in Burlington, which happens to be one of the biggest witchcraft areas in the world, and is known as the witchcraft capital.
One thing that has made my head start spinning in thought is how do you react with the evil forces around you? How do you address the situation when praying God to show up?
From the experiences I have seen, there has been prayer for God to show up, that evil doesn’t belong in this place, that its not God’s will that the devil be in any situation, and directly telling the devil to leave the place we are standing in. But something about this last thing has always made me a bit unnerved. I have never been able to explain it fully, but its there.
I remember when I was a little kid, maybe 5 or so, I was very upset about something. I have no idea what about, but I remember going out on the front porch and telling Satan directly to go away, or God and I would beat him up. I stood there and screamed this for ten minutes or so, until my mom walked outside and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was telling the devil his place, and that he did not deserve to be there in that moment.
My mom told me to stop immediately. At first, I questioned why, but then she told me that only God deserves to be talked to directly in the spiritual realm. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but I obeyed my mom and stopped, as well as thought about how God might be angry with me for not talking to only Him.
So, for the last few days, as I overhear prayers that start with talking to God, and then directly telling Satan to leave, it brings this cringe to my being. And it makes me wonder if its what God had intended for us. And I still don’t know, but here are my thoughts.
First, in Matthew 6, when Jesus teaches us how to pray, in the entire portion, the only focus was on Jesus. The only focus was on God, and Him delivering us from evil. And I know we have the Spirit, and we have the authority, but that brings me to my next thought.
So, this might sound like a completely different topic, but often times I think about what the opposite of love is. Because, we are supposed to love God because He is love. So if we love the Creator of who we are, the One who is our everything, then shouldn’t we do the opposite for the devil, because he is God’s enemy? I think so.
So what is the opposite of love? A lot of times, our first response is hate. Hate seems like the most obvious response to that. But I guess we have to define love first as well.
Love: To care deeply for someone. To have deep feelings for.
So, the opposite of that I would say is apathy, not hate. Hate is to still have feelings, but in a different manner. Apathy, on the other hand, means to have no feeling for whatsoever. So I think we should be apathetic towards the devil. I think we should care nothing about his position, his power, his presence. We should instead, like Matthew 6 says, focus on God and His power in the situation. Telling Satan what to do, yeah we have the authority, but gives him more attention than he deserves. Its only us and God here now. His Spirit is light, and no dark can abide in it. Its only us and Him now. Don’t give Satan more attention than what he deserves, which is none. Those are my thoughts.
