Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

A friend today was sharing a painful experience. A person was causing great pain for him in a family situation. The situation seemed solvable but this one person just would not let go f their position. His description of this person and the pain was that of a screw.

I saw something in this and shared this insight. The situation was the screwdriver, it was driving the screw deeper and deeper into the struggle. What my friend needed to pray about was not the removal of the screw, nor was it the removal of the screwdriver. It was the unseen hand that turned the situation into a painful situation for him.

So often we blame a person for the pain they cause. People, like screws, are driven by circumstances. Even if you can get past the blaming of the person and recognize the situation, we want to fix the situation, which may or may not affect the screws position. People do not get over these things just because circumstance change for a moment.

The enemy of Ephesians 6:12 will change tactics and use another situation, another screwdriver to drive that screw once again. So what is to be done for everyone involved if this is the case?

Change the hand from the enemy to the Lord’s hand. The Lord will use His circumstances to back out the screw and relieve the pain.

Our first best answer to painful situation should be to pray the Lord will grab hold of the situation of make things right.

Isaiah 60:17b I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness.

Which is my way of saying, back off Satan, Jesus is in charge here.

Ephesians 1:18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,

Today I would like to relate life and spirit. It centers around my recent cataract surgery. I had the worst eye done first. It was the eye that posed me the most problems. My other eyes still has cataracts and remains damaged by that condition.

When I went to the ophthalmologist I did not know I had cataracts. They formed slowly, impairing my vision a little at a time. It was not obvious that it was forming. Now that I have had my right eye done, what is left in the other eye is obvious. I can see the effects of the cataracts by closing my right eye.

I cannot wait to have the other eye done.

What Ephesians 1:18 does say is that just because your understanding is enlightened, it does not mean you don’t still see sin in your life. Sin creeps into life like cataracts, hiding the truth of its effect little by little until the Holy Spirit points it out. Then is confession and conversion, the most dangerous sin is removed.

But sin, like the cataracts in my left eye still is part of our lives until it is finally removed. It remains until we are perfected into our resurrected form. Until then, we have to deal with it. We have to see it for what it is and believe the truth over that part of us that can still see sin.

1 John 1:7-10 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

See it, deal with it, be done with it, until that day when we are transfigured into His likeness.