{"id":318,"date":"2017-06-19T11:04:12","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T11:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/?p=318"},"modified":"2017-06-19T11:04:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T11:04:12","slug":"spiritual-world-surrounds-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html","title":{"rendered":"The Spiritual World Surrounds Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"unsplash.com\"
unsplash.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Years ago my wife and I took a vacation down to the Gulf Coast and did something we’d always wanted to do: parasailing. After being at the beach and enjoying the water for a few days, we ventured several hundred feet above the ocean to see if the view looked any different from up top, and boy did it.<\/p>\n

Besides the almost deafening quiet of sailing 400 feet above the water, my wife and I were at the same time transfixed and horrified by what we saw: jellyfish. Millions and millions of jellyfish, all near the surface, just pass the waves, an invisible barrier of pain waiting for hapless swimmers who ventured too far. Needless to say, my wife stayed by the pool for the rest of the week.<\/p>\n

In 2 Kings 6 the prophet Elisha is under attack by the enemies of Israel. Trapped in a city and surrounded by an army, Elisha still remains unnaturally calm. Finally he lets his servant in on a little secret:<\/p>\n

When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. \u201cOh no, my lord! What shall we do?\u201d the servant asked.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid,\u201d the prophet answered. \u201cThose who are with us are more than those who are with them.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

And Elisha prayed, \u201cOpen his eyes, Lord<\/span>, so that he may see.\u201d Then the Lord<\/span> opened the servant\u2019s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.<\/em> 2 Kings 6:15-17<\/span><\/p>\n

Are we like the servant, ignorant to the spiritual forces around us, naively playing in the surf with hidden dangers just out of reach? Or are we like Elisha, aware of the devil’s schemes and actively engaged in the spiritual war around us? Whether you see it or not, the spiritual world surrounds you. If you want to stop being a victim and start being a victor, look at your world\u00a0from a higher perspective, see the battle waging around you, and join the fight with the weapons given to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago my wife and I took a vacation down to the Gulf Coast and did something we’d always wanted to do: parasailing. After being at the beach and enjoying the water for a few days, we ventured several hundred feet above the ocean to see if the view looked any different from up top,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[188,187,189,19,190,56],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-next-steps","tag-devil","tag-enemy","tag-jellyfish","tag-satan","tag-spiritual","tag-spiritual-warfare"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Spiritual World Surrounds Us - Next Steps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My perspective of the ocean forever changed when I saw it from 400 feet up. How will your life change when you see the spiritual forces all around you?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Spiritual World Surrounds Us - Next Steps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My perspective of the ocean forever changed when I saw it from 400 feet up. How will your life change when you see the spiritual forces all around you?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Next Steps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"facebook.com\/drjoshdaffern\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-06-19T11:04:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/06\/michal-pechardo-215774-300x200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Josh Daffern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@joshdaffern\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Spiritual World Surrounds Us - Next Steps","description":"My perspective of the ocean forever changed when I saw it from 400 feet up. How will your life change when you see the spiritual forces all around you?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Spiritual World Surrounds Us - Next Steps","og_description":"My perspective of the ocean forever changed when I saw it from 400 feet up. How will your life change when you see the spiritual forces all around you?","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html","og_site_name":"Next Steps","article_author":"facebook.com\/drjoshdaffern","article_published_time":"2017-06-19T11:04:12+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/06\/michal-pechardo-215774-300x200.jpg"}],"author":"Josh Daffern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@joshdaffern","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html","name":"The Spiritual World Surrounds Us - Next Steps","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/06\/michal-pechardo-215774-300x200.jpg","datePublished":"2017-06-19T11:04:12+00:00","dateModified":"2017-06-19T11:04:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/#\/schema\/person\/8ac2e15479ad6a320d2082837203cb7c"},"description":"My perspective of the ocean forever changed when I saw it from 400 feet up. How will your life change when you see the spiritual forces all around you?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/06\/michal-pechardo-215774-300x200.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/files\/2017\/06\/michal-pechardo-215774-300x200.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/06\/spiritual-world-surrounds-us.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Spiritual World Surrounds Us"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/","name":"Next Steps","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Josh Daffern","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/#\/schema\/person\/8ac2e15479ad6a320d2082837203cb7c","name":"Josh Daffern","description":"Born and raised in California, Josh graduated college from California Baptist University and spent two years as a missionary in Africa before coming back to America and finding the love of his life (Robin). Josh graduated from New Orleans Seminary with a Masters of Divinity and a Doctor of Ministry. Josh has been involved in full-time ministry for over twenty years. He enjoys hiking, beach volleyball, reading, playing anything competitive, and rough-housing with his kids. Josh, his gorgeous wife Robin, his outrageously handsome boys Zeke, Shepherd and Lincoln and his princess Elle, live in northern Virginia. Josh also blogs on Patheos as New Wineskins: an Apologist for the Modern Church and you can find links to all his content on joshdaffern.com. Enjoy the blog!","sameAs":["http:\/\/joshdaffern.com","facebook.com\/drjoshdaffern","https:\/\/x.com\/joshdaffern"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/author\/jdaffern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}