While I intended this blog as an academic exercise, I'm finding my time spent elsewhere. Yes, I've enjoyed the History of Christianity in Asia and a rather conservative commentary on Ephesians. But what I've really been reading? Charles Kraft's I Give You Authority. Demons. Spiritual warfare.
Too often people read such books with a morbid fascination, a strong dread, and a good dose of skepticism. Because, after all, we're modernists. Or early post-modernists. Or just plain human.
But that's not how I read it. I've had to dig back about 5 years and remember what I've learned before. And the truth is, his books say very little that I don't already know. I mean, I haven't articulated it all as clearly as he has, but most of what he says I know to be true from my own experience.
The world we walk in is just one facet of reality. But God has given his power that humans in this world may influence the spiritual. So often we're blind to that. Maybe we've never been shown the spiritual world, or maybe we deny it. But it's there. And the more we ignore / deny it, the more power we give to Satan.
The people I've known to be the most effective in ministry, are those that balance the two: professors, pastors, missionaries.... an academic without spiritual awareness lacks authority, and the spiritually aware, without understanding, is easily misled.
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