Spiritual Warfare: Are You Wrestling or Resting?and unbelief about the Word so he can defeat us. But if
we stand our ground in faith, he cannot sway us from
the Word. Therefore, the "wrestling" we do is not
fighting the devil, but it is a "fight" sometimes to hold
fast to our faith in God's Word.
You see, the term "wrestling" in Ephesians 6:12 is
used figuratively, just as the word "run" is used
figuratively in Hebrews 12:1: "... let us RUN with
patience the race that is set before us." The Bible doesn't
use the word "wrestle" to tell believers to get into heavy
spiritual combat to wrestle against the devil in prayer.
No, the Bible is trying to show believers that our
opposition in this life comes from the spiritual realm
and that we are not to fight against flesh and blood, but
we are to take our stand on the Word of God and
enforce our victory against a defeated foe.
We can accept the victory Jesus Christ already
wrought for us and enforce Satan's defeat in every
situation or we can lose the faith fight. God doesn't
want us to lose, but by failing to believe the Word of
God—who we are in Christ and what we already
possess in Christ—and by failing to exercise our
authority in Christ against the devil, we can allow
Satan to gain the upper hand in any situation.
So if you don't read the entire context of this
passage in Ephesians chapter 6, but only focus on verse
12, you can become confused and defeated because
you'll think, I'm in for it! I've got to wrestle against all
those principalities, powers, and forces of darkness in
order to try to defeat them.
But anytime we overemphasize one part of a
scripture and take it out of context, it's too easy to make
it mean something it isn't saying. And if we
overemphasize one verse to the exclusion of other