EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Fight by Kenny Luck (WaterBrook).
Part 1: Facing Evil
“Ignorance is incompetence.”
“It is a very human and natural response to fear the unknown. For a believer to keep himself in the dark about Satan’s person and work is a dangerous mistake.”
—Mark Bubeck
I don’t know of any book that actually invites you to begin picking more fights with evil.
And yet you’re holding it. Aside from what that says about you, I’m well aware that holding this book may cause some men to feel like the deer from The Far Side comic with the bull’s-eye birthmark on his chest. Fact is, you and Hal do have this birthmark issue in common. You’ve been marked and labeled in the spiritual world, just by virtue of your birth. If you claim the family name of Christian, you are being hunted to be destroyed.
And yet a lot of us are denying this dance to the death even exists. We’ve heard of the battle and may even be aware of it to some extent, but it’s all to little practical effect. We’ve been duped and made to forget that, unlike Gary Larson’s deer, the hunted God’s man can actually turn the tables on evil and become the hunter. We have the power and ability to send the hunter packing! It’s all a matter of perceiving the spiritual reality and understanding the source of authority.
Most believers are aware of the “right answers” when it comes to the familiar idea of waging spiritual warfare. And yet we’re failing at practical application. We look at the cosmic conflict between good and evil more like a Harry Potter movie—it’s a tossup which side will prevail until the final frame. And it’s this perspective when applied to the real world of spiritual attack that breeds insecurity, hesitation, vacillation, and harm to both believer and the cause of Christ.
I, for one, am loath to take on that reputation. I trust you’re with me.
No Interest, or Just No Stomach?
We will have struck a deep blow to our enemy if our concept of the spiritual battle moves forcefully from being an afterthought to a way to believe and behave. Based on the attitudes I encounter in men worldwide regarding evil, I would want us for an opponent if I were Satan.
The painful, sad reality is that the underworld has the upper hand on the ground level of this war with God’s men. I’ll address this later in the book in detail, but for now let’s just say we’ve been assuming the submissive position of a scared pooch, or been freely giving permission (by our inaction) to evil to trample over our lives and the world with impunity.