On the train this morning I was listening to a lecture by Pastor Mark Driscoll about Spiritual Warfare. It's a touchy subject for most people. I have met those who have come from a church torn apart by it (the church subsequently closed it's doors) and were burned heavily by it.

There seems to be two types of responses to spiritual warfare, either we deny it's real (taking the cessationist route) or we see demons behind every action, misstep and misdeed that confronts our lives.

Both seem to be equally dangerous to people, when we deny the reality of the supernatural we begin to cut out the heart of God and His ability to change hearts and lives. When we embrace it too fully we begin to abdicate our response to the all of the natural struggles of life to the work of Satan.

I met one of the latter people early on in my Christian walk. A friend produced a Book of Mormon in a bible study as a discussion point, the persons first reaction was to get the book out of the house because "familiar spirits were attached to it". If only it were that easy to tie us Satan and his followers.

Let's look at some facts:

• The bible says that when Satan fell 1/3 of the angels rebelled with him, it also says that the heavenly creatures do not marry or are given in marriage (and consequently reproduce) so there are a fixed number of them out there.
• When these angels became demons they did not gain omnipotence, omnipresence or any other aspects of God. They are not everywhere and can not see everything you do but they have been studying mankind for a long time and have a pretty good bead on people.
• God and Satan are not equals. God created Satan as an angel. The bible suggests he had a pride of place in heaven which eventually led to his downfall but to use a boxing term, he doesn't have the reach to land a blow on God.

Let's get past this stuff in our churches and start to look at the real effects of spiritual warfare in the lives of people. The real consequence of all of this is that are hearts are not renewed by Holy Spirit, that we accept a false teaching of Christ or follow our hearts elsewhere. Satan battles to have us turn our hearts from God and he doesn't do that by camping in books.