Supply lines

I am writing today to talk to you about some thing that is of the utmost spiritual importance. FOOD.
If you will, please add this to my spiritual warfare collection. Yes. That is correct. Food is an issue of spiritual warfare.

Some of the most effective battle strategies through history have been to do with food. It's a well known saying that an army marches on its stomach and for a good reason. Without food all the weapons you can wield are useless. Its for this reason that master military strategists such as Napoleon have used scorched earth policies. The practise of burning all the crops behind them as they advanced. Other effective strategies have been to disrupt and target enemy supply lines, the routes and means of supplying your troops as they fight. Few armies have been able to take enough with them to be able to progress fast enough or to sustain them long enough. Thus looting has long been a practise of various military campaigns.

So why would Satan, a masterful strategist, ignore so vital a part of his campaign against you? Will he come at you only with a direct attack, wielding his tongue like  a sword and showering you with fiery arrows of accusation? Or will he, perhaps, deploy the age old tactic of cutting you off from God's ordained supply lines? I think I know the answer to that. He wants you spiritually anaemic. He wants you weak. He wants you apathetic. He wants you so hungry you will even eat things that may harm you. I am of course speaking of spiritual food here!
So I would say that it is vital to know the supply lines that keep us strong for battle. I don't think I am going to surprise you here, but I want to tell you the things that I think Satan wants to cut you off from.

1. Prayer

Our growth and strength in God depend upon our feeding on Gods presence. If you stop praying you start dying inside. It's really that simple. Its all about the relationship. Satan will do anything he can to disrupt your prayer life. Among his tactics; discouragement, distractions, and disasters that break the flow of daily prayer. Things that are so big that they seem to require ALL your attention, but long after the crisis is over you have still not picked up the baton again. He makes that first molehill-step back to prayer look like a mountain, but it's not. Remember the prodigal story. The father is waiting with open arms to fall on you and embrace. Keep the lines of prayer open, no matter how crappy you feel. It is vital. You need it. Maybe now more than ever. I would include in this section, bible reading too, and all forms of personal devotion.

2. Fellowship.

Satan wants you to think you can go it alone. Especially, he will sometimes  exaggerate the importance of the prayer (Ironically) in order to get you to neglect this one. 'You only need God'  and 'Your personal prayer life is enough', he will say. He doesn't really want you to pray, but he loves to play the anti organised religion card. 'it's messy where other people and their egos are involved', he will say, and he's right. Sometimes it is. But it is vital food to you. God put the command, to love him first, into the context of loving your neighbour. This love is food to us. Both the giving and the receiving. The community of God cannot be neglected if we are to be spiritually sustained. If you walk away from the camp then you walk away from the camp kitchen too. Don't be deceived. We need input. We need the sharpening of clashing egos, of failure and restoration and we need encouragement, all in the context of the Father's love and grace. And, of course, in this context we receive a whole smorgasbord of foods; like corporate worship, instruction, accountability and service. These sustain us too.

3. Obedience.

I left this till last because it is the hardest. Jesus said that his meat was to do the will of the Father.
This is so hard. But if we are cut off from obedience by the thousands of excuses we make (and the devil suggests) we really cannot expect to be sustained as spiritual beings. Like all of these points I have made, I have personal experience of this. But of this more than any other. Every disobedient act weakens us, robs us of our sustenance, be it things we have done that we shouldn't have, or things we should have done, but havent. The fastest way to grow in strength and grace is to feed on doing Gods will. Accept no substitute. It was vital for Jesus, how much more so for us?
If we can identify where our food comes from, we can be much better equipped to defend the supply line. Only a fool would neglect to do so. You keep on fighting on the front line, but pay no attention to your supply, and you are going to do the enemies work for him...and starve yourself out. And that would be a true tragedy.

Grace and peace.