29th November 2025. This has been my longest gap between writing Posts, and I guess it’s because I’ve been preoccupied with a series of challenges. There was a car accident – fortunately painful only to my wallet – which resulted in a write-off and a change of car. Before that was having to get our roof repaired, and since then the onset of winter weather coincided with our central-heating stuttering despite having it all recently overhauled. Not that I am discouraged, as God continues to bring us opportunities to pray for healings, and he reassures us that, having called us, he is in it with us for the long haul. All the problems I’ve mentioned are common to humanity; God never promised to shield us from life’s problems, and he goes with us through them, lifting us above our circumstances. A Muslim guy tried to convince me that “good people get good things” – history and my experience teach me that is not always true.
As Christians we have an enemy that is bent on making things difficult for us and discouraging us. At the extreme end, he is compared with a “roaring lion” who wants to destroy our lives. My own experiences of last-moment escape from heart-attack (the “big one”) and sudden physical removal from an Oxford pavement onto which a smashed window was falling from a great height have demonstrated that! And Jesus’ words to Simon Peter about Satan wanting “to sift you like wheat” underlines how leaders are top of his list. Knowing this causes me to sigh deeply when I hear professing Christians say they don’t believe in a “personal Devil”, or in a discussion will assert “I am playing devil’s advocate”. I have enough trouble from Satan himself without having Christians advocating on his behalf!
In the matter of undergoing temptation to sin, there is a challenge for all practising Christians who seek to live a God-pleasing life. Helpfully the Bible (not to mention good Christian books) is full of advice about life “in the fullness of the Spirit”, and of God “providing a way out” of the strongest temptations. As for “spiritual warfare”, Paul in Ephesians 6 takes it as read that all Christians have enlisted in ‘God’s army’ and there is no opting out, and certainly no turning tail, as no armour is provided for the back! Mercifully, not all believers will find themselves in life-threatening spiritual warfare settings, but they should beware of those “on the front line”, including church leaders and evangelists. My wife has discovered very useful books and videos written and recorded by some of those who have regularly encountered more extreme forms of evil. They have not necessarily sought after it, but it has found them because Satan’s “principalities and powers” don’t want to lose their evil control over persons and instututions. Just as Christians gather in churches and homes to pray for God’s Kingdom to come, so Satan-worshippers and other occultist practitioners devote time and resources to their destruction. They seek to visit disease, accident and poverty on God’s people – and we both have experienced some of that.
My wife and I really appreciate how the Burmese Mission Church (with whom we most frequently work) at every service join in making a series of declarations, including “Sickness-free, Cancer-free, Poverty-free” zone, amonst other commitments. And they love to sing the song I taught them (originating in a North American revival): “I went to the enemy’s camp and I took back what he stole from me. He’s under my feet…, Satan is under my feet”. Long may he stay there, for all our sakes!
Healing in Jesus' Name 