Unclean Spirits

I'm pondering Matthew 12:43-45 this morning. It's about unclean spirits leaving and then returning to someone with more spirits making him worse than he was before.

And I'm imagining how this might be relevant today. I'm thinking of bad habits or addictions. Drugs, gambling, shopping, eating for examples. One manages to give up the addiction, maybe "find Jesus" in the process or even just renew their faith and find strength thru their faith and feel confident that they are over this addiction.

Eventually that demon of addiction comes back, sees you all cleaned up and realizes that addiction alone won't be enough this time.

So he's goes out and gets the demon of self doubt, the demon of temptation, the demon of complacency and they tag team together at once.

Confidence falls first and then with the temptation in front of you it suddenly doesn't look so bad. Couldn't be wrong just to try it one more time... and before you know it, good ol' Addiction gets to slide back in to his old home making room for his helpful new buddies.

While you're already down the demon of depression easily moves in helping Self Doubt make you feel worse than before and the battle to fight them off is a bigger fight than before.

All analogies of course but this is how I interpret these verses as how they could be happening in our lives today.

The battle for our souls wages on empowered by our freedom of choice and our sinful nature. But I try to remember too that there are more ANGELS battling for us than there are demons against us. Even just considering the numbers should help boost my confidence that this is a battle we can WIN!


- Posted by Becky using BlogPress from my iPhone