God Is Not Surprised By Evil's Tactics

We have a hard time imagining beings much more intelligent than us. It’s hard to imagine them as doing anything other than super-intelligently contemplating their navels, because we simply can’t imagine being far, far more intelligent than we are, and taking direct action based on that intelligence. If we could imagine it, we’d be that intelligent.

So it’s easy to imagine that God’s sitting there, and, you know, ambiently in charge of what’s going on in the universe, but surprised by the peculiarly 21st century nature of the attacks that evil is deploying against us. Televised propaganda? Anonymous Conservative’s pervasive surveillance state? Tracking devices in every pocket?

Of course when we think about it directly, the Being Who authored life itself, against which our fanciest gadgets are mere crude toys, is not surprised by any of this. He saw it coming from eons away. But this attitude can creep back in to our subconscious when we’re not looking.

In particular, I think this can affect our prayers. I think we should be as direct as possible with our prayers, but I think many of us stay somewhat vague because subconsciously, we feel like maybe God won’t understand what it is we’re talking about. I say this because I see it in myself.

But it is not true. We can and should pray directly against these things. I would never claim to be an expert on these matters, but I’ve been using a sort of template in my thinking as I pray against these forces:

1. Pray explicitly against the demonic support.

   Every year, I find myself thinking more that a lot of the effectiveness of our propaganda isn’t just in the propaganda itself per se, but in the demonic support. Without that, I think it would be far less compelling.

   Similarly, while I’m sure humans would be surveilling other humans even without demonic motivation, I think it would be far less dedicated, and far less able to hold together without fragmenting into competing power structures. The humans don’t fragment into competing power structures because they are utterly overwhelmed by the demonic one.

   Pray directly against the demonic support. It is where the authority of Christ granted to you by his grace is at is strongest.

2. Pray explicitly that the humans being used by the demons will be exposed to the truth and come to the realization of their need to embrace it.

   There’s a meme I’ve seen on SG that makes fun of this with FBI agents. I see no reason not to pray for it directly. The Church is supposed to be on offense, not defense, let alone ineffectual defense. Praying for this sort of thing isn’t a long-shot, it’s a direct attack on their stronghold.

3. Then, finally, pray against the effectiveness of the thing itself.

God is not surprised by the television, or the cell phone, or huge international computer networks, or artificial intelligence, or any other such thing.

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