Bill Murphy sits down with Peter Ackerman, Sunday School teacher at LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church, for a discussion about spiritual warfare.
BM: Hi Peter. I have a few short questions for you. First, what is the name of your church?
PA: LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
BM: Do you hold an official office there?
PA: Technically, Sunday School teacher. I was a deacon. We have three-year terms. I came off council a year and a half ago. But I taught Sunday School, 3rd and 4th grade, for probably six years. This is my first year of teaching 11th and 12th grade Sunday School.
BM: I’ve heard that you’re doing something special with high school students in your church regarding spiritual warfare. What is it?
PA: Yeah, we have been taking our 11th and 12th graders through the Book of Ephesians this entire year. We started in August/September of last year, worked out way through the first five chapters of Ephesians and then decided our next section was going to be on spiritual warfare. Obviously, Ephesians 6’s the armor of God, the breastplate of righteousness, etc. So, I thought we could use that to launch into a study of spiritual warfare. I’ve been doing a lot of research and reading into what God’s divine family looks like, using Isaiah and Psalm 82 and some of those other passages. Joel Muddamalle came out with a book called The Unseen Battle which kind of builds on Michael Heiser’s work. So, I’ve been reading, over the course of the last six months, and I thought it would be interesting to have a conversation with them [11th and 12th graders] about that, but using Ephesians 6 and the armor of God as the practical way we can battle this.
BM: Sounds fascinating.
PA: I’ve been using J.P. Pokluda’s Your Story Has a Villain as our guide, with Ephesians 6 as the text. So, we’re starting with the practical defense, and how does the Holy Spirit equip us, how do we put on the armor of God, equip ourselves with those things through prayer. And then we’ll go into What is the spiritual family? What does this passage in Genesis mean about the Nephilim and the sons of God? What does spiritual rebellion look like?
BM: Sounds thorough.
PA: It is. We’ll also talk about Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Who is this Baal? Is he a fallen angel? So, we finished the real practical “Here’s what I’m sure about: we have these tools available and there’s a battle around us.” But now we’re moving into this “Here’s conversation I’m guiding, but I don’t have the answers.”
BM: Tell me more about the J.P. Pokluda book.
PA: There is Pokluda’s book, and a Bible study guide, and video teaching. And we did use the video teaching. We would watch a 15-minute video and then have a discussion following that.
BM: Here’s the really big question: How are people reacting to what you’ve been teaching?
PA: It’s definitely sparked a lot of conversation.
BM: I can imagine.
PA: The conversations have been around, “What does spiritual warfare look like?” If you recall, in the preface to The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis wrote, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” My goal is to get those kids to be somewhere in the middle.
BM: How do you do that?
PA: Like, if you walk out to your car on a Sunday morning and the battery is dead, did a demon drain your battery? Or did you leave the lights on? There are influences – the urges that we have, mental images and thoughts that cause us to doubt ourselves or everything we’ve been taught. Who is that whispering in your ear? We tell you to listen to the still, sweet voice of the Holy Spirit. But if it’s giving you direction that doesn’t align with the Bible, whose voice is that?
BM: This leads into the last question I’ll ask you, which is this: Why do you believe spiritual warfare is real? Have you ever had experiences in your own life that would lead you to believe that?
PA: Yeah. I’ve had experiences. Like a lot of people, when they leave their home and go off to college, you start to have more visibility to the vices of the world. Like, you start to see things you that wouldn’t consider when you were younger, and now consider them as a possibility, and so some of the decisions that I made when I was in college, I chose to do things other than…
BM: Such as?
PA: Well, like, “You don’t need to get up Sunday morning and go to church.” I think that’s an easily overlooked aspect of spiritual warfare. That’s the demonic world trying to separate you from the Body of Christ. In a physical way. It’s like during COVID. You start to think, “Hey, church is not important. Watching church online is the same thing as going to church.” It’s not the same thing as going to church. One of the things that Satan uses is to separate you from the Body of God. And my dad would say to me, “You need to go to church because you are not to forsake the gathering of believers.” [Hebrews 10:25.] And I’d be, like, “Well, I’m here at the lake with family. We’re all believers. And, so, I am doing it.” He’d respond with, “No. Corporate worship is a command.” So, for me, when I was in college Satan convincing me that I didn’t have to go to church was a form of spiritual warfare. I think gathering with the Body is super important. That’s one of the biggest examples in everybody’s life: the tug of war in your mind on Sunday morning. Do I get up and go to church?
BM: I totally get that.
PA: Right? And I think that resonates with the kids. Because at 17, 18, they’re having that conversation. So, I ask them, “Why don’t you want to get up? Why do you think church is boring? Why will you sit and stare at your phone for an hour rather than to get up and worship?” When they start to think about it in that way [as a form of spiritual warfare] and realize that there’s someone actively trying to separate them from the Body of Christ, I think they get it. So, we’ve been talking about prayer and how we can ask the Holy Spirit to equip us with the armor of God. The church talks a lot about prayer. But it doesn’t always say much. I think we need to have a serious discussion about how to have a strong prayer life as a part of spiritual warfare.
Bill Murphy, MS Communication (Grand Valley State University), MA Apologetics (Luther Rice College & Seminary) loves reading broadly, researching deeply, listening to music of many types and genres, and writing about theology, music, movies, culture, and anything else that catches his interest. He lives in West Michigan with his wife, Beth, and his cat, Larry.