Welcome to the conversations that Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. It is good to be reminded once in a while.

More than that, every day, that a spiritual battle rages around us. Are you aware of that? You think to yourself, how often do I think and ponder or even just acknowledge the fact that around me is raging a battle between the forces of good and evil between God and the devil,

demons and angels, and we are tempted, we are caught in that, we are part of that.

We are soldiers in the Army of the Lord if we are truly

Christians we have a role to play in all this we are told to put on the full

armor of God we are told to submit to God resist resist the devil. And we know how the devil works, through

temptations, lust of the eyes, lust of the heart, pride of life. These are the same, I mean it's in tandem with the world. These are the

same things that the world tempts us with. And sin, the flesh, the world, the devil, we have that going on all around us.

Every day is a battle.

Now, every day is not just a battle.

There's other things going on in our days, but we are at war and it's good to just be reminded of that.

We tend to forget sometimes and we should enjoy life, we should enjoy the great blessings God's given us, absolutely. But we also need to remember, hey, we are at war. We do need to keep on guard because there are forces out there that want to destroy us, our families, the good things around us, our churches,

and the good things that even inhabit the culture, that are features of the cultures in which we inhabit. And so I wanted to just say that I felt like I needed to say that up front. What we're talking about today is not specifically related to spiritual warfare directly. But as I was going over some of this

material I just thought this is demonic this is just this is just evil and I think

whenever you talk about children and using children, manipulating children,

abusing children, I think the tendency, especially for Americans, is

just to be shocked by that or angry about it. is children are not valued in cultures where human life is children are valued and they're usually

valued because of their innocence, because of their ability to be corrupted, their need for protection.

They are, they have a special value and a special responsibility really

that attaches itself to the adults in any society

and the parents especially,

those who would influence a child. Jesus said himself

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