A few years ago, my Amish neighbor years ago was going to have a new bore hole dug for a well. So they brought in a “water man.” This guy came to their property, pulled out a pliers, and started walking around their meadow. At one point, he said he felt the pliers start vibrating, and that is where he said they should drill the well. I was over there a couple days later buying some eggs, and my Amish neighbor asked me what I thought. I said that sounds like divination to me. Divination is a practice of relying on spiritual powers for direction, and it is condemned throughout scripture. God doesn’t work by divination. The dark powers do. I said I would stay far away from that.
Between my junior and senior year of college I did a missionary internship in Guyana, South America. My missionary host told me a story about a short-term mission team that had traveled down to work with them for a week a few years prior. As the mission team was walking around a local neighborhood, they saw people entering a Hindu temple. Guyana is about 50% Hindu. One of the American men on the mission team became very internally angry as he watched the people enter the temple, because he believed they were being led astray by a false god. As he expressed internal hatred toward the devil, right there on the street, he was hit with a wave of spiritual oppression and knocked down to the ground and he could not get up.
Perhaps there are other ways spiritual warfare can manifest itself in world.
Psychiatrist Richard Gallagher says, “I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession.”[1] Many psychiatrists would disagree with Gallagher. But he writes that, “careful observation of the evidence presented to me in my career has led me to believe that certain extremely uncommon cases can be explained no other way.” He is not saying that mental illness is the same as having demonic interaction in your life. He is saying he’s seen both.
What about addiction? It might not only have a sinful side to it, but a spiritual warfare element. Addiction seems to be particularly evil.
I also read about how bullying can be connected to spiritual warfare, and we’ll talk about that next week when we discuss the first piece of the armor of God, the Belt of Truth.
Let me repeat the point I attempted to make in the previous post: the spiritual forces of darkness are not to be trifled with. We should not see ourselves as demon-slayers. We should not see ourselves as holy knights whom God has called to do battle with demons. That is precisely why Paul says what he says in the rest of the verses in Ephesians 6:10-13.
He says we all should be strengthened in the Lord and in the power of his might. This is a command verse. Paul makes it clear that this is not an option. All disciples of Jesus should pursue being strengthened in the Lord. He is the one with the power. He is mighty. Not us. When we have encounters with the spiritual forces of darkness, we should make it very clear that we are depending on God, not ourselves. We should be very humble.
So how should we interact with evil? We’ll talk about that further in the next post.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/
Photo by Niels Smeets on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 