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Warfare Spirituality

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spiritual_warfareThe Trinity function as farmers of our souls, actively caring for God’s creation: an ongoing, radical reclamation of His creation. Initially, when God separated light from darkness, He did so through the presence of His Spirit sweeping across the waters and His Word uttering light into existence. Those first moments presciently foreshadow God’s spiritual warfare, brought against evil working to subvert God’s light and truth, attempting to diminish our relationship with the Father. God has given us the means to participate in both the spiritual farming and warfare, allowing us to integrate His Spirit in our soul through the transformative human life, death, and resurrection of God’s son, Jesus Christ.

Until we allow His Spirit to transform our souls, we are without God’s presence in our lives, or recognition of any connection to God’s Spirit. Even when we follow the Holy Spirit's invitation, effort is required to maintain the bond of Christ's life with ours.  Without the tight connection with the Word that separated out the darkness, disease can occur. The results of evil are apparent across God’s land: weeds that grow and either choke off the fruit of the Spirit or shade out the Light of truth from Christ. There is also the world’s detritus mixing into our Spirit-fed stream, choking off the water, drying up our source of strength. In the process of blocking off the stream the water becomes polluted with unhealthy contaminants, clouding our drinking supply and the source of providing water to our fruit.

God’s farming reflects his wonderfully abundant generosity, so that our fruit, cultivated by His Spirit, glorify the Father, while also preparing and/or cultivating the souls of others. Love, the essence of who God is, epitomizes the radical means of interceding, renewing, and transforming the most barren, desiccated terrain into land overflowing with the water of forgiveness and bearing fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These fruit work as the most effective armaments against evil. As joint-heirs in this farming and warfare, we need daily discipline to enable the blood of Christ to flow through our lives, to ensure the deep spring of the Spirit is unblocked by the cares of our pride or the strength of our own efforts. Our cultivation of God’s love leads to a strength that is impenetrable by hate and the associated weapons of evil.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. Genesis 1

The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis  (complete)

The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis (complete)

THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

by

C. S. LEWIS
Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford

TO
J. R. R. TOLKIEN

"The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to te...

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The Screwtape Letters: Outline

Chapter Outline

Preface: Introducing the conceit that the letters were "found" and are "true", although Lewis takes care to point out that the devil is...

Preface to the Screwtape Letters: CS Lewis

Preface to the Screwtape Letters: CS Lewis

THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

by

C. S. LEWIS 
Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford

TO 
J. R. R. TOLKIEN

"The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to ...

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