Scripture
Ephesians 6:12 (NIV)
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Observation
Did you know that there are at least 21 different words to describe the wind in various places of the world? The wind can erode mountains and topple buildings. We hear its sound and we can feel it on our bodies. The wind is important to our ecosystem. It can carry seeds from one place to another (anemochory). We respect the wind. Its power and its force, but we can’t see it. We know that it’s real because we can see, we can feel and we can hear its effects.
Do we rail against it? Wage war against it? Are there wanted posters for it? Of course not. I’d say that most of us just live with it and let it do whatever it wants to do. We work around it in our lives. We build shelters to protect us from it. For the most part, we treat evil the same way as we do the wind. We build prisons, hire police, create laws, and wage war against the physical forces of evil.
We treat the symptoms of evil with carnal weapons when evil can only be fought and defeated by spiritual means. We wage war against flesh and blood. We see the effects of fighting evil with carnal weapons and we think we are winning by the body count it brings. How’s that working for us? 150 million to 1 billion estimated lives lost throughout the wars in human history with at least 108 million people killed in wars in the twentieth century.
Since evil is a spiritual force, like the wind is a nature force, we can only fight evil through spiritual means. How do we fight spiritual forces? Do we pray against them? No, we pray for people. We pray that God’s will be done. We lift prayers to God and let Him fight the battles for us knowing that only He can win the day.
