The Bible makes us understand that our fight with the enemy is like a wrestling match. It does not refer to boxing, because boxing is a bit restrictive. For example, in a boxing match, you are not allowed to hit below the belt, you are not allowed to use your legs, and you are not even permitted to use your teeth like someone did some time ago.
Wrestling is quite different; you are allowed to use practically anything to fight. There are almost no rules attached to a wrestling match; you can strangle the neck of your opponent with your two legs, you can decide to strike his stomach with your fist, you can carry him up and throw him out, they are all allowed.
This is the exact Biblical description of the kind of fight we are facing as Christians. The fight can sometimes be vicious and terribly wicked by approach. The Bible says we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in high places.
In a wrestling fight, if you break the bones of your opponent, it is allowed; you can also twist his neck to the back. It is not the kind of sport where you take things for granted. In the same vein, you cannot afford not to be meticulous about your spiritual life. Any time you begin to notice that your prayer temperature is going down, you better be up and doing. Any time you notice that your Bible reading is reducing, you better wake up, start to wrestle, and begin to fight.
A brother was living close to a herbalist. Initially, he did not know that the man was a herbalist; what he noticed was that he used to see people streaming to him, and on some occasions he had seen some of the members of his church there; hence, he concluded the man could not be on the side of evil. He did not know that the snapshot prayers he was doing at night used to disturb the herbalist a lot. The prayers of the brother used to nullify his medicine.
So, this herbalist decided to wage war against this brother. This herbalist, through evil powers, would ensure he was in this brother’s room by 12 a.m. every night to fire him arrows. (The entry I am talking about was the one without opening of doors.) The kind of forces we are talking about cannot be deterred or prevented by either barbed wire or an iron gate, for they would pass through them.
But each time this man got into the room of this brother, he used to see a wall of fire surrounding him, including two swords dangling here and there about him. In all his twenty-five years of talking with evil spirits, he had never seen any kind of thing like that. He kept wondering what kind of power was being possessed by this young man. Notwithstanding, he kept monitoring him until one day when the brother felt so fatigued that he could not really pray as usual. This man came that night only to discover that there was only the fire; the swords were not present, so he determined not to relent in coming, hoping that one day the fire too would no longer be there.
No wonder the Bible says:…we wrestle not against flesh and blood.. .. Equally, no wonder an adage says, May God deliver us from someone stalking our lives without our knowledge. So, this brother did not know that he was under close surveillance of the enemy until one night when this brother was praying and the Lord opened his eyes to see the herbalist with two sex organs—one for male, the other for female. It was then clear to him that the man was not an ordinary person; as a result, he changed his strategy. Every night he would lay his hands on the wall facing the direction of the herbalist’s room and command the fire of God to go there. As a result, confusion started in the herbalist’s room, such that the man had to come to him and say, “Where is your power?” We wrestle not against flesh and blood, indeed.
This serves as an example. You too can never tell what is happening where you live. You may not know where your colleagues in your office have gone to for evil power against you. You can never tell the kind of people your co-tenants are or what your landlord buried inside that building.
shalom!
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