Dystopia and discernment

If you’re the parent or grandparent of a teenager, you may have noticed the recent trend in dystopian books and films for young people. The Divergent trilogy, the Hunger Games, the Maze Runner, and more... These novels and movies are all set in a future society where young people live in a world with amazing technological advances, but have to combat situations of incredible injustice, depravity and war.

Why should this be so? What has drawn these authors and their young readers to the theme of fighting for survival in a world of human selfishness and cruelty? Is it perhaps their awareness, consciously or unconsciously, that we do live in a fallen world, a world of lawlessness and moral ambiguity that threatens to destroy us if we don’t know how to wage war against it? We can’t afford to be passive, gullible or unaware, like some of the young protagonists in those books and movies.

Recently, in my daily reading of the Bible, I became aware that the Bible paints a picture of a fallen world that is not so different from the dystopia of those modern novels. It speaks of a world where human selfishness, depravity and ambition can cause us to turn our backs on the truth and embrace the kind of deception that could ultimately cause us to lose our lives; it speaks of a world where moral values are being discarded, where people do whatever seems right in their own eyes, and where many are confused about what is true and right and good in the world.

Just like in those teenage novels, the Bible calls us to rise up and do warfare against the enemy who would rob us of our decency, integrity and humanity. It calls us to be divergent (not afraid to go against the flow and be different from the world around us.) It calls us to be insurgent (to rebel against the devil and refuse to be governed by his lies.) And it calls us to be allegiant (radically committed and loyal to the God who created our world in the first place.)

Read on, in the post below, for more thoughts about engaging in spiritual warfare and winning victories in a fallen world.

Waging war in a fallen world

This morning, I was reading in the very last book of the Bible. In Revelation chapter twelve, we read of a violent battle in the heavenlies and are given a clear insight into one of the main strategies of our enemy. Not unlike the plot of some recent books and movies for young people, we see that we need to know how to fight if we want to survive. An important starting point in spiritual warfare is our recognising that some of the most challenging battlefields are the ones within ourselves: the battle for our heart and the battle for our mind. Revelation 12:10 - 11 lifts the veil for us and gives us a glimpse of the enemy’s weapons in the battle for our minds and thoughts. We see that lies, deception and accusation are some of Satan’s key weapons in seeking to pull us down and neutralise us in the battle. 

The Hebrew word שָׂטָן, transliterated as "Satan," means an enemy or one who opposes and resists us. The Greek word διάβολος (diabolos) usually translated as "the devil," means a slanderer or one who accuses us.  And so it's not surprising that this passage in Revelation describes our enemy as "the accuser" of the believers, and says that he is busy accusing us before God, both day and night. Sometimes he accuses us through other people, sadly even sometimes through our Christian brothers and sisters.  But his most usual way of accusing us is through our own thoughts: memories of failure, feelings of inadequacy, awareness of sin will all be exploited by the enemy to accuse and condemn us. That's why a key strategy for us is the one described in 2 Corinthians 10: 3 - 5. We need to learn how to "take our own thoughts captive," so that the enemy can't use them to bring us down.

This Revelation passage mentions two more weapons in our armoury: the blood of the Lamb (our authority to proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus) and the word of our testimony  (remembering and speaking out the ways that God has been there for us and has triumphed in the past.) It's probably also key in this passage, that the believers "didn't love their lives" and were willing to die for their faith. But perhaps it's easier to die a heroic death than to live with a hurtful accusation or slur on your character/reputation, and this may be why accusation is still the enemy's most powerful weapon against us.

Reading this passage a couple of years ago, I got to thinking and meditating on why two such different weapons are mentioned… and my theory is that it's because there are also two different kinds of accusation from the enemy. Very often the enemy's accusations against us are blatant deception, not even based in truth. Jesus Himself called the devil the "father of lies" (John 8:44) and said that there is no truth in him. The enemy will lie to us, telling us that we're not good enough, that God doesn't love us, or that our prayers won't be answered. It's at such times that we need to call forth the word of our testimony and proclaim the truth of how God has been faithful and has answered our prayers and used us to win victories in the past. The Word of God (the Bible) and the word of our own experience of God are powerful weapons against the enemy's lies. 

Just occasionally, though, the enemy's accusations are true: he'll tell us that we've sinned, that we're weak, or that we're lacking in faith. These things are probably true, and so that's when we resort to our other weapon, the blood of the Lamb. We can remind the enemy that, even though we are sinners, we have been cleansed and forgiven because of Jesus' death. We can proclaim that even though we're weak, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. And we can rest in the fact that winning the war does not depend on how strong or weak our faith is, but rather on how strong and powerful God is.

These are the things, together with our praise and worship of the living God (even the praise and worship of little children; see Psalm 8 vs 2) that will silence the enemy's accusations and cause him to flee from us. Let's remember that much of the battle takes place in our mind and thoughts. If we take our thoughts captive, draw near to God and resist the enemy (James 4: 7) our accuser will need to flee from us.

New Inductive Bible Study curriculum

I wrote in a previous post about the topic of ending Bible poverty.  After that, a number of people contacted me to ask if I still had the multigenerational, inductive Bible Study materials that I’d written for KKI South Africa in the 1990s. Sadly, I didn't have it, as all of that curriculum was lost in a major computer crash about a decade ago. So I took some time last week to re-create some sample resources, together with a few pages explaining how we used this curriculum to teach young people and families how to study whole books of the Bible for themselves. It's available now as a small A4 manual that will serve the KKI ministry around the globe and help to motivate more young people and families to engage with the Word of God. At the moment, it's available only in English, but we may be able to produce it in other languages over the coming months.

Walking the animals...

I'm used to walking the dog; it's long been one of my favourite things to do - from walking my Irish Setter, Rusty, when I was a teenager... to walking my Border Collie, Kylie, when I lived in Cape Town. Walking a dog in a quiet location is an ideal setting for prayer and reflecting on what I've read in the Bible that morning. So, taking my neighbour's English Setter puppy, Buba, for a walk on the mountain (second video below) is a familiar enough scenario for me. What's been a little different for me this week is that I'm house sitting for friends and their Tabby cat, Tommy, likes to accompany Border Collie, Brandy, on her morning and evening walks (first video below.) Drivers of passing cars look twice when they see me ushering both a dog and a cat to the side of our country road, and more than a few smile and wave at us.

From people of all nations to animals of all kinds...

Our week of meetings with YWAM's Western Europe Leadership team came to an end on Friday night. Saturday was full of airport runs as everyone headed home to the different nations of Europe…. and my friends left for Canada, where they'll visit family and run an LDC taster week. I'll be house-sitting and dog-sitting for the next ten days while they're gone. What this means in practice is that I'll sleep at Villa Rehoboth with Brancy (border collie) and Tommy (tabby cat) and do most of my coaching from there during the day. But I'll drive home to Alhaurin every day to check on my own cats and take Buba (my neighbour's English Setter puppy) for her walk. So it'll be a real "animal week" for me over the coming ten days.

As if to kick start my animal week, I had fun this past weekend at the Málaga pet fair, which happens in October every year. Dogs, cats and other animals of all shapes and sizes are there, and my Spanish gets a great workout as I chat with pet owners and breeders from all over the province. The agility demonstrations are one of my favourites (the border collies always win!) but there are also some amazing displays by the canine units of the Guardia Real (military police) and Málaga's Policía Nacional. Vendors are giving away so many free samples of premium dog and cat foods, that the entry ticket is more than compensated for! My own three cats, as well as my friends' and neighbour's dogs are the beneficiaries this week :-)

Coming from all nations...

How many of these flags can you name?
Hint: they're all  European.
Click to enlarge the photo.

This morning I was reading in the book of 1st Kings chapter 10 - the story of how the Queen of Sheba came to visit the kingdom of Israel (vs 1 - 9) because King Solomon's fame had spread far and wide. In fact, verse 24 tells us that people from all the nations of the world were coming to see and hear for themselves the wisdom that God had put in Solomon's heart and the blessing that this was bringing to the whole nation.

While our western nations are no longer so clearly God-honouring nowadays, it's nonetheless true that people are coming to us from all around the globe. Refugees are coming because they seek justice and safety; international students are coming to seek knowledge and education; businesspeople are coming to seek wealth and opportunity. In many of our nations, especially in the major cities, we have a unique opportunity in the 21st century to share God's wisdom and truth with people from all over the world.

When Jesus was on earth, He told His disciples to "go into all the world" with the gospel and spread the good news to the ends of the earth. In those early days, you needed to travel to another nation or region to be a missionary; in our modern world, the nations are coming to us and you can probably find people of different nationalities and languages making their home just a few miles from where you live.

What are we doing to welcome the nations and peoples that are coming right to our doorstep? If you live in a university town, you have an amazing opportunity to reach out to foreign students, welcoming them to your country and sharing the love of God with them. Some of them are coming especially for the purpose of learning English (or the language of your nation) and would be thrilled to have you reach out to them and chat with them over a cup of coffee. Others are coming seeking work, and we find them in shops and airports around our nation. Still others are fleeing injustice and coming because they seek to start a new life. A friend of mine in Birmingham told me that their church now has bilingual Sunday morning services - in English and Farsi - because there are so many asylum seekers in their area, and they're beginning to see some of these people coming to the Lord.

People can't experience God for themselves until they have first heard the report of His fame. Often a friendly conversation with a local Christian can be the first step in that process. And later, like the Queen of Sheba in the story I read today, they'll be able to say, "The report I heard is absolutely true…. but I didn't fully believe it until I experienced it for myself."

God is sending us to the nations…… and He's also sending the nations to us. How can we maximise this incredible opportunity that He is giving us?

Heading home tomorrow

Friends at church this morning told me that I seemed to have brought a week of warm sunny weather with me from Spain. Looking at next week's forecast, it seems like I'm taking that warm weather back home with me again!! The Road to Growth Seminar seems to have gone well, and tomorrow morning I'll be flying back to Málaga.