Spiritual Warfare

This week our topic is spiritual warfare. This is a topic about which I was somewhat apprehensive. The YWAM approach of knowledge being directly applied had me a little worried about what we may have been asked to do. Imagine the most outlandish things you have heard about "spiritual warfare" and that is where my mind was. (This had nothing to do with YWAM, just a personal association I have with that phrase.)

I am pleased to report that we didn't have a field trip to cast the demons out of the neighbors emu or llama. It was a very good discussion by Dean Sherman. In the few hours we had with him this morning, I jotted down several ideas I would like to share with you. I am not going to try to give you the lecture notes, just a collection of ideas.

• Jesus talked about the kingdom of Heaven being like a treasure hidden in a field. Our job is not to sell fields, but to make people aware of the treasure that can be found. This is best done by living a joyfilled, loving, serving, compassionate, humble life. Then they will sell all they have to buy the field.
• When He sent Jesus, God was not interested in starting a religion, He wanted to love the world.
  
• If your belief system does not include the supernatural, you will tend to become too active towards humans. People are never the enemy (see Ephesians 6).

I look forward to the rest of the week with Dean as we continue to discuss this topic.

Tonight Adriana's Bible study met again. They studied chapter 1 of Ruth. They drew pictures of life before and after God transformed their life. She is very excited about how it went.

Grace to you,
Tom