Reflecting on the Sermon 10/10/10

This weeks sermon was from Doug and covered Eph. 6:10-20, "The family as  battleground."  One of the most helpful things to me in this message was how he spoke about the "normalcy of warfare for the Christian."  There are often two extremes in the Christian life: 1. to think a demon is behind everything (a demon for everything from indigestion to laziness) or, 2. to never think twice about the fact that there is a Devil and he does roam like a lion seeking whom he may devour.  I often fall into the second category.  This, however, is equally as dangerous as the first mistake because it makes me less alert and less dependent on God. 

When we forget we are in spiritual warfare, "Satan tricks us into wrongly identifying the enemy- we think it is people around us [wife, child, roommate] instead of Satan himself."  When we forget that, we will fail to see that our call in family conflict is to "love the captive soul and rage against the captor."  We will see our spouse or friend as our enemy instead of as a fellow sinner who needs our love and help as we wage war against the powers of this world.

Satan would love to destroy families (and the church) since these are the two primary institutions God has ordained to display his goodness.  My goal is to battle that by:

1. Knowing I'm in a battle- Remembering the normalcy of warfare in the Christian life
2. Knowing my enemy- Remembering that my enemy is not ultimately the person I'm in conflict with

Let me know if you had any thoughts...