Jesus Sees the Devil's Attacks on Churches - Do We?

This may sound like a strange question to ponder, but if you were the devil and had all the forces of darkness at your disposal, where would you assign your demons to do their works of evil?  Governments, entertainment, media, warlords and other organized criminals, education systems, the list goes on with so many people and places that you could influence with wickedness and have a major impact on the world.  

In Setting Your Church Free, author Charles Mylander, thinking about the strategies of Satan, says, "you better believe I would especially assign some (demons) to churches, missions and Christian organizations!  If I could slow down, immobilize distract or derail the churches of Jesus Christ, everything else would be a piece of cake.  If people remain blind to the gospel, they remain in the kingdom of darkness.  The only human institutions that pray for God's light to dispel the darkness and then proclaim the gospel are churches and Christian organizations."  

One side note here.  did you notice that line where he says churches pray for God's light to dispel the darkness.  Do we?  I'm convinced that whether it is a written prayer, or impromptu by a leader or someone else in the congregation, we should be praying prayers for God's light to penetrate the darkness in our communities and the world whenever we gather to worship.  I'm taking that as a challenge to try to include that whenever I lead worship.

Back to the topic.  Churches are prime targets for attacks from the enemy, Jesus knew that, and pointed it out in the first chapters of the book of Revelation.  The words of Jesus and the Apostles warn us that the attacks can come through the effects of personal or corporate sins of the congregation (Rev. 2:14-16), a strong demonic presence in a physical location (Rev. 2:13), or even through people who pretend to be followers of Christ that are trying to create division or spread heresies(2 Cor. 11:13-14).  Too often we see circumstances and don't look beyond them like Jesus did.  Gossip, sins, unresolved disagreements, false teachings, financial problems, worship that is not in spirit and truth and sometimes even a building can be used to derail us or distract us from who the church is supposed to be and what we are supposed to be doing.  Jesus saw that there were well strategized plans from the kingdom of darkness to try and ruin His churches and keep them from being effectively bringing the Kingdom God to this world.  We've all seen or heard examples of churches that have fallen under the attack of satan and given him the victory by not being a good representative of Jesus before the eyes of the world.  

We know that God will bring His plans to pass, that Jesus had the victory over death and all powers of evil, but that doesn't mean that we can just pretend that we're not under spiritual attack and just try to deal with problems by earthly means, or even worse, simply stand by and let Satan have his way till Jesus returns because we're not willing to fight the fight we've been called to (Eph. 6:11-13).  Sometimes I even wonder if it is that a church or leadership is too proud to admit that they are under attack and that is why they don't deal with things on the spiritual warfare level.  Prayer according to the authority of Christ is the greatest defense, and its something that we can all can be intentional about on behalf of our local church body as well as others that you know of that are under attack.  Jesus doesn't want His church to be victims, so let's ask Him to help us see things the way He does and use the methods and tools He's given us to live as victorious churches according to His purposes.