Spiritual Warfare: We wanna bop those dang devils over the head like we are Little Bunny Foo Foo and they are bunch ole flea bitten field mice.

Spiritual Warfare: 
We wanna bop those dang devils over the head like we are
Little Bunny Foo Foo and they are bunch ole flea bitten field mice. 

Hey peeps, it’s your brunettish BB here.  We have to get way off track for a second.  We BB’s LOVE a bunny trail, but God has sent us down a scary path.  Now don’t get me wrong, this was NOT an unexpected little jaunt, but we are all ready for a cute little blog about being a good example with the 1993 remix of Michael W. Smith’s song “Picture Perfect” playing the background, when things took a turn…

Insert SKREECHING halt here.

Anytime we BBs (that means YOU too) step out and do a big somethin’, that has God wobbling in the middle of it, we are going to get pounced by that ole no legged, temptation slinging, lying, teasing serpent.  And what do we do?  Fall for it most the stinkin’ time until that voice of reason that God slung in our hearts, called the Holy Spirit, shakes us by our fairy wings and says, “STOP!”  What we forget is that each and every day as we walk along in this yucky world, we are being teased and poked at by Satan and all his lowlife minions.  We are in the middle of spiritual warfare people…plain and simple.
 

Tell me if this sounds familiar…

I sit down to write for the BB blog.  I get my coffee all made and my hair out of face and am ready to dive in.  Then I realize my coffee is not hot enough.  I head to the microwave to zap into the magical scalding hot cup of loveliness that keeps me on my toes, and I get distracted.  I left my Bible in the truck.  I must go out and get it and I get distracted again. The pig, I’m sure from how she is squealing, needs a belly rub.  Then I hear the whines of Moose (my big ole Rotty) and I feel certain that he cannot breathe another breath with the sadness that’s coming from his big ole precious self.  I put him in his kennel, so he’ll be happy again.  Then I realize that I never swept off the porch while cleaning the night before.  This silliness goes on and on for thirty minutes or so before I realize I never got my coffee out of the microwave.  Off to re-heat, and you can press repeat now.  Then after round two of this madness, I realize, that “dang, I only have 15 minutes to write before I have to head back to work”.  Oh well, It’ll have to wait. 

Now let’s insert the following things where I had “write”: have a quiet time, pray, have a talk with my child/friend/co-worker about Christ, go to church.  You with me now?  In C. S. Lewis’s book, The Screwtape Letters (which is a fabulous book where a higher demon writes letters of counsel and instruction to a lesser demon), he writes,  “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”  Oh my word, BB’s, is this not SO true???

We BB’s got bombarded with a spiritual battle the past few weeks, so we wanted to take a minute to share with the BB army!  It started with the nonsense I wrote about a couple of paragraphs ago.  When Jenny and I mocked our absent mindedness with you guys and threw our hearts on the line with honesty, we were struck harder.  We were hit with family problems, struggles with clients, friends making accusations, others questioning our walk with God, anxiety that left us curled in a ball crying out to Jesus, my voice literally being taken away.  All we knew to do was cry out to Jesus.  In the name of Jesus, claim what were doing and ask for His grace and blessings and His reassurance.  In His name, we clung to His protection.  In His name, we prayed against those nasty, little spineless, backstabbing demons (that we name things like depression, absent mindedness, anxiety, business, etc.).  And through our tears, laughed at them and proclaimed the name of Jesus.  As the Vegetales so eloquently put it, “God is bigger than the boogie man”!  AND HE IS!!!!

We thought we might talk to every preacher we know, followed by knocking on the door of every older, wiser, BB out there, topped off with reading every book we could find on spiritual warfare.  When we saw didn’t have no time for that, we went to the Word of God.  DUH! (We BB’s sometimes get all excited and forget the obvious, don’t we?)  The sword of the Spirit against this train wreck causing, army of fools is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17).  So instead of giving you seemingly helpful advice and witty phrases about how to bop your demons over the head, we want to share a little of what the Word of God tells us.

The very first that we hear of Satan is in Genesis.  We all know the story of creation and the fall of man.  Satan twists words around and tempts Eve all while Adam hangs out and is too…. something… to stand up to Eve OR Satan.  (Woman, watch it… we have been given the power of influence.  Use it wisely.)  This event created a ripple effect throughout generations.  And we see story after story being infiltrated by Satan.  Seemingly good people that Satan tempts and destroys: Caan and Abel (Genesis 4), the golden calf Exodus 32, David’s affair that leads to murder (2 Samuel 11), just to name a few.  And in the New Testament, we see person after person possessed by demons, and even Jesus, Himself, tempted for 40 days by Satan.  Let’s look at just tiny little bit of scripture on all this.

And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. 2 Corinthians 11:14-15

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  1 Peter 5:8

You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder!  James 2:19

But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."  Matthew 16:23

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.  The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, "Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.  1 Corinthians 2:14-16

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  1 John 4:1

This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God's child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.  1 John 3:10

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.  Ephesians 6:12

So where does that leave us?  Surrounded by Satan and his pesky demons that are disguised as angels of light, servants of righteousness, prowling like lions, completely focused on the things of man and the world.  What do we do?  Test the spirits, do what is right, love our brother and sister, KNOW what is of God, and put on the armor of God and be ready for battle. 

I tell ya, this mess can just scare the fire and brimstone out of ya, cause it’s REAL!!  We didn’t even scratch the surface of the scripture about this mess.  How scary is THAT?  And I’d love to share some of my BB-to-Booger, face-to-face, spiritual battles with you, but I feel that I need to guard my heart in that area.  No BB can tell all...TO all.  I will say that I’ll drop anything and pray for you and with you or sit over a foamy caffeine filled cup of deliciousness and share my heart ANY TIME you’d like about this matter.

What Jenny and my prayer is for you today is that you take this seriously.  Satan is just looking for a loophole in you…in us.  He is looking for a weakness.  He is ready to pounce and let the ripple effect of his nastiness run through your life little by little until it affects your family and friends for generations to come… let that sink in!!  For generations to come!
 

“It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.  Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” –C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

Be strong.  Pray.  I truly believe that this is one of the biggest reasons the Bible says pray without ceasing in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.  We have got to be a community and pray together over this.  That is the only way we will defeat the enemy in this world anyway. Christ rose from the grave to forgive us, so that the picture was made perfect and the broken was made beautiful.  At the name of Jesus EVERY knee bows down on heaven, earth, AND down below!!  Our God is greater!! 

HOLLA-lujah and XOXO,

Anna