Spiritual Warfare or Spiritual Development?
Seems recently that everywhere I turn people are being faced with very interesting situations in life. Work conflicts, car crashes, deaths in the families, property damages, friendship issues, marital strains, pet tragedies and homelessness. It seems to never end. In some ways it seems to line up with Daryl Worley’s lyric “Sounds like life to me”.
But when they line up one after another one has to think….is there more to it? In the church world there are some who will be quick to point straight to Spiritual Warfare. That Satan and his crew are menacing at each step and anything that doesn’t fall into our convenient gentle lifestyle must be the work of the devil. Others will take the opposite approach that its just life and there is no spiritual element to it at all.
As I navigate this life and spend time with more and more people I seem to think there is another more important conclusion to land on. They are all opportunities for Spiritual development. The less time we spend wondering where our circumstance comes from the sooner we can start understanding what God might want us to learn from it. Romans 8:28 states “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
This week I have been reminded to look for the good that God wants to bring from the situations in my life. Uncomfortable? yes! Inconvenient? Yes! Annoying? Yes! Aggravating? Yes! Disturbing? Yes! Opportunities? YES!! Growing pains are a natural part of life and the result is a mature, strong, fully developed version of our selves. So let’s look forward to the growth. Let’s appreciate the development and let’s look forward to being stronger so we can handle all that life has to offer.
Because after all for those of us that know Christ, this is simply a brief moment in time before we spend eternity with Him.
Pastor Low
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July 13th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
The way I see it is that probably most of the time, circumstances (like the things you listed) are simply that…circumstances. Things that “happen” because we live in a fallen world. They can easily become an opportunity for Satan to wage war on us when we don’t recognize them for what they are and turn them over to the ONE to control and help us manage. We often set ourselves up for spiritual warfare because we don’t seem to keep the understanding that life happens. We must always be resisting the urge to become victims of our own lives and always be seeking to learn what the Lord can teach us in our brief moment in time. Afterall, the war was one a long time ago. We need to keep that in the forefront of our hearts and minds.