Don't just do something, stand there!

Anzac Day

I'd like to introduce you to George and Irene. These were my grandparents on my Dad's side. This shot was taken in around 1970, when I was about 7 and it's pretty much how I remember them because within a couple of years they were both gone. Each year when Anzac Day rolls around it makes me think of my Grandad. He fought in the "Great War" (WW1) and used to march in the parade for years. What you can't tell from this photo, however, is that he spent the years after the war with one artificial leg. His original leg was hit by shrapnel when a bomb landed in his trench and he wasn't able to take cover quickly enough to avoid it. Later in hospital, gangrene took over and they had to amputate. And if that wasn't bad enough, he almost died of pneumonia in hospital, too. I'm glad he didn't or I wouldn't be here.

The interesting thing about WW1 is that it was bound up with Australia becoming an independent nation, being seen as viable and significant. As the boys marched off to the war, there was much flag waving and fanfare and most of the focus was on the glory and pride associated with our national coming of age. There were a lot of misconceptions about war. But when the soldiers limped back home, without many of their mates, shell-shocked and missing limbs, Australia began to understand the harsh reality that is war.

Spiritual Warfare.
Many Christians have misconceptions about spiritual warfare. In my limited experience they fall into one of two categories: too much or too little. They're either way too interested in demonic activity, or barely paying attention at all. People who are too interested tend to see a demon in everything and are always yelling at the devil about something (eg if they burn their mouth on their coffee they'll try to cast out the coffee demon that's trying to attack them). These people are a danger to themselves and others. On the other hand, those who are not paying attention tend to view the world with merely natural human eyes. They have no idea that there's a war going on, and tend to dismiss everything as a coincidence.

Neither of these extremes is Biblical. We don't see the writers of the Bible, or Jesus for that matter, seeing demons in everything that moves; nor are they silent on the subject. But we do see them talking seriously about an enemy that faces off against God and his people. In Ephesian 6:10-18 Paul gives us some very sound advice that will keep us balanced. Let's see what he has to say.

Power.
This passage comes towards the end of a letter in which Paul has repeatedly talked about power. The main gist is this: God has demonstrated his power in many different ways - raising Jesus from the dead, bringing us to new life, converting Paul to name a few. "Finally," says Paul in 6:10, "be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power." Is he saying here that we are to raise people from the dead and zap people into becoming Christians? I don't think so. Here's why.

When Paul talks about God's power in all those different ways, he uses the Greek word "dunamis" from which we get "dynamite" and "dynamic". It means an explosive driving force that gets things done. But here in v10 he uses a different Greek word "kratos," meaning a position of strength and power. So, for example, the Prime Minister might say he has the power to invade another country. He would probably not have the physical resources to single-handedly take on a cranky ladies lawn-bowls team, let alone another country. But he would have the kratos power to do it, because there is dunamis power (in the army) to back him up and make it happen.

When Paul tells us to "be strong...in his mighty power" he uses the word kratos. He's not telling us to be explosive and get things done. He's not saying we should take on the devil and somehow defeat him. That would be like trying to single-handedly invade another country. Jesus already did that. Paul wants us to simply understand that if we belong to Jesus, we have been placed in a position of strength and safety which is unassailable if we stay close to him.

So much for yelling at the devil.

There's a war on.
Next Paul talks to the other extreme, those who think everything's fine. He has to point out that our "struggle" as he calls it, is not against people, it's against spiritual forces. This might be a real newsflash for some people. He wants us to understand clearly that there is a war on, it's real enough, but the enemy is different from any that we might naturally think of. We're inclined to think of an enemy that attacks by trying to injure us in some physical way (eg sickness, accident, personal conflict, job loss etc).

That's what a human enemy might do, but our spiritual enemy operates differently, because his aim is different. He wants to injure us spiritually - in other words to damage our relationship with God somehow. He might try doing it through sickness and so on, but the thing many of us miss is that he can do that in a lot of different ways, including making us very comfortable. He doesn't care whether we're happy or sad. He doesn't care about us at all - in fact how we feel is irrelevant to him. The only thing he's interested in is hurting God, and attempting to damage anything that God does. If he can achieve it by making us physically comfortable, and thereby get us to stop relying on God, he'll do it.

The point of all this is that the war is very real, but we might not notice it unless we're paying attention to the right things. We need to be on the look-out for anything that might separate us from God, not for things that merely make us uncomfortable. That's why Paul says we need to "be strong" in a special kind of way. Unless we use the resources provided by God through Jesus - that kratos power - we won't stand a chance, and we may not even notice that we've been taken out.

Stand your ground.
So how do we use God's resources? Simple, really. Paul says in v 13-18 that we need to put on God's armour (I'll get to that in a minute) and just stand there. It's interesting that in the space of 4 verses (11-14) Paul  tells us to "stand" 4 times. Whenever the Bible repeats itself like that, you know the writer is really trying to get his point across. The point here is that we only need to stand. It's not our job to somehow defeat The Evil Empire of the devil. That's Jesus' job. All we have to concentrate on, Paul says, is standing our ground - in other words, remaining spiritually alive. Just don't let him take you out!

Paul goes on to say that staying alive means using the armour - that's simply a word picture for some important spiritual principles that need to be in place in your life if you're gonna make it out alive. I don't want to spend time now going through them all in detail. (Let me know if you'd like that, and maybe I'll post something later.) But these principles all boil down to something very simple. Read the passage through for yourself and see if you agree. Here's what I think they boil down to:

Fully trusting what Jesus has done, and obeying God's word

Paul says "when the day of evil comes", not "if". You can be sure that if you are serious about following Jesus, there will be forces at work to stop you. As important as Anzac Day is to us in Australia & New Zealand, I think we'd do a lot better to concentrate on preparing ourselves for the  next spiritual attack.

Lest we forget.