Life Is Connection, Death Is Separation: The Real Spiritual Warfare

"This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." (John 17:3, NKJV)

When Jesus prayed this the night before He went to the cross—in what we call His high priestly prayer—He wasn't talking about going to some far-off planet called heaven when you die. He was talking about something available right now, right here.

Eternal life isn't about grasping for heaven through good works or saying the right prayer or jumping through a million religious hoops.

Eternal life is knowing the Father.

The word there for "know" in the Greek is ginosko—it means a full knowledge, to experience, to have intimate awareness, to connect with. It means intimacy. Into-me-see.

This is life: connection with God, intimacy with Him, face to face and heart to heart.

And if life is connection, then by definition, death is separation.

The Enemy's Only Strategy

When you die physically, your soul separates from your body. When you die spiritually, your soul separates from God, your Creator.

Life is connection. Death is separation.

This is the framework for understanding all of spiritual warfare.

Our adversary, Satan, does not care how we divide or separate or why we do—just that we do. He doesn't care if it's through a lie, a wound, religion, works, addiction, or anything else. As long as we disconnect—first from God, then from each other—he wins.

Our power comes from our unity. Therefore, his strategy has always been divide and conquer.

This first played out in the Garden of Eden. Before the fall, the last statement about Adam and Eve is this: "They were both naked and were not ashamed" (Genesis 2:25, NKJV). That was their identity. That was their creation. They were made in God's image and in His likeness. They were to be one—with each other and with Him.

In the Garden, which means paradise, there were two trees. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One tree brought life; the other tree brought death. "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17, NKJV).

They had a choice between life and death. Connection or disconnection.

And the choice was theirs, because love has to give you a choice or it's not love. If God just made them robots who couldn't choose, we would not be partners. We would not have intimacy. We would have a servant-slave relationship, and that's not what He wanted.

He wanted family. He wanted His bride, His child, His son, His daughter. The whole point is intimacy. We were created for Him to be in a loving relationship with us—actually to be one.

The Original Disconnect

Satan came to them with a lie: "If you want to be like God, do something outside of yourself."

What was the problem with that? They already were like God—made in His image and in His likeness.

So first, they doubted who they were. "Oh, I'm missing something. I'm not enough. God's holding out on me. God can't be trusted."

And even before they took of that fruit, they were already assessing good and evil. They sinned without a sin nature—free choice. They chose death by reaching outside of themselves and apart from Him to become something they already were.

The problem was that when they fell, "the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings" (Genesis 3:7, NKJV).

Now being naked, they were ashamed. They heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day to visit with them, and they hid. They separated even more.

Did God come to them with wrath? Did He say, "You're dang right you should be afraid! I'm going to teach you what you should be afraid of, you dirty rotten sinners"?

No. He went toward them with compassion and asked, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9, NKJV)

The separation was on their side of the equation, not on His. He moved toward them, not away.

We're Wired for Connection

Here's what's crucial to understand: We are biologically and neurologically wired for connection. That's how God created us. It's a biological, emotional, and psychological need.

If a baby is left untouched, it will die from something called failure to thrive. Literally, they're not getting enough touch, enough holding, enough connection. Connection isn't a luxury—it's life.

Most of us have experienced the pain of rejection, though. And the thought of being connected becomes fearful. We feel like we're not enough, and we feel like the risk is too great to risk being seen or known by other people. So we only go so far.

We go through motions, being roommates for life or surface-level friends. "How you doing, buddy?" "Good! Blessed and highly favored!" But we don't stick around to see what's really going on, because "You may not love me if you knew how hard my life was."

But that's how we fix things—we get involved and become intimate with each other.

I grew up in a dysfunctional home. Alcoholic dad, mom who checked out, left alone physically and emotionally. I did not learn how to connect well. But as a baby, I was not born missing the connection gene. I was not born a dirty rotten sinner. I was born and created perfectly by my heavenly Father.

I was biologically and neurologically wired for connection. I was made in the image and likeness of God. He did not create me to be bad by my own nature.

But when you're raised in a fallen world, in brokenness, you learn to disconnect. You learn to numb out. I started smoking as a very little girl, a pack a day by nine, addicted by eleven. Drugs, alcohol—it was all a way of numbing myself and disconnecting from the pain.

And when you're doing that kind of stuff, you find other people who are doing it too. So now you belong. You found a crowd you could fit in. But were they healthy relationships? No. We were all disconnecting together.

What Destroys Intimacy

With the fear of not being enough, we develop internal anxiety and internal anger. We become angry or anxious on the inside, which leads people to start controlling and manipulating.

And you cannot be intimate with people who are controlling and manipulating. You cannot be intimate with people who are not loving and safe.

Boundaries are healthy. If you're with people who aren't safe, you need boundaries. But we can't create walls with the Lord—He's actually safe if we know who He is.

We can't be intimate with people who are selfish. Selfishness destroys intimacy. God is love, and by definition, love is other-centered and self-giving. It is not self-centered and self-taking.

Coercion and power struggles destroy intimacy. Lack of trust destroys intimacy.

Let me tell you, I counsel a lot of people, and trust is built and destroyed in the smallest of things. Those little foxes spoil the vine (Song of Solomon 2:15). When you cannot trust, you start to build up walls of self-protection, and you disconnect.

Remember: the enemy just wants us to divide. This is spiritual warfare. Connection is life; separation is death.

The Last Enemy

Paul writes in Romans 5:12, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned" (NKJV). Death—separation—spread to all.

Adam separated. Eve separated. They raised children who were separated. We all grew up separated to some degree. We did not learn how to connect well in broken families and a broken world.

But in 1 Corinthians 15:26, Paul also says, "The last enemy that will be destroyed is death" (NKJV).

Life is connection. Death is disconnection. Life is intimacy. Death is separation.

How do we defeat that last enemy? By staying connected with the Lord.

Breaking the Barriers

So what are the barriers to intimacy?

Shame says, "I'm not enough."

Fear says, "God's not good enough—He's not safe, He can't be trusted."

We break shame by coming into agreement with who God says we are.

We break fear by understanding who He really is.

I needed to start trusting more in His ability to communicate than in my ability to hear.

And then it was okay if He talked to me through a sunset, through a word, through a Bible verse, through a friend. Now I can see Him in everything, because "in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28, NKJV).

I don't disconnect. It's not like I have my prayer time and then the rest of my life. My work is worship. Doing the dishes is worship—He's doing them with me.

The Simplicity of Connection

We don't have to strive or reach outside ourselves to gain the thing we really need. We already have it.

This is eternal life: that we know Him. That we stay connected.

He is good, and He loves you. And when you were at your worst—hiding, ashamed, afraid—He moved toward you, not away. He covered you. He pursued you. The separation was never on His side.

Even on the cross, when Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46, NKJV), He was quoting Psalm 22—and if you read that whole psalm, verse 24 says, "For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from Him; but when He cried to Him, He heard" (NKJV).

He never turned His face away. He would never leave you nor forsake you. Never.

Life is connection. Death is separation.

Choose life. Stay connected. Let Him love you.

That's how we win the real spiritual warfare.

Where have you experienced disconnection—from God or from others? What would it look like to choose connection today? Share your story in the comments below.

Blessings,
Susan 😊