Spiritual warfare has been dragged through many pits of distortion in an effort to establish how we relate to the forces of evil in the world. It seems that every 20 years or so, there is another outbreak of “deliverance ministries” focused on how we gain victory in our own lives over the influences of demonic powers. Those of us who have been through some of those cycles can remember screaming at demons in the middle of the night, arguing with voices that claimed authority beyond ours, and realizing that such an approach was not featured in the early church. War stories of demon bashing often resurface as we remember the days of discovery.

There is much about the powers of darkness that we don’t know, and we are not encouraged to know, but what is unmistakably clear from the New Testament is that we are God’s chosen force against the powers of darkness on earth, and we fight by standing in the victory won by Jesus at the cross.