Not Against Flesh and Blood

Here's something nobody tells you when you fall in love, take a new job, or move into a new season of life: you just signed up for a fight. Not with the people you love. With something behind the scenes you can't always see.

Paul is writing near the end of his letter to the church in Ephesus, and he says something that probably stopped people in their tracks: "We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against... the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). Read that again. Paul isn't talking about your annoying neighbor or your difficult in-laws or even the person who hurt you last week. He's saying there's a bigger, unseen battle going on, and most of us have been aiming at the wrong target our whole lives.

Think about how easy it is to make people the enemy. Your spouse leaves the dishes in the sink again, and something in you thinks, "They're the problem." A coworker takes credit for your idea, and suddenly it's you against them. Even in your own head, you start keeping score, building a case, treating the people closest to you like the opposition. Paul says, hold on — that's not actually what's happening here. There's a real enemy, and it's not the person across the table from you.

That doesn't mean people's actions don't matter, or that hurtful behavior gets a pass. Paul isn't saying that. He's saying something deeper is often at work underneath the conflict — something patient, something strategic, something that would love nothing more than for you to spend your whole life fighting the people you're supposed to be fighting for.

This is why Paul tells the Ephesians to get dressed for battle. Not to attack their spouse or their coworker or their family, but to put on armor built for a completely different kind of fight. And here's the good news tucked into this passage before you even get to the armor part: you're not fighting this alone, and you're not fighting it in your own strength. Verse 10 says to "be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might." The power doesn't come from gritting your teeth harder. It comes from somewhere else entirely.

So before we dig into the armor piece by piece this week, just sit with this first idea: what if the tension you're carrying right now — in your marriage, your family, your friendships — isn't ultimately about the person you're frustrated with? What if there's something else going on that you've never been taught to name?

That's where we're starting this week. Not with blame. Not with fixing someone else. But with getting honest about who — or what — you're actually fighting.