Skip to content The Nature of the Battle Oct 14 · 38 min ...more
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Dr. Tony Evans is the founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, founder and president of The Urban Alternative and author of over 100 books, booklets and Bible studies.
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0:00 There is no more relevant subject that I could teach than the subject of spiritual warfare, the mother of all wars. There is no battle that0:12 you could conceive of that can match, that could compete with the battle that you and I are engaged in. Even as I began to prepare, I was overwhelmed with all of the titular0:24 details involved in this massive conflict that you and I are a part of. It is either the source of your greatest joy or the cause of your deepest0:36 pain. This warfare that we're going to be discussing affects every area of your life and every individual in your life. There's no place to run, no place to0:47 hide. There is no bunker or foxhole that you can get into that will alleviate you from the repercussions of this battle. This is a battle like none you've ever thought0:59 of, conceived of, heard of, or interfaced with. Think of the worst battle in human history and its peanuts next to the battle that we will be discussing,1:12 this battle called spiritual warfare. Many of you know what it's all about even though you may not know that it's a warfare because you are 1 of its casualties. Perhaps you are an1:24 emotional casualty of this warfare. Discouragement, depression, downtroddenness, perhaps a sense of even split personality has affected you by this war.1:36 Many of us have been affected in our marriages by it. Divorce, conflict, being bruised and battered as children growing up in insensitive homes. You1:48 thought it was simply a problem of a bad mom and a bad dad. Now it was a problem of a bad war, and you and I are in the midst of that warfare. It affects us morally. It affects our2:00 ability to control our passions or to yield to those passions. Many of us did not know it, but our financial situation is directly related to losing the warfare,2:12 and we just thought it was related to the credit cards. When it is intricately tied to a battle that is raging beyond the scope of what you naturally think of. This battle affects2:24 us in our relationships, our friends, our coworkers. No matter where you run, where you try to hide, you are a recipient of the battle of the ages, the battle I simply call2:35 spiritual warfare. First of all, let me clarify the essence of this war. Let me state what this war is all about. What you2:47 must understand and I must understand is that this battle is at its core, at its heart, in its center spiritual. It is not first physical, it is first2:59 spiritual. So to the degree that you understand and I understand and relate to it on a spiritual level is to the degree that we can make sense of it and be3:11 prepared for it. Perhaps a definition will help. Spiritual warfare is that cosmic conflict in the invisible angelic3:22 realm that is being waged in the context of the visible physical realm. Let me say that again. When I use the term spiritual warfare, I am referring to3:35 a cosmic conflict occurring in the invisible angelic realm that is being flushed out, worked out in the very visible physical3:47 realm. Or to put it another way, the cause of the war is something you can't see. You are fighting in the context of an3:58 invisible battle that involves invisible beings yet they're taking it out on you and me. Now, it's hard enough to whip somebody you can see.4:11 It's even much harder to try to whip something you can't see. And at the core of this battle is something you can't see. Verse 12, our struggle4:22 is not against flesh and blood. But rulers and powers and world forces of this darkness against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly4:35 places. To put it another way, you and I are in a battle fighting beings we can't see, yet their effect on us we can see.4:48 Paul the apostle says, you make a grand mistake if you think people are your problem. He says in verse 12, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. That means4:59 people. As bad as people are, they are merely conduits of another battle. What Satan has done in slipping us a5:11 Mickey is he has successfully gotten us to fight people rather than that which is causing people to be the people that they are. All of us have been in situations trying to change5:22 people who are not doing right, maybe not understanding that the people who are not doing right by us could very well be under control of a person that they5:34 can't control. Until you and I learn to understand that what happens through people, that does not exonerate the wrong things that people do, but that what happens through5:46 people, through you, through me, through people upon us, has at its core something that is much grandier and grandiose than they are, and that5:58 is a whole spiritual battle. Now let me try to make sense of this because today I wanna set a foundation. Everything physical6:10 let me say this again. Everything physical is influenced, caused, or provoked by something spiritual. There is nothing that your6:22 5 senses partake of, your physical being, that is not generated and influenced by that which your 5 senses do not partake of,6:34 which means that if you're going to fight this battle, you need a sixth sense. You need something that goes beyond the obvious use of your physiology and the obvious6:46 use of your physical well-being. Daniel chapter 4 26 states that heaven rules what takes place on earth. Everything that takes place6:58 on earth was precipitated by something that took place in heaven. So that until you and I, listen now, can address the spiritual7:09 cause, we will never fix the physical effect. Now I'm hoping that the result of this series will save you some money because you'll perhaps7:21 stop spending money on physical solutions that don't start with a spiritual solution. Perhaps as a result of this series, I'll save you some time. Perhaps instead of spending7:33 all of your time on human man made solutions, you'll start with the spirit realm and get that to take care of the physical realm. Perhaps as a result of this series, we'll save you7:45 some relationships. Because instead of starting first with the wrong people have done to you, you'll start first with the wrong that the spirit world has done to the people who are doing wrong to7:57 you. When we understand that this is spiritually provoked, it affects our worldview. Now when I say worldview, that becomes an important word in this series.8:10 Worldview has to do with the lenses by which you perceive reality. When I say one's worldview, it has to do with the presuppositions that determine what you believe.8:22 Your worldview means how you look at life. Now there are only 2 real worldviews. There is a naturalistic worldview, materialistic, it's sometime8:33 called, and today, in modern America, we could even call it scientific worldview. This is the worldview, naturalistic, materialistic, scientific, that simply says8:45 that man, by his reason, can figure out how the world works. And so if you can put it in a test tube and look at it that way and it manifests itself and becomes a8:57 hypothesis and then you reduce it to a thesis, and you begin to work on it. That's all you need. It is naturalism or materialism or the scientific orientation that has led to9:09 agnosticism and atheism. That is you don't need God as long as you have a test tube. It is the naturalistic worldview, and the tragedy is that many of us as Christians have been lured into this9:21 worldview. Now we don't deny the other worldview. We just don't live by the other worldview. And when I talk about worldview, I'm not talking about what you're saying. I'm not talking about what you're9:32 thinking. I'm talking about how you're living. Because you determine a worldview by a person's behavior, not by a person's talk. I can say all day long, I believe in God. But if my walk9:44 doesn't walk like I believe in God, I don't really believe in God. I just know the right theological terminology to use to make everybody else think that I believe in God. Your worldview is9:56 always determined by your foot, never by your tongue. Now on the other side is the spiritual worldview. The spiritual worldview says that there is a realm10:08 that sits outside of this realm. There is, like some TV show says, another dimension. There is a world that this world reflects,10:20 but that is not at the core of what this world is. Now most people believe in some form of spiritual worldview. You know a person believes in this worldview when they pick up their newspaper10:32 and turn to the horoscope section. What they are looking for is something outside of this world, something in the stars out there that will emanate some spiritual principle that will govern their10:44 decision making today. People reflect a spiritual worldview when they go to their local palm reader and get somebody to look at the physical at the lines on their hands and come up with a spiritual way10:55 of determining how they're gonna be blessed, who they're gonna marry, who they're gonna meet next week, or even to get in touch with the dead. All of that is reflective of an attempt to get beyond the obvious11:07 physical environment in which we live and make a contact out there and beyond, to sort of reach out to some twilight zone sort of place and make contact with the other11:19 world. The problem with the spiritual worldview is that you can have a spiritual worldview, it's just connected with the wrong spirit. So until your spiritual worldview, the naturalistic view is not11:30 sufficient because it doesn't answer really any questions. It doesn't tell you who you are, why you are, where you came from. It doesn't give you the answer to the first cause, what got all this started. The naturalistic11:41 scientific worldview is limited. Science today is beginning to realize that scientific test tubes don't solve the moral crisis of the day. They don't keep teenagers from killing each other. They don't deal with11:53 this invisible part of man that has to be addressed. Why? Because this world is tied to another world that you can't see. So in order to understand this now, we have to understand its essence, and that is12:05 the battle in which you and I are engaged is essentially spiritual. However, even though it's spiritual in its cause, as I stated a moment ago, it is physical12:17 in its effect. In other words, the reason you know you're in a spiritual war is you are bleeding. The blood is real.12:29 You may not have seen the bullet, but the blood is real. And we are seeing it in 4 areas of life. Many of us are seeing it in personal lives. For many,12:40 personal lives are a disaster. And it doesn't mean that you're out there doing something real bad. It just could be that you have uncontrolled anger. Look at the relationship between your emotion or12:52 this emotion called anger and the spiritual war just by flipping back 1 page to chapter 4 verses 25 and 26. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each 1 of you with13:04 his neighbor for we are members of 1 another. Be angry and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Why? And do not give the devil an opportunity. Please notice13:16 he makes a correlation between the effect of uncontrolled anger and the opportunity granted the devil to take over a compartment of your life. Many of us are suffering13:28 today because of unresolved anger that never got dealt with yesterday, and we just think, well, you did me wrong when really Satan has gotten a hold of our emotions and has destroyed our ability to13:40 function because it's a spiritual opportunity that was granted by the devil. Many of us are facing it in our family lives. We're facing it all the way back to Adam and Eve. You know the first13:52 family was sucked in by the devil, but the bible even relates the devil to the sexual relationship between a husband and wife. He says in first Corinthians chapter 7 verse 5, stop14:03 depriving 1 another except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self control. He talks about the fact that when14:15 a husband and wife don't have a dynamic physical life, the devil is looking at that as an opportunity to come in and to bring about moral deterioration in the14:27 family. So it gets down to the raw everyday aspects of life. It affects the church. Paul told Timothy in first Timothy chapter 4 verse 1, he says, watch out for doctrines14:39 of demons that will infiltrate the church, and many a person is being led down the defeat in the spiritual warfare because they're listening to teachers that are teaching doctrine14:51 from hell. Just because somebody quotes the Bible doesn't make them okay. That you've gotta be able to do like Bereans did and check this stuff out and see if these things be so.15:02 Sometimes people say amen to stuff that's not even in the Bible simply because the person saying it was used in the Bible. He says that this thing affects the church. It even affects the culture. As we're gonna see as we15:14 go along in Daniel chapter 10, whole nations were being influenced by this invisible battle among the angels. Right now, you and I are in the midst of a war,15:26 and the head of this, Satan is called the prince of the power of the air. In other words, you breathe in this stuff. This stuff is in every compartment that you live in, and there's nowhere to run.15:38 Well, when you find out you're in a war, there's nowhere to run, then you better learn how to fight because that's the only way you're gonna survive. So the key to its essence is simply this, it is your ability to15:50 control and influence the spiritual realm that will determine victory or defeat in the physical realm. It is your ability to control or influence the spiritual16:01 realm that will determine victory or defeat in the physical realm. If you are in a war and you are, then your ability to deal with the spiritual realm16:13 will control whether you lose or win in the physical realm. And so what's Satan's job? Satan's job is to get you to not take the spiritual realm seriously. Because if he can16:25 divert you from the spiritual realm, he can divert you from the only place where a solution lies. Well, let's go from the absence of the battle, spiritual, to the location of the battle.16:37 What did the end of verse 12 say? Verse 12 says that this battle is raging in a certain place. It's called in heavenly places. There it is. In heavenly16:49 places. In the Bible, heaven is spoken of on 3 levels. 1 is the atmospheric heaven. That's the place where you and I live, the place of oxygen where we breathe, where we fly17:00 airplanes, the atmospheric heaven that embellishes this earth. But then we move from the atmospheric heaven to the cellular heaven, that is where the stars17:12 exist. That's called the second heaven. That is also where the angels reside because in the Bible, angels are called stars. So when you see the stars17:23 at night, that is to remind you of something other than just stars. God made physical stars because he created spiritual beings whose name was17:35 stars. So what God did was create spiritual beings, angels, spiritual stars, and gave you a physical reality to remind you of them, physical stars. But very few of us, when we see17:47 physical stars, think of spiritual stars, angels. And if when we thought physical stars, we think of spiritual stars, you'd know the kind of warfare you're up against because on a bright17:58 starry night, stars are all over the place. And that is precisely what we face when we face the stars of heaven or the angels of God or the angels of hell. Well,18:11 he said it takes place in heavenly places. The third heaven is the throne room of God. It's where God's throne is. That's where God's, office is, so to speak. It's where he operates out of. Look at the book of18:23 Ephesians very quickly, and let's look at how this phrase is used in the book. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every18:34 spiritual blessing, guess where, in the heavenly places. Now this verse says 2 things. It says, God the father is in the heavenly places, but notice what else it says. It says, your blessings are in the heavenly18:46 places. Now if you and I are in a war and we need blessing to win the war, and the blessings that we need to win are with the father who's over the war, and the blessings that we need to win are with the father18:58 who's in heavenly places. If you don't know how to get to heavenly places, you don't know how to get to the blessings to get the help to help you to win the war on earthly places. If you're battling Satan, you say, I'm19:09 facing Satan on Earth. Yeah. But your blessings are in heaven. And if you ever learn to take a trip there, borrow from your arsenal, and use them down here, you'll be a casualty of the war. Because the19:21 father is in heavenly places, and the blessings are in heavenly places. Look at chapter 1. He says in verse 19, in which is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe,19:33 these are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought about in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand of the father, where? In19:44 the heavenly places. Chapter 1 verse 3 says, the father is in the heavenly places. It says your blessings are in heavenly places. But chapter 1 verse 20 says that Jesus Christ19:56 is in heavenly places. Now if you need Christ's help in earthly places, you better know where Christ is hanging out. He's hanging out in heavenly places. So you better learn and I better learn how to take20:08 a trip there, find out what transportation we need to get there because that is the only place from there that gets the help in order to make it down here. So the father is in heavenly places. Our20:20 blessings are in heavenly places. Jesus Christ is in heavenly places. Let's look at what else is in heavenly places. Chapter 2 verse 6. And God has raised us, Christians, up with him and seated us with him20:31 in heavenly places in Christ. Now this is getting not better and better, but gooder and gooder. The father is in heavenly places. Our blessings are in heavenly places. Jesus20:43 is in heavenly places. But guess what? You and I are in heavenly places. You say, wait a minute. I'm here in church right now. I'm in a physical place, and that's the problem. If you only see where20:55 you are physically and never understand where you're supposed to be spiritually, you'll never be able to win the battle of spiritual warfare. He says that when you accepted Christ, you were21:07 transported to another zone. Even though your body is here, your spirit that should control your body is operating in a whole another location, heavenly places.21:19 Most of us not only not know where heavenly places is, we didn't know that we were supposed to be part of heavenly places. Well, that's who you are. And so as we learn about how heavenly places21:30 operate, now you can take control of earthly results because you can take control of the heavenly beings causing your earthly problems. So your father's in heavenly places. Your blessings are in heavenly places. Jesus21:42 is in heavenly places. You're in heavenly places. What else is in heavenly places? Chapter 3 verse 10. In order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers21:54 and the authority in heavenly places. Angels are in heavenly places. Rulers and authorities refer to angels. You say, why is that important? I'll tell you why it's important.22:06 Because it takes an angel to beat an angel. You see, if you got an angelic problem, you need an angelic solution. Now most of us have very little consciousness of angels. Why? Because they're not far22:18 part of our physical repertoire. But what you need to understand is that there is a battle going on, and God has a whole group of angels. When the bible says, the lord of hosts, that means the22:29 lord who is in military charge of an angelic core whose job it is to meet demonic action that is attacking you. When you say the devil is attacking me, it's22:41 probably not the devil because he can't be but 1 place at a time. He's not God, but he has a whole host of angels, which meant that he's got an angel called the demon with your name on it that he seeks after you to bring22:53 destruction in your life. Now if you've got a demon after you, you're no power for a demon. You need God to tell 1 of his angels to come meet 1 of your demons in order to23:04 neutralize him. So what you need to know is where these angels are located. They're in heavenly places. So if you need angelic help, but you don't have a heavenly mindset, then you don't know how to get to23:16 the help you need at the time you need it. So the father is in heavenly places. Your blessings are in heavenly places. Jesus is in heavenly places. You're in heavenly places. Angels are in heavenly places. What else is23:27 in heavenly places? Chapter 6 verse 12. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but rulers and powers and world forces of this darkness against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly23:39 places. The devil and demons are in heavenly places. So in other words, anything that hell makes wrong in your life has been caused by satanic activity that is23:51 operating in the same place where God is, your blessings are, where you are, where Jesus is, where the angels are, and where the demons are. In fact, from this book, everything24:03 is in heavenly places. So since everything is in heavenly places, you better get up from earth and learn to take a trip to heaven because that's where the action is. You say, but wait a minute, Evans. This is foreign24:15 to me. I don't understand that. Stick with me. Stay with me because as you see as we go through this, you can take a trip to heaven any old time you feel like it. Any old time you feel like it, you can take a trip to24:27 heaven. Why? Because you don't have to find it. You're already there. You are seated with him in heavenly place. It's not like you gotta pull out a road map. You are already there. The idea is waking up to where you24:38 are, not trying to find out where to go. You are already there because it all takes place in heavenly places. Let me try to quantify this concept a little bit more.24:51 Some years ago, we were in England, my wife and I, and, so we were in another country. We stayed in a hotel that was 1 block away from the American embassy.25:03 Now what is the American embassy? It's America on farmed soil. Embassies are sovereign territories. They belong to the country that they represent. They do not belong to the nation in which they're25:15 located. They are sovereign territories. If you wanna find out something about America, you can go to the American embassy. If you want help in a foreign country, you go to the American embassy. If you25:27 need protection, you go to the American embassy. In other words, the American embassy is a little bit of America located on foreign soil. That's what heavenly places is. Heavenly places is the embassy25:39 of God on foreign soil. It is the place where you can make contact with your homeland. You say, but my homeland is America. Well, no. You have a visitor's visa25:51 here. The Bible says that you and I are aliens, that we are passing through. This is not a permanent home. That what God wants you to do is to use your visa to stay here, but he wants you to live life26:02 like a Christian, like person who belongs really to a brand new nation, to a a whole another realm. So it has to do with the same concept. To put it another way, it's like Capitol26:14 Hill. You know, in Capitol Hill, you got the Republicans, you got the Democrats. They have 2 different philosophies, 2 different worldviews as far as government is concerned, and you get to vote on 1 or the other come26:25 election time. What is the job of each party? It is to bring you into their worldview. The Democrats want you to buy their worldview. The Republicans want you to buy their worldview. They want you to buy and vote in26:37 their leader so that their leader can push his particular administrative program. Well, there is a capital hill of the universe like there's a capital hill of the United States, and this is the26:49 place where there are 2 warring factions, the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of light. But my point is there's a Capitol Hill with 2 warring factions, and both parties want their king in charge. The kingdom of27:00 darkness wants Satan in charge. The kingdom of light wants Jesus Christ in charge, and you get to take a vote. All those who vote for Satan get to live eternally with him. All those who vote for Jesus Christ get to live27:11 eternally with him. Whoever you vote for is who you get to live with. So I only have to tell you 1 thing, make sure you vote for the 1 that's gonna win. Make sure you vote for the 127:23 that's gonna win because whoever you vote for but not only that, there are sometimes Democrats who vote Republican. There are sometimes Republicans who vote27:35 Democrat, and there's sometimes children of light who vote for the kingdom of darkness. There's sometimes Christians who don't vote for the kingdom of light, and so what27:47 happens? The effect of the kingdom of darkness comes on them even though they're part of the kingdom of light. And see, some of us been voting wrong. And who you vote for affects how things27:59 work out in your life. He wants to stock earth with heaven so you and I learn to shop so that we buy things that will bring heavenly benefit because the reason so many of us are sick all the time is we're shopping at the28:10 wrong store. We're picking up goods that don't belong to the kingdom of god. We're picking up good that belong to the kingdom of the devil and wanting to know how come I'm sick all the time because the devil knows how to28:21 make a generic label. He knows how to make a generic label. So you pick it up because it looks cheaper. You pick it up because it looks like it's more fun, but long term, it'll make you sick. It'll make you spiritually28:33 sick. And you wanna know what's wrong with shopping at the wrong store. God has his own shops in town selling his own produce. We've gotta learn to shop at those locations. He moves and he says, the essence of the battle28:44 is spiritual. The location of the battle is heavenly. The source of the battle is Satan. He is the commander in chief. Look at Revelation chapter 12.28:58 This depicts a day when the war will break out in a very visible form like never before, but I just wanna show you 1 thing. I wanna show you 1 thing in Revelations 12 verse 7. And there was29:09 war in heaven. Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon, and the dragon and his angels waged war. K? You got an29:21 angelic conflict. And they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of29:33 old, who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. You got Michael29:45 and the good angels. You got Satan and the bad angels, and guess who they're fighting? 1 another, but guess what they're fighting over? This whole world that is being deceived. So there is a29:57 war in heaven that affects the deception that is going on on earth. We are in the midst of an angelic conflict, a satanic rebellion in which Satan is seeking to30:09 wrap this whole world in this war. And so when you're born, you are born into a war. You say, I don't wanna be born into a war. Well, neither do the kids in Israel. But soon as they come out of their mother's womb,30:19 they're born into a war torn nation because surrounding them are people who disagree with them, and the battle is very simple. If you go to Israel with the with the argument, you know, they got a lot of different aspects30:30 to it, but it boils down to 1 thing, land. I can give you a 1 word issue in the Middle East. It's about land. Whether it is a battle on the West Bank or the Golan Heights or the Gaza30:42 Strip, it's all about land. 1 word, land. Well, what is this cosmic battle about? I'll tell you. Glory. Who's gonna get the glory?30:54 Like 1 1 word, glory. And you will find that's a very important word in this series, glory. It boils down to who is gonna get the glory. Satan31:05 says, God, you can't have all this glory by yourself. Share some of this glory. God says in response, I share my glory with31:17 nobody. Satan responds, you're gonna share some glory with me. And he argues, let's go to war. And the war boils down31:29 to who will get the glory. And so Paul the apostle says to you and me, don't forget what this battle is all about. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the31:40 glory of God because that is the heart of the battle. It boils down to the word glory. Who will receive the glory? That is the essence of this battle.31:52 What is Satan's strategy? What is Satan's strategy? Let me show it to you right quick. Second Corinthians talks about in Ephesians 6 the schemes of the devil. Look at32:04 second Corinthians. I wanna look at 2 passages. 1 is chapter 2 verse 11. He says, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.32:16 So he says Satan has a plan. Now look at chapter 11 verse 3. But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceive Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led32:28 astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. He says, Satan's issue is deception, as the serpent deceived Eve. If you wanna32:40 understand Satan, if you wanna understand what he's trying to do in your life, he's trying to trick you. It boils down to that. He is good at making you think he's God, and God is not God.32:52 And he can give you a good time doing it too. So his issue is deception. Back to Ephesians 6. Here's all you need to know. Verse33:03 10, finally, that means in conclusion, let me give you the bottom line. Be strong in the Lord33:16 and the strength of his might put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to, guess what, stand firm against what? The schemes of the33:28 devil. You don't have to read it now, but acts 26 18 says, anybody who comes to Jesus Christ is delivered from the domain of the33:39 devil. Acts 26 18 says, when you receive Jesus as savior and decided to follow him as Lord, God set you free. You say,33:51 well, good gracious, since he set me free, why am I still in jail? Because you've been used to being in jail so long, you don't know how to walk out when the door flies open. You've been used to34:03 being in bondage. He says, God, he whom the son sets free is free indeed. You say, but I try to fight the devil and I lose. That's exactly right. Because34:15 verse 10 says, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. It is when God fights the battle for you, not when you fight the battle for you34:27 that you win against the evil 1. Lack of victory. I mean lack of problems. Everybody has problems. I don't mean lack of failure. Everybody has failure. But inability to move out of the34:38 problems, inability to get out of the failure, lack of victory reflects a lack of understanding of divine resources. Satan wants to detach us from dependency34:50 on God. Listen. When you are in a war, the government only takes care of soldiers, not civilians. Did you hear that? When a country's in a war,35:02 the government takes care of soldiers, not civilians. We have too many Christian civilians and not enough Christian soldiers. If you are a Christian soldier, the government that you're fighting35:14 for has to put clothes on your back, food on your stomach, and bullets in your gun because you're a soldier. But if you're a civilian if you're a civilian, then you are on your own because you're not part of this35:26 battle. Some of us wanna jump in a soldier's uniform when we run into a problem rather than understanding you're not supposed to take off your soldier's uniform, soldier. You're in a35:37 war. You're in a war. And so from now to next time, what I want you to do is I want you to say, Lord, I am facing Satan in these areas in my life. These are the defeating areas. My35:49 personal life, family life, church life, societal life, these are the areas that he is attacking me. I can't beat him. He is too much for me. You get these people going around in these spiritual warfare36:01 boot camps, and they go around talking to the devil. I rebuke you, devil, in the name of Jesus. Devil, don't go anywhere because he knows you're nothing. He knows that that little that little word coming36:13 out your mouth won't do a thing to him. It's like me telling Mike Tyson, I rebuke you in the name of my fist. So what? That's got nothing to do with nothing because I can't handle somebody who can fight36:25 that well. But the bible says in Jude, when Michael the archangel came up against Satan, even Michael, angel number 1, wouldn't even fight Satan 1 on 1 because Satan's too36:36 strong. So it said, Michael said, I rebuke you in the name of the lord Jesus Christ. So when you fight the devil this week, instead of finding out how strong you are, tell36:48 god how weak you are. Instead of arguing you can, tell God you can't. Instead of trying to say, but I know that I have the ability, tell God I don't have the ability. But say, because I know37:00 you, because I trust you, because you can do what I can do. My faith is in you to do to him what I could never do to him on my own. And then you'll begin to see the Lord's37:12 strength, the Lord's power, the Lord's ability, the Lord's tenacity in dealing with the devil in your life. You're in a war, but Christ has given us the victory.37:23 Put on your fatigues. Put on your boots. Pick up your gun. It's showtime. It's time to beat some battles in your life. Win some wars in your37:34 family. Win some victories in your home. That's what god wants.
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