Stuffing

Needless

Last night I finished reading John Paul Jackson's "Needless Casualties of War" that I referred to in the 'Crocodiles and JPJ' post. It's a book on spiritual warfare. I got it because the back cover seemed to indicate that he would have something helpful to explain if you were suffering a lot of attacks and seeing as I know a lot of people with attacks going on, I thought it would be helpful. But it wasn't really.
Overall, I thought it wasa good book. The first bit made me uncomfortable. Not that I mind being uncomfortable. I don't mind being challenged by other people's ideas, but I was uncomfortable because at the start I thought he seemed to be saying not to do spiritual warfare at all, which to me was implying not to do anything for Christ.

His point seemed to be people who do spiritual warfare 'incorrectly' suffer needless attacks. Which I agree with. But doing anything for Christ (correctly or not!) I think sets you up for attacks. Of course you don't want needless ones. And then there are just the regular problems of living in a sin cursed world. Not sure that you can always tell the difference!

The book seemed to be directed at people who spend a lot of time praying to 'bind Satan' or so. In my prayer time, I rarely think about Satan, I pretty much focus on God, enjoying Him and looking to see what he wants me to pray for. Do I suffer attacks? Yes. But I don't think I'm doing his key point wrong (nor do most of the people I know who also have attacks in their lives. His point was focus on God in prayer, not Satan. Check.

He had some other point that is was good to be refreshed about
-that repentance is a key weapon
-that our prayers should be modeled after the prayers of Jesus and portray the nature of Jesus

He had one definition of sin that I thought was interesting. I'm not sure it covers all sins, but it's an interesting way of thinking about it: "when we attempt to take by force what God would have given by grace"(82)
I can see how it applies in a lot of cases- if we are taking things into our own hands, we are blocking God out.

He does give some good ideas of things to pray for your community, which I hope to find useful.

posted by Aphra @ 7/29/2007 07:41:00 AM