In other days wars were won by direct frontal attack and head-on collision. Today some wars are won without fighting them. They are won by infiltration, camouflage, deception, subversion. Spiritual warfare follows the same strategy nowadays. There is the sneaking infiltration of false doctrine and the gradual inflow of worldliness into the church. Satan does far more evil as an angel of light than he wrought as a roaring lion. And matters are made worse because it is considered unloving, unchristian, to attack these wolves in sheep’s clothing. We are honored for killing lions but condemned for battling angels! It isn’t nice to tackle these mock angels who preach heresy in the language of orthodoxy.
Devotion of the Day
The Supreme Experience
My grace is sufficient for thee.
II Corinthians 12:9
Within a few verses Paul goes from height to depth and rises again to greater height than ever. His third heaven experience, his thorn in the flesh, his denied request, should settle once for all what is the supreme matter in this earthly sojourn. We like to play up third heavens, mighty deliverances, amazing answers to prayer. The supreme experience of Paul was none of these but a constant dependence on God’s sufficient grace. That does not sound spectacular, sensational; it does not make as good a story as third heavens and startling deliverances, but God rates it higher. After all, in the strength of it Paul outtraveled, outpreached, outwrote, and, in general, outperformed any man of his day.
It is better to be buffeted by Satan’s messenger than to be exalted above measure by a third heaven experience. Better have something you can tell than hear words you cannot utter! Life’s greatest experience is to live in the strength of Another the Exchanged Life – “Christ liveth in me.” It is better for heaven thus to come to earth than for you temporarily to be caught up to heaven.