Choose Your Weapon

I think of this line in connection with duels of earlier centuries. The choice of a weapon can make so much difference. There is a classic scene in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. A bad guy wielding a sword tries to stop Indy in the marketplace. After 10 seconds of fancy sword work, Indy simply pulls out a gun and shoots him. He wasn't concerned with a fair fight; he wanted to continue with his objective at the time. Our military owes much of its dominance to the superiority of its weapons. But you need both the technology and have people who know how to use them. So it is with spiritual warfare. We have been given weapons that are more powerful than that which is thrown at us. However, we must know how to apply those weapons and then do so with diligence.

A good starting point for discussing spiritual weapons is the verse I closed with during the previous blog.

"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

2 Cor. 10:3-5

From this verse, I glean a couple of overarching truths about the weapons with which we fight these spiritual battles.

First, they are potent and able to give us real help in the battle. They have divine power and since this battle occurs in a realm outside of our five senses, it makes sense that we need to have weapons that are effective in that realm.

Second, these weapons will be able to demolish strongholds and arguments and pretensions. Strongholds speak to me of places in our lives that are entrenched, like the rock fortresses of antiquity. Spiritual warfare can help us deal with ungodly habits and patterns. Arguments and pretentions seem to deal with attitudes and the thinking that dominates so much of our lives. The spiritual battles are often waged most forcefully in our minds. How we think determines so much of how we will live. Paul warns us that the mind set on the flesh is death. (Rom. 8:5) The mind set on the flesh will perceive that what happens on earth is the beginning and end of the story. We are to set our minds on the spirit. To me, that involves maintaining an awareness of God's purpose in what is happening in our daily lives. The mundane is not necessarily mundane but can be part of a bigger plan. I can be tempted to forget that God is a part of that casual interaction in the store, that flat tire that made me late, that opportunity to correct or instruct my children. We can each take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. All we do and say in each daily interaction, no matter how seemingly important or inconsequential, is something God can use to accomplish his purposes in us and through us.

Next time we’ll begin to look at the specific weapons at our disposal.