Beverly Van Kampen’s Official Blog

Martin Luther tells of a time when he was at Wartburg Castle translating the Bible into English and was confronted by Satan. Luther responded by throwing an inkwell at him. No one has been able to prove or disprove the authenticity of that story, but historians do agree that Luther had a great sensitivity to the spirit world and to the efforts of Satan and his demons to work against the work of God on this earth. Often those attacks, he claimed, were directed personally toward him.

I am no Martin Luther, but recently, I had what I felt to be a similar experience. Here’s what happened: I was working at my desk creating some contemplative exercises for a spiritual formation course I am writing for Christian University GlobalNet. My computer was open and I was working my way through a meditation on purity when our doorbell rang. I got up to answer it, apparently causing some movement in the floor or the desk.

As I turned, I heard a crash and looked to see that a faux stone cross had fallen off the top of the bookshelves above me, had hit and broken the screen of my computer, knocked my open Bible to the floor, and landed on top of it. When I saw the Bible and the cross on the floor, I was stunned. My immediate, almost panicky, response was to pray, “O God, protect me from the evil one. Surround me with Your presence.” Then, aloud, “I renounce the Devil and all his ways. In the name of Jesus Christ, be gone!”

Immediately in my mind the words came, “Greater his He who is in you that he who is in the world.” And I whispered a prayer of thanks to the greater One who has me in His protective hand.

Was the falling of the cross, the “attack” on the Bible, and the destruction of my computer an act of evil? I don’t know. It certainly felt like it was. It may not be important to know for sure. For me, though, it was a reminder that the life I live is not lived for myself alone. There are spiritual forces watching what I do (see Psalm 138:1; I Corinthians 11:10; Ephesians 6:10-12; I Timothy 5:21; Hebrews 13:2; I Peter 5:8). As an individual, I am probably not important enough to be attacked by evil forces. But the organization I am writing for is focused on training Christian leaders by teaching the Word of God and they are positioned to move into greatly expanded arenas of ministry in the very near future. I have to believe that Satan and his minions would be delighted to impede those plans in any possible way in order to thwart the movement of the gospel into need-filled areas of the world.

But he will not prevail. The end of the story has been written and Jesus Christ wins. I think I need to be very aware of the unseen world, though. It is a world that is more real than the world we know. There is a great battle going on - a battle is between God and Satan. Because we are the focus of God’s affection, we have become the target of Satan’s attacks.

Seeing the cross and my Bible as they lay on the floor, I felt violated. Those are two of the primary focuses of my life on a day-by-day basis. And my ravaged computer is the tool that allows me to write in order get the message of God’s Word out to others. Now it was broken, lying in a heap. Satan thought he had won a great victory. But he was wrong! My Bible has been dusted off and opened, read, and marked again. The cross is resituated on the shelf above my desk. And the computer has been repaired by a computer genius who just “happened” to have on hand a used screen that fit my laptop and got me back to work in less than a day. To God be the glory!

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