Halloween - Halo please!

I’ve never understood how a parent can dress their child up as a devil, and then act surprised when they behave like one. As a Christian parent, Halloween has always been a challenging holiday for us raising our only daughter. With her growing up in Scotland, we never wanted her to feel left out or excluded from the fun of dressing up, the Halloween school parties, or the trick-or-treating around the neighbourhood.

Halloween’s original roots may surprise you. All Saint’s Day on the 1st of November is also called All Hallows Day. It’s a day when many believers around the world thank God for His faithfulness to their loved ones who have died. It’s a celebration that they died in the faith and are resting in the presence of God.

The day before, the 31st of October use to be called ‘All Hallow’s Eve’, which was later shortened to Halloween. Unfortunately, the day’s original reason to celebrate has since been twisted by Satan, where the focus has been moved from celebrating the life of the deceased to death itself. Satanic worshippers have even chosen this night to do their most evil work, which is why many Christians choose to reject participating in Halloween altogether.

However, when you consider the story in 1 Corinthians 8, we see that the Church in Corinth faced a similar dilemma - to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols in the pagan temples. Although not totally the same thing, we can learn from Paul’s advice that it’s a matter of our conscience. If we have doubts that celebrating it will condemn us, then we shouldn’t eat the meat/candy.

Doing anything that does not proceed out of our faith is a sin. Our righteousness is not determined whether we participate in Halloween or not. We are saved by the work of Christ alone (Acts 4:12), not by observing or abstaining from holidays (Colossians 2:16). Christians that take their kids trick-or-treating are still Christians. And Christians that stay home and ignore the doorbell are also Christians. We shouldn’t judge others by the choices they make.

For me, rejecting Halloween altogether is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I believe that with the right discernment and wisdom, this holiday can offer us opportunities to share our faith in a practical way. As long as we can steer our children away from dressing up as zombies, devils, witches, and other evil personas, this part of the holiday can still be fun. I have purposely not included a ghost, because we all grew up with Casper the friendly ghost. One year, a lady from my church added a halo to her daughter’s ghost costume and proudly announced to everyone that she was the Holy Ghost! I am not sure if God would have approved, but it sure did make us laugh!

This photo is of my daughter’s first Halloween outfit as a pumpkin, which makes me so grateful for the inspired Christian pumpkin message. If you’ve never heard it before, it goes like this: - God picks us up from the pumpkin patch, washes off all our dirt, scoops out all our yucky seeds of sin, carves out for us a new smiling face, and puts His light inside of us, to shine out for all the world to see. This story started a fond family Halloween tradition when we use to live in Scotland, where we would carve out a pumpkin with a smiley face and leave it by our front door.

Living back in South Africa, it seems we are fast following the trends of America, the UK, and the rest of the world, by welcoming the hype and consumerism around this spooky holiday. It would therefore be foolish to try to avoid or shield our children from taking part in it altogether. However, we can change our perspective on how we choose to engage with it and thus use every opportunity to our advantage.

For example, we can share the Gospel of faith over fear and try to educate unbelievers about the schemes of the devil and the path it leads to when you choose to focus on death and all things evil. It may seem like just a bit of fun to many, but if they knew the gates they were opening into their soul, they just might think again.

Trick or treating also offers us the opportunity to get to know our neighbours and is a good platform to be friendly. Your selection of treats doesn’t always have to be sweets either but can include fruits or healthier, less sugary sweets, which I’m sure every parent will thank you for.

I am grateful that many Churches choose to offer an alternative party to Halloween, such as using a Superhero theme, where kids can still participate in the full fun of the holiday, but without the reasons that cause many young children to be plagued by nightmares.

So, however, you choose to observe Halloween this year, do it with a clear conscience, knowing that God sees your heart and your motives. Rejecting the evil part, whilst keeping the good can be achieved when we do it from faith. And as we carve out our pumpkins and take photos of our children in their cute costumes, let us also spend time in prayer for the protection of our loved ones, our Churches, our nation, and for every unbeliever’s eyes to be opened to the spiritual realm that they are innocently dabbling in.

Fighting from Victory

Have you ever felt under attack on all sides from the devil?  Whilst we may not know whether it is in fact the devil’s doing, consequences of bad choices, a generational or other curse or even, if like Job, God has allowed the problem to test our faith, the bottom line is the same. Our victory is gained by our attitudes and our words of faith.

We may be familiar with the concept of binding the enemy and loosing God’s blessings to cancel out perceived curses in our lives, but sometimes it seems as if we are fighting against a relentless enemy, putting all our focus on the devil instead of standing on the Word and declaring our victory in His name.

The key to winning the war is changing the focus of our prayers, instead of reaching TOWARDS a point of victory, pray FROM a point of victory.  We do this by boldly declaring the victory God has already given us through Jesus’ death on the cross.

Psalms 100:4 says we are to enter His courts with praise. We stand against the enemy by putting on our Holy armour according to Ephesians 6:10-18, standing on   the promises that God has given us.

Remember that the enemy has already been defeated, so we just need to remind him of this by using the authority we have in Jesus’ name. 

Sometimes we act like dogs chasing our tails, trying to get what we have already been given. Jesus is our mediator and He is the one who intercedes on our behalf.  We do not need to beg God or persuade Him to release His power, but simply exercise the authority He has already given us.

Powerful prayers in fighting the enemy is by acknowledging our inheritance and the blessings we already have. Proverbs 18:21 tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue, therefore we need to speak death and defeat to our sickness or problem, curse it and command it to leave; then speak life by releasing the living, resurrection life of power that God has given us through His Word. God clearly tells us to “choose life”.

Another important aspect of spiritual warfare is being aware and recognising the enemy behind the chaos.  The problem is not your boss, your husband or your child but it is the devil using them as puppets to push your buttons to try and destroy your relationships, and to steal your peace and joy.  When we can see that, it helps us to separate the person from their behaviour and allows us to more easily forgive what they said or did.  Satan uses people to get our focus off of God and what we should be doing for Him.

When we grasp the fact that there is a battle for our heart by an enemy who is trying to dominate our lives through our choices, of what we say, what we think, what we do and what we believe, we can be better prepared to respond correctly.

Satan cannot control us outside of our will – he needs our consent and co-operation, which is why we need to be careful of our choices in order to resist him. He will try every scheme he knows to discourage us, deceive us, oppress us and destroy us. A toxic environment of our heart and any unrighteous living is an open invitation to the enemy to enter, just as wrong and negative thinking will create strongholds in our minds that the devil will feast on.

Robert Morris shares in his sermon ‘Under Attack’ that a deer only pants when it is chased by an enemy, and its first action is to run for water.  We need to do the same, by running to our living water, which is the Word of God. Run to God, the shelter in your storm.

We need to stop listening to our negative, anxious thoughts and attack back with praise and worship as our weapon to defeat them. Every day, we need to be fighting the war within us between our spirit and our soul (mind, will and emotions), as they are both contending for control.  

When it comes to praying, many of us are losing the battle, merely by praying incorrectly.  We need to stop explaining to God how to do His job better, or giving Him ideas of how to solve our problems. We must stop griping and start thanking Him; praising Him for our victory in faith, even before our victory comes.

I’m not saying we can’t pour out our hearts to God in desperate situations – rather Him, than to the people around us – but just like in the Psalms, once you’ve vented to God, make sure that you end off by standing firm, and by letting your hope be your anchor to trust Him with the outcome.

I can honestly testify that when we choose to keep a good attitude about our problems, or difficult circumstances, instead of complaining and whining in a ‘Woe is me’ pity party, the issues always get resolved that much quicker. 

When we declare and speak out our faith, and the promises from God’s Word, we break the strongholds of incorrect thoughts, remove our doubts, build up our faith and align ourselves with God’s Spirit, activating the authority and power within us to win the battles.

Every day, we should mentally put on all of our armour, as listed in Ephesians 6:14-18, but remembering that it ends off with praying in the Spirit, which is the key to unlocking our victory. 

Remembering that the devil knows how God sees us and what He thinks of us, will automatically change our countenance. Satan already knows the outcome and that we win in the end, but he is trying to distract us from our path and to lead us away from it.  He does this by stirring up challenges and by disguising himself through people. He knows our weaknesses and what will ensnare us. He is trying to trip us up and rob us of our inheritance.

Our spirit is our connection to God and alive unto God when we are born again. We commune with God spirit to spirit though the Holy Spirit. This is the only thing that cannot be intercepted by Satan.  Man’s soul realm is his mind, will, and emotions, e.g. our worldly, carnal self, all subject to change and attacks of the enemy. That’s why it is so easy for Satan to attack us in this realm and why we need the baptism of the Holy Spirit, to give us that fullness of fire to resist.  When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can walk tall with victory, knowing that the roar of our Father is behind us, scaring off the roar of the enemy.

In conclusion, I was reminded at Church recently by Gabe Philips of Life Changers Church - Milnerton, that Communion is also an effective Spiritual weapon in winning the war against the enemy.

When you consider all of our Spiritual Armour which is; the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes shod with the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, they are all rooted in what Jesus died for and what taking Communion represents.  When we partake of Jesus’s body, represented by the bread, we are claiming healing not just for our bodies, but our minds and all of our broken pieces.  When we partake of His blood, represented by the wine or grape juice, we are receiving the forgiveness of our sins and covering our lives with His blood, that has redeemed us and protects us.

In Psalms 23, we are reminded that Jesus has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies. The first communion, when Jesus initially demonstrated and charged us to remember the importance of these two elements, was held at the Last Supper.  When we feast with the symbols of Jesus’ body and blood, by eating the Word of God, the Spiritual realm is shifted to bring about our victory. Sometimes it may not seem like God is doing anything in the natural, but rest assured, that things are moving behind the scenes in the Spiritual realm, and the devil is going down!

Whilst God may choose to take our trials or problems away, true spiritual victory comes when we can have a Godly perspective on what is happening to us, whether they go away or not. The true victory is when we have reprogrammed our thinking with a renewed mind, being able to still praise God regardless of our circumstances.

So, my fellow soldiers in the Lord’s army, go forth with your full armour to fight your battles the right way, rejoicing with praise, taking Communion, and declaring that the war has already been won. You have the victory!