Seeing In the Spirit Understanding the Battle
How friendly fire is dismantling our unity and destroying our love
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Taken from Chapter Two: “Understanding the Strategy, Tactics, Devices, and Tools Used by Our Common Adversary: How our common enemy organizes against us in the battle.”
Friendly Fire?
A definition of friendly fire used by the U.S. Military Department of Defense (DOD) is “a casualty circumstance applicable to persons killed in action or wounded in action mistakenly or accidentally by friendly forces actively engaged with the enemy, who are directing fire at a hostile force or what is thought to be a hostile force.”Friendly forces are soldiers who are on the same side of a military battle. They are your own troops; they are allies or supporters. Friendly fire in the church occurs when individual Christians, who are members of the same church or those of differing denominations, direct negative actions or words (weapons) at each other instead of the enemy of Christians: Satan.
Satan creates an obstructed battlefield by using our vulnerabilities and weaknesses as tactics. Foggy, cloudy, obstructed spiritual vision, faulty judgment, and our inability to discern truth, are his devices. When the terrain is set, he creates conditions that prompt individuals to either knowingly or unknowingly take aim at one another. Friendly fire can take the form of gossip, rumors, shunning, and cliques. As described in Galatians 5:20 (NLT), this is manifested in the form of “…hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, division, the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group.” The resulting damage is a band of walking wounded and casualties in the form of offended, confused, disillusioned, and emotionally hurt individuals who are often focusing their attack on each other instead of their common enemy.
The harm done to the Christian church includes a weakened infrastructure, rendering the fighting force ineffective in accomplishing the plans and purposes of God, and a battlefield littered with many wounded soldiers and casualties. This cripples the church’s ability to sustain and advance God’s plans and mission. It weakens the fighting power of the army and, in many cases, breathes life into the battle plans of our enemy.
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About the Book
How can we become the body of Christ with all parts functioning together—in one accord and in harmony?
What is friendly fire and what is the enemy’s purpose for it in the body of Christ? How can the use of it be stopped? It is our lack of understanding of the strategies of our common enemy (Satan) that allows him to pull apart the thread of love that binds us together in unity.
Our enemy has been able to infiltrate the church, decreasing our overall strength and successfully capitalizing on the use of his main weapon: friendly fire. Our ignorance has served our common enemy well in the advancement of his plan to cause situations of relational strife within the church (the body of Christ) and turn our focus on each other instead of him.
This book is written to all who are of the Christian faith (also known as believers or the body of Christ) who care deeply about being united with other Christians. This book is written to you who are on the verge of leaving the church you now attend; and this book is written to all of you who once attended church, but have left because of a painful relational experience with people within the church. In Seeing In the Spirit Understanding the Battle, you will learn:
How to recognize the strategies, tactics, devices and tools used by our adversary that create the friendly fire situations in churches today
How to see the battle being waged from a spiritual vantage point so we can become the unified body of Christ
How to refocus our weaponry upon our true enemy
About the Author
Linda exists to teach, illuminate and model the applied Word of God in a way that inspires unity, builds connections and positively impacts relationships. She is one who studies what we can do to produce healthy fruit and add value to our relationships. And Linda speaks boldly about what destroys friendships and relationships at work, in families and within the church. Linda is the founder and principal consultant for The Word Applied, Inc.
For more information contact The Word Applied, Inc., 1041 Grand Avenue #104, St. Paul, MN 55105 or visit https://www.applytheword.com