Patience is the power of God, anger the energy of evil.

If you surround yourself with love, only the truth can get through.

You are in this world, remember always, but not to be of it (John 17:16). (If you are, change now.)

Remember that this world and worldliness are in the thrall of the devil.

We’re here to love, with which we take back terrain from the devil.

When the mission is accomplished, we end up back above. We transcend.

The goal is to reflect God’s Kingdom while living in a temporary earthly home amidst the kingdoms of dark forces.

Look at earth as if you were dropped here to be tested and to battle in enemy territory, like a paratrooper.

We like the way a formerly wayward-now-strongly Christian comedian and “celebrity” named Russell Brand, admittedly once dark, puts it. “Forget the tyranny of those most powerful people in the world. Do not conform to the patterns of this world,” he recently said. “The evil one is in control of this world. We fight not against flesh and blood, but we fight significantly controlling the most powerful institutions in the world and that is not North Korea.

“There was a moment where a world that continually said no to me suddenly after decades said yes. Then I belonged to the world. Now I had to prove myself in the world. I had to make myself beautiful, lauded, and applauded, celebrated, adored.

“You don’t convert to Christianity. You let go of the false conversion of being in this world.

“Stop worshiping the world. You’re going to die. It’s all meaningless. I don’t want to be in any other conversation. I don’t want any of the world’s power anymore. I know how broken I am and how corruptible I am.

“As Saint Paul reminds us in Ephesians, we’re fighting against dark spiritual power.

“Do not conform to the patterns of this world. The evil one is in control of this world. We fight not against flesh and blood, but we fight against the authorities, the rulers, the dark heavenly powers. All these things are in there. My children, don’t worship false idols.

“In 2015, I thought I should be powerful. I made it about myself. I thought that I was fantastic and I got involved in my own thing. I thought individualism was our religion.

“It’s possible for us to return to absolute harmony with God. There are dark energies that are affecting us and impacting us and attacking us and significantly controlling the most powerful institutions in the world.

“And that is the story told in the Bible.

“At the point of first becoming famous, there was a kind of glory in it. And by true glory, I don’t mean personal glory, because anything that’s personal is not true glory at all. There was a moment where a world that continually said no to me suddenly after decades said yes. Suddenly the golden light was upon me. I was appearing on television. People were saying yes to book deals. I was in movies.

“I was experiencing abundant sex, for example, and as that took hold, that’s where I feel and see the presence of the tempter, the accuser, the fallen one,” says this man who was married to a “glamorous” actress. “The enemy requires our complicity. I did participate. I did participate in elevating false gods. I did allow sex to become a kind of idol, fame to become an idol, and neither of those things are possible if you don’t first fall into self. I consider sin to be ‘in self.’ I crawl upon the floor. I’m only a belly.

“We’re continually in the garden. And we’re continually observing Satan fall from Heaven like lightning because he wants his own kingdom.

“It’s an apostasy to be in this world. You don’t convert to Christianity; you let go of the false conversion of being in this world where you have been placed by the evil one, lured, tempted, hypnotized. We all understand the idea of the facsimile, the counterfeit, the simulation.

“You live in a synthesized reality in your own consciousness. We’re surrounded in every direction by endless miracles which we nullify through dumb orthodox science.

“You will move among demons, scorpions, and snakes and do great healings because your names are written in the book of Heaven. You are encoded. There’s a cross down in our DNA. There’s so much poetry in it.

“When you no longer belong to the devil, but belong to him, you no longer question why you are here.

“The main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. We’re meant to live here harmoniously with one another as one human family. The Author of reality entered into His own story. Without the Cross, without personal acceptance of Him, we’ll just end up critiquing without energizing. We’ll end up in dead tradition. We have to participate in the resurrection. He says, ‘I am the Resurrection.’“

“Prayer is to ensure that we establish such a strong connection with God that it can withstand the storm—that we can sleep in the storm with Him.”

[resources: books of devotion]