The Trinitarian Battle for Hearts, Minds and Souls

Why am I tempted

By this flesh, I pray tell?

Why does Satan

Want to press me into hell?

Why is the world

Insisting that I follow

When I know all this

Is just vanity and hollow?

God has given us awareness

Of our desires

In order that we might

Turn to Him to put out the fires.

When we understand

The nature of life’s snares

We have much less problem

Giving God all of our cares.

***

There is in the scheme of things, in this realm called existence, barely to be discerned, and usually by those sensitive to the spiritual things, the existence of spiritual powers – good and evil.

Powers of evil are well known in theological terms: the flesh; the world; the devil. Powers of good – let’s just call him the Holy Trinity. The powers of evil work three against one but they are still pathetically overpowered by a simple trust and obedience in a believer.

Trust and obedience is our only defence. We have the capacity to overcome any power and turn that very circumstance to good – when we see the test for what it is. It is a test. God knows we can overcome every test in his name, as we give him all our cares. Those tests are not of God, but God’s power helps us as we overcome by trust and obedience.

All our burdens we lay at the foot of the cross.

But we need to establish it as a routine way of doing our responding to life. Rarely will we have the opportunity to make faith a routine unless God has purposed it so. Otherwise it is all our own effort, which is possibly worse than doing works devoid of God.

The Trinitarian battle for hearts, minds and souls is a battle on a stage barely discernible, let alone visible. God battles evil for our heart, mind and soul, yet the opposite is also true.

The enemy uses a threefold strategy to weaken us: the world has delicacies that will entreat our flesh; the flesh is battling with the Spirit within us all the time; Satan uses whatever means are open or potentially available to sway us off course.

God has power incalculable in the spiritual conquest for our soul. When we fret less about the world scaling our perimeters of temptation by focusing our energies on trusting and obeying God, we are given what we need in our moment of need.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.