Spiritual warfare
My son asked a question about spiritual warfare when we were walking past a shuttered up shop in Tel Aviv. I suggested we need to think about the attacks of the enemy in three categories, using paint vandalism of a shop front as an illustration:
- Is someone actively vandalising the shopfront with paint now? We need to confront/resist/stop them.
- Did someone set up a pot over the shopfront and then disappear, leaving the pot to keep pouring paint down over it? We need to dismantle the mechanism they set up.
- Are the person and pot out of the equation, but the shopfront is spoiled? We need to restore (and protect).
I find this a helpful way to think about spiritual warfare, taking seriously the reality that our battle is not against flesh and blood but at the same time not “over-spiritualising” and imaging demons under every stone.
There is no question that the devil and his agents are behind all 3 scenarios. But that only in scenario 1 do we need to speak to them in Jesus name. In scenario 2, we may need God-enabled therapy or counselling or medication to help dismantle the destructive processes that are now running automatically. And in scenario 3, we need the Spirit of grace and redemption to repair (maybe with no lasting trace, maybe with kinsuge gold), give rest, provide recuperation etc.
I hope that’s helpful as you seek God’s discernment through different situations you encounter.
(In the back of my mind was a Cambridge Paper from 1996 on ‘Demons and the Mind’ that I found really helpful, a copy of which you can download here https://royclements.net/wp-content/uploads/Papers/Demons-and-the-mind.pdf)