20 Apr There are Three Categories of Spiritual Warfare
Blog Series:
Renew Your Mind ~ Transform Your Life
We learned last week that we must be prepared to fight the invisible war, as the third step in forging an eternal perspective that is adequate for life in the 21st century.
This week, we learn that there are three categories of spiritual war. If we don’t know that, we run the risk of being defeated in a battle we don’t even know we are in.
The three categories of spiritual war are:
- Dirty Tricks
- Mind Games
- Hand to Hand Combat
Let’s look at them.
Dirty Tricks
One level of spiritual warfare can be called “Dirty Tricks.” This is circumstantial opposition of evil spirits to God’s people and will. It could be a level of circumstantial opposition that we might not even know is satanic in origin.
For example, in the first chapter of Job, we see Job’s life being devastated. One day, he was walking the earth with fabulous wealth, good health, and a large family. Virtually overnight, he lost it all. The Sabeans attacked and took his oxen and donkeys, which were being used to farm his land, and killed the servants. Next, lightning killed his sheep and shepherds. The Chaldeans rustled his camels and killed the camel keepers. A tornado (or other great wind) destroyed the house where his children were, and killed them all. Finally, Job lost his health, and ended up sitting in a garbage dump with his body covered from head to toe with boils.
Job had no way of knowing why the tragedies befell him. They all had a natural explanation. However, the curtain of heaven is pulled back for those of us who read the account in the Bible, and we learn that all of the incidences were a result of spiritual warfare.
The dirty tricks against us are not likely to be anywhere close to Job’s, but it is likely that we will experience them. Good things we try to do inexplicably fall apart. We get so busy that we don’t have time to do something that needs to be done. We plan to invite someone to an event to influence them for Christ, and the person gets sick and cannot go.
These, of course, are hypothetical possibilities, and the variants are endless. But you get the idea. And they can be difficult to spot because we live in a fallen world in which bad things happen to good people, as a natural course of events. But when things get extreme, or bizarre or relentless, it is reasonable to suspect the possibility of spiritual warfare.
Mind Games
A second level of spiritual warfare is “Mind Games.” Mind Games are the strategy of deception used by the devil to deceive and defeat Christians. Satan’s name means “deceiver.” Deception is a primary strategy. He is the great trickster, the great illusionist, the great con-artist, the great liar. Jesus said, in John 8:44: “[The devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
Satan plays games with our minds to get us to believe that…
- that which is false is true,
- that which is bad is good, and
- that which is wrong is right.
Don’t underestimate these mind games because they may seem so simple and obvious to you. The devil is very good at them. If you are not careful, you will find yourself believing something is true that isn’t, or something that is actually good is bad, or something is right when it is actually wrong.
His strategy is the same with us as it was in the Garden of Eden: to deceive us into doubting God’s character and love for us, and to prompt us to take control over our own lives. If we know Satan’s mind games, we can be prepared to resist them.
Hand-to-Hand Combat
Occasionally, the enemy comes out from behind his Dirty Tricks and Mind Games, and engages God’s people directly in “Hand-to-Hand Combat.” This is direct opposition by evil spirits to God’s will and God’s people. We see an example of this when Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness when Satan spoke directly to Jesus and tried to deceive Him and tempt Him into sinning (Matthew 4).
In another example in Acts 16, a demon-possessed girl who could tell fortunes followed the apostle Paul around for days, interfering with him as he ministered. Paul finally turned to the demon and commanded it to come out of her, which it did, destroying the girl’s ability to tell fortunes.
In Acts 19, some Jewish exorcists were going around attempting to cast demons out of people in the name of Paul and Jesus. In one instance, an evil spirit said, “I recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” (verse 15). Then the man assaulted the ones trying to cast the demon out, having extraordinary physical power because of the demon.
There are many times in the Bible when we see direct confrontation with evil spirits, and such things are being seen more and more today as the light of the gospel dims in our world. Of course, one of the most frequent sources of such reports comes from missionaries, often in very primitive cultures, who tell stories of direct demonic confrontations.
Conclusion
We may not be sure, especially with Dirty Tricks and Mind Games, when something is spiritual warfare or when it may be accounted for by other means. In the Bible we see spiritual warfare being behind a number of life problems:
- Circumstantial upheaval, as in the book of Job
- Physical maladies, with people being doubled over (Luke 13:11), mute (Matthew 9:32), deaf (Mark 9:25), having seizures (Matthew 17:15), manifesting extreme violence (Mark 5:3-5), etc.
- Mental instability (as in the life of King Saul) (1 Samuel 16)
- Faulty thinking causing conflict & disorder (2 Timothy 2:24–26, James 3:18)
- Thoughts raised up against God (2 Corinthians 10:4–5)
This is not a complete list, but is a list of examples from Scripture of the kinds of things the enemy does to wreak havoc in the lives of people. The tricky thing is that many of these problems might be caused by things other than spiritual warfare. That is why discernment must be cultivated.
Next week, we will look at how to do battle against these three categories. I’ll see you then.
In case you’re new here
This blog post is part of a series titled “Renew Your Mind, Transform Your Life”, introduced on January 5, 2021. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.
If you know anyone who you think might enjoy joining us in this study, please forward this blog to them and encourage them to go to my web site (www.maxanders.com) and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blogs on this subject.
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