KingdomCome
Don Follis
Our Choices are Never Free from Conflict
Two kingdoms are vying for power...
This article originally appeared on Jan. 27, 2003. Don Follis will return next week. Send feedback to Don at editor@ivcf.org.
I am regularly aware that my old sinful nature loves to do evil. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, constantly urges me to walk in the light. The evil one tempts me to lie; the Holy Spirit says, “Tell the truth.” These two forces persistently fight each other, and my choices never are free from conflict.
Just this morning, suddenly I was tempted to engage in very bad behavior, a behavior I knew to be absolutely wrong. At the moment, I very much wanted (even desired) to do the wrong thing. I asked the Lord to help me, to give me a desire to do the right thing. By his grace I was victorious.
Every Christian is engaged in spiritual warfare. We live in a world with palpable tension between the kingdom that has already come in Christ and the continuing realities of evil (the kingdom of darkness-Colossians 1:13).
Truth is, God’s mission will be completed when Jesus returns, the kingdom of God comes in power, and the evil kingdom of darkness and sin is destroyed and eliminated forever.
In August 2000 a group of about 30 pastors, theologians and missionaries gathered in Nairobi, Kenya to discuss the emerging frontier of spiritual conflict in taking the gospel to the whole world. The group was convened by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and the Association of Evangelicals in Africa.
What interested them the most was the fact that the participants from the Western societies increasingly had come to recognize the realities of the unseen or spiritual realm as a result of their cross-cultural experience. The group spent a week together discussing spiritual conflict, presenting papers and looking for areas of commonality.
They came to realize anew that the only way to break the power of Satan (the god of this evil age-II Corinthians 4:4) in everyday life, in society and in culture is by walking in the light of Jesus.
The group compiled 10 theological affirmations that I find useful to set alongside the prayer “Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.”
Consider them carefully and prayerfully:
1. “Calling people to faith in Christ, inviting them to be delivered from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God, is the missionary mandate for all Christians.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
2. “Satan is a real, personal, spiritual and created being.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
3. “The powers and principalities are ontologically [relating to or based upon being or existence] real beings.” They never can be reduced to mere social or psychological structures. Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
4. “Satan works by taking what God has created for human well-being, and perverts it toward his purposes, which are to destroy and devalue life by enslaving individuals, families, local communities and whole societies.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.”
5. “Satan uses deception in an attempt to redirect human allegiances to anyone or anything other than God.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
6. “Satan and ‘the rulers, authorities, the powers of this dark world, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’ are at work through all forms of opposition to God’s work of salvation and the mission of the church.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
7. “A primary purpose of the life and ministry of Jesus was to expose, confront and defeat Satan and destroy his works.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
8. “While we acknowledge that God is sovereignly in control of creation, the biblical evidence indicates a variety of causes of illness and calamity: God, Satan, human choices or trauma and a disordered universe.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
9. “The elements of a worldview that is Christian, within our respective cultural context, must include: God is the creator and sustainer of all that exists, both seen and unseen; People were made in the image of God, in which the aspects of the human person are inseparably connected; God remains sovereign over all creation in history, and nothing happens outside God’s ultimate control; Any teaching on spiritual conflict that leads us to fear the Devil to such an extent that we lose our confidence in Christ’s victory over him and in God’s sovereign power to protect us must be rejected; The return of Christ and the ultimate consummation of his victory over Satan gives us confidence today in dealing with spiritual struggles and a lens through which we are to interpret the events in the world today.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
10. “The person and work of the Holy Spirit are central in spiritual conflict.” Lord Jesus, Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.
[Deliver us From Evil – An Uneasy Frontier in Christian Mission; Edited by A. Scott Moreau, Tokunboh Adeyemo, David G. Burnett, Bryant L. Myers and Hwa Yung; Copyright © 2002 by Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization]
My friends, in this life you will feel the conflict between the two kingdoms. But fight, brothers and sisters, fight. God has rescued us from the power of the kingdom of darkness. Praise God! He has transferred us into the Kingdom of his risen Son.
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