Day Seventeen

Whew, all caught up! :)

Have you experienced any spiritual opposition yet in this Spiritual Boot Camp? Have you sensed a stronger than normal opposition in your life? It could be in the form of greater temptation, more readily available rationalizations to not continue with the Boot Camp, or whatever.

The fact is, Satan does not want you to develop the habit of daily time with the God of the Universe! Why not? Well, because he knows that if you develop that habit, then not only will you be more in tune with God during your quiet time, but you'll be more in tune with God throughout the day. You'll be more useful to God, more likely to glorify Him and His Son Jesus Christ, more spiritually aware of evangelistic opportunities that the Holy Spirit reveals to you....and Satan DOES NOT want ANY of those things to happen.

So, he attacks. He will try to lie to us and deceive us and frustrate us and tempt us.

We must be ready for those attacks, and so we must be ready to engage in spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is a huge topic, and if you don't know much about it, I would encourage you to do some study on it (for a good, short and practical paper on spiritual warfare, go to the International Training Partners website for a paper by Ken Williams, entitled "Being Effective in Spiritual Warfare").

For today, here are a couple of key scriptures that deal with this important topic:
Ephesians 6:11-17
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
James 4:7
1 Peter 5:8-9
Luke 10:19
Colossians 2:15
1 John 3:8
Hebrews 2:14
Matthew 16:18
Isaiah 54:17
Matthew 18:18
1 John 4:4
Romans 8:37

Read a couple of these scriptures this morning. Keep this list handy, and whenever you encounter what you believe may be spiritual opposition, pull this list out, and read through these scriptures, pray them back to God, and apply the principles in them. When spiritual attacks come, we need to recognize that the attack is for the attention of our mind and our will, and we MUST engage in that battle. We cannot afford to give any of that territory to the enemy. When those spiritual attacks come, and we just continue to go through the motions with our quiet time and try to ignore the attacks, that would be like seeing a thief come into our home at night, and begin to make their way into our children's bedroom, and we go back to bed and try to sleep...try to ignore that it is happening and keep doing business as usual.

It is not business as usual when spiritual opposition comes. It must be defended against, and these scriptures are our best weapons. Pull out your sword (the Bible), and engage in spiritual warfare Biblically.

Daily Bible reading for today: Acts 13:26-52, Joshua 20-21 (note, we'll have a new monthly scripture calendar beginning tomorrow...can you believe it's already May!?).