Garbage, rats and the attacks of the enemy

I am beginning a Sunday morning series on Spiritual Warfare this Sunday.

We are at war. It's a spiritual war in the heavenly realms (in the invisible realm).

It's a hand to hand combat type war.

Here's what I know: one of Satan's favorite tactics is to attach himself to and attack areas of weakness in our lives.

He(or his demons) may not be the specific cause of what you and I are going through, but he will use that to his advantage. A lot of times, problems come our way because of the sinful world that we live in. Or they come because we make bad choices and we sin.

Again, like gang tackling in football, the enemy may not be the one to initially tackle us, but he will be there to "pile on" and make sure that we stay down.

In his book "Wounds That Heal," Stephen Seamands shares a helpful analogy regarding sin and spiritual warfare that he learned from Charles Kraft. Seamands writes:

"As significant as demonic influence may be, it is never the primary issue in someones life. It may be a deadly, destructive consequence or fruit, but it is not the root problem. Charles Kraft has a helpful analogy.

He says demons are like rats that are attracted to garbage. The problem is the garbage, consisting of things like our persistent sinful behaviors, our reactions to our emotional wounds, and sinful generational influences and patterns.

These are the issues for which we are responsible. When we deal with them, when we get rid of the garbage, then the rats won't have anything to feed on, and it's easy to make them go away."

Maybe what you and I need to do is not necessarily try to first get rid of the rats in our lives but the garbage.

That convicts me - how about you?