warfare

Once the Holy Spirit guides us past Satan's lies and we are saved, God, in the form of the Holy Spirit becomes part of us, willing and able to guide, comfort, and teach us (John 14:26), enabling us to serve Him (Zechariah 4:6). We are now children of the most-high God, adopted for a price out of the hell of Statan's kin. Where before we shared in Adam's willful sin and so were separated from God the Father, enslaved to sin in the Devil's lying, deceitful chains, once saved we are loosed from that bondage and joined soul-deep to our new Father, the one, true God. That is a glorious beginning.

However, something else happens the moment we get saved. We used to be the prize in the Devil's struggle against God.... he lost. Now we become God's soldiers. Instead of cowering before the Devil in our chains, we stand tall and have been enlisted in a spiritual warfare against him and his hosts. The Bible tells us that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood" (Ephesians 6:12), and "though we walk in the flesh we do not war after the flesh" (2 Corinthians 10:3,4). We worship God in Spirit and in truth (John 14:24). We must realize that the spiritual world, although unseen, is real, as are the battles therein.

What battles? Why now is there this conflict? We are already won from Satan. The fight is for our relationship with our new glorious Father. Although the relationship is secure (Romans 8:11-17), the quality of it is not. The Devil works to diminish our relationship with God, ruin our witness to the unsaved, and hamstring the edification of the brethren. The Devil and his minions are tireless and relentless, always trying to wreck our relationship with God and prevent us from helping others to be rescued from his chains.

"The thief cometh not but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy" (John 10:10). That thief, the Devil comes to steal the peace that should be deep in our soul. He would ruin our witness and wreck our testimony and steal the fruit that we may have planted for God. That thief, Satan, comes to kill our spiritual love of God, and even to entice us to commit suicide, stopping our witness and earthly relationship, if we listen to enough of his devilish lies. That thief comes to destroy our joy as sons and daughters of the Sovereign Lord of the universe and everything. 1st Peter 5:8 describes this thief as our adversary who is always looking for ways to destroy us. He's really bad. He has our "Best interests" as described below as good in God's eyes, as his target to destroy. He struggles to make each man, woman, or child saved from his chains the last one. That's his effort, and for the Saved, it means ruining our relationship with our God.

God, on the other hand, wants us to have a deep, secure relationship with Him. God provided this abundant life as a gift for us (1 Peter 1:3), but we can only access that abundance as we learn to trust His perspective and obey His directions. He also commands us in His Word to share what we know of His Gift with others that they might receive it also.

That is the spiritual warfare we are embroiled and are soldiers in. The spoils of the fight are the souls of the unsaved and our own relationship with the Lord. God is clear on each account: we are to worship Him; we are to be obedient to His Word; and we are to bring others, step by step, closer to that worship and obedience. That is God's will for us. Our adversary seeks to thwart that Will.

Our adversary the Devil is real, as real as you or me. He is not God though, and while he wields powers not commonly seen on this earth, he does not share in God's supreme attributes. He is not an infinite being like God. God created Satan (Colossians 1:16), but God had no beginning (John 1:1). Neither is our enemy omnipotent. God has the power to do anything He wants to any time He wants to, but God has puts limits on Satan's activities. He changes those limits from time to time to suit His will, as the Book of Job tells us (Job 1:12)

Neither is the Devil omnipresent. God can be near each of His children all the time (Matthew 28:20), but Satan is limited to one place at a time. He must travel from place to place to do his work (Job 1:7) as do other angels. For example, chapter ten of the Book of Daniel tells how God sent a messenger, presumably an angel, to Daniel. The messenger/angel started out on this journey when Daniel first needed clarification of a vision, but was delayed. Then the arch angel Michael came to help and the messenger/angel finally was able to reach Daniel, but it was three weeks after he started out. Satan is an angel and shares that limitation.

It seems apparent, then, that angels (including the Devil), as created beings, lack crucial abilities of the Creator. We can then also be assured that the Devil and his minions are not all-powerful as is the Creator, our God. That means that we can be engaged in the conflict with them with certain hope of victory. Especially so with The Almighty firmly in our corner, helping, leading, loving, and guiding. (1 John 2:13-14)

Remember, and it is important, that God allows and defines the limits of Satan's activities. Therefore he must act within God's will. It is as if Satan is a corralled wild stallion that is to be broken to saddle. He is allowed to gallop within the corral, but can not leave his confines and can only buck as high as the rope lets him. How though can such an evil one as Satan do Gods will? Famous Romans 8:28 provides the answer to this apparent conundrum: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose." All things.

What is that "good" that "everything" works toward? It is not necessarily a new car or an "A" on the test, or landing your favorite girlfriend. We must look to God for what "good" is. 1 Timothy 2:3 & 4 shows that "good" for God is that everyone who He calls gets saved. The Devil's activities are allowed by the exalted Lord of the Heavens, then, because they eventually give believers a chance to tell other people how to be saved from the Devil's chains, or a chance to choose to strengthen the faith of another believer, or our own. Satan's goal though is to give us the opportunity to choose otherwise. But since all things work together for good for those who believe and are called, that opportunity for choice is in itself a way to honor the Lord through obedience, even though Satan doesn't mean it to be.

So the Devil has several fatal, as far as his plans go, strikes against him. for one, he tries to sabotage God's plan but instead works right into it. For another, he is outgunned; he does not have the attributes or power that God does. Not even close. And most importantly, the Devil has already lost the war before it even started. But these hard facts do not stop him. As our adversary, he constantly labors to bring about that which is not good in our lives. Since he can not win the spiritual war against us, it is if he is willing to settle for sniping his firey darts from ambush to keep us from growing in the Lord and bringing others to Christ. Happily though, he can be vanquished at every turn.

Firey Darts? We know that angels can communicate with humans in visions, or put thoughts and images in our heads. As so many angels have put so many visions or thoughts in the heads of so many Old Testament prophets and New Testament saints, so the Devil and his helpers can put thoughts in our heads (1st Chronicles 21:1). There are the firey darts mentioned in Ephesians 6:16 that our Shield of Faith protects us against.

But what if our shield droops? Then these darts from Satan and his demonic hoard can pierce our innermost minds with enticements to rebel against God. If Statan can get his thoughts inside our heads, how do we stand a chance against him? Easy.

John 8:44 tells us all we need to know about Satan's firey darts. Every dart that Satan gets into our heads is a lie. He can not tell the truth, since there is no truth in him. Everything he says, every thought slipped past our shield into our head from Satan is a lie. Christ, on the other hand is the embodiment of truth (John 14:6). God will not lie; Satan can do nothing but lie, period.

The "roaring lion" (1st Peter 5:8) is toothless and can easily be unmasked. The unmasking is one section down and the heart of this discussion, but first what do we do with these unmasked darts? God tells us to be "casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2nd Corinthians 10:5) We are to put forth mental effort to stomp out ungodly thoughts and refuse to act on them. We are to make every thought bow humbly before the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Key

In order to do the above effectively, we have to know which thoughts come from Satan and which are in God's will. How do we do that? Two ways, one hard, one easy.

The hard way, but the best way: Know The Word. Study the Bible. Go to a Bible preaching church. Hear The Word. Study The Word. Our Lord in His Word has "given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness" (2nd Peter 1:3). The more we are in The Word, the more we can sift our lives through that holy filter. Sadly, many of our lifestyles are not suited to that intense study of The Word. That is to our shame and to be struggled against. Knowledge, deep and pervasive, of The Word guides us through every situation we may encounter.

Knowledge of The Word also provides the easy way and the heart of this discussion regarding knowing what is God's will and what is the Devil's.

First though, remember that communication with angels is not a one-way street. Old Testament prophets communicated with angels, asking questions, arguing, listening, talking, and receiving replies. New Testament saints also had personal discourse with angels (Acts 8:26), even though they had Jesus as their intercessor in Heaven and the Holy Spirit within them just like us. It is important to accept that. We can talk with the spirit world. After all, what are we doing when we pray?

Now, if the Devil can't do anything but lie to us, we need a fundamental truth with which to query the spirit that gives us a thought, or encourages one way or another as we pray. Remember, the Devil masquerades as an angel of light.(2nd Corinthians 11:13-15).

The first epistle of John, chapter 4, verses 1 through 3 is the answer and the KEY: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."

Most of the time these verses are interpreted to identify false prophets, which they clearly do. But they talk a lot more about spirits than prophets. And they talk in the present tense. Those spirits"even now" are "already.. in the world." God has given us His Word that contains all things pertaining to life and godliness. We must take Him at his clearly stated word. Evil spirits are in the world already and now, and we can expose them by asking them about Christ.

I'd write the last three paragraphs again ten times it is so important. The Devil has done a good job of hiding that Truth. He can be unmasked with a single question. It ought to be on billboards across the country and spelled out with the marching band at halftime during the Super Bowl. Did Jesus Christ come in the flesh? Instead we get perversion and belching beer frogs.

So how does this work? Say you have a thought that seems reasonable, and you wish to know where it is in accordance with God's will. Pray. Ask the spirit that gave you the answer, in the same manner as you prayed: "You, spirit who just answered me, did Jesus Christ come in the flesh?" In the same manner as the answer to your original prayer, you'll get a yes or no answer here. It if is "yes," you'll know the thought is according to God's will. If it is "no", you'll know that the spirit answered you was Satan or one of his hoard masquerading as an angel of light and to act in accordance with that thought will be opposite God's will. It's that easy. It works all the time. It has to. The Bible says so. Period.

First John 4:1 "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."

That's the end of the key. Now the cautions. This is direct, personal, immediate, and overt interaction with the spirit world. For many of us, the limits of our logical, reasonable faith make it difficult for us to swallow such a notion. Brethren, it is Satan who whispers this disbelief into our hearts. Don't believe him.The Bible says it is so, and so it is so. Period.

It is possible also to deceive ourselves with regard to the answer to our prayers. Jeremiah 17 :9 reminds us that our heart is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." The second best way to combat this sad ability of ours is to pray about the same thing with another person. Compare answers. The best way is to go to The Word. Everybody can have a Bible program. Find out what God says about what you want to do. Most Bibles have indexes and concordances in the back. Find out what God says about what you want to do. 2nd Peter 1:16-21 tells us that in the Bible we have a more sure word than anything we think we hear from the spirit world.

Search the scriptures. Use the instant Satan detector with care. It is there though, and not enough people know about it.

Amen.

Still under construction for fine tuning, however, the content has been vetted and approved by Pastor Ferrett of Independent Baptist Church in Big Lake, Alaska.

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