The other day my wife said something startling to me, and I’ve been chewing on it ever since. Perhaps you’d like to chew along.

Women, you see, have sensitivity to some things that men do not, and when they share these things we men too often disregard them. One of the most basic of these is smell. Women use perfumes and lotions and all kinds of aromatic things to both enhance their attractiveness, and help cover up what we males don’t pay enough attention to when we are with them, especially when the person needing the cover up is us. Even if men don’t care as much about bad smells, they learn that good smelling women are indeed attractive; certainly more than poor smelling ones.

But this isn’t about the smells of people, which makes it all the more difficult for us men to grasp, being out of our “nature.” Being alert to spiritual things is beneficial to both men and women, and in order to be alert one must be aware. If we aren’t careful we will discount the very possibility of a thing and then not notice it when it’s right in front of us. This can be a problem, spiritually, as you will understand by what my wife said:
While reading the morning paper, with all the international news of conflicts around the world and at home, and then pondering the terrible horror of human beheadings by Islamic radicals, my wife said: “There’s a strong smell of Satan in the air.”

What a curious comment I thought. In fact, it’s completely beyond my observational practices, and probably yours. Sure, there’s trouble almost everywhere, and the news makes us almost numb to it after awhile; we become de-sensitized to it all just to get through the day. We get to the place where we don’t even notice the “bad” things going on all around us; and don’t get involved, because it’s “none of our business.”

In the realm of things spiritual this is incredibly important. When we stop noticing evil, stop being aware of it, then we stop being alert to it, and, ultimately, lose the ability to discern spiritual things. The Bible informs us that we are either walking “in the Spirit” or “in the flesh,” so the difference is profound in both mental understanding and physical practice and outcome!

The reality that a spiritual environment exists must be comprehended. We need to be more keen on the ability to discern it, even through the senses, like an aroma! How often have we heard someone say “That really stinks” when referring to something that didn’t go the way they wanted? It makes sense, then, that evil has an aroma, that stinks, and that we can smell the presence of Satan.

Go ahead, chew on this and let the Spirit teach you more on the subject. Perhaps we can get better at spiritual discernment, and then awareness, and then alertness, and then victorious defeat of the enemy!