Our Fight is not Against Flesh and Blood

https://odb.org/MY/2022/05/16/the-fierce-struggle

Even as we were created in the spirit before our physical bodies came into being, there is actually in parallel an immense world out there in the spiritual realm that are unseen to us. Our physical human senses are not able to see, hear, smell, taste or touch that world because our 5 senses are made for this physical world. Yet we know they exist. There are occasions when the spiritual realm are able to penetrate into the physical realm like when we pray and God moves in signs and wonders, through healing and deliverance. Or there are people bestowed with a 3rd eye or a 6th sense to see the spiritual world that exists side by side with us. However, as much as the spiritual realm exists in parallel with us, it is not a world inhabited by departed spirits. When we pass on in this physical world and give our body back to the soil that it was created from, our spirit goes back to God and all will be resurrected on the day of Jesus Christ. The question then is whether we will go on to enjoy the new heaven and new earth and live with God as revealed to John in Revelation 21 or will we banished to a place of gnashing of teeth?

The final destination of the human soul is determined by what it does here on earth while its human body still have breadth. That is why many have described the believer as only being a pilgrim passing through the earth on the way to eternity. It’s a pilgrimage fraught with trials and challenges, and yet we are also empowered with the grace, goodness and power of God to overcome and cone out victorious.

That is why Paul reminds us that our fight is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities of the air, the dark forces, the evil rulers and authorities that are in the heavenly realms. They are always fighting with our heavenly hosts and angels to take control of the spiritual realm so that the souls of humans are either drawn to the world or to God. Prayer is our God-given weapon to call upon the heavenly hosts to fight for us against the vile and evil schemes of the evil one.

The fight is always for the souls of mankind. That is the real fight. All others are just peripherals. What we go through in life is just like a play although it is real to us. Because in the end, we will live for eternity. The physical is only temporal, but the spiritual is eternal. Thus whatever we do in the physical to survive amd continue to live in the physical, we must always bear in mind and give emphasis to and prioritise the eternal. Are we storing up riches in heaven? Are we doing what God had planned for us before the foundations of the world? Can we be like Job who look to the day when he knows that his Redeemer lives and though his skin be destroyed, he will see God. Job was an excellent picture of what happened in the spiritual realm having affected the physical and yet the soul of man (Job) was intact as his faith for God was unwavering.

The message today I believe is to look beyond the physical when we face issues in life. There is more to life than that, much more. The battle is being fought in the spiritual realm and we can help out by praying for our heavenly hosts to always protect and preserve the souls of man. We serve God in church to meet the physical and spiritual needs of our fellow brethren but always remember to pray and intercede in the spiritual realm as there is where the real fight lies.