The war you’re always fighting, and what the Psalms have to say about it

When you read the title of this post, you probably know what I mean.

You know there’s a war you’re fighting right now. Maybe you’re fighting a war with anxiety, whether over the current COVID pandemic or something else. Maybe you’re fighting a war with temptation to sin. Maybe you’re fighting a war with laziness. Maybe you’re fighting a war with hostility toward another person. I’m not sure what your war is, nor am I sure whether it’s active in your mind now or lying dormant under the surface until your inward casus belli ignites it again. But I would bet that you are in one.

Typically, if you are a churchgoer, you will hear a lot of sermons about peace, but you will not hear many about war. Certainly, the Bible has a lot to say about peace. It’s a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:23). The Holy Spirit can give us an extraordinary peace within, and the ability to convey that peace to others. Jesus declared peacemakers to be blessed children of God (Matt 5:9). But is there any place for war in the Christian life? Is there any place for hostility? Any place for anger? Any place for conflict?

The Psalms say yes. Not only that, but they convey to us a proper wartime mindset and sound battle strategies.

Bible readers will know the Psalms as the poems that contain some of the most uplifting, upbuilding, encouraging, and emotionally raw verses in the Bible.

But in the modern church, we tend to take only bits and pieces out of the Psalms. We learn single verses like, “The LORD is my shepherd” (23:1), and “delight yourself in the Lord” (37:4). Although these bits and phrases are richly meaningful in and of themselves, the Psalms were nevertheless not meant to be read this way. The Psalms were written as songs, to be sung in religious services and to serve as prayers. So we can only appreciate them fully if we look at them in their entirety. Because we often don’t, it’s easy to miss what they have to say about the presence and the role of hostility and conflict in our lives.

Let’s look at an example in Psalm 27. It starts like this:

The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life—whom shall I dread?

Many of you probably know this verse, or at least recognize it. It’s a great verse to recall in times when you’re troubled or afraid. This verse can remind us that God is in control, that he can rescue us from anything, and he is bigger and stronger than anything that might cause us fear or concern.

Then the psalmist goes on:

When the wicked came upon me to devour my flesh, my enemies and foes stumbled and fell. Though an army encamps around me, my heart will not fear; though a war breaks out against me, I will keep my trust. (Psa 27:2-3)

Whoa! Wait a second. I may be nervous and anxious, but I’m hardly being pursued by cannibals! I’m not about to go into battle against a foreign army. How can I relate to this?

Verses like this are the reason why most modern Christian music isn’t based on texts from the Psalms. They seem so extreme, so hyperbolic. What are we to do with verses like these? Singing or praying verses like this just seems a little bit exaggerative.

It’s not just descriptions of the psalmist’s enemies’ toward him that you’ll find in those great poems. You’ll also find descriptions of the psalmist’s hostility toward his enemies. Take this one from Psalm 139.

Oh, God, that You would slay the wicked—away from me, you bloodthirsty men!—who speak of You deceitfully; Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD, and detest those who rise against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them as my enemies. (Psa 139:19-22)

There are many other examples. These are just the first few that came to mind. But you get the point. It doesn’t seem right, does it? Jesus said we should love our enemies and pray for them. I don’t think that by this he meant we should pray for their violent deaths!

Both of these Psalms were written by King David. If you know much about David’s life, you can understand why he would say these things. He was the king of Israel 3,000 years ago. He quite literally did have mortal enemies threatening his life constantly. He was in constant warfare against those who opposed God’s chosen people, and therefore opposed God. So were all the people of Israel. It was a brutal world at the time: fight or be conquered. To be an Israelite meant fighting against Israel’s enemies, who were God’s enemies.

We are all engaging in warfare as well. Whatever conflict we might be experiencing outwardly, we’re all engaging in warfare inwardly. That’s because we, like David, have enemies who want to kill us. They’re just enemies of a different kind. As Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

The war you’re fighting is a spiritual one. Whatever kind of war it is, whatever you’re fighting against, you’re fighting a spiritual war. That’s because the forces of evil and darkness want to destroy you. They assail your mind and your thoughts. They try as hard as they can to turn you away from God and render you unfruitful and your life unproductive. They want to see you crippled by anxiety and depression. They want you to give in to the temptations of lust and greed. They want you to be full of yourself, to lose your temper, to neglect your family and friends. We don’t understand exactly how this spiritual war works, and I don’t think we’re meant to. But it is a war that we inevitably face.

The Christian life is characterized by peace, but paradoxically, it’s also characterized by war. War is unavoidable for the Christian. Those forces of darkness that Paul refers to are your enemies. They are the enemies of God’s people. And as such, they are God’s enemies. To be a Christian means to fight against God’s enemies, these forces of darkness. That war rages within us and around us all the time, one with far higher stakes than any war David fought or any political rivals he ever faced.

In that light, we can see that it’s perfectly appropriate to pray those things regarding those enemies. So how can we take the psalmists’ experience of war and apply it to our own experience of war, and gain some sound insight and strategy for effectively fighting it? Here are a few principles:

1. Recognize your mortal danger. David speaks of those who came upon him to devour his flesh (27:2). He speaks of armies surrounding him. He recognized that his life was in constant danger. So is ours. Our spiritual lives are in constant danger as our spiritual enemies attack us. They can’t destroy us spiritually, nor can they separate us from Christ (Rom 8:39), but they can render us spiritually effete (2 Pet 1:8-9). They can make us effectively lifeless.

2. Hate evil. We may struggle to understand how we’re supposed to identify with David’s statement in Psalm 139:20 about hatred of those who hate God, until we recognize from Paul’s words that those who hate God are the spiritual forces of evil. As such, there is a place for hatred in the Christian life, and in fact it’s absolutely essential that we harbor hatred for evil. That’s hatred for evil itself, not hatred for people who do evil (a category into which any of us would fall). This is so important because very often evil tries to lure us, to make itself look attractive or true. It tries to make it seem as though only lust will satisfy us, that anxiety is the proper reaction to our circumstances, that running from God is the only possible path. And we very often believe it. So we must learn to hate it. When we do, we can see through its lies and start to see it as repulsive rather than alluring.

3. Pray that God would destroy evil. David prayed that God would slay the wicked—those who hate God. As mentioned, those who hate God most of all are the aforementioned forces of darkness and evil. God has indeed promised that one day he will destroy all evil and execute perfect justice, making the world right. So praying that God would destroy evil is much like praying, as Jesus taught us, “Your kingdom come.”

4. Trust God to fight the battle from beginning to end. After David speaks of his mortal danger in 27:2-3, he goes on to express his confidence that God will protect him (27:5) and give him victory (27:6). The refrain you will see throughout the psalms, when the psalmists speak of the wars they waged, is that they are always completely dependent on God to give them the strength to overcome their enemies. And when their enemies are overcome, they always give the credit to God for giving them victory. That’s an example that it’s imperative for us to follow. We must never rely on ourselves or believe that the secret to winning our battles is just a little more strength. We must rely on God completely, because only he can win our battles.

Our spiritual enemies do pose a constant and grave danger to our spiritual life. We should pray that God would destroy them. And we need to constantly run to God for refuge as they wield their weapons of anxiety, lust, greed, arrogance, and many other things. It’s why Paul tells us to put on the spiritual armor, using for our protection righteousness, peace, faith, truth, salvation, and the word of God.

So with all this war in our lives, where is the place for peace? We can find our peace in this: We who have surrendered to Christ are reconciled to God and no longer hostile toward him. As such, nothing can oppose us and overcome us if we trust in God. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31). And so we can have peace from the Holy Spirit, in the security of knowing that even when we are embroiled in bitter warfare, Jesus is for us, and cannot be defeated or deterred. Victory is guaranteed.