PURSUING THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS
Seek first the kingdom of Heaven, and all these things will be added to you. Remember this from passage (Matthew 6:33)? What Matthew is saying here is very powerful. He’s telling us that when we seek God and His kingdom first, we take on new desires (from God). Many of us are afraid to lose our own worldly desires, but that is the pull of the flesh speaking. Like a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly (Proverbs 26:11).
When we desire what our flesh wants more than what God wants for us, we pursue the kingdom of death through sin. This might sound intense and maybe dramatized, but it’s quite literal. When we seek the kingdom of darkness, of sin, we seek Hell on Earth. We pull into ourselves towards where which Jesus isn’t. Our desires form around the edges of a life that remains in the shadows. We don’t want others to see our sins.
Without admitting it, we know we shouldn’t do something we would like to do (drugs, porn, steal, you fill in the blank). We know and yet we ignore that knowledge, we ignore that we live in sin because we want to continue living in sin. There is a sick feeling right under our skin, a sense that we have to hide behind the choices that invoke shame, and that means something. But we ignore that too.
CARELESS PURSUIT IN THE LAND OF THE DEVIL
Sin influences the flesh, and our flesh desires that which sin influences within us. When we want sin, we seek what is furthest from God, since sin cannot dwell the presence of the Lord (Psalm 5:4). And when we engage with our sin, we turn from God, influenced by worldliness. The principalities of darkness and the powers of the unseen realm constantly work against us in order keep us from choosing Christ.
If we’re not pursuing Christ, the devil’s pursuit of our soul stands without much of anything in its way. When we pursue Christ, the devil’s pursuit has a lot more resistance to fight through. Like trying to stick someone from around a thorn bush, he would have to try to take us down with quick or subtle surprises, conjured in the folds of evil designed to take us off guard in the midst of our weakest moments.
The devil is cunning, but powerless to Christ. He can certainly attain what he desires if we aren’t careful, and there are many who aren’t even trying to be careful. Toying with witchcraft, seances, playing with the Ouija board like a hobby, tapping into the spiritual realm using tarot cards and making contact with “the other side” as though it’s a harmless world of mysterious noises and moving objects. Anything that isn’t of Jesus is in the realm of Satan.
IT’S HEAVEN OR HELL, WE CAN’T AVOID BOTH
When we sin, we draw closer to the world unseen, but a world more real than even this one is. We can’t even fathom its reality, but it’s there. We can’t comprehend it, but we interact with it all the time. Even if we don’t believe we are, our actions and beliefs adhere to one or the other. There is no way not to interact with one of them since that’s all there is. There’s Earth, and there’s the spirit world; it’s either angels or demons. It’s angels from heaven coming to Earth with answers to prayers, or demons from hell taking us further into the depths of our own self-pursuit of whatever sins we engage with.
Even if it’s just ignorance of all that is religious and turning inwards to only “seek peace and solace”; if all we ever seek is peace and we never fight against the darkness or even acknowledge its presence, we are susceptible, vulnerable, and open to spiritual attack.
SPIRITUALLY BLIND AND UNPROTECTED
If we aren’t for Christ, and we claim not to believe in the devil, the devil still seeks us out, and he will win if we don’t choose Christ. The only protection we have against anything that isn’t of God is through Jesus Christ. If we don’t believe in the armor of God, we won’t put it on, and we won’t have it with us. Then we have gone to spiritual war completely blind and without any form of protection. We’ve already died and lost the battle before it began.
CHRIST, OR THE DEVIL’S JAILHOUSE
Sin makes us weak. If we don’t want to take a stand, we remain unguarded to all attacks coming at us. We don’t have to want war in order for the reality to be that we are in one. We each have a war to fight in our lives, and I do mean spiritually. Whether or not we fight will only make it easier or harder to endure this world.
Think about this. If we are an unbeliever, the devil wants to get in our head and make us choose more and more of what leads to a Godless life in the pursuit of something to fill in God’s place in our soul. That leads to hell! On the flip-side, if we are a Christ-follower, the devil wants to attack hard and consistently to slip us up, to cause us to fumble the ball back to the chokehold of sin in order to cause us to question our beliefs, to find doubt in our faith, anything but become a bolder, stronger, committed, passionate Christ-follower.
Do you see where I’m going with this? There is no NOT fighting the war. We are in it already, but we fight as soon as we comprehend what it means to choose Christ or to choose the devil’s inferno in hell.
PUT ON HIS ARMOR, PICK UP YOUR CROSS, AND FIGHT
All of this just because we pursue the sin in our lives much more often and more boldly than we pursue the spiritual truth of Jesus Christ behind the fold of this physical world. Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added. If we are to pursue anything that is not Satan-related, then we need to grab a Bible and seek God’s Truth. Grab the sword of the spirit, put on the breastplate of righteousness, strap on the boots of peace, the helmet of faith and the belt of truth, and get to it!
When we seek Jesus’ kingdom, we want what He wants: to love God, save lost souls, and to love people. We lose our Earthly concerns and just begin focusing on people and their salvation. We all just need to pick up our cross and fight the good fight. No need to worry about getting rich, the pricey cars or fancy neighborhoods (not to discriminate prosperity, but to state the importance of God’s kingdom as more important than the pursuit of money). We just need a place to hang our head until we wake up to fight this war all over again, with Jesus’ name as our saving grace.
WHAT WOULD JESUS DO IN OUR SPIRITUALLY VIOLENT WORLD?
Why are we not fighting harder when this war is getting more and more violent? People are being spiritually attacked like never before now that we are in the End Times. We have the power to destroy evil in Jesus’ name through the gift of the Holy Spirit. We have the devil using tactics to get us entangled in our lusts, becoming slow to listen to the Holy Spirit and quick to be lazy. We have a society that cares more about cultural and political issues than it does about what Jesus would do if He were the Lord over our lives. Let me say something: If Jesus were our Lord, we would know how to handle these issues because there wouldn’t be any fear of the devil’s pushback through the people who aren’t God’s children.
What would Jesus do? He wouldn’t compromise the integrity of Scripture. He would the fight temptation and the pressure to conform by using Scripture, and by humbling Himself towards God almighty. He wouldn’t stop loving those who are trying to fight for His truth. As we seek His kingdom, we are meant to reflect His very nature. He was meek, bold, loving, compassionate, generous, and zealous for His Father’s kingdom. Where are these qualities in the church today?
Come alive, church!
MAKE OUR ENEMIES SCATTER
Jesus, feed us the passion and zeal You had when You overturned the tables in the temple. Give us courage to do what You would do, in the manner You would do it. Grant us peace and take away our fear in the presence of evil. Grant us strength in the face of our enemy’s resistance to the power of Your will. Let us move mountains with faith, and help grow our faith so we can do the great works of Your hands. Help us bring Your kingdom to Earth, and let it be so in Jesus’ powerful name, amen!
