“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.” (Mt. 7:25)
Spiritual opposition to people living and walking in the Spirit is a reality previewed for us in the Bible (Eph. 6:12). Opposition in the form of negative situations and circumstances in the natural realm is one way that spiritual darkness sows doubts, creates fears, undermines resolve, attacks faith, and weakens trust within the active servants of God.
Spiritual darkness can even use negative situations and circumstances to retaliate against the servants of God, after-the-fact when God has wrought some positive spiritual work through Christians, large or small.
God allows spiritual darkness to operate within the natural realm of events and circumstances. God is so intelligent He can reshape the efforts of spiritual opposition into re-directed positive outcomes for believers who are in the midst of God-composed and orchestrated walks of faith.
The reason that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28) is that God is smarter than the agents of evil.
In the Bible, God always takes spiritual opposition that presents itself in the form of negative appearing events and circumstances, and turns this spiritual opposition around for good outcomes when faith and trust in Him are in operation.
Lucifer introduced evil into the world in the Garden of Eden. God is not the author of this evil. God has been demonstrating His divine quality ever since that time, through His ability to take evil and reshape it for His good purposes.
This is one of the most powerful lessons in the Bible. Throughout the biblical record of God’s interaction with man, God refocuses evil in the direction He wants it to go, defeats it, creates an object lesson out of the encounter, and generates beneficial spiritual growth for His followers all in one brilliant stroke. We see this repeated many times in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
The example of Joseph being sold into slavery to a caravan heading for Egypt, by his brothers, was meant for evil. God took this evil action and turned it around for good on a massive scale. Who other than God could compose such a story as Joseph’s, in which everyone, including Joseph, required hindsight in looking back at events to be able to understand and appreciate what God had done?
The cross of Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of this divine ability to shape and remold spiritual opposition into a beneficial outcome, in this case the sacrificial redemption of mankind from the curse of sin through the exercise of faith in Christ. The cross and the resurrection tell us that God can take evil in its deadliest form, and turn it upside down on its head to perform a great work of God in complete frustration of evil’s original intent.
When God is in charge of the program, spiritual opposition loses every time.
God is so intelligent He uses the very deception that Lucifer originally devised in the Garden of Eden…to attempt to undermine God’s authority…to instead illuminate the spiritually bankrupt nature of sin and thereby our deep need for God.
God is so intelligent He uses the spiritual opposition intended to trip up the Christian, instead as actual lesson-plans to divide for us the difference between right and wrong.
These lesson-plans help us to discover genuine repentance in the character areas we are deficient…short temper, impatience, pride.
God is so intelligent He can take the evil opposition that is intended to destroy us and creatively use it to help us to grow spiritually strong into Christ-like character and conduct.
God set up this physical environment called earth, knowing that this was the best possible environment for exercising faith and trust in Him through situations and circumstances that both spiritual darkness and spiritual light had an opportunity to utilize.
The God of the Bible is never intimidated, deterred, or outsmarted by spiritual darkness, no matter how deceptive or terrifying it seems in the natural realm of events and circumstances.
Isaiah 9:6 gives many names for Jesus Christ…Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, and The Prince of Peace.
Jesus, the Prince of Peace, cannot remove the offenses of this world until all of the purposes of God are completed. But Jesus can change evil into outcomes of eternal peace because He is both God and the Prince of Peace. Jesus Christ can superimpose peace in and through any set of circumstances concocted by spiritual darkness when people place their faith and trust in Him.
The Cross in the Christian Life 