Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Matt 18:18 (NIV)
Physical Form – Part 2
Go to PART 1
If you’ve grown up in church or have been around it long enough, you’ve probably been part of some pretty intense prayers meetings rebuking the devil. Or have even done it yourself.
It may surprise you (or probably not) that I was a pretty intense kid. I did a LOT of rebuking, casting out, proclaiming and declaring. I always had a picture in my mind's eye of the devil being someone – a spirit that manifested in physical form. Then I read Frank Peretti’s “This Present Darkness” (which I still love and re-read recently), and I started imagining angels and demons and satan everywhere. (I did say I was intense…).
And while I have experienced and seen many things that I cannot explain on a spiritual level, I have to admit that I’ve never seen a lot of ‘fruit’ from my rebukes that I’ve thrown at the person of the devil. I’m not saying not to do it, but I think there could be a deeper and more whole way of looking at it.
Matthew writes, “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matt 18:18).
We tend to treat that verse almost like a spell – if we do ‘this', ‘that' will happen. But I think the implication has more to do with the collision of the spiritual and material world than it does with verbally ‘binding' the devil. Everything that happens in the physical realm has an effect on the unseen realm. And, vice versa, things that dwell in the unseen have an effect on the physical world. What I want to happen in the physical will not happen unless it first comes from that place within me that has no physical substance. Eg. I cannot show my husband love unless I actually love him. I cannot walk out the paths of peace if I have hatred dwelling within me. When our actions, spirits and God's presence have synergy, his kingdom blooms out and into the world around us. It’s almost like the kingdom and essence of God takes on human form through our lives when we choose to walk his ways, internally and externally.
Along that line of thought, here’s an interesting quote from Catholic Theologian, René Girard, ”The devil's quintessential being, the source from which he draws his lies, is the violent contagion that has no substance to it. The devil does not have a stable foundation; he has no being at all. To clothe himself in the semblance of being, he must act as a parasite on God's creatures.”
The deceiver of the whole world (as John called Satan in Revelation 12) is so because he lives and feeds off the powers of darkness at work within us. As we let hatred grow his essence grows with it. As we allow racism and greed and abuse to live on within our lives, his deception that these very things are the only way we can live, grows stronger and more powerful.
But as John said in Revelation 12:11, he can be conquered. Maybe not so much by our rebukes in prayer meetings alone, but by us allowing the bedrocks of Jesus way to change us from the inside out. So that instead of reacting with hatred, we respond with love. Instead of erupting in relentless anger, we stay calm with peace. Instead of manipulating people for our selfish gain, we become servants and givers.
As the way of Christ becomes our own personal testimony, the deception starts to fade and truth begins to weave its way into our lives undoing deceptions power at our core.
Go to Part 3 – Life Testifies »
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