Spiritual Warfare

Daily, we're fighting against something, whether we realize it or not. If we're going to school, we're fighting ignorance. If we're working, we're fighting poverty. If we're hanging out with friends, we're fighting loneliness. Life is a constant struggle against evil, regardless of our consciousness of that fact. To even LIVE at all is to upset the evil one, as nothing makes him happier than death and destruction (John 10:10).

So Christians who think they can follow God without encountering daily spiritual warfare are simply wrong. We can't coast along and avoid the enemy's attacks, because no matter how weak your faith is, or how nonexistent, he will always try to make it worse. Nothing will ever be "bad enough" for him, just like we can never be "good enough" for God without His grace. So we need to face facts - life is a battle, whether you choose to fight with God or not. You can go through the battle asleep, or you can go through it awake and actively build God's Kingdom here on earth.

It's that activity that I want us to remember. Constantly living FOR GOD, not just abstaining from doing things for Satan. "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder." (James 2:19) Abstaining from "bad" sins is not what our faith is ultimately about; a lot of non-Christians can do that quite easily. At judgment, God will not say, "Well done, my good and faithful teetotaler" or "Well done, my good and faithful virgin." He will be more concerned about whether we loved to fight evil and advance His Cause here on earth, whether His Cross was our all-consuming passion. Going back to education, if you simply abstain from taking books away from little children, you can't say you're fighting ignorance. You have to actually be teaching them. Saying, "Well, at least I don't steal their Speak n Spells!" doesn't mean anything.

When you read the Armor of God in Ephesians 6, think about it this way. No one suits up with armor as heavy as the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, etc., just so they can walk nonchalantly across the battlefield, whistling all the way and not paying attention to the arrows clanging off of them. (Whew, right? Wriggled my way through another day of life!) You don't suit up unless you're going to be firing some arrows yourself. Otherwise, you're completely useless.

If we're not actively fighting evil daily, we are not Christ's disciples. Jesus did not save us just so we could walk across the battlefield and not get hit, he gave us that armor so that we can join him in his daily struggle against a very real enemy. The fact is, there is no such thing as walking across the battlefield and not getting hit, and your pretending won't make it true. Just try it. Get your nice house, your nice family, your 401(k); go to your all-white middle-class church, ignore the poor and the depressed around you, and just see if you can avoid spiritual attacks.

We shouldn't be cowering, waiting for the enemy to come get us. We should be actively seeking darkness and turning it into light. Jesus didn't leave his mark by hanging out with the holy people and avoiding the world; He confronted darkness with the Father's light and the darkness FLED. And that same power lives in us.

Proverbs 8

Proverbs 8 or Proverbs 8 (Amplified)

Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice?

The world makes such a clamor sometimes that it clouds over the truth. We have to constantly ask Father for understanding and wisdom, and for ears to hear the Holy Spirit. The truth we seek will become clear if only we have the right ears to listen.

Recently I was desperately seeking God on whether to do the English Honors thesis. I really don't want to waste my senior year in the library. So many students I talk to spend their college years studying (serving school as their god) and hating it, and then drinking to forget how much they hate it until Monday.

But if Christ is my God, school cannot be. I cannot serve two masters.

At the same time, I knew the thesis would be an awesome experience if I could do it in a way that honors the Lord...if I could be passionate about it, enjoy it, and not view it as a worthless chore...if I would still allow my schedule to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. So I was begging him for guidance, going back and forth on a seesaw of doing it or not.

I was asking the wrong question.

See, what I was asking for was an answer as to whether or not I should do the thesis, but the answer the Holy Spirit was giving was to dedicate everything I do to the Lord, and then my plans will succeed (Prov. 16:3), and also that I can do everything through Him who gives me strength (Phil. 4:13). I tend to overlook those verses because they're so popular and often used as an excuse for following our own plans instead of God's...but they're in His Word. Meaning they're important and they will speak wisdom and truth to me if I let them. God was reminding me how much He loves me, and that since I want to please Him above all else, he won't let me make a decision that does not please Him.

On the heights along the way, where the paths meet, she takes her stand.

The heights. That is where wisdom lives. Any path that climbs upward, towards God, will meet wisdom as well. Therefore, whatever guidance you seek, keep looking up, toward Him, and not around you. Don't listen to the clamor of the world, even when it seems right.

To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.

It's interesting that the first two evils mentioned are pride and arrogance. Fear of the Lord leads to humility, and yet we are constantly taught to be prideful. This also means that pride and arrogance lead one away from wisdom, because wisdom HATES these things. If you want the Lord's wisdom, you have to demolish all the walls that keep God from leading you to change. Because that's what God does - He changes us, constantly, and a prideful person believes such changes are unnecessary.

What's amazing to me is how much wisdom loves humans, though we have constantly spurned her:

The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was fashioned from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began.... I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above.... Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.

Wow. I can't believe how beautiful that is. Can you imagine being by God's side, watching as he creates things day after day? Isn't it humbling to hear that Wisdom rejoiced in us?

"Fashioned from eternity." So wisdom is literally the stuff of eternity; it was made from permanence. Truth is forever. Literally. What a blessing that we have so much of eternity here in this transient world, and yet how little we value the stuff of eternity compared to that which is temporary. How little we value the truth and how highly we prize shallow happiness when we could have eternal joy. I said the other day, "I don't worry about my friends who are seeking the truth, because I know their search will eventually lead them to Jesus. I worry about my friends who are seeking happiness." Jesus says that if we seek, we will find, and in the Old Testament Wisdom says,

Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord. But whoever fails to find me harms himself;
all who hate me love death.

How much more meaningful that last line is in light of wisdom being made from eternity. Wisdom is life - eternal life. Death is made of lies, of deceit. It's what first brought death into the world.

And yet do we sit at Wisdom's doorstep, patiently waiting for her to open the door and give us life? Or do we pound on it for a minute, cry if she doesn't give an immediate or satisfactory answer, and then run off and do our own thing?

How often do we do that to God?

I truly love summer.

So I picked out some favorite summery poems.

Summer Sun by Robert Louis Stevenson

Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.


Sonnet XVIII: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


Exhortation: Summer 1919 by Claude McKay

Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder,
And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder:
Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!

In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking,
And its golden glory fills the western skies.
O my brothers and my sisters, wake! arise!
For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking,
Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off the grave's disguise,
And the foolish, even children, are made wise;
For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making--
O my brothers, dreaming for dim centuries,
Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!

Oh the night is sweet for sleeping, but the shining day's for working;
Sons of the seductive night, for your children's children's sake,
From the deep primeval forests where the crouching leopard's lurking,
Lift your heavy-lidded eyes, Ethiopia! awake!

In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking,
And its golden glory fills the western skies.
O my brothers and my sisters, wake! arise!
For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking,
Ghosts have turned flesh, throwing off the grave's disguise,
And the foolish, even children, are made wise;
For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making--
O my brothers, dreaming for long centuries,
Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!


Summer Morn in New Hampshire by Claude McKay

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children's feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth's wet breast.

But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.


The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?


Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith by Mary Oliver

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green
stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.


Birches by Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.


Tryin' On Clothes by Shel Silverstein

I tried on the farmer's hat,
Didn't fit...
A little too small -- just a bit
Too floppy.
Couldn't get used to it,
Took it off.
Tried on the dancer's shoes,
A little too loose.
Not the kind you could use
For walkin'.
Didn't feel right in 'em,
Kicked 'em off.
I tried on the summer sun,
Felt good.
Nice and warm -- knew it would.
Tried the grass beneath bare feet,
Felt neat.
Finally, finally felt well dressed,

Nature's clothes fit me best.

My Portion

I read The Taming of the Shrew this week. It was really funny, probably one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. Alongside it, I read chapter 8 of this “companion to Shakespeare” guide to help us understand the times better. 

“The bride’s family promised to give to the married couple a dowry made up of property, valuables (silver and jewelry, for example), and cash. This was also called the bride’s portion…”

Portion. I’ve heard this word before (I mean, other than in the context of a meal). I thought of a line in “Amazing Grace” - The Lord has promised good to me; His Word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures.

If Christ is my portion…if Christ is my portion…that means everything. The church does not deserve to be the bride of Christ. Not one bit. Has there ever been a more uneven match? Has any husband (even the husband of a “shrew”) ever had such work cut out for him? Of purification, of reconciliation, of unfailing love towards a continually adulterous bride? 

In the Renaissance, a portion was a promise. It secured a husband for the bride (her primary goal in life) and ensured that the young couple would survive as they began their lives together. But once there was a bride that was so unsuited for her would-be husband, so far beneath him, that no dowry her family could possibly give would appease her fiance’s Father. However, as unattainable as this perfect husband was, he was the bride’s only hope. Without him her life would be meaningless. Without him she was nothing.

What if, instead of rejecting the bride, telling her there was no hope, that she would never have this husband, the fiance's Father allowed the marriage? Of course, before doing so, he set up plenty of ground rules to make her a better match for his Son and to save her from herself. You would think the bride, in her thankfulness, would be the best wife possible, with a constant heart and a thankful soul. But it was quite the opposite; the son did everything he could for his bride, serving her though he was infinitely above her, coming to her rescue when enemies threatened her, listening to her though he was infinitely wiser, and treasuring her as a jewel though she was far uglier than he. She, on the other hand, desired another man – charming but insincere, deceitful and selfish, alluring and dangerous, who seduced her but said she could not have him until she murdered her husband. 

So she killed her only hope.

After her hope was dead, she ran into her new lover’s arms, only to be repulsed, beaten and laughed at. He left her completely alone in despair. Of course, now and then he would come back, promising that this time he would be faithful, that this time she would find the hope and joy anew that she had killed…but she would always be left alone, scorned, in a frightening and solitary darkness. 

But the Father…the Father, though it would have been just to avenge his son, though it would have been completely fair to leave the bride to die in her hopelessness with her deceitful lover, had pity. He saw this shamed creature, saw what she could be, not the ugly thing she was, and offered her a new identity if she would only leave her unconstant lover behind. Once again, she needed no portion – only to acknowledge the sacrifice the Son had made for her and exchange her ways for his ways. And so, upon her acceptance, the Father took her to a new place, gave her a new name, gave her a new face. He made the ugly beautiful. He made the old new. He gave her the most complete love she had ever known – an eternal security and yet also an eternal adventure. And best of all, she learned that her husband had never and could never die, though he was no longer physically with her. He would forever live on to battle her deceitful enemy, who had wooed her and thrown her away, and worse, who had mocked and attacked him and his Father, until that enemy was no more. And, once recreated, once she had abandoned her old self, she was fit to join him in that battle for Good, to war against all things untrue. And fit to share in the victory when He triumphed.

Nothing less than a perfect Life was a sufficient dowry for this woman. Nothing less than complete recreation could make her see the truth and stop believing lies. And yet the Father, who is in the business of creation, gave it all willingly, for he forever gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.