The war is being fought over my heart
Carla said today (and I have said many times in recent days), “ok, I understand about this spiritual warfare, and that I have to fight. I know that I have to submit myself to God daily, and claim his victory, and put on the whole armour of God, and tell the devil to get lost. But what do I actually have to DO? Throughout the day? Where is the fight? What is the fight?”
It was only a few minutes later that the lights came on for me. I realised this: the battle is for our hearts. In fact, the war is for our hearts. That is the end goal. Satan wants to take our hearts away from God by breaking them, making us into shells of what we could be, unable to do any good for anyone. God wants to make our hearts whole and full, so that we can “live life to the full”, being not only fully ‘actualised’ ourselves, but also being a blessing to those around us.
The fight is for our hearts, firstly, then for the hearts of the other people around us.
I pictured our hearts being like a hill. You know the picture, of the hill and the soldiers raising the flag on the top of the hill. We start out with our ‘hill’ being completely overtaken by the enemy. We then start to fight our way back. The fights will be in different areas at different times. At one time it may be health - this was our experience last year, when for three months we hardly had a day without someone in the family being sick, we hardly had an unbroken night’s sleep, we had an ear infection, a chest infection, two of us with eye infections (one really severe), pneumonia which resulted in a couple of nights spent in the children’s hospital, three cases of chicken pox, several bouts of vomiting, and severe colds. This time around it is in the area of finances (which we have had several times before, but only once before it has been this critical).
And the battle for our hearts is going something like this:
“We don’t have enough money to pay all the bills - in two weeks I will be $1500 in debt. But that is ok, because God will provide”
“He won’t provide. You will have to juggle everything and stress to string out and juggle creditors, and at the same time you will need to work really hard and push yourself really hard to try and get something coming in…”
“No, God will provide.”
“But it will only be just almost enough, and just a little bit too late, because that is what he has aways done in the past.”
“No, I believe that God will get us through this. I don’t know what “getting through” will look like, but I believe that He will meet our needs.”
“God is getting sick of you always asking for money. God is getting tired of always having to bail you out.”
And so it goes on. And on. And on. You know who the other voice is, don’t you? It is in my head, but the inspiration is not coming from within me. And it is certainly not coming from God!
[Just a quick note: Don’t go getting all weirded out on me now! I’m not hearing “voices in my head” like the sort that has people reaching for the medication! I’m talking more about feelings and attitudes and hints of thoughts. It’s very subtle - it doesn’t generally play out like the conversation above. That is just how I figure it out later, once I put some words around the ebb and flow of the feelings I was experiencing.]
God loves me. He wants the best for me. He cares about my heart. He adores my heart. He created my heart to be glorious, to reflect His glory. He created my heart to shine.
And the devil hates that. With a passionate loathing. And he wants to kill it and cover it and shame it until it shrivels up and disappears. This is where the fight is. My heart is what is being fought over. Angels on one side, demons on the other. And me in the middle. Which side am I going to allow in? Which side am I going to align myself with?
So to answer the initial question: What is the fight? What do we DO? We fight for our hearts. We come against the temptations to doubt God, come against them with scripture and with a renewed determination to trust God. We believe in the eternal reality of God’s Word, rather than in the transient ‘reality’ we see around us.
Inspiration for this was taken from “Waking the Dead” by John Eldredge.
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