Between what I have been reading about spiritual warfare,
and what God has been speaking to me about in his word this morning, I realize
afresh how forcefully Satan works to captivate our thoughts. He doesn't need to
make anything happen in real life as long as he can fill our thoughts with
fears of what could happen (terrorism). He will hold us back from obedient
faith[1] because we are too busy
obeying our fears instead.
As I was considering this through the framework of how
Satan works in our childhoods, here's what came to mind.
First, Satan works incessantly in our early years to make
sure people wound us so painfully that he can create the deep belief that we
are worthless. He can control people for whole lifetimes with this foundation
of worthlessness firmly established in our innermost beings.
Second, Satan continues his relentless work of making
people hurt and wound each other to surround this foundational belief in our
worthlessness with the debilitating belief that our worthless condition is
hopeless. As long as we leave that belief in our worthlessness rooted in our
souls, every act of rejection, disowning, or abandonment, grows into such
despair that children simply cannot live with that feeling. They then
dissociate from it in some way so that they can carry on doing the best they
can.
Third, as long as Satan can keep people from returning to
the feelings of hopelessness that surround the beliefs of worthlessness, he can
shut down every relationship God provides to address the inner brokenness of
the soul. If the hopelessness of ever being of worth continues its stranglehold
on our inner being, every opportunity for fellowship with people who would walk
together to healing and freedom in Christ gets sabotaged by people's fear of
losing one another. Once again, it is fear that demands obedience, and people
now quite willingly sabotage their own relationships in order to make sure that
no one sabotages their relationships!
As I felt the weight of Satan's ugly work, and tried to
discern how much of this in the church is the external work of Satan's fiery
darts constantly shooting down our hope,[2] and how much is the
internal accusations of Satan's lies and deception working through strongholds
he gained in our childhoods, I was reminded of the way Paul prayed. Here is the
whole prayer:
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from
whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the
riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his
Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through
faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to
comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and
depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may
be filled with all the fullness of God.[3]
The main focus at the moment is verse 16: "to
be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being." It
didn't take long to see the contrast:
|
What
things look like in the inner being that is set on the flesh
|
What
things look like in the inner being that is set on the Spirit
|
|
In your inner being
|
In your inner being
|
|
Weakened
|
Strengthened
|
|
With powerlessness
|
With power
|
|
Through our own sarks (the flesh)
|
Through God’s Spirit
|
It is no wonder that Satan works so hard to keep us sarky
(fleshly). All it takes is convincing us to rely on our sarks, and he maintains
our weakness and powerlessness. Every rejection, or perception of rejection,
clings to the whole gamut of beliefs of worthlessness and feelings of
hopelessness so that he only needs to put one thought in our heads (fear of
losing people) and we add all the other lifetime of thoughts, and memories, and
beliefs, that utterly debilitate us.
In other words, Satan's strategy to cripple us as children
by laying a foundation of pain that convinces us we are worthless, and repeat
the hurts sufficient times to convince us we are hopeless, makes his job easy
for the rest of our lives. All it takes is tiny suggestions that someone is
going to hurt us, and we take over doing all the damage to ourselves Satan
could ever think of. We accept any negative thoughts, regurgitate past hurts
until we are literally sick to our stomach, reject anything God is doing because
it appears to threaten relationships, and close our hearts to God's gift of
healing because the hopelessness tells us that we are so worthless that God
would never want to heal us anyway.
Which brings me back to Paul's prayer: "to be
strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being." While
this seems to be the central issue of this whole prayer, the central issue of
this phrase is, "through his Spirit." The one thing
that can combat our sarky beliefs, and Satan's stronghold in our lives through
that foundation of sarky beliefs, is the personal presence of the Holy Spirit
of Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. Remove the Spirit from anything (as Satan
tirelessly works to do), and all we have left is a worthless person trying to
manage the feelings of worthlessness with all manner of self-protection that
destroys the very relationships they are afraid of losing.[4]
What each of us needs is an infusion of the Holy Spirit
bringing the power of God into our innermost beings in order to strengthen us
where Satan has been working to "steal and kill and destroy.”[5] However, this is not
merely a battle between the Spirit and the sark (flesh), but between the Spirit
coming into our innermost being to heal, and forgive, and restore, and Satan clamoring
to hang on to every cleverly laid snare, and every despicably destructive
scheme, in order to keep us in despair.
While each of us must look to what God is working in us,
both to will and to work for his good pleasure in our inner freedom, and how we
can immediately take specific steps to work out our own salvation with fear and
trembling,[6] that is not the only thing
we can and should do.
The other part of this is that, everyone should search our
hearts to see how God wants us to imitate Paul in his praying for ourselves and
for one another. In other words, our hope in deliverance from the hopeless
worthlessness of our souls is not the strength of our determination to get
free, but our faith in the Holy Spirit's determination to deliver us. Paul
tells us how he prayed because that is the way we should pray. We don't need to
be strong, but we need to pray for God to strengthen us with power through his
Spirit in our inner being. We don't even need to know how he will do this. We
only need to know how to pray this.
And so, God, in his gracious love for us, gives us the
words to the prayer!
It is interesting that, the thing that extinguishes the
fiery darts of the evil one is the shield of faith.[7] Here in Paul's prayer, God
gives us the prayer that is so clearly according to his will that even the most
broken of God's children can pray this in faith, or join with other believers
who can pray this for them in faith. There is enough faith in two or three
Christians who come together in Jesus name that if we will pray this prayer in
faith (not as though the words have magical power, but they direct us in how to
pray according to God's will), God is sure to answer it.
Another noteworthy characteristic of my time with God this
morning is that it started with a strong emphasis on praying in faith,
including these Scriptures:
- And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would
draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who
seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)
- “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
- “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything
they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” (Matthew
18:19)
- “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” (John 14:14
- And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask
anything according to his will he hears us. (I John 5:14)
- “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock,
and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one
who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew
7:7-8)
Added
together, these Scriptures tell me that what Paul prayed for the churches is a
God-breathed revelation of God's will. That means we can pray in faith that God
will change us in our inner beings by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we
will have faith in him about all the other issues of our lives.
I
have shared this verse a few times recently, "And it shall come to
pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. For in
Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has
said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.”[8]
Do
you hear God calling? Answer the call by calling on him. His will is to save
you. Pray for this according to his will.
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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