It is one thing to quote Scripture about Spiritual Warfare but it is quite another to actually experience it. So I am going to share my experience and my perspective and offer you a chance to share yours if you have any. With that said, i am not here to prove or defend my perspective though I grant that I could be wrong.
I have met some interesting people over the years with interesting ideas..Every interaction and experience can and has given me an insight that I could take with me. And much of what I am about to write is based on some mix of study, experience, and insight.
One: Not against flesh and blood
Whatever we see in the physical world is a byproduct of something in the spiritual world. The Word becomes flesh. The seed that sprouts into a bushel is not a physical seed but spirit in nature. When it sprouts, it ultimately leads to something corporeal, solid.
The ground level, the soil from which the seed rises to become something that bares fruit, is the spiritual realm. And the fruit of this seed is the nature or essence it brings into the physical world, a quality that can describe and define the specific spirit at work. And that essence influences the physical world, cause and effect.
Two: The seed
Seeds are ideas, images, beliefs. It is nourished, fed, watered by Thoughts, Feelings and Energy.
What you concentrate on plants a seed in the spirit. The more you invest in it, the more you water it, feed it, nurture it to grow and increase the odds that it likely will eventually sprout into something. And the more people in a given space that focuses upon that seed, the more they collectively water and feed it and increase the odds of something happening. Where two or more are gathered.
Religion, cults, spirituality, and witchcraft all center around this understanding, whether the people involved know it or not. You don’t need to be aware of it in order to play a part.
This is similar to worship. The dangers of an idol or graven image, or the representation of an idea being worshipped is not in that it is a sin alone but in that it can create an influencer that effects the material world. And energy is being poured out on to the idol, an image, through song and prayer and dance.
A modern day example of this is the Slender Man phenominom. A website created a fictional boogey man that kills children. The site was opened up to allow fans to create their own stories, songs, poems etc. Movies and video games have been made.
And two children, affected by the website, obsessed with the Slender Man, attempted to murder their young friend as a sacrifice by luring her into the woods and stabbing her multiple times. She survived.
Seed is sown, sprouts, and effects the physical world.
Three: the fruit
The fruit is what effects the world. It effects mood, thought, feeling, action, and matter itself. Physical matter can fall apart, break, become ill or wounded. Or the exact opposite depending upon the nature of a spirit. Think Superman- Truth, Justice, Inspires toward good. Kal -El, El refers to the Jewish name for God.
The fruit can unite minds and hearts toward a singular goal without their knowledge, like a hive mind where people become the extension of something else.
A town that crumbles apart after the main employment closes down, that becomes a den for drugs, gambling, and crime, is infected with a spirit that has taken a hold. If you visited, stayed long enough, you might begin to be effected. Your energy drained, your mood/thoughts darkened. If not, if you somehow remained uninfluenced or held your ground, you may find yourself targeted. Anyone that cannot be assimilated by the spirit may be considered a threat. Especially if you tried to evangelize.
This is why it is not enough to just preach the Word of God, to tell a sinner they are sinning, to threaten them with hell and damnation. You cannot reach them when they are caught up in the influence of something like this. No one is awake, conscious, thinking or reasoning. They aren’t in control anymore. They know not what they do.
You cannot deal with a spirit by targeting the vessel. The focus must be on the spirit itself first. The spirit that has taken a hold of the human mind is expressing itself through that mind and body. But after the spirit is gone, then the soil is ripe for the Word of God. Salvation and Freedom. The soil being that person’s heart and mind.
Spiritual warfare is about being intentional with your focus. The idea that you hold closest to you, feeding and watering, is actively planting and yielding fruit, whatever it may be,.for good or evil. This is how we tend to God’s Garden. Like God, we can create or destroy.
But God, Who originates life and is always Conscious, Awake, is not made by us. Christ aays, Stay Awake. Stay Conscious, as God is Conscious, the seat of being intentional and above influence. And God says hold no graven image. He is above them, unchanging, Eternal. If you focus on an image, you risk creating something that is not God but presents itself to be.
God cannot be effected by our focus. But we can be. We do not create God. God is beyond our influence but we can close off God from us, stop the Spirit from pouring through us as vessels. By our focus. When we focus on that which is not God. And I means qualities, essence, fruit. The Fruit of the Spirit specifically. It matters whether we allow God’s Spirit and Its fruit to have an effect upon our lives. If That Spirit is absent, any other spirit can have an effrct and maybe even take hold of us. Unknowingly to us. This is what it means to be asleep, to live unconsciously to all that is in the world and can effect us. Being drunk on any spirit that is not God.
You can just imagine how the whole thing could create a cycle that never ends of cause and effect. The mind infected goes on to create more of the same. While the mind filled with God sows the Kingdom.
