Conversation: Kenny Luck
Christian, know your enemy
Kenny Luck is founder and president of Every Man’s
Ministries as well as men’s pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.
He says his new book, Fight, isn’t merely designed to help equip Christians to
understand the offensive nature of spiritual warfare, but also to fully grasp
the reality of evil on earth. Luck recently spoke with TPE News Editor John W.
Kennedy.
tpe: Spiritual warfare isn’t a common theme for Baptist
pastors.
LUCK: I classify myself as a Bapticostal. But people in
churches in general — from Baptists to Pentecostals — need to
discern evil on a daily basis, how to attack it in a New Testament way. We need
to know about evil and its origin. We need to understand the targets of its
energy — which are us and the Church. We need to recognize the character
of evil, Satan’s organization and patterns. In the Gospels, Jesus always
addresses the responsibility and accountability believers have in combating
Satan’s strategies.
tpe: Why do you believe most Christian men aren’t engaged in
the fight?
LUCK: It’s a combination of things. Gender aside, most
believers respond more culturally than biblically in terms of our intellectual
perception of evil. But we must be people of the Word. We cannot love God and
not love His Word. There is an amazing passion externally for Christ, but
internally there is a low commitment to study, integrate and assimilate God’s
Word functionally.
tpe: Do people understand that Satan is ultimately behind
the misery in our lives, including failed relationships?
LUCK: The Bible says Satan is the ruler of this present
world. He has at his disposal an organization that works overtime to tempt and
persecute. But some men and women think all they can do is talk about it: “Wow,
we’re having a bad day,” or “Why is our family falling apart?” Satan wants to
keep men out of the Word. If he can’t make them bad, he’ll make them busy so
that they are ignorant and ineffective.
tpe: Does warfare terminology scare a lot of men?
LUCK: I think so. Many times these core truths go over
peoples’ heads. But there’s no such thing as evolution of weapons in spiritual
warfare. In Luke 4, Jesus squeezed off a few rounds of the Word of God. As a
baseline, people must have the Word of God in their hearts and know what it’s
for.
tpe: How do people view Satan?
LUCK: There are three categories: over-belief, sort of
believe and don’t believe. For those who over-believe, there is a demon under
every rock, and Satan is behind every negative circumstance. In reality,
sometimes it’s just life’s circumstances, but those episodes create negative
emotions, and that’s when Satan goes to work.
The majority of evangelicals are “sort of” believers. They
know there is evil, they feel the tension inside themselves and in the world,
but functionally they live as a nonbeliever regarding evil. That sort of believer
filters circumstances with human solutions. Even though cognitively they know
there is good and evil, they don’t incorporate the dynamic of evil in a
real-time functional way.
tpe: What should our attitude toward Satan be?
LUCK: Know that he has a visceral hatred toward you. Know
that he exists to destroy all that God loves. If the Bible has authority in
your life, wake up every day with the knowledge that evil exists and that Satan
has a deliberate campaign against you. When did he go after Christ? When He was
isolated, lonely, fatigued. Satan goes to work when we’re at a low state or at
a loss because that’s when we’re vulnerable. He’s an opportunist.
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