“We are not fighting against human beings but against wicked spiritual forces” Ep.6.11
I remember a situation. The other day I was with a group of youth in New Zealand. We started to talk about the stress in the families and I noticed one young man dropping his head and eventually the focus of attention was on reconciliation in the families. At one point, interestingly enough one of the youngsters stated “My home is a purgatory” and for him purgatory means a temporary hell. For him Lucifer is his Dad and mom is the counterpart of Lucifer. This young man and all the youngsters except one or two mentioned that they themselves are the little devils in that temporary hell. It was sad to be conscious that their parents are the devils. For the youngsters they and parents are the devils.. We may sit back and argue for arguments sake that they could be wrong but real life situation for these youngsters was the awareness of themselves not as the beautiful creation of God. They forgot that God created the human beings to resemble God. God said “now let us make human beings they will be like us and resemble us” - Gen.1.26. The youth in New Zealand experience temporary hell situation in their families. Often we think that our parents and our enemies are devils and we start fighting them. We are ready to annihilate each other. But the real enemy is not us. It is the wicked spiritual forces. “We are not fighting against human beings but against wicked spiritual forces”. Ep.6.11. Often times we think the enemy is my family member. Hence we fight tooth and nail to destroy the others. I have seen children fighting their parents for various reasons or even annihilating them. Cain did the same. He felt jealous. Jealousy is a gift of the devil and Satan hid that very cunningly and deceived Cain. Cain felt angry at his own brother and destroyed Abel. “Cain ! turned on his brother and killed him” Gen 4:8. The real enemy was evil that took over Cain. Satan is a liar. He even called God a liar. When Eve, reasoned out with Satan in her struggle to obey God, Satan said God is a liar and convinced Eve to work against God. Eve said “God told us not to eat of that tree. If we did we will die” Gen3.3 and Satan stated “That is not true” Gen 3.4. This Satan is out there looking for us to trap us to sin against one another so that we might fight each other and annihilate one other. In this fight against the evil forces, we may fail if we don’t put our proper spiritual armors. There are six pieces in this spiritual armor to be used in the fight against the evil. “Truth as the belt, righteousness as the breastplate, readiness to announce the Good News as the shoes, Faith as the shield, salvation as the helmet and Word of God is the sword which the spirit gives. Pray on every occasion as the Spirit leads”.Eph.6.14-18. The fight against evil is a constant warfare. But we need the Holy Spirit to illumine our hearts so we will know the real enemy. The real enemy is Satan not our brothers and sisters. No need to destroy our erring brothers and sisters. Pray for them so that they will be ! delivered from the clutches of the Evil one. Jesus himself prayed for us sinners. “I do not ask you to take them from this world. Keep them safe from the evil one” John 17.15 We need to pray for our parents, brothers and sisters, spouses, children, friends, priests, religious, government officials, communicators so they may not transmit evil messages, teachers, office mates and everyone who might be considered as evil doers or our enemies. Praise the Lord Fr Thomas Mathew/Nov.2/2002, New Zealand ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Protect your PC - Click here for McAfee.com VirusScan Online **************************************************************** This mail is generated from JOYnet, a Jesus Youth mailing list. For more info on the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet To unsubscribe from the list send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet/join To get a standard help message on the list services send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In case of any issue related to the mailing list contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ****************************************************************
