It’s easy to be a soldier in a parade. The weapons aren’t loaded, there is no enemy to be found, and all your leader has to do is make sure you keep in step. But when you’re in a war, your weapons are always loaded, the enemy is in sight, and your commander is telling you what to do in order to stay alive and win the battle.
Far too many believers in Jesus Christ think they are in a parade instead of a war. They dress up nice, smile and wave, and want to know how to keep in step rather than how to go to war. That’s why we have so many casualties on the spiritual battlefield. You can’t fight a war while marching in nice, straight lines. The British redcoats found that out when they came to the American colonies.
Someone might say, “How do you know we’re in a war?” That’s easy. Besides the casualties, we also have a lot of prisoners of war—believers who have been taken captive by the enemy in some area of their lives.
God created humanity to rule the earth and demonstrate His power to Satan and the angelic world. But now “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).
To put it bluntly, Satan is after you.
Satan has an agenda, which is to keep the world of unsaved people under his control and render Christians ineffective in spiritual warfare, bringing us down to daily defeat. Since the garden of Eden, he has widened the battle to include all of life, and he is attacking on many fronts simultaneously.
Each individual life is a battlefront for the devil. The apostle Peter said, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
To put it bluntly, Satan is after you. No matter who you are or what your status, he wants to overthrow and defeat you. I referred above to Christian prisoners of war. The devil has some Christians in POW camps because of alcohol, drugs, pornography, fear, discouragement, depression, pride, narcissism, materialism and a whole host of other problems.
There are a lot of names for these things. But in the spiritual realm, the fact is that believers who are being held captive by the devil in things like these are prisoners of war. The devil is after individual Christians, seeking to capture and destroy them spiritually.
Here’s the news you need to hear: God has already won this battle. I know it might not feel like it, but because of the sacrifice of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, Satan has no power over you that you don’t choose to give him. So my encouragement to you is this: accept the victory that Christ has secured, and start living like a spiritual warrior!
Each individual life is a battlefront for the devil.