The Consequences of Spiritual Warfare on Business and Career

We’re all familiar with the oft-quoted passage from Ephesians 6 that warns us of spiritual warfare:  

        Put on the whole armor of God so that you may be able to stand
firm against the Devil’s strategies. For our struggle is not against human opponents, but against rulers, authorities, cosmic powers in the darkness around us, and evil spiritual forces in the heavenly realm. 

         While we know that the final victory will be the Lord’s and that we will have won the great battle between the forces of good and evil, we are warned for the specific purpose of equipping us to fight the tactical battles we each face along the way. God wants us to be victorious in our daily conflicts with the ‘evil spiritual forces.’

           The consequences of losing the daily battles are larger than most of us consider. Let’s look at the impact of spiritual warfare on our country, our businesses, our lives and our careers.

Millions of people lost to the Kingdom who could have been saved.

One way the ‘cosmic powers in the darkness around us” attack us is through errant beliefs. These are ideas and paradigms which we have internalized and then shape our behavior. They often sound reasonable and are often held by others around us, but they are false and they serve to lead us down the wrong paths.

           One such errant belief is this “If I go to church on Sunday, and remain active in the institutional church, I don’t have to worry about what I do in the marketplace.  Christianity is for church, but business is something else.” 

           Since we believe this false idea, we compartmentalize our faith and our careers.  We don’t see our careers as our ministries, we don’t see business as the first venue for God to work with us..  So, we lead lives in the marketplace that many people characterize as hypocritical. 

We rob all those people who we encounter in the marketplace – our colleagues, our customers, our vendors, etc. – of the opportunity to see God’s love and providence manifested through our lives. Over generations and geography, millions of people who could have been nudged into a relationship with God never were because generations of Christian business people separated their faith from their businesses.

           This must be Satan’s greatest ploy.  Through this false belief he has kept millions of Christians on the sidelines of the great battle between good and evil.  And, in so doing thwarted the potential influence of an army of Christian businesspeople.

           The damage is incalculable.

The culture growing darker and falling apart around us.

Any half-way literate person can see that our culture has slid downward rapidly in the past few years. Behavior and life styles that were once anathema are now celebrated.

           Christians are characterized by the legacy media and some aspects of government as ‘hateful,” and are beginning to be singled out for ridicule. Rational discourse is being replaced by mob rule, and even in our most respected universities, some administrators side with the mob in shouting down speakers who happen to have  a different point of view. 

           A few decades ago, America would have been characterized as a Christian country, while today it seems like the tide is moving in the opposite direction.

           The “cosmic powers in the darkness around us” are celebrating their progress.

On a personal level, business and careers remain in mediocrity instead of victory.

           There must be hundreds of thousands of Christian-owned  businesses whose ownership is focused purely on worldly values.  In so doing they put barriers up to the active involvement of the Holy Spirit in the development of their business.  Their pursuit of money and power render them impotent in the Kingdom and unavailable to the guiding and enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

           The same can be said for thousands of those whose careers, sidetracked by the pursuit of worldly gains, never reach their potential to have an impact for the kingdom.

           And for those who do try to make a difference – the potential for personal suffering and  catastrophe.

           We have the example of Job, where the “rulers, authorities, cosmic powers in the darkness around”  were allowed undeterred access. The result was personal catastrophe: Job lost his business, his family, his wealth and even his health. 

         But perhaps the most poignant example of the consequences of allowing the “evil spiritual forces in the heavenly realm” to take control was Judas. He walked and talked with Jesus, and yet became so twisted in his thinking and abhorrent in his behavior that he betrayed Jesus for worldly wealth, and ended up killing himself.

           In our times, I am sure that many of us have experienced the attacks of the ‘forces of evil.’  Typically we become depressed, discouraged  and often fearful.  Instead of proactively venturing out, we fall back to discouragement and withdraw from the battle.  Every time the forces of evil cause one of us to hesitate and slink back out of fear and discouragement, they have won a
battle.          

           So, on a cosmic scale, from a national perspective, and even from our personal lives, the
consequences of not seriously confronting the rulers, authorities, cosmic powers in the darkness around us, and evil spiritual forces in the heavenly realm” can be catastrophic.

           Let’s take this seriously.

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