angels and demons

I am reading this book currently about the persecuted church in China. This book is a novel by Randy Alcorn, but I believe the Lord has given him an incredible gift by allowing him to write windows into the spiritual realm while living in the physical. If you are a believer, you cannot help but read with tears in your eyes from the beautiful picture that this man paints of the battle between heaven and hell. The vivid images in my mind produce an excitement within me that has not been rivaled since I first had the Chronicles of Narnia read to me. But this, this story of epic proportions, is happening. It really exists. It is because of this truth that my imagination is finally able to bleed into reality. It is every kid's dream!

Going through life, it is easy to become calloused to the knowledge that there is a war going on all around us. We cannot see it or hear it in most cases. I believe that there are occasional manifestations of this incredible battle that allow us humans to catch a snapshot, but we do not hear of it often, at least not here in America. Thinking more about that, it is probably good that we don't hear about it often because our natural reaction to such things would be to develop a money making ploy. Anyway, whether we try and deny it or not, our very souls are being fought for. Some have been won, other's are still in the tug of war. Whatever your view is on how this works, one thing remains..."seek and you will find" (Matt. 7:7). God says it so I will just go ahead and say that the trump card has been laid. But just think, what initially seems like fiction is actually happening. Evil versus good. We grow up seeking those stories with our hearts.

Many deny this possibility, but I believe it is because they have not looked into the situation. I had read about and prayed that I could catch glimpse of the supernatural. The more I was interested, the more I became intuitive about what was going on. I believe the Spirit of God allows us to sense when evil is present the more we seek His guidance. This makes sense since we are seeking the Spirit of the Almighty God who is in the spiritual realm. When we become sensitive to His presence, I believe He allows us to be exposed to the other side. In my own experience, there have been monumental points where I have encountered that other side. To be honest, when you get a taste of that side, you know without a doubt that you want no part in it. They are the most terrifying experiences of my life. In those moments, you learn what it truly means to run into the arms of your Father all over again. No one can stand up to the devil under his own power. There is no question. Thankfully, the Lord has used those experiences to verify to me that He does exist and that He is who He says He is. I think that is why we are exposed to such terror; to prove to us that God is a warrior and to remove the possibility of us taking credit for what is not ours. If we realize that our only hope is the Lord in such times, then we have no one to praise but the God of heaven.

This book is humbling me to the point that I am realizing, once again, that... "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12). Christ has overcome those forces already when He defeated Satan on the cross. When we resist and call upon the name of Christ for help, we can know this: "In the race of the Christian life, every believer's victory is ASSURED because Someone else has already been declared the winner. The life that I now life, no matter how difficult the struggle, is really just a victory lap" (John Koessler). We cannot be ignorant of the fight that is going on, but we can take joy in the fact that it has been won. Having experienced another dose of the devil's attempt to terrify me this past week, I am brought to my knees to acknowledge that the spiritual realm is real and that the King has dominion over it all!

Amun Zhu Yesu Jidu