We’re bombarded every day with reports of wars all over the world, but did you know you can have a battle of epic proportions taking place much closer to home – even within the borders of your very own skin — and not even know what’s going on?
Take my digestive system, for example … please… although I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
For more than a year, right inside my deceptively healthy-looking body, there was a war being waged between “good” bacteria and “bad” bacteria. Normally, the good guys have no trouble keeping the bad guys in check, but following some surgery and too many potent antibiotics, the balance of power in my digestive tract shifted and the war was on.
And what a war it was. For many months, I felt worse than bad, and I honestly wondered if the good guys would ever again rule the land.
Once my doctors figured out what was going on, which was difficult, expensive, embarrassing and exasperating, the war was on. We stopped fighting with cap guns and brought out nuclear warheads – strong medicine made especially for killing off the bad guys and giving the good guys a chance to replenish their ranks. Even so, it still took 12 long months to restore order in the kingdom again.
Given that this is way more information than you want to know, why on earth am I telling you this? To make this transcending point: Life is full of battles – some visible, some quite invisible, but both very, very real. Don’t be deceived by what you see with your eyes. Appearing fine is not the same as being fine.
Author and theologian C.S. Lewis wrote that if we could truly see every human being we meet in their ultimate, eternal state, we would either see a spiritual creature so glorious we’d want to fall down and worship … or a hideous being straight out of our worst nightmares. Each of us is, Lewis said, one or the other, but this reality is temporarily camouflaged by human skin.
Fact is, there’s a war going on in you, around you and for you every day. The battle lines were drawn way back when Satan chose to rebel against Almighty God. Satan knows he’s a defeated foe, but his goal is to take as many of us down with him as he possibly can. Anything to inflict pain upon the heart of a loving God who sent His Son to seal the victory over sin and death.
The battlefield is as vast as the universe and as close as your heart. The weapons are invisible, relentless and deceptive. They look like lies, half-truths, and temptations, and they always have one purpose: to “kill, steal and destroy” our lives (John 10:10). They may seem harmless, but make no mistake – they are deadly. Eternally deadly.
Choosing to believe there is no war does not make it any less real. The only question that matters is this: Whose side are you on?
“Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For 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. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground …” — Ephesians 6:11-13