Spiritual Warfare

Spiritual warfare, largely the frame Paul has in mind throughout Ephesians, comes to us in small and ordinary ways. The enemy is cunning — we often miss the small ways he attacks us because we are expecting noise and explosions.

As Paul notes, our trials come from both within and without. Inwardly we struggle to truly believe the Gospel: that I – even I! – am truly God’s beloved. Outwardly, we fail to accept and believe in one another. We accuse one another of faulty motivations and intentions without truly listening and understanding first. We become judges with evil thoughts. The enemy loves this! May we learn to put on the full armour of God, especially the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness – we must know in whom we stand or we will not stand for long.

Len Hjalmarson in a post called 90 Days, on the blog, NextReformation.

Knowing, loving another

To be intimate with another person, we must always be imagining the other’s feelings, hopes, desires. We have to imagine those desires as best we can, knowing all the while that we cannot ever know even our closest friends and beloveds completely.... The day we believe we know everything there is to know about our intimate beloved is the day our love will cease to grow. We can always go more deeply into the mystery of each other. There is always more to know. Stephanie Paulsell
“Friendship and Intimacy” in On Our Way