My Future Self

I still have to choose a vise for my drill press. No idea what size to get, or whether a quick-release vise is worth the additional cash. The vise I have right now is maybe 3″ wide across the jaws. The drill press is a 17″ model, so if anyone has a suggestion, I am listening. I’m thinking 4″.

I bought a very good book recently. I think the Christian life is mostly about spiritual warfare, as Paul made clear when he talked about principalities and powers, so I am trying to learn more about how to fight. I want God to teach my hands to war (Ps. 18:34). Luckily for me, I found Perry Stone’s Dealing With Hindering Spirits.

It always amazes me how little mainstream churches talk about Satan and demons and fallen angels (I mention fallen angels and demons separately because I suspect they are not the same things). Jesus mentioned three things he expected his followers to do, and one of those things was casting out “devils.” Fighting a spiritual war by being good, without going after the enemy, is like trying to win World War II by keeping your troops at home and growing a victory garden. It makes no sense.

Evil spirits make us sick, often terminally. They kill us by attacking us physically. They give us addictions. They give us sick behaviors we can’t quit, such as domestic violence and fetishes. They ruin our careers and our families. They make us blind, deaf, crippled, and insane. They prevent many of us from receiving salvation. They cause us to do things that bring punishment and curses on us and our families. They are as common as flies, and they are not trivial enemies, and there is no human being on earth who is not beset by them. Yet somehow we have decided we should not talk about them or fight them. Crazy.

The book taught me some interesting things. Example: it’s probably a stupid idea to get puffed up and tell Satan or another powerful spirit off. There are little spirits we can deal with pretty easily, but there are also big spirits that can make our lives hell if we attack them without preparation. Stone notes that Jesus pointed out that even when armed with his name, we would sometimes have to resort to prayer and fasting to get certain spirits to submit. Look how long it took God’s messenger to reach Daniel, when an evil “prince” withstood him. Three weeks. Not all spirits are pushovers.

The message I took away from that is that I should not go looking for trouble. I think there are certain fairly low-level spirits in the area in which I operate, and I should be content to overcome those spirits instead of inviting bigger ones to go after me and my family. Stone says some ministers will rail against powerful spirits, only to end up with horrible problems in their ministries because they bit off more than they could chew.

He also said a married couple will have more fighting strength than a single person. That’s something that has been on my mind a lot. I’m not constant. Sometimes I’m spiritually strong, but sometimes, I have to deal with earthly matters, and besides, I’m fundamentally bad. So I’m not always focused on my enemies. If there were two of me, I could be on my guard more of the time. The Bible says one will put a thousand to flight, and two will put not two thousand but ten thousand to flight. I see a single person as a house with only two walls. The spouse provides the other two walls, and that closes the house and provides security. You have to clean up your temples and establish armaments and barriers.

Stone wrote about Paul’s thorn in the flesh, and he noted that God told Joshua that if he didn’t clear his enemies out of the promised land, they would remain to vex him. In the Bible, the story of Joshua is symbolic of the story of any given believer. That’s what I believe, and I think it’s what Stone was saying. Crossing the Jordan (water) into the Promised Land represents baptism and salvation. The warfare the Hebrews did inside Israel symbolizes our warfare to get spirits and sin out of our “temples,” meaning our bodies and minds and hearts. We are supposed to fight the spirits using our faith, as the Hebrews did. The walled cities they conquered represent strongholds in our lives. Sins and afflictions we need to defeat. If you don’t get rid of as many as you can, they will remain and vex you. You will have given place to Satan, providing him with his own office in your “building,” and he will have the right to make you miserable, as the Amalekites made the Jews miserable after God’s people permitted them to live.

This is why Christians have to quit sinning, even if they are not under the law. Sin generates defeat and leads to a life of slavery. And then you lose the rewards you would otherwise store up in heaven. We have to be filled with the Holy Spirit and the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, and we have to be changed from inside, and we have to fast and cast down strongholds. I’m convinced this is how it works. Joshua got the Lord to help him destroy Jericho and Ai and other cities. We’re supposed to get the Lord to help us destroy alcoholism, unforgiveness, sickness, habitual sexual sin, drug addiction, pride, hard-heartedness, and other “cities” Satan has built inside us.

We’re supposed to be in constant communication with God while we do this, and we are supposed to walk in faith. The Hebrews wandered in the desert for forty years not because of proactive sin, but because of a lack of faith. It’s as bad as defiant and immoral sins such as idolatry and adultery. The spies looked at the Promised Land, and the ten faithless spies convinced the Hebrews they couldn’t defeat the giants that lived in the land, and God punished Israel for having no faith in his ability to deliver them. Had they had faith, they would have entered the land forty years earlier and been given daily guidance and blessings. They would have lived in victory.

You have to be like Joshua. You have to have a personal relationship with God, in which you seek his will daily, and then you have to do what he tells you to do, even if it seems like it won’t work. Otherwise you’ll wander. You may think you’re doing great, but you’ll eventually find out that you were spinning your wheels. Building on sand. When trouble comes, you will have to crawl back to God for help. You may be blind and poor and naked and not even know it.

That is my take on spiritual warfare, so I am glad to get any advice I can. My family has been subject to all sorts of evil-spirit manifestations since before I was born, and I am tired of it.

On the subject of broken strongholds, I continue to lose weight without much effort. I am down twenty pounds now. Fifteen more would be great, and it seems certain that I’ll keep losing, since I’m not the one doing the work. If God chooses, I’ll make it. I also have more control over sexual immorality and anger-related sin. I hope God will see fit to continue the improvements, because I don’t want my enemies to have any footholds within my walls.