Matthew 20:22
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” “We can,” they answered.
In our early days we thought we knew what “hard” meant. Hard would be rigorous, demanding, even exhausting. Jesus said the way would be hard and with James and John we replied (if not in words, then in unspoken presumption), “We are able” (Matthew 20:22). But like James and John, we didn’t really understand what we were getting ourselves into. Like green recruits we thought we understood what war was like. War is hard. War is hell. Especially when you war with hell.
Devils know no chivalry. They are cruel, and conceal their cruelty in the Trojan horses of pleasure and comfort, wisdom and security, flattery and shame.
Hell’s one primary objective is to destroy our faith in God. All of its elaborate strategies and all of its diabolical energies are focused on this one thing: breaking the power of the word of the Lord by undermining our trust in it. The universe was created and is upheld by the Word of God (John 1:3, Hebrews 1:3), so hell must break the power of the Word of the God, if it wants any chance to win. Therefore, we find ourselves fighting an enemy that constantly seeks to alter our perception of reality. This is why this fight is such a surreal and sometimes horrific experience.
Hell wages a war of distortion. It seeks to make the most destructive things look tantalizingly desirable, while it seeks to make the most wonderful things look unbearably boring.
Hell wages a war of disorientation. Through temptation, condemnation, intimidation, discouragement, disappointment, doubt, illness, weakness, weariness, and appeals to our pride and shame, the spiritual powers of evil seek to keep us off-balance, confused, and turned around. For if we lose our focus on the truth we lose our confidence and may lose our faith.
Hell wages a war of suspicion. One of the most painful things in this spiritual war is hell’s infiltration into our relationships. Marriages break, families fracture, friendships rupture, churches split, movements derail as sin infects and seeds of suspicion are sowed and fertilized.
Jesus was right: the way is hard – far harder than we expected. But Jesus was right about something else: “the gates of hell will not prevail” (Matthew 16:18). The way is hard, but the way is sure. For the Way (John 14:6) is the Word (John 1:1). That Word stands above all earthly powers and smashes against the gates of hell. The way may be hard for us. But the Way will be hell for hell.
“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” (1 Peter 5:8-10)
