It's A Warfare

It's a Warfare...Most of you don't need to be told that, or to be reminded of it.

Many of you are here, really war-scarred warriors, you've been in the fight and the battle has left its marks on you.

You know it quite well. And yet, it needs to be said - perhaps firstly to those who are newly, who have newly donned the armor, who have newly come to the LORD:

Understand that you have been enrolled in a spiritual army!

And your life business is war. You're going to find that out sooner or later whether you like it or not, but there's the fact.

And that is a very responsible position. One, by failure in this warfare, may let down many and affect the whole campaign.

But, dear friends, although you and others may know it so well, and feel that you do not need to be reminded, are you sure that you don't?

Well I think I know something about it in experience; and yet, and yet there's this subtle truth, this subtle fact...

That very often we are in situations, things are going on, and we begin to blame people and circumstances and get all worked up about things that are happening, and look for scapegoats, and forget, forget the reality of this thing.

Why, the devil's after something!

Here the battle is on, there is no doubt about it; the air is thick with conflict; and we get our eyes on people, and things, and forget.

And we are defeated, we are defeated, we are just beaten, and rendered casualties, put out of the fight...

Simply because we have lost sight of the fact, the abiding fact, that we are in a spiritual warfare, and behind 'things' there are other forces.

And we all need to be reminded. 

It is no small thing, you know, when we are really in a situation like that, and things are getting worked up to a fine pitch of stress, when someone comes along and says, "Look here, the enemy is in this.

The enemy's in this, he is trying to get you, he knows something or other, he's on your track; let's have some prayer about it" and we get to prayer, and the whole thing goes.

So sometimes just to remind one another of the fact is a tremendous deliverance: we find that it is, it IS a fact.

We've been attributing it to things and people, and there's something deeper than that behind it.

But we do need to be reminded continually that we are in a warfare - we are.

Well, that's the first thing here...the conception of the Christian life-we must just get a hold of it and settle it.

And, although I don't like saying it, I don't think we are ever going to be out of this warfare here!

No. Well, let's go on.

The second thing that is in these statements is that, if you are going to wage triumphant spiritual warfare, you must be all in it.

No soldier on active service (for that's the literal wording) entangleth himself with the affairs of this life.

~T. Austin Sparks~