I’ve been mostly quiet about the election in recent days as I’ve awaited the ultimate outcome of the related court cases. I’ve been really burned out on the turmoil, the conflict and disunity among Christians over it. It has seemed that everything I say about the election, no matter what it is, tends to stir a lot of folk to hurl uncleanness into the atmosphere, so I’ve backed up a bit from directly addressing certain issues.
However, the nation continues to drown in a flood of hatred and you can’t blame just one side for it. It’s a contagion that infects everyone, irrespective our various confessions of faith, political alignments or even good intentions. I know that some of you will object to that statement and protest innocence. I don’t think any of us on any side of the issues can afford to protest innocence. We’ve all been tainted by it and we all need to return to a pure focus on Jesus.
I’m actually trying to be nice in what I’m about to say today. I’m trying to stay balanced. I want to present strategies for prayer that most of us who call ourselves Christian on all sides of the issues can own, even if we disagree.
The most important reason I’ve held back a bit recently on statements I knew would generate controversy is that I needed time to simply meditate on the Lord and seek Him. I needed to re-center. As I took some of that time, the sense of His guidance shifted, and some of you probably won’t like what I believe the Lord spoke. So here it comes…
In the aftermath of November 3, many of us evangelical Christians, convinced that Donald Trump is God’s man and that the election is shot through with voter fraud and corruption, have been praying for a specific outcome for the filings, recounts and court cases. If you are not aware because the mainstream media isn’t telling you, the key and most substantive cases are being filed over the course of the next few days. It’s far from over.
Other people on the other side of the issue, deny that there were any problems at all with the election and exhort the rest of us to simply graciously accept what appears to be the outcome of the election. Whatever side we’re on, we all pray accordingly for the outcome we envision.
The problem is that when we focus our praying on a specific outcome, we tend to place our faith in the outcome at the expense of trust in the Lord Himself, and we can actually feed the agenda of the enemy as we miss the real target. We then end up drowning in divisions, anger, judgments, accusations and condemnations, even in our praying, because we find ourselves fighting against flesh and blood people instead of against powers, principalities and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the spiritual realm. Remember Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
So, as court cases remain in motion, and as it seems that allegations of fraud surface on a daily basis while the mainstream media deny that these exist, we need to focus not on the outcome, not even on the revelation of wrongdoing, but on the spiritual hosts of wickedness that have been setting up the current situation for decades now. It has been a coordinated strategy planned and executed in the spiritual realm of the demonic. The plan has been first to undermine the faith of the nation. Write God out of public life. Water down the churches. Inject cheap and easy grace into the doctrines of the church. Diminish the power and central importance of the worship experience in the churches. Create a generation of Christians seeking after experiences of God or spiritual entertainment but who will not study the Bible. Infect schools and universities with secular philosophies inimical to the Bible. Then influence the culture at large, through a corrupted media, to buy into all four of the biblical signs of the worship of Baal and Baal’s demonic influence on a culture – 1) consuming self focus, 2) acceptance of sexual perversion and immorality as normal, 3) sacrifice of children/infanticide which corresponds to abortion in our day, and 4) cutting (which I will not go into today).
Make all this seem normal to the majority of the population and then portray those who stand against that stream to be haters, bigots, judgmental and narrow-minded opponents of progress, justice and equality. This then leads to outbreaks of open hatred, violence and intensified struggle between the left and the right as each side more and more desperately vies for power. The quest for power inevitably leads to corruption, and so here we now stand, mired in an election cycle that will leave half the country with broken faith in the system regardless of who comes out on top of the court cases.
In the end, this state of affairs has the potential to neutralize America as a beacon of light to the world, a model of democratic governance and economic prosperity, the world’s greatest engine of missions funding and a nation much of the rest of the world looks to for Christian leadership and support.
I submit that if we’re focusing our prayer on a specific outcome in this electoral crisis, we may be missing the mark. The real war must be fought in the spiritual realm, disarming and breaking the power of the demonic forces that have deceived so many, infected our political process and fueled the hatred and division we see wreaking havoc right now. The same demonic powers that have fueled lawlessness, riots, violence and destruction in our major cities are now behind the electoral hatred and turmoil we’re seeing. Our entire culture is being manipulated by high level demonic influence.
I’ve been a student of WWII most of my life. It’s not difficult to learn a few lessons about spiritual warfare by studying what went on in the natural back then. If the allies had focused only on battling the armies of Nazi Germany face to face, but had neglected to bomb the factories and transportation systems behind the lines that provided armaments for the German war machine, the war might never have been won. Similarly, if we’re focusing on a specific outcome, the fight we see immediately before us, but fail to address the demonic engines that fuel the current crisis as they work behind the front lines, we may never win this battle. I believe I can say this to all of us, regardless of which side of the issues any of us might stand on. If we can unite in praying for the defeat of demonic hosts of wickedness, then whatever is true can be revealed and justice can be established.
Having said all this, anyone who knows me knows where I stand on the issues, but I’m trying desperately to find common ground that all believers, regardless of political persuasion, can unite around. Our struggle is not against one another, but against high level demonic powers in the spiritual realm. We can all address that.
The powers of darkness delight in concealment. Mark 4:22: “For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light.” Or John 3:19-21: “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” Of the devil himself Jesus said this: John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
Lies are crafted to conceal truth and to lead people into darkness. We’ve been led into darkness as a nation by the father of lies. There can be no good outcome while we hurl accusations and condemnations at one another. That’s a miss-focus and is itself a lie. Only limited good can ever be produced while we hammer away at the situation with an unbalanced focus on an outcome while neglecting to focus on the underlying cause of what is happening.
I’m suggesting that over the course of the next couple of weeks we urgently need to address the hidden demonic element of the current situation. Pray to tear away the veil of demonically inspired hiddenness to expose whatever corruption exists wherever it exists.
I’ll say again that we can certainly pray for an outcome or for corruption to be exposed, but at this point it’s much more strategic to pray for the power of the demonic that energizes concealment to be broken. While we can and should pray for revelation of wickedness, it would be much more strategic to pray for the defeat of the demonic forces behind it.
The future of our nation and of the world depends on it.