The lights, the buildings, the shows, the glamour; it’s quite the city, this city of Las Vegas.  I have been spending the last few days here teaching at a Youth With A Mission Discipleship Training School.  These courageous young warriors have chosen to train on the front lines, in the heart of the battle ... in Sin City as it’s appropriately called.  A city that is proud of its vices.  The neon lights advertising riches with a role of the die,  the shows offering to satisfy every kind of primal fantasy, the girls for hire delivered discreetly to your room; it is very much a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

And yet, it also has its redeeming qualities, like the fountains at the Bellagio, and the architecture of the ‘strip’, as well as just the excitement of a large city.  It was that part of Vegas that my son Josiah and I wanted to experience while we were here.  And so, we spent an evening on Las Vegas Boulevard.

We talked about the vices:  the men and women offering pictures of unclothed women with phone numbers on every street corner; the results of the city, seen in the homeless beggars on the streets; but we also talked about the beauty of this place, this city of lights in the desert.  And we were careful.  We were careful to look away, to ‘bounce’ our eyes away from those images that were less than honorable.  We were careful to not allow thoughts to linger in our minds and to remind ourselves that life was not found there. It was a good evening, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Perhaps that is why I was so surprised the next morning as I asked Jesus what he had for me this day, that he revealed a blackness, a dark filth that had covered my heart.  It wasn’t that my heart was black, but rather that something evil and malicious was suffocating it.  I knew immediately what it was.  It was this place, or rather a spirit of this place.  I began praying, inviting in the Holy Spirit and speaking in the authority that is mine by Jesus’ sacrifice, resurrection and ascension against this evil.  It took time, it took battle, but it slowly left.  I could see my heart again, my restored heart that Christ had given me.  It could breathe again, and I invited Jesus to fill it anew with his Spirit.

You see, we are spiritual beings.  Our spiritual natures are actually much truer of us than our physical, and so Paul instructs us to ‘fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.’ (2 Cor 4:18).  What I did on the strip, the looking away, the refusal to dwell on the lies, was the right thing to do … but it was not enough.  It kept me alive in the battle for sure, but it did not treat the long term affects of the radiation poisoning.  I needed to be decontaminated.

And I suspect that I need this decontamination much more than I realize.  Sure, Vegas presents a clear picture of malevolence, but our enemy in everywhere.  He thrives among us much as a virus infects our bodies, slowly doing its work until we are so overwhelmed with it, until we have nothing left to fight with.  As such, I believe that I need to learn to daily go before my Savior and ask that question:  where has the enemy infected me?  And then, do battle there.

Because, what happens in Vegas … happens everywhere.

To the King,

David