I hate conflict. I usually find myself slipping out the back door when I see a conflict erupting around me. It makes me about as comfortable as a cat trapped in a roomful of squeaky rocking chairs. I feel anxious, my palms get sweaty and I look for an exit. That’s the way I felt throughout the entire presidential race. I prayed about it and felt God showed me the person He wanted in that position so I voted based on my conscience. It’s not important that I disclose who I voted for, what is important is the revelation I received from this stress laden election.
Christians have buried their heads in the sand for far too long. We allowed the world to convince us that our morals are antiquated and not relevant today. We believed lies that our prayers do not matter and we have no voice in our nation. At the risk of being labeled politically incorrect we neglected to take a stand for righteousness for many years now. God has been removed from our schools, our businesses, courtrooms and a great effort is being made to remove Him from our culture. We cannot allow that to happen!
We carry a very unique responsibility as Christians. We are citizens of two amazing kingdoms. Our duality is unlike any other in the world. We still possess a freedom that most people in the world do not. However, our freedom as Christians is currently facing serious attack from terrorists, or spiritual bullies trying to infiltrate and dominate our world.
Experientially speaking, I know what impact a bully can have on his/her prey. I endured the threats of a bully my entire 2nd grade year. Every day he either threatened me, pushed me down and even once physically injured me by kicking me in the nose. I can still feel the sick feeling in my stomach and the dread that came over me every day on the school bus. Not only were we in the same classroom but we rode the same bus. I tried to stay away from him but he always found a way to get near me. The situation escalated to the point that my mother moved me to a different campus so I did not see him for several years. The situation caused me to live in fear and mistrust most people. I always felt the pressure of intimidation and learned very quickly that if I did what they bully required of me the situation subsided for a while. I always felt like his victim so I tried to stay out of his way and avoid him as much as possible.
Unfortunately that is exactly what the church as a whole is doing. We do our best to avoid our real enemy, citing the ten commandments to the world and reminding non-christians what they are doing wrong. We have forgotten that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12) We are going after the symptoms of the illness of our sin stricken world instead of dealing with the cause.
It became so clear to me during this election process that the we have allowed the enemy to bully us and send us running to stick our heads in the sand. We believed the lie that our stand for righteousness doesn’t matter and our prayers are ineffectual. What lies!!! When our prayers are spirit led and in alignment with God’s will they are very powerful. As a matter of fact, they are so powerful that the enemy is doing everything he can to convince to stop praying. The prayers of the righteous are God’s method of brining heaven to earth. There is no other way! As citizens of God’s kingdom we possess the responsibility to take dominion over the earth and we do that by pulling down principalities & rulers of darkness that successfully usurped authority to access these powerful positions in our government, cities, businesses and even churches. But no matter how powerful these evil forces become, they have no long-lasting power over God’s church. When we band together we can pull down the darkness in the highest places of our world. But we can only do this collectively-it takes unity within the body to accomplish the task.
Honestly it’s not just prayer that I’m speaking of but intercession. Intercession involves seeing the problems and linking arms with the spirit of God to release the prayers to overcome the darkness. We listen to what God is saying and then we release it. The power is in releasing His word. If He spoke the world into existence by His word alone then obviously His words carry the power to fix our broken world. We can bring heaven to earth if we will but release HIS words, stand on them and fight the good of faith until we see them come to pass.
We need to stop sticking our head in the sand and running from our enemy. When we run from him, just like when I ran from the bully, we only allow his influence to get stronger. He takes dominion and the things that God meant for us to rule. The world gets darker and the situation becomes more desperate. The only way to defeat a bully is to stand up to them and fight back. But we must fight back the right way-with the weapons of our warfare and in the authority that Christ gave us.
What about you…..are you willing to intercede on behalf of our nation, churches, schools and workplaces? Things won’t just get better because we wish them to change. As believers take back dominion over the earth we can change things for our generation and the generations to come. Our children and grandchildren can live in a different world because of our choices right now. Our willingness to stand and intercede can change everything. We are the church and the gates of Hell cannot prevail against us because of Christ’s authority operating through us.
Why We Can’t Bury Our Heads in the Sand Anymore
