Jesus Christ

For we do not 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 NKJV)

I have had two seemingly different streams of thought running rampant in my head over the last few weeks; however, the more I meditate on them, the more they tie together.

The Lord has been sharing some impressions with me. I don’t have the full picture, but what I have seen is an office space filled with cubicle partitions. Each cubicle has a separate group of like people within. I heard the word “partition” and realized this is tied to one of the thoughts I’ve been meditating on.

When you hear the word “community” what do you think of? What does that word mean to you? Is it not enough to simply be a community? Why must there be defined demographic people communities within one community? Where is the unity and promotion of God’s love in that?

When I think of community I think of a group of people with common unity. This, to me, does not mean we agree on every single thing, but recognize and respect our differences, working together toward a common goal where we are and loving each other in our diversity. What bothers me are the subsets or “partitions” of communities within a community. We have black communities, white communities, hispanic communities, asian communities, evangelical communities, Catholic communities, muslim communities, immigrant communities, religious communities, rich communities, poor communities, school communities, etc. Never are these labeled subsets of community more prevalent than within our media and governmental speech. For many of us, we have become so used to the partitions we don’t even think about it. But I believe this to be an effective way to subtly keep us separated and reminded of who we are seen as rather than as simply a human community.

The other thought stream I’ve had is in reference to dry, desert and barren places. Where I live in the Northeast, we are experiencing a drought. According to our meteorologists, it has been many years since we have dealt with conditions such as these. Our lawn is the color of hay and about as soft as kindling to walk on. Matter of fact, it greatly resembles kindling right now. Much of our nation has been under a heat spell and the west coast is dealing with widespread fires. Basically, we need rain, we need it all over and very badly. We can say our nation, in the natural, is experiencing some dry, desert and barren conditions.

In the spirit, demons are restless in the dry places. Luke 11: 24 “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’” Our fight is in the spirit realm, not the natural, but we see the effects in the natural realm. As I have prayed for this nation, and over the jars of dirt, the Lord has revealed a few things to me: we have an enemy who desires division to the extent of another civil war; corruption is rampant within our current elected government; our borders leak; our land has blood crying out for vengeance, to name a few. Our nation is in a desert place and the demons in the spirit realm are restless, looking for places to dwell.

In Matthew 4, we see Jesus being led into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He went fasting, but the bible only tells us He was hungry, not thirsty. Jesus, as the Word, used the Word to overcome temptation and resist the devil, but he had to go to the devil to do it. Desert places are designed for battle; when we enter the desert, we can expect to fight. When we are grounded in the Word of God and abiding in His presence, we will not be thirsty in our desert place, strengthening us. We may not “feel” saturated, but we must continue to have faith and not give up when the heat rises at midday and the cracks form in the dust at our feet. We must stand firm on what we know that we know that we know.

Our country is in political upheaval, division is rampant and Christian men and women are at each other’s throats with no love. This deeply saddens me. God is into community organizing, not community disorganizing. We have allowed the spirits of religion and politics too much freedom and I believe our battle has just begun. This is not the time to sit back, but to rise up in our authority as the Church, to take our seat next to Christ and to enter the desert as a bold conqueror of Christ. The devil seeks to steal, kill and destroy and to do that he will divide, segregate and discourage; but Jesus came to seek and save the lost, to set the captives free and comfort the broken hearted; He is our strength and the source of our courage.

The devil wants to label us with faulty names and separate us into cubicles with only those who are like us to promote his version of “unity”, which is complete and total agreement. In the vision I saw each group of people begin to shake and push agains the walls of the cubicle, breaking the walls down. I saw them begin to mingle with each other, to laugh and hug and talk. It was a beautiful sight.

Let us walk boldly into the desert and take back our human community, giving the desert demons NO MORE GROUND!

Look, a righteous king is coming!
    And honest princes will rule under him.
Each one will be like a shelter from the wind
    and a refuge from the storm,
like streams of water in the desert
    and the shadow of a great rock in a parched land.