For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us
to the kingdom of His beloved Son (Colossians 1:13).

The Western world today sees reality in two tiers. The upper tier is
the transcendent world where God and angels–as well as ghosts and
ghouls–reside, a world which is understood through religion and
mysticism. The lower tier is the empirical world, which is understood
through science and the physical senses. In two-tier mentality, the
spiritual world has no practical bearing on the natural world; we have
excluded it from our understanding of reality. Most attempts at
integrating theology and psychology include only God and humanity
(fallen and redeemed) and exclude the activity of Satan and demons.

In stark contrast to the secularism of the West, two-thirds of the
inhabitants of the world hold an Eastern worldview. They live and
operate believing that spiritual forces are an everyday reality. These
people appease their gods with peace offerings and perform religious
rituals to ward off evil spirits. To the common people in Third World
nations, religious practice or superstition has more practical relevance
in daily life than science.

It is easy for those of us raised in the West to dismiss the Eastern
worldview as inferior on the basis of the "success" of the
Western world. But both are worldly systems and neither reflects
biblical reality. The West tries to ignore the reality of the spiritual
world and the East tries to appease it or naively enter into it. The
Bible clearly depicts the reality of the kingdom of darkness and the
kingdom of light. God’s Word tells us we can have victory over the
former by being transferred into the latter.

Many Christians either exclude the supernatural from their worldview
altogether or consign it to the transcendental tier where it will have
no effect on their lives. By doing so they not only exclude God’s power
from their theology and practice, but they also explain all human
failure–even that which is induced by demonic influence–as the result
of psychological or natural causes.

Lord, I accept the worldview presented in Your Word. Help me deal
victoriously with the reality of demonic forces in my world.

This daily devotional is published and distributed by
http://www.GOSHEN.net/ . It is written by Neil Anderson at
http://www.freedominchrist.com/ .

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