Ancient Anglican

Ultimately, resistance and spiritual warfare aren’t about winning debates or policies, but about persistently practicing the self-emptying love of Christ, which will conquer even death and hell itself.

Today is our time to uphold these principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Today is our time to keep these principles at the forefront of the policy debates that we are now having. Today is our time to nourish and to water the tree of liberty for all.

n proclaiming and believing that Jesus is Lord of all, all of the idols in our lives become uprooted. And only when these idols are overturned, can we then love everyone as ourselves. By doing away with the idols of this world, Jesus turns the world upside down.

The antidote to the fear of death and the fear of scarcity is prayer and worship. For there we find gratitude, joy, and grace, which leads to an experience of abundance.

Galatians is the pure distillation of the Gospel of God’s Unmerited, Unconditional, and Irresistible Grace. In this Gospel of Grace, Christ has set us free – Free from the Law and Free to Love Others.

In our spiritual warfare, we are called to live a life of Kenosis and not Harpagon. We are called to emulate Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet. We resist the satanic pattern of the world, but having a towel around our waist.

Holiness is the discipline needed to protect our love in a world that is satanically antagonistic to love. Holiness is not about removing ourselves from the world but rather about allowing us to become more radically available to it.

Beck concludes this chapter with the observation that each of us is blinded by the Zeitgeist of our own time and place. He asks, how can we “test and discern the spirits in our own contexts and in our own hearts and minds?”

Beck asks, in what way have we imitated the slaughtered Lamb in living our lives and engaging in our spiritual battles? How does our following Jesus put us at a “disadvantage” in the world?

Spiritual warfare is the battle between the self-emptying, self-sacrificial love the Cross signifies and anything that tempts us away from taking up our Cross. It is the battle to maintain a cruciform shape in a world that presses a very different pattern upon us.

Our response to suffering and evil must be behavioral, not philosophical. God is at war. The question is not the “why” of the enemy, but its ultimate defeat. A defeat in which we are called to participate.

It is within the Church that we practice sharing and forgiving, and extending mercy and grace. The Church is also where our own brokenness and sinfulness are revealed and healed. The Church is where we learn to accept and celebrate our differences, discard our old selves, and grow into our new selves.