BP 51
Some of you may remember in J.R. Tolkien’s, the Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, that the people of Rohan were under dire threat from the wicked Saruman and his evil armies. Despite this imminent threat of total annihilation as a people, King Theoden announces, I will not risk open war.
Aragorn, the ranger from the north, who one day will become king, replies to Theoden, Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.
How many of us today—this morning–live as if we are in peacetime when war is upon us?
Yes, you were born into a world at war. I’m not thinking about politics or viruses or interpretations of social justice or about fallen flesh and blood although all these are dark fruit of the primary plot. I’m thinking about the war that prompted Jesus to parachute into this dark world behind enemy lines. He did not come to overthrow Rome after all—a human kingdom. He had a darker kingdom in mind when He came to this planet.
It’s a war you can’t see with physical eyes.
If you are walking through this world primarily by sight and not by faith, you will be largely blind to the war that prompted Jesus to put on our skin. This war is not a physical battle in the material world but one beyond human vision. Are you practicing spiritual eyesight so you can see beyond this physical world? Who here is willing to step out of the allures and busyness of this world long enough to recognize with urgency that a war is raging—all the time? Even as you read this post.
It is a war between two kingdoms. The stakes are massive–eternal actually–and you will choose one side or the other even if you do not intentionally choose. Every day, every hour you will live out an allegiance to one kingdom or the other.
The first kingdom—the kingdom of light–is ruled by the Father of the universe, the great I AM. Through His son, Jesus, the Father calls us into a mystical union with Him, a holy relationship forged by the blood of Jesus; a friendship with the God who created all reality. He desires us to practice His presence and know His character because it is a perfect expression of love, grace, mercy, righteousness, justice and holiness. There is nothing better than knowing the heavenly Father as our Almighty God.
The opposing kingdom is the kingdom of darkness, the one the current world serves. I John 5 says, We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. In other words, if we are not serving God, we are serving the kingdom of darkness.
The practice of the dark kingdom is rebellion, defiance, pride–and the battle cry is, I will do what I choose and if anyone stands in my way, they will be labeled a hater and summarily cancelled.
Even God will be cancelled by those who wish to shoot the Messenger who sheds light on their darkness. Time magazine suggested just such a cancellation of the divine on their 8 April 1966 cover that announced: Is God Dead? The dark kingdom proclaims its own anti-gospel message: human choice and rights and relative truthiness instead of obedience to a divine authority; intimacy with personal desire and alienation from God’s good and perfect gifts; enmity with God Himself.
Jesus announced in Luke 4 that He came to proclaim liberty to the captives (of sin) while Romans 7:23 says that the law of the dark kingdom will wage war against the law of my mind and make me captive to the law of sin. Cross purposes could not be more contrasting. Yes, it is a war between good and evil.
In Luke 5, Jesus tells two fishermen, James and John, that from now on they will be capturing men alive for the kingdom of God. 2 Timothy 2:26 informs us, using the same Greek verb, that the devil captures people alive in his trap to do his will—for the kingdom of darkness. Clearly, there is a battle going on for the hearts and minds of humanity.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 is a critical passage describing the battle. It addresses the two kingdoms and the ongoing war to capture the minds of men and women. It tells us that we who believe need to have our weapons ready to destroy every dark spiritual obstacle that seeks to prevent us from knowing God.
This passage reads, For though we walk in the flesh [in the physical world], we are not waging war according to the flesh [according to the material world]. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy fortresses. We destroy false reasoning and every towering fortress of opinion—all pride, every proud obstacle–that is raised against the knowledge of God . . .
So, what towering fortresses of false reasoning rise up against the knowledge of God? These strongholds are anything that distort our knowledge of God’s true character (vv.4,5) or that suppresses the truth of God’s existence (Romans 1:18-23). These false reasonings are anything that distance us from our heavenly Father.
Let’s break 2 Corinthians down briefly.
What is the battle being described here? The battle is to know God rightly, to see His character for what it truly is instead of to have it distorted by the proud obstacles erected by the kingdom of darkness. Satan’s goal as portrayed in this passage is to separate us from an accurate knowledge of God, to plant false thoughts in our minds that will lead us to disobey Christ.
Did you ever think your relationship with the Father in this world would be nice, easy, unopposed? I did, somewhat, for a while. But that’s simply not the reality of things.
In Ephesians 6, we are commanded to put on the full armor of God so we will be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. Why? You were born into a war that rages inside of you every day—a battle for your mind but also for your heart.
The war that rages in your mind and heart concerning the knowledge of God is both about knowing who God is (theologically) but also knowing Him personally—on an emotional, relational, and psychological level.
Having a right knowledge of God is not just about knowing the truth or the right answers about Him but experiencing God as present in your life, as with you.
Paul writes in Philippians 3:8, Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him . . .
In this passage, knowing refers to a personal, loving relationship with Jesus for which Paul has given up everything! So, remember, the war is about knowing God both inside your mind and inside your heart instead of being separated from Him by distorted thoughts and arguments.
So, who represents the kingdoms in this war? The battle, as you already know, is between God and Satan for your mind and affections. Just note here that these two opponents are not equals. God created Satan. Unlike God, Satan has not existed forever. He is but a fallen angel. Never forget that God stands alone above all others—even the devil.
The enemy of your mind is a dog on God’s leash. When we talk about Satan as the father of lies and about God as our Abba Father (Romans 8:15-17), we must remember that they are not fathers on the same level of power or authority. Satan does not even own the keys to his own house. God does.
How is the war conducted by both kingdoms (a slight overlap with what that was discussed above)? Satan, representing the kingdom of darkness, labors tirelessly to deceive, distort, twist, seep into our minds and plant false reasonings and thoughts about the Father. He desires to tutor us into calling evil good and good evil and putting darkness for light and light for darkness.
The prince of darkness strives to rise up and tear down the truth about God being good, sovereign, loving, holy, faithful, trustworthy. He fights to malign our Father’s character in our minds and hearts so we will find Him less desirable.
In the gardens of our hearts, he sows distracting weeds like rights, relativism, and the transcendence of human choice over divine authority and yanks up the flowers of common sense.
So, be aware of Satan’s false arguments and false reasoning that manipulate and distort our knowledge of God. Yes, 2 Corinthians 10 gives us an inside view of how the enemy opposes our efforts to know God rightly and to walk closely with Him.
Also be aware that God the Father in Jesus through the person of the Holy Spirit makes us new creations and gives us the mind of Christ. How awesome is that! But that divine mind in us is opposed by Satan’s towering fortresses that seek to corrupt that mind and drag us away from a deep affection for heavenly Dad.
The existence of you and every person who has ever lived comes down to one thing: the war in your heart between knowing God or being separated from Him. Even theology is worthless if we do not know and pursue a loving relationship with the Father.
As born-again believers, if we know much about God but have obstacles within us that prevent us from ever connecting deeply with the Father on the level of our hearts, we will tragically miss the full presence of the Father. We will not love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We will not experience the abundant life Jesus promised in John 10:10 but will languish under the influence of the thief who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy.
Knowing God is about a relationship. Relationship is about love as John 3:16 tells us. Glorifying the Father occurs organically within us when we experience Him personally and love Him as the most amazing Being in the universe—when we know Him so intimately that we feel Him in our bones.
When we experience withness with God, we cannot help but worship Him. Our praise will not only arise from our right thoughts about Him but also from the love we have for the Daddy (Abba) who is with us, who has delivered us from the kingdom of darkness, and who rejoices over us.
Some of you reading this post today are missing this deep knowing of the Father at the heart level. Yes, you are saved, but you are settling for living out in the outlying provinces far from God’s presence. Why are experiencing this distance from your heavenly Dad?
Satan fights to prevent unbelievers from knowing the salvation of the Father. He also labors in the hearts and minds of believers to distort the Father’s character so you will not deeply trust Him. Do you know this fight? Have you experienced this distance, this separation?
How can we be born again but remain largely blind to God’s true character—maybe even believe good theology in our minds but entertain distorted perceptions of the Father in our hearts? How are we able to read about God in the word and learn of His character on Sunday mornings but still not trust Him on the heart level? This distrust and accompanying distance often occurs more with God the Father than with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. What is up with that?
Our head believes right theology but in our hearts there are dissonant, opposing obstacles. Why? What gets in the way of us trusting God? It is never about only what you believe but how you trust and relate to the Father on the level of heart intimacy.
What distances us from the Father on the personal, heart level?
If you love anything more than Him—you will experience distance from God; if you don’t trust Him due to suffering, pain, and death in the world; if a winsome professor at the university planted seeds of doubt in your mind by arguing for godless evolution or the impossibility of the supernatural in a material universe; if you settle for less (milk not meat) due to spiritual complacency; if you have invited idols of sin into your life that you love more than the Father.
All these obstacles will certainly interfere with knowing God intimately and walking closely with Him.
2 Corinthians adds to this distancing list another obstacle even for believers: wrong thoughts about God. False reasoning, arguments, strongholds, towering fortresses of proud opposition to who God is—all these strive to distance us from our Creator.
Today, we will briefly address one of these strongholds that Satan deftly manipulates to distort our knowledge of God, namely, transference, which I define as directing unresolved emotions and dynamics from a past relationship onto a person in the present.
In this blogpost, I want to address how children might transfer the dynamics of the relationship with their earthly fathers onto their heavenly Father.
Let me say at the outset that I am not here to blame earthly fathers or to condemn them. Not at all. Jesus came to love and restore, not to condemn and blame. Blaming only keeps us stuck. However, I do not want to ignore or sugarcoat the reality of things if a relationship with an earthly father was abusive or emotionally complicated. Fathers hold great power for good or for evil in the lives of their children. Both need to be addressed honestly and openly.
Satan might have hijacked your experiences with your earthly father (or mother) and superimposed them on your knowledge of God, your heavenly Dad. Transference might be one of Satan’s tools in 2 Corinthians 10.
How you, as a child, experienced and perceived your earthly father may very well resurface in your relationships as an adult. That is why it is so critical to resolve negative experiences you had with your earthly father because if these are left unhealed, they will be transferred to other authorities in your life such as bosses, law enforcement, pastors, and God.
Authority issues with an earthly father can be especially massive and lead to significant problems later. If the emotions and beliefs related to the father are not addressed, you will have authority issues with other men and even God the Father. You may even bristle against the authority of the word of God and subconsciously erode its authority in your life. You might even seek to deconstruct its authority by claiming that it was just written by a bunch of patriarchal, controlling religious fanatics who thought they were little gods.
A warning here: Keep in mind that your father is 100% responsible for his behaviors toward you and that you are 100% responsible for how you chose to cope with any abuse or neglect. You are also responsible for your perception of what happened.
Why even look at this topic of potential transference from the earthly father to God?
I have seen too many men and women transfer the negative experiences (along with their unhealthy coping skills) they had with their earthly fathers onto their relationship with the heavenly Father. If these experiences with the earthly father are powerful enough, they will distort the adult child’s perception of and intimacy with God the Father, sometimes even to the point of a major deconstruction of faith.
It is critical to understand that sometimes a person’s resistance to God, or possibly even his or her total unbelief, is not about theology but about emotional and relational pain from a human father that is transferred to God.
In next week’s blog, we will briefly address four different father experiences and how they transfer to God the Father. I will discuss the impact of the needy father, the distant father, the angry father, and the shaming father and how these earthly fathers can be internalized by the child and then later transferred onto other authority figures including God the Father Himself.
In closing, keep in mind that separation or distance from God can be highly influenced by psychological factors like transference. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to address these factors.
How good it is that God’s word in 2 Corinthians 10 strives to make us aware that Satan actively seeks to raise up proud obstacles to interfere with our knowledge of the Father. We need to intentionally identify these false reasonings and take them captive to obey Christ instead of allowing them to be used by Satan to drive us away from our loving Dad.
We need to destroy every spiritual, psychological and relational obstacle that has been erected as a barrier to our friendship with God.
Take a moment this week and think about your relationship with your earthly father. Is there anything there that could interfere with your intimacy with your heavenly Father?
It is not only the negative things you experienced that are important to remember and identify. Possibly even more important is how you chose to react to the dynamics of that relationship. You are the agent in your coping and defenses.
Put a finger on any unhealth coping skills or lack of trust that you developed when you were a child living with your parents because those might be transferred onto God. Then also take time to identify the healthy dynamics you experienced with your dad and thank God for those—and for him.
Maybe 95% of dads, though sinners, want the best for their children and try hard to raise them to be healthy people. These fathers will hurt you at one time or another but they do not wish to inflict premeditated harm on you.
5% of fathers, however, are sadistic and intentionally seek to harm their children. These fathers provide dark fodder for Satan’s war against your relationship with the heavenly Father.
Thankfully, your first Dad created you and sent His son for you after you rebelled against His authority—and His love. Above all, seek Him with all your heart. He will never leave you or forsake you. Neither will He love you any less than He loves you right now.
Who knows, your heavenly Father might even empower you to restore or strengthen your relationship with your earthly father!
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith ~ Hebrews 12:1,2