Spiritual Warfare

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites.  Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands."

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill.  As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalakites were winning.  When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it.  Aaron and Hur held his hands up---one on one side, one on the other--so that his hands remained steady until sunset.  So Joshua overcame the Amaleite army with the sword (Ex. 17: 8-13).

While we are engaged in "battle" on the physical plane, we often forget that there is a spiritual world swirling around us, and that there are forces within that world that can be overcome only by prayer, or "lifting up our hands."  The Book of Ephesians could be seen, according to the great Watchman Nee, as the pattern of our spiritual lives.  In his book Sit, Walk, and Stand, a great classic of spiritual writing, Nee demonstrates that our spiritual lives begin while we are still "helpless," with an outpouring of the grace of God, lavishing on us all spiritual riches through being "included in Christ."

At first, we are "sitting," as Paul says, "dead in your transgressions and sins, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature," (but then), "God made us alive in Christ....for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Because of what God has already done for us, "we are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit."  Thus, the second stage of our spiritual life (Walking) begins:  "to live a life worthy of the calling we have received."  Chapters 4 and 5 of Ephesians outlines what it means to live a life worthy of our calling and to live a life of love.  Most of us grow up thinking that first, we must live a worthy live, and then we will receive the blessing of God.  But the Book of Ephesians says just the opposite.

And if we look at  Exodus, "where it all began," we see the Israelites "sitting" in slavery to the Egyptians, helpless to help themselves-  but God sent Moses to deliver them from captivity and to lead them to the Promised Land.  Since they had received all these blessing, they were to live a life worthy of their calling---not, like the people around them, oppressing others, but walking according to the laws of God as they entered the Land of Promise.

In the final chapter of Ephesians, Chapter 6, we find that "after you have done everything (you can), to put on the armor of God and to stand...for our struggle is not against flesh and  blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

I like Watchman Nee's observations about the pattern of life, for only then do we see that we have the power to "walk" or to live the Christian life because God has already accepted us and given us everything we need to do so.  And finally, that our wrestling with the forces of evil depends not on our own strength, but rather on our ability to "put on the armor" of God and to "lift up our hands" in prayer.