The daily grind of spiritual warfare might weary us, but we can hold onto our joy, even when we are exhausted. And how exhausted we may become! Satan never lets up, so our battles last all day long, not just once in a while. We may pray fervently in the morning but by afternoon not understand Satan is causing us strife and then lose our joy. So we need God to help us hang onto our joy in the battle. How? We remember that our defense comes from drawing close to the Lord. He is our greatest joy. When we realize this truth, we can realize how blessed we are. For example, how often can a soldier say putting on his armor brings joy? Usually never. Soldiers become fatigued and depressed if they see no hope for victory. But we can read the Bible (especially Revelation) and know our victory is guaranteed.
Will we become tired? Will Satan confuse us, anger us, frighten us and stir up all of our bad emotions? Will Satan put bad thoughts into our heads and then blame us for them? Will Satan distract us from praying, reading our Bible and doing other things that draw us close to the Lord? Yes, Satan will do every one of those things and then tell us we are sinners and at fault for those things. But we are not to blame for them coming at us. We are only guilty if we entertain those thoughts, emotions and other bad things, and act upon them.
A hard part of Spiritual warfare is its mundane nature. It happens every day, and often through out the day. We can become weary, just because this battle never lets up. But remember, we can still have joy, even while we are tired and battling.
As I have shared in an earlier post, sin was already in the “sinless Garden of Eden,” before Adam and Eve sinned. How? Satan had access to this sinless garden. And Satan had already fallen into sin and had been struck down from his exalted place in heaven. He had access to the garden and to the sinless people there. We must remember this simple fact. Even in a flawless place, sin had access, via Satan. He has been a nuisance even before humans existed. These truths are explained in several verses such as: Isaiah 14:12-15 and also in Ezekiel 28:14-17.
We have another reminder that Adam and Eve needed to fight spiritual battles, while still sinless, because Eve was called “Ezer,” a Hebrew word which is used to mean a military ally. But even here, there is further spiritual warfare. You see Ezer is often translated as “helper” without any clarification about what this means. The Ezer is one who performs vitally important acts of rescue and support or active intervention on the behalf of someone. “Ezer” is also used for God as our help. In fact, Ezer is used 21 times in the Old Testament*. While a few of those verses describe offering military help and other forms of rescue to other people, most of the verses describe God as our help. For example, Moses named one of his sons Eliezer, which is Hebrew for “My God is my helper” (Eli = my God, and ezer= ally or military helper.)
The spiritual warfare here is the fact that many people misunderstand when they only read “helper,” and assume Eve is an underling, an assistant who does Adam’s bidding. This is a misnomer, and it has caused many people to under value women and their ability to fight the devil, through the spirit. Women have been relegated to a lesser role by too many people who do not understand Hebrew and the rest of the Old Testament. Some assume a wife should wait on her husband for his every whim, and give up her hobbies to only do what he wants. But this is not a military ally but a slave. A wife (and single woman) needs to have her first relationship with the Lord, and from there learn what God has called her to do and follow his lead. Of course she can come alongside her husband and share a wonderful life together, encouraging him, even as he encourages her. But they are equal partners, fighting Satan’s plans.
Even while Eve was made to be an Ezer “suited to” (Kenegdo is the term for suited to) Adam, her title did not say she was subordinate, but simply made to correspond as Adam’s equal partner to alleviate his solitude. She had no children nor household to care for, just the need to help Adam in the fight he would face against Satan and in the hard work of being fruitful and multiplying (as God had asked in Gen.1:28.) We need to understand how important that title “Ezer” is to understand that we (women) were also built to fight spiritual battles. Even in a sinless garden, Adam was built to fight, and this is why he was given a mate who had a title meaning “military ally.” We think of spiritual battle as a result of our sin, but the first spiritual battle occurred due to Satan’s sin, not our own.
Satan wants to confuse us so that when we read “helper” or “help mate” woman see themselves as weak and inferior to the man, and thus unable to fight spiritual battles. Remember, the first woman’s (Eve’s) first job was not to care for a household or children, because she did not yet have these. She was Adam’s perfect ally in the battle against Satan. Sadly, she and Adam fell into sin and ended up fighting God and each other. But we must always remember God’s original plan. We gals were meant to fight alongside our guys, not against them. We were meant to fight the devil, not each other. Women are strong and capable of equipping themselves in the Lord. God knew this when he formed Eve, and God still wants gals, from girls to grown women to be strong in the Lord. This includes single gals. A woman does not need to be married to be an Ezer. Women come alongside others, as their ally, and not just alongside a husband.
So let’s get back to this contrast with the exhausted soldier who puts on his armor, filled with dread, while we Christians can put on God’s armor with joy, knowing this means we can grow close to him. Life will be exhausting. We may suffer anxiety, especially if we had a hard childhood. When children do not feel secure, they may develop deeply seated anxieties they will carry into adulthood. Even when these gals fight their fears, they may never fully silence them. But this does not mean this gal is weak nor is she sinning. She is in a battle, and her childhood “scars” (fears, anxieties, etc.) will make every day living harder, just like scar tissue can tighten a body and make movement harder where the scar tissue interferes with the healthy, softer more flexible tissue (skin or muscle.) Satan wants these gals to either think they will never overcome any part of their fear, or that when fear tries to creep in, this means they are sinning. A gal can learn to manage her fear, and she may force it back so far that it does not dominate her life. But until we die, the sin nature will be alive in us and it can try to attack us.
I can use myself as an example. I have anxiety at times. I have learned to manage it. But sometimes an angry person (someone I know or a stranger) may yell or rage and thus startle me (whether or not I am the one being yelled at) to the point I forget what I was trying to do and may lose focus for a long time. My stomach may tighten up and later in the day I may even realize my shoulders ache from tensing them. I can ask God to re-direct me, but it may take a bit of time. But at other times I do not give my fears to God. I ruminate over them, and even lose sleep trying to scheme my way out of an upsetting situation. Finally when I am exhausted I realize I did not ask God for guidance. He forgives me but also helps me to rest in him. Guidance eventually comes, and God gives me great ideas about how to handle hard situations or to rest in him if I have no control over the situation. So at times the fear or anxiety do not cause me sin, and I recover from the fear (though not always instantly.) At other times I don’t realize I am ruminating, and I sin by worrying and not surrendering my fear to God. The fear is not always a sin—only my obsession over it.
But when I back away from my fear or anger, I feel joy. I may sing praise songs that calm my spirit. Or if I am fatigued, the praise songs may buoy me up. If I am sad, the songs may comfort me and help me to cry and then heal the pain too.
We can perform many spiritual disciplines from memorizing Scripture, to attending Bible studies, to reading the harder Bible passages, to serving others. But we might become exhausted from life or even from serving with such fervor. That exhaustion is not a sin. Sometimes we need rest. There are times when we have to step away from all of that spiritual discipline. Sometimes we need to set down our “spiritual sword” and feel like a child again and weep from exhaustion. Twila Paris released a song, in 1984, called “The Warrior is a Child.” You can listen to it on YouTube. Here are some of the lyrics in that song: “They don’t know that I go running home when I fall down. They don’t know who picks me up when no one is around. I drop my sword and cry for just a while. Deep inside this armor the warrior is a child…Unafraid, because his armor is the best. Even soldiers need a quiet place for rest. People say I’m amazing, never face defeat. But they don’t see the enemies that lay me at his feet.” Sometimes we need to be a child in our perfect heavenly Father’s presence.
If we continually feel fatigue in our spiritual walk, we are working too hard, either by not asking God for more help, or because we are doing more than God asked us to do. We need time to figure out which is the cause. But when we are fully in his will, we may still face exhaustion. That is part of life. Then we need to rest. If we feel better after resting, then we can resume the work we did before. If we never feel better, we need to figure out what to give up doing. But we must always come back to the joy we find in Christ. He promises us joy and rest.
I want us to overcome the mundane (and draining) side of spiritual warfare, and I need to write more about this next week so I don’t drain you by a too-long post today! I have only briefly examined the aspect of God’s joy as part of our spiritual warfare. I will write more next week. Please let me know if any aspect of this has blessed you or if you would like me to write about anything similar. I love to hear from my readers and then write according to your interests and needs. We are a family in Christ, and we can encourage one another. Thanks for sharing this post with us.
*Here are 18 Old Testament passages that use “Ezer,” in Hebrew but are written as “help” or “helper” in English.
Genesis 2:18 & 20, “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the human to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’ … but for the human no suitable helper was found.”
Exodus 18:4b, “For [Moses] said, ‘My father’s God was my helper.’”
Deuteronomy 33:7 “Hear, O LORD, the cry of Judah; bring him to his people. With his own hands he defends his cause. Oh be his help against his foes.”
Deuteronomy 33:26, “There is no God like the God of Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens to help you, and on the clouds of His majesty.”
Deuteronomy 33:29a, “Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD? He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword.”
Psalm 20:2, “May He send help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion.”
Psalm 70:5, “We wait in hope for the LORD; He is our help and shield. Psalm 33:20
Yet I am poor and needy; come quickly to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer…”
Psalm 115:9–11, “O house of Israel trust in the LORD – He is their help and shield. O house of Aaron trust in the LORD – He is their help and shield. You who fear Him, trust in the LORD – He is their help and shield.”
Psalm 121:1–2, “I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
Psalm 124:8, “Our help is in the Name of the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
Psalm 146:5, “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God.”
Isaiah 30:5, “Though they have officials in Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes, everyone will be put to shame because of a people useless to them, who bring neither help nor advantage…”
Ezekiel 12:14, “I will scatter to the winds all those around him – his staff (ezer) and all his troops – and I will pursue them with a drawn sword.”
Daniel 11:34, “When they fall they will receive a little help…”
Hosea 13:9, “You are destroyed, O Israel, because you are against Me, against your helper.”
I have been blessed by this post! Thank you for the much needed breakdown of “Ezer”. We are a help, rescuer, and strong and not just an underrated helper. Praise God for His ordinance! We are an “Ezer” in the spiritual realm and this realm.
Dear Michelle, I am thrilled to hear this blessed you. I love this concept of Ezer, and so in next week’s post, I plan to share a bit more about it. God has exalted women, but too often the world lowers us. Too often that even happens in some churches. So I want to show women their esteemed place in God’s love. Thanks for the encouragement!