Today's Scripture | John 13:34:
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Once we understand spiritual maturity, we can begin to understand what is involved in spiritual warfare. Most folks understand that effective engagement in spiritual warfare requires some degree of spiritual maturity, but they do not understand why.
True spiritual warfare is simply walking in love when we don’t want to walk in love. Spiritual warfare has more to do with overcoming the selfishness of our flesh than with battling demons. It is a love war.
The enemy of our souls understands that if he can keep us out of love, he can keep us off the path of life. But it is our own sin nature that fights to remain childish, and our childish self strives to protect itself through fear and pride. Our enemy is already bound and under our feet, so our job is to renew our minds and discipline our flesh with the power and love of God. We must perfect our love in order to have victory over our enemies—both spiritual and natural.
While we might think that binding the devil is spiritual, the most spiritual thing we can do is walk in love when our flesh is telling us to do just the opposite. Paul said that prophesying is good, and the gifts of the Spirit are good, but that none of them are any good at all if we don’t walk in love.
We’ll never know true spiritual maturity until we make a decision to forgive people that we don’t want to forgive. We’ll never grow up in Christ spiritually until we put on a heart of love.