Choose Your Enemies Wisely
Choose Your Enemies Wisely
A friend told this story about her son’s high school football game.
The players on the opposing team grew angry at each other over a poorly executed play and began fighting among themselves.
Morale was shot. There was no way they could win after the fight stopped. Same with us. If we fight each other, we lose morale and morality. We cannot win.
This is true whether we think our enemies are disagreeing fellow believers or people outside the family.
Our enemies are not:
Evolutionists or Creationists, Intelligent Design folks or Theistic Evolutionists, Egalitarians or Complementarians, Calvinists or Wesleyans, Pentecostals or Cessationists, etc.
Democrats or Republicans, Left or Right, Woke or anti, a racial group or social group, etc.
Your spouse, your in-laws, your neighbor whose dog dumps on your lawn, your ex-spouse or your roommate, etc.
Our enemy is the devil, and all of the above are his cannon fodder in the war of the spirit.
We are to be the aggressors, not defenders—the term “Defenders of the Faith” is a misnomer. We are to go, not stay. To make disciples, not church members. And we are to conquer in love because love conquers all.
The battles are real, but the perceived enemies are not. We, indeed, do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces holding people in bondage.
Our most powerful strategy is the Great Commission.
The command is cyclical — go make disciples, teaching them to obey all he commanded, including “go and make disciples, teaching them – and so on.
It is dimensional involving space (where you go daily) and time, for it includes generation after generation of disciples. Paul’s admonition in 2 Timothy 2:2 is a measuring device. We can be sure of success if our efforts get repeated to the fourth generation.
There is a place for big churches and busy programs, while individual disciplemakers and microchurches in unexpected places are like special ops going where battalions cannot. Each is a necessary element as we bring grace to our world.
The words spoken to Jeremiah are appropriate to our spiritual conflict, “…seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare,” Jeremiah 29:7-9 ESV.
While anger gets us nowhere, love does conquer hearts. The question is whether we choose to live and war after the flesh or to walk and make disciples after the Spirit, “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace,” Romans 8:6 ESV.
If we believe that love conquers all, we have a tunnel into the minds of people who oppose us – even see us as their enemies. Sincere friendship precedes disciplemaking. We can patiently disciple a person with strongly opposing opinions into a relationship with Jesus if we are both intentional and resolute.
So, what do you think? The comments box is for you to sound off. Please do!