Little Messages with Big Impact
Of the three enemies you face, the most personal is the one you cannot cast out, cannot walk away from, and cannot separate from yourself: the flesh.
Scripture speaks of the flesh not merely as the physical body, but as the unredeemed, sinful nature that resists the Spirit of God. It is the part of us that still craves what is forbidden. The part that loves comfort more than calling. The part that resists submission to divine authority and offers us sophisticated justifications for doing so.
One of the most important things you can understand about your enemy is what he cannot do.
There is a dangerous tendency in some spiritual circles to speak about Satan as though he were God’s equal opponent, an all-knowing, all-powerful dark counterpart locked in a cosmic struggle whose outcome is genuinely in doubt. This is not the picture scripture paints. Satan is powerful, yes. He is strategic. He is relentless. But he is a created being. A fallen one. With real limits.
Most people think of spiritual warfare as a two-party conflict: you versus the devil. The reality is considerably more complex, and considerably more personal.
Scripture reveals not one enemy but three. They are distinct in nature and in strategy, but they rarely operate independently. They are coordinated. They overlap. They reinforce one another. And together, they form what I have come to call the evil trinity: Satan and his demons, the flesh, and the world.
In survival training, one of the first things soldiers learn is how to read terrain. What looks like a peaceful clearing may be a kill zone. What looks like a safe path through the forest may lead into an ambush. The ability to read the environment, to see past what is surface and perceive what is strategic, is not a bonus skill. It is a survival requirement.
In the 2001 movie Behind Enemy Lines, a US Navy flight officer named Lieutenant Chris Burnett is on what he believes is a routine surveillance mission over Bosnia. He is confident, almost bored. The sky is clear. The mission feels harmless. Danger seems very distant. Then, restless with routine, he flies off his designated route and spots something he was not supposed to see. Serbian forces are breaching a peace agreement. And they see him too. Seconds later, a surface-to-air missile streaks through the sky and his jet is gone. The illusion of safety evaporates, and Burnett finds himself behind enemy lines, hunted and alone.
We have always read Genesis 2:15 as a gardening assignment. We were wrong.
The Hebrew word translated “keep” or “take care of” in this verse is shamar, and it carries a weight that our English translations rarely capture. Shamar means to guard, to watch, to keep vigil, to protect. It is used eight times in the Old Testament specifically in reference to a military watchman. This is the word you use when soldiers are stationed at a gate. This is the word you use when a sentry is posted through the night. It is not the word you use when someone is weeding a flower bed.
There is a particular kind of anger that comes not from being defeated by an equal, but from being surpassed by someone you consider beneath you.
Think of the older sibling who has worked and waited for years to take over the family business, only to watch the youngest child, who showed up late and contributed little, receive the inheritance first. The anger is not just about the loss. It is about the perceived injustice of who received what you wanted.
Every war has an origin. This one began before you were born.
To understand why you are in a spiritual battle, you have to go back further than Eden, further than the garden, further than the first breath of any human being. You have to go back to a moment in heaven when one of the most breathtaking creatures God ever made looked at his own beauty and made the most catastrophic decision in the history of creation.
Nobody tells you, when you give your life to Christ, that you are also enlisting in a war.
You are told about forgiveness, which is glorious. You are told about peace, which is real. You are told about purpose and community and the presence of God, all of which are true. But the fine print, the part that does not always make it into the welcome brochure, is this: the moment you became a believer, you became a target.
Every person in the Hall of Faith was pointing to Someone they had not yet fully seen.