Neutralized

 A surefire way to conquer your opponent is to neutralize their defenses. If they have no defense against your siege, they cannot push you back, and eventually, the inevitable occurs. The enemy has known of this for millennia. With each generation, his preeminent goal is to neutralize the church’s defenses, making it incapable of defending itself against the lies, the deception, and the falsehoods.

The surest way to flood the household of faith with deception is to remove the filter of truth the Holy Spirit provides. Without the presence of the Holy Spirit, there is no discernment, and men use human reason to determine whether something is divinely inspired or the machinations of mal intentioned souls.

Why wouldn’t God want you to be rich beyond your dreams, live to a hundred, and still run marathons into your nineties? Why wouldn’t God want to spare you trials and persecution? Because the purpose of man is to glorify God, the Holy Spirit would whisper if He were still welcomed in today’s churches. Since He is not, human feelings and emotions decide God’s purpose for His creation, and it’s never sanctification or righteousness; it’s always excess and a form of godliness.

The Holy Spirit guards men’s hearts against the plans and devices of the enemy. It acts as a shield against deception, and whenever something not tethered in truth attempts to take root, it serves as the most effective weed killer known to man.

The devil’s always known that the Holy Spirit stands in stark opposition to his plans, so for the longest time, he’s done his utmost to remove Him from the equation. When the Holy Spirit is absent, so is discernment, and when discernment is absent, confusion and deception are a given.

This isn’t about some denominational bend or another; this is about spiritual survival in a time when those within and without what we would consider the church are hostile to the gospel of Christ. I don’t care what denomination you belong to, except perhaps for the Anglican church. Any denomination that started because the pope wouldn’t grant a king a do-over when it came to his marriage isn’t really a denomination you should bother with.

We like our little color-coded boxes, but the devil doesn’t seem to care which box you belong to. He’s out to devour anyone within reach, and he will not pull up short if you suddenly slap a Baptist, Methodist, or Pentecostal sticker on your forehead.

Things do become problematic, and we’re likely to have words if anyone decides to put denominational creed above the Word of God, but otherwise, as long as whom you’re listening to preaches the gospel, the fact that they have a beard or don’t doesn’t matter at all to me.

The purpose of a fellowship is brotherly love, unity, and spiritual nourishment. Those things can be had in someone’s garage or living room as readily as within a building with a bell tower and a cross on the roof.

Christ’s declaration was direct and straightforward enough that anyone could grasp the meaning thereof:

Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”

There was no addendum to His promise. There was no further fine print that said He would be present only if the gathering was denominationally sanctioned and taking place in a Sanctuary with the appropriate acoustics and a hipster worship team that took worldly melodies and spiritualized the verses. Granted, they’re not even bothering to do that anymore nowadays; they’re just singing Highway to hell during Sunday service because the lead pastor’s trying to be edgy and make a point.

Do what God says, love what God loves, spend time in His presence, and be satisfied in Him. It’s not complicated, but it’s grating to the flesh, and it limits its ability to manifest itself and sup upon the things God has declared forbidden.

I used to listen to stories of when my grandparents were young, during the war when both the Russians and the Germans used Romania as a doormat, and how thankful and grateful they were whenever they could get something hot to eat, even if it was some runny corn mush or some boiled pearl barley. Scarcity made them appreciate the most basic things, and they savored them, not knowing when they would enjoy them again.

Whenever my daughters argue about whether they want my wife to make them pancakes, crepes, or waffles for breakfast, I think back on my grandparents’ stories and retell them, hoping to make them see how blessed they are.

We’ve lost sight of how blessed we are when it comes to access to the Word of God. We have a glut of exhaustive commentaries at our fingertips, translations upon translations from the original Greek, and tools that can cross-reference any word in the Bible, yet rarely do we even bother to access them. That guy on the television said I’d be rich if I sent him a seed faith of $120 representing the twelve tribes of Israel as a type and shadow of their covenant with God, and I could think of worse things than being rich. Perhaps we need a bit of scarcity to make us appreciate the gospel. Is that scarcity on the horizon? I believe it is, not because I want it to be, but because the Bible says it will.

Amos 8:11-13, “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord God, “That I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; They shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but shall not find it.”

I often wonder if we’re already living in those days. I wonder if all most people consume has no sustenance or ability to sustain them but rather reprocessed theories that do nothing to feed the soul. Perhaps when they start to starve, they’ll realize that what they’ve been eating isn’t sustaining them. Some will, I think, but many will wither into nothingness, glutting themselves on lies.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.