The enemy does not want you to trust God. I believe the primary way the enemy undermines our trust toward God is by disparaging His character. The devil wants to make God look bad. The goal of Luciferianism is to undermine God's character by persuading mankind to question the character and benevolence of God.
What is spiritual warfare? Are you battling demons? Do you fight to make them obey Jesus? Do you tie them up and send them to the abyss? Or do you battle your own thoughts to believe the truth and resist the enemy?
Yes, we do wrestle with demons, but not in our own flesh and blood strength. The weapons of our warfare are not physical, they are spiritual and soulish. They are spiritual in that we stand in our authority in Christ and they are soulish because we are to put off thoughts that are in line with demonic trickery.
The way you fight or wrestle a demon is by reminding yourself who you are in Christ and being confident in Christ's power in you. You simply stand firm in your trust in the power of Christ, and the enemy must flee from you.
In no way can you fight a spiritual being, but you can stand still in peace, fully persuaded of the supremacy of Christ. Then, when your heart is confident in who Christ is in you, you will yield to his grace to strengthen you to resist the lies and deceptions the enemy brings your way.
Why do demons exist? Where did they come from? Genesis 6 and Jude tell us that a group of fallen angels, called the Watchers, mated with human women and gave birth to a corrupt species of creature called the Nephilim. The Nephilim were giants that sought to rule and defile mankind. The Watchers taught mankind all sorts of perverse mystical secrets which eventually led to the great flood in the days of Noah. The Watchers that fell are now in chains but the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim still roam the earth today seeking to oppress and defile humanity. But Jesus had other plans.
I rarely write to you about our ministry but I felt like this would be a good time because there is so much happening. I wanted to tell you about a few things; the growth of Forward Church, our focus on content creation, working with Jim Richards, teaching at Charis Bible College with Andrew Wommack, and the increase of Forward Ministries.
From the beginning of time, God has desired to be with his people. He walked with Adam in the garden. He asked Abraham to build a tabernacle. He asked Moses to build a temple. And through Christ, God now lives in his people. God has always had the desire to walk among his people, enjoy their presence and lead them to be a blessing to the nations of the earth. You are the fulfillment of his desire, you are the holy nation through which he is seeking to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
Prayer is the secret weapon of the believer if done so from the proper perspective. If you pray "if it be thy will" prayers, I wouldn't expect much to happen. But if you stand in your identity and authority in Christ, you can expect to see everything Jesus paid for manifest in your life and the life of others.
You don't have to ask God to give you things he's already given you in Christ. In Christ, you have been delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of Jesus. Jesus bore your sickness and disease on the cross. He delivered you from the wrath of God. You have the mind of Christ so that you can have peaceful mental health. God promised to meet your needs exceedingly, abundantly above all that you can ask or imagine. His spirit is in you, guiding you into all truth. He gives you wisdom just by asking. He has given you power to minister to others.
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
Why be doers of the Word? Because the world is looking for truth in uncertain times, we can be examples of faith and righteousness.
Your friends and family and the world around you need to see someone who is experiencing the benefits of following God. The world needs to see our love for one another. The world needs the hope that comes from someone who inherits God's promises by walking uprightly.
You are not blessed because of your works, but your works are evidence of your faith. The world is starving for something real, and as we live well within our freedom in Christ, we become His witnesses. As we become His witnesses, we give the world around us hope. And the world is desperate for hope.
The world is confused and afraid, but they don't have to be. We have the solution. But if our relationship with Christ is not benefitting us in this life, we have some work to do. The work is to believe, to become more persuaded of the character of God.
As you do the Word, blessings will follow, and people will see that God is real in your life. Our lives can be testimonies of the faithfulness of God. You can not improve on your salvation through your works, but how you live can affect what you experience in life and bring hope to those who need God.
Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "The just shall live by faith."
Do the Word, live by faith, and watch the world come to you asking why your life is different. Then you'll get to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ boldly.
Watch the video above for the full sermon on this topic.
Watch the Spiritual Practices and Disciplines Series on YouTube.
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NEW MEDITATION
85% to 95% of your thoughts, feelings, and actions are the same as the day before. Ultimately we bypass our ability to think and change our lives and do what our environment has trained us to be and do. Our obligations, responsibilities, jobs, and relationships dictate our lives to us without thought much of the time. The body becomes the brain.
In other words, you become programmed to do what your external world has told you to do. And you don’t do anything else unless you feel like it. And most people don’t feel like doing much beyond what they have to do. The carnal world and desires become our default. You can retrain your mind to habitualize spiritual awareness and interaction. You can change your life and take control of your present and your future when you decide what you will think about and how you will cultivate a new future based on God’s possibilities.
Prayer is perhaps the most fundamental spiritual discipline we can practice. Prayer is a conversation with God. It’s when you rent all that is fearful and ungodly from your soul. Prayer is when you set your mind of things above and allow your thinking to be shaped in the spiritual realm of God’s Kingdom. Prayer is when you let your requests be known to God. Prayer is when you contend for something Jesus paid for, whether for yourself or another person. Prayer is declaring the promises of God into your life. Jesus gave us insight into the proper inner state of prayer.
"I am deeply dissatisfied in life."
I recently watched part of a conversation between two successful A-list actors. They were describing their fulfillment in life while acting versus their real-life. They both agreed that while they were acting, they had a sense of fulfillment they didn’t get out of their real-lives.
The male actor basically said he only feels satisfied and fulfilled when he's pretending to be another person in a world that's not real. I realize that's my summary of his brief statement, but I think there's a more significant takeaway that applies to our faith walk.
I speak with people who love Jesus but feel very dissatisfied in life. You wouldn't know from their Christian activity; how much they read their Bible and how much they give to their church, how much they volunteer. If you were to look at the list of Christian obligations, they check the box for most if not all of them. So why the dissatisfaction? Shouldn't all that Christian activity bring a sense of fulfillment and purpose?
