Jesus told us that in the world we would experience great strife…that’s much more than a series of “bad-hair” days. It’s more than dealing with grouchy people ordering coffee at Starbucks. It’s a real battle with principalities, power, the rulers of spiritual wickedness in high places…not flesh & blood but cosmic evil. Though the battle is indeed played out in the shoe-on-pavement world and has physical consequences, its arena is nonetheless a spiritual one. It is a battle to harm us, discourage us, to try and get us to “stand-down” and stop reaching out to the world caught in the deadly grip of sin. That is why we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, soaked in God’s almighty power, clothed with Jesus as our armor, filled with Life that will never end to wage a war that our Captain as enlisted us in as His feet and hands on the earth.