My Beloved Brother Steve continues and I share it in installments with you:
Positioning
Position is a critical tactical component in any conflict, including in spiritual warfare. Here’s how it works:
A human origin strategy is localized; it doesn’t spill over to affect the spiritual realm. But, a spiritual origin strategy is all encompassing. It affects the heavens and the earth, the spiritual and the material.
God’s Man is the only being in creation that occupies both of these dimensions at the same time. No other being in God’s creation can do this. So, each kingdom positions itself with respect to God’s Man according to its interests.
The Kingdom of God wants His Man to rule WITH Him. So, Jesus positions Himself to God’s Man as a Joint Ruler. He invites God’s Man to participate WITH Him in executing the strategies that have been assigned to this Phase of God’s Plan – The Transfer – in the spiritual and material worlds.
The kingdom of darkness wants God’s Man to be its slave. So, Satan positions himself to God’s Man as Supreme Lord. He views God’s Man as being obligated to do his bidding, whether in the earth or in the spiritual realm, as his slave.
Once each kingdom positions itself to God’s Man, the first goal of spiritual warfare is to secure Man’s allegiance.
This is accomplished by achieving 3 objectives:
1. Capturing Man’s ear.
2. Capturing Man’s eye.
3. Determining the theater in which Man will engage the conflict.
Capturing the Ear
All spiritual conflict begins with spiritually inspired speech. So, everything begins by speaking. God created by speaking:
“And God said, ‘Let there be. . .’ and there was. . .”
(Genesis 1 – 3; Hebrews 11:3)
God granted authority by speaking:
“Let Us give Man dominion over the earth. . .”
God assigned roles by speaking:
“Tend to the garden and name all the animals. . .”
God set parameters by speaking:
“Of all the tree of the garden you may freely eat, but. . .”
God warned of consequences by speaking:
“In the day you eat, you will surely die. . .”
God established the nature and character of the creation by speaking:
“And God said it is good, very good. . .”
God set the whole of His creation in place and then mobilized it through His spiritually inspired speech.
Satan also initiates through what he speaks:
“Has God said. . .” (Genesis 3)
“If you are the Son of God then. . .” (Matthew 4:3)
In both instances, what resided in the heart of the spiritual speaker began its journey into the material realm to shape it through what was spoken. In God’s case, His words created, articulated His Vision, granted authority, assigned roles, set limits and consequences, and established the nature and character of His created order WITH Him – Good.
In Satan’s case, his words perverted what God had created. Through them he infected the creation with his nature and character – Evil, slandered God’s reputation and redefined what God had said, intended and authorized, all while using God’s Man to do it. This is the kind of power that’s resident within spiritually inspired speech.
For most of us, though, speaking is much more benign. To us, it’s about transferring our thoughts, ideas and feelings to another so they end up with the same thoughts, ideas and feelings. If we’re good at it, we can get our point across.
If we’re really good at it, we can even convince others that our point of view is right. But, to those who understand the power of communication, it goes way beyond simple speaking. To them, words and the art of communicating are among the most powerful weapons that can be used in the realm of living beings.
To this group of communicators, the goal of communication is to use the thoughts, ideas and feelings being transferred to create or change perspective.
This perspective is what gives meaning and purpose to the communication. The meaning and purpose then gives birth to belief. And this newly born belief then shapes attitude, which energizes and mobilizes behavior to achieve the
interests and objectives of the communicator.
In addition to mobilizing behavior, the sophisticated speaker also uses its words to infuse its nature and character into its audience, usually without them knowing it. This is important because behavior will only go as far as the belief system that
fuels it, which itself is fueled by the nature and character that embodies it.
The objective, then, of this kind of speaker is not only to achieve the form of its intentions through the behavior of its listeners; it is to infect them with its nature and character so their behavior and belief will infect others.
And so, Herod’s wife wasn’t satisfied with simply keeping John the Baptist in prison. She had to dehumanize him by cutting off his head to demonstrate her superiority over him. The religious leaders weren’t satisfied with simply killing
Jesus. They had to slaughter Him for the same reason to protect their power and control over the audience.
In the Garden of Eden, the Serpent’s goal wasn’t to get Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in disobedience to God’s instructions. She could do that by herself without him.
The Serpent’s goal was to change Eve’s perspective about God. If he could do that, a new belief system would be birthed in her that would forever change how she viewed God, herself and everyone and everything else around her. This could then be tapped into to mobilize her behavior way beyond just eating from the Tree. It would convert her into an agent and from an agent into a propagator – one who not
only achieves but also advances his intentions in his nature and character. And that’s exactly what happened.
Once Eve ate, Satan immediately mobilized her to relay to Adam the Serpent’s communication. She did and he did and here we are today.
This is what’s happening now with the coronavirus, as well. The Serpent is speaking and his intentions are to create in us a perspective that incites fear and panic. But, Jesus is speaking, too, and He’s inviting us to come up where He is so we can see as He sees.
Capturing the ear.