Wolves, faith, and trophic cascades

Problems are God’s tool to teach us how to fight.  Fighting God’s way requires extreme faith.  Extreme faith brings about extreme blessings.  Extreme blessings don’t just bring us personal joy, they create lasting changes that infect others around us with the same faith.  We human beings are comfort-seeking creatures and will only fight if we feel forced – and even then, we’ve been known to avoid fighting and just tolerate evil.  There’s no way around it, God’s great love and mercy includes permitting negative forces to attack us to spur us on to a fighting spirit.  The sooner we react in faith, the sooner the victories and the more extreme the blessings.  

In nature, scientists call that progression of effects a trophic cascade.  A predator high on the food chain is removed from an ecosystem, and all the other levels of plant and animal life are vastly effected because of it.  In spiritual terms, it works the same way in our fallen and sinful world where the devil is considered the “prince of the powers of the air.” (Ephesians 2:2)  Not only we, but all of nature longs for the day when evil will finally be destroyed, but until then we need to fight.  Not because God is powerless and “needs” us – but because on our own we are powerless and need Him.  In the spiritual ecosystem where we are living now, our survival depends on how much we live by faith, and how much we engage in spiritual warfare.

God’s great tenderness and care at times has to come through the discipline of enemy attacks.  He never abandons us, even though the devil does his best to convince us so.  We are to fight evil, but to respect the fact that these deserts and battlefields for our own good.  Why begrudge God of the very thing we need to wake us up?  

For Christians who waste a lot of time wishing they could live a problem-free life, who harbor resentment towards God as they trudge through a war zone, remember that victory is waiting for you.  It’s all in how you react with a fighting faith.  A faith that stubbornly refuses to believe that God would ever fail you, that stubbornly holds to the truths of His word, and stubbornly insists, day and night, that the demons behind all of your attacks are bound up and defeated in Jesus’ name.  

The first victory in this trophic cascade is the eradication of your victim mentality, and replacing it with a warrior’s vision.  The next victory is God’s sign that your prayers are being received and answered, even before you see the answer completely fulfilled.  Then more and more victories come, spread over the time that you need to persevere.  This cascade begins spiritually, but affects you emotionally, physically, in your marriage, your family, your friends, your community.  Be very careful not to become bitter, to blame God, or to wait passively for the problems to just disappear.  They are His tools to refine you.  

These are the nations the Lord left in order to test Israel, since the Israelites had fought none of these in any of the wars with Canaan. This was to teach the future generations of the Israelites how to fight in battle, especially those who had not fought before.  (Judges 3:1-2 HCSB)

These truths can be seen in His creation.  Even with dangerous predators, God’s sovereign love for His world is evident.  Watch this video below and see how He reveals this truth in nature today.