Ephesians 6:12 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of this dark age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (NKJV).
When I was growing up my brother and I used to play a game called mercy. We would be wrestling and the first one to say mercy would lose, so the goal was to get the other person in a position where they said mercy. It was possibly the game we played the most, for it took creativity to come up with new maneuvers and ways of putting a person in a position to say mercy. When we were kids, this was just a game, but now that I am an adult, I realize the enemy is in a wrestling match with me and it is not a game to him, it is his passion, his goal, his reason for existence.
Spiritual warfare is a deep and wide topic of which others are more able to speak about it in realms, that I am not interested in plummeting, but there is something the Lord has been teaching me about spiritual warfare that I want to share with you. The enemy does not care about your money, your marriage, your ministry, your job title, your kids, or anything that bears your name. He attacks these things, but these things are not what he is interested in.
As believers we hold each of these things in high value, so we seek to protect them, defend them and do whatever we can to not lose them. So, when we sense the enemy attacking them, we fight to keep them, when in reality the enemy is not even interested in any of these things. So, what is he really after?
When Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden with God, the Bible says the serpent, who was more cunning than any other of the animals came to Eve and said, “Did God really say…” (Gen. 3:1, NIV). The goal of the enemy was not to get Adam and Eve out of relationship with God, his goal was to discredit the character of God as being good. He does the same thing with you and me. The enemy has one goal, to discredit the character of God and to get us to discredit His character as well.
How we navigate disappointments is critical to our life in the kingdom of God, Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, CA says. We all experience disappointments, unanswered prayers, promises yet to be fulfilled, prophecies we have not seen come to pass. The enemy will use these disappointments to wrestle us into discrediting the character of God. He will say things like, did God really say; if He is God why didn’t He heal your _____________; or like he said to Jesus in Luke 4, if you are God, why don’t you throw yourself down from this mountain. You see the only thing the enemy is interested in is discrediting the character of God.
Why does the enemy care about discrediting the character of God in your eyes? Because if Satan can get you to doubt that God is who He says He is and can do what He says He can do, you won’t believe in God. Your faith in God is dependent on His unchanging nature, His character. If God is not who He says He is, then you will not trust Him and if you don’t trust Him you won’t obey Him and if you don’t obey Him you won’t be able to worship Him in spirit and in truth and that is what the wrestling match is all about. He is seeking to get you to say, God is not who He says He is.
