Pentecostals remind us of the work of the Holy Spirit today. We may disagree about the prioritization and emphasis placed on specific spiritual gifts, but we don’t want to limit the Spirit’s work just to be merely the opening God's Word to us right now.

(All of life is applying the Word, even when we’re not at the time reading it or hearing it, so we constantly need the Holy Spirit and we are wise constantly to pray for his presence in our lives). We try to do justice to what Jesus told us, that it is good for us that he left us  so that the Spirit might come.  

Our battle is with the World, the Flesh and the Devil. The first two seem easier to understand and engage. The World is the godless culture all around us, and it works vigorously to impose its idols upon our hearts. We battle the culture by recognizing just how alien it really is, not something that we just take for granted. We are greatly helped by the learned apologists among us, who expose those cultural idolatries and help us to become more rooted in the Word and engage the world more effectively.   

The Flesh is the sin of our hearts. I rejoice in the Christian counseling resources we have, given to us by Jay Adams and his successors. They help us understand what is underneath our anxieties and frustrations, showing us the idols in our hearts  they represent. Flesh meant for too long something ambiguously evil; now we understand it more specifically and hence have more targets at which we aim.  

There remains the Devil. I have taken that to mean something like: whatever stands between me and God that is neither World or Flesh, i. e., miscellaneous idolatry. Is that overly messy, about idols that I have no idea how to identify? Is that a ‘Western’ failing on my part, that I think I need to know what something is before I can pray against it?

Adam and Eve were together with the Lord in Eden, his place. But the Snake was there too, of course by God's permission. Eden’s culture is undefiled, so Adam and Eve’s spiritual battle can’t be with it. Whatever we can say about original sin, I don’t think it was there yet. That leaves Satan the Snake. Yes, now Christ is Risen, and the Snake has been defeated; but so have World and Flesh, of course. (A victorious D-Day meant the Nazi War was over, but there still remained the Bulge and all those hard times. I copy Oscar Cullmann, "D-Day is Christ is Risen, but Final Surrender is not/yet until Christ returns").  

We are still fighting the Devil as well as the World and the Flesh. I thank the Pentecostals for that reminder. We call on the Holy Spirit to fight along with us. How do we get beyond seeing him as Miscellaneous? Wouldn’t it help to list all of his temptations found in the Bible? Especially directed at Jesus in the 40 days? 

The recent WRF Statement of Faith has helped me. There are demons out there, Satan’s helpers, not cute but malicious. There are surprising temptations coming to me that make no sense, that have no earlier place in my life that I can see. With all the godly wisdom available from the great apologists and counselors, I still don’t really have to figure out every looming idol in my life before I can pray against it, do I?

I think it is my Western mindset, that every effect has a reasonable cause. I doubt Satan has committed himself to that way of acting. He delights in generating those events that I didn’t anticipate at all, in those strange misunderstandings that come my way within the body of fellow believers, right now in the disorienting power of that powerful medicine that works against my shingles.

So my prayer doesn’t have to be that organized either, does it? Not after I’ve done my best with Christian philosophy and counseling, and still find idolatry there in my heart.

O Holy Spirit, just shut down for me that evil junk coming from Satan himself. Keep my heart fixed upon my Savior Jesus himself, your kind gift to me forever. Amen.