Introduction
When we hear the words “spiritual warfare”, the verses that come to mind will most likely be those in Eph 6:11-17, and you would be correct. However, it is a mistake to think that spiritual warfare means a way of praying because it is not. It is actively engaging the enemy’s temptations and attacks. It is real spiritual warfare that goes on, often unseen by physical eyes but taking place in the battleground of our minds.
Before engaging in spiritual warfare, it’s essential to be spiritually strong and grounded in the Lord. We need to maintain a close relationship with God through prayer, studying the Scriptures, and seeking His guidance. Only when we are spiritually prepared and strong can we effectively wear and bear God’s armor as we engage in the unseen battles of the spiritual realm.
But, of course, before a soldier can put on his armor, stand, and fight against his enemy, Eph 6:10 tells us we first need to BE something. This is to “be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” (Eph 6:10). This article, however, will not deal with this topic and assumes the reader knows how and where to get his spiritual strength, and therefore, fit to wear and bear God’s armor and just needs to know how to fight the battle.
In a movie player, there is a button called “rewind”. With this button, you can watch any interesting scene over and over again, and see exactly how it was played, thereby learning the thing you are interested in. Some people might wish reality had a rewind button, so they could backtrack on a blunder and make it right. But even if there were, how sure are we that by correcting an “error” we are creating a worse situation? But I digress.
Well, in the spiritual world, the Bible gives us this capability.
The Lord has brought us into the future with the book of Revelation, and here, we can rewind through history “past” that has been written in its pages. The Holy Spirit revealed to the apostle John what was going to happen in the future, and he described it according to the vocabulary and imagery of his time.
In this book, God shows us exactly how we can win each and every battle. Let’s take a look and see exactly how Christians conquered the devil with three heavenly weapons, countering the devil’s three tactics which are:
- The lust of the flesh,
- The lust of the eyes and
- The pride of life (1Jn 2:16).
Let’s see how the devil uses these weapons, and how we can also apply divine weapons against the devil’s attacks, and win every single time!
Lust is defined as “a desire for that which is forbidden, an obsessive craving.” Lust is not simply desire, it is illicit, unlawful, or unholy desire.
All these weapons of the enemy, called the “fiery darts of the wicked” (Eph 6:16) can be quenched/extinguished by faith (shield of faith).
Shields, in times of war, were not carried alongside the soldier, or dragged behind them. They were raised before the enemy and were even used offensively. They were often oiled to preserve the leather and to make them shine, reflect sunlight, and blind the enemy.
Thus, we see a strong parallel between how the Roman shield was used in the past to how it should be used in our spiritual warfare.
Eph. 6:16 tells us that our Shield of Faith, the faith of God (Gal 2:20; Rev 14:12; Mar 11:22) which is available to all believers to do His works, is to be anointed with the oil of the Holy Ghost! You might want to contrast this with “faith in”, which is what is required for salvation and staying saved (Gal 3:26; Eph 1:15).
Without Holy Ghost oil, will the shield still be usable? Yes, but it won’t be durable – the leather binding will become brittle and can’t be used offensively, i.e., reflecting God’s glory and blinding the enemy with Sonlight!
So let’s now talk about how this anointed shield of faith can be used in the context of Rev. 12:11 vs. 1Jn 2:16.
From the future and looking back into the past, there are three weapons the Christian overcomers used to conquer the devil. These are:
- The Blood of The Lamb;
- The word of their testimony, and
- Their not loving their lives unto death.
Pay very careful attention to how each heavenly weapon is worded, because we will relate and match this up with the devilish tactics.
Of the three components in our weaponry, one is unchanging or constant, but the other 2 are dependent on us, on our faith, the faith of God. Let’s stack them up one against the other.
ONE ON ONE: The Blood of The Lamb vs. the Lust of the Flesh
The lust of the flesh includes such sins as unnatural or unrestrained sexual desires, gluttony, vices, compulsive behavior that is detrimental to the body, and surgically altering natural facial or body parts for “beauty”. (An insult to the superior creative and design ability of The Creator!)
The power of the Blood of Jesus is eternal in validity and infinitely vast in efficacy.
In the Scriptures, the blood represents life. “…the life of the flesh is in the blood…” (Lev 17:11; Lev 17:14; Deu 12:23). Thus, this weapon talks about the Life of Jesus Christ, as He lived it on earth.
Looking at it from the historical angle, we know that Jesus is the sinless Son of God, born of the virgin, without a human father. Since man walked the earth, and up to this time, every human being born carries with him the stain of sin from our first parents (Rom 5:12).
Since the man who sins, i.e., powerless over sin, is the property of Satan (1Jn 3:8), Satan has full rights to such a man, doing whatsoever he wills, as far as God allows him.
This was not the case with Jesus Christ. So when Satan saw the baby Jesus, he watched Him closely, followed Him, and even tried to kill Him prematurely several times, even before His birth, recognizing that Jesus was truly the Son of God, the Heir (Mat 21:38; Mar 12:7; Luk 20:14) to the Kingdom.
Satan thought Jesus was going to establish God’s Kingdom on Earth and displace him from his consigned territory, making God’s reign complete from heaven to Earth. Remember that Satan, up to this time, has dominion on fallen earth (Mat 4:9). He plotted to kill Jesus to end His Kingdom-in-the-making, or so he thought.
“Succeeding” finally at Calvary, he was aghast to find out how badly he had misread God’s eternal plan, and how wrong he was in killing Jesus (Col 2:14-15). Satan was divested wholly of his authority over those who belong to Jesus Christ.
The death of Jesus Christ on the cross in effect gave legitimacy to His title as Messiah, The Christ because Jesus was not fully man in the sense that He did not have an earthly father – the mortal transmitter of sin – but Whose transmitter was the Holy Ghost Himself – Satan became a criminal and was sentenced to the lake of fire (Mat 25:41; Rev 20:10), at the fulness of times.
The execution of Satan’s sentence is pending the fullness of the Gentiles and the coming back of Israel to the Lord when they finally recognize Jesus as The Messiah they have all been waiting for.
Meanwhile, in the limited time that Satan has, he works feverishly to weaken, discourage, and intimidate God’s people, while trying to prevent the spread of the Gospel. Since the Gospel is propagated only by the true, born-again Christians, they are the primary targets of Satan.
The Blood of the Lamb works against the lust of the flesh in the following ways:
- Direct application and pleading the cover of the Blood of Jesus over and during temptation. When demons hear the name of Jesus, they cower and flee. When they see the Blood of Jesus, they become powerless, because they are made to remember their absence of authority over the believer, and reminded of their future sentence. That is why they hate the Blood of Jesus.
- Retreat into Jesus and let His Life out. When the centurion saw the manner with which Jesus gave up the ghost, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” (Mar 15:39). Jesus did not die – He gave up His life. Whenever we recede into ourselves and let Christ take control of the situation, the results are amazing. When unholy lust comes rising, put yourself in Jesus, i.e., instead of a Jesus-in-me posture, make it I-in-Jesus. In other words, hide in a cleft in The Rock, seek cover in our Fortress, and run up to our High Tower. Seek refuge in Him, and the lust will disappear as quickly as it came. By the way, this is the position we should always be in, all the time. Jesus’s life manifested in and through us (Gal 2:20).
The Word of our Testimony vs. the Lust of the Eyes
The eyes are the window to our soul (Mat 6:22-23).
These verses tell us that if our eyes are “single” or clear, meaning we look at things and people with pure and holy thoughts, our inner man will be full of light (Luk 11:36). On the contrary, if we look at people with clouds of hate, mistrust, when we look at things and think how to consume them upon our lusts, such dark outlook and disposition extinguishes the light in us, and creates darkness that is greater than the darkness that is in the world (Joh 8:12).
The lust of the eyes in the context of Mat 4:8-9 is a contention for worthship. Our eyes and minds will play tug of war over the domination of our souls. If we give our eyes the license to gaze and gawk at things that muddle the purity that should be in our minds, then these unholy sights pollute our souls.
The Greek word translated as testimony in Rev. 12:11 is “evidence”. Now faith is the evidence of things unseen (Heb 11:1). Aside from what we normally hear as testimonies during worship services, we could, therefore, also say that the word of our testimony is our confession of faith.
The word of our testimony works against the lust of the eyes by drawing out the Light in us and confessing the nature of Christ already in us, by His indwelling presence. In other words, speak with your mouth, even if only in a whisper of His name and His nature that is contrary to the thought that comes with what you see. For example, when our gaze is drawn to someone of the opposite sex because of her provocative clothing, or ostentatious jewelry, speak out: “Your holiness, Your humility, Lord Jesus!” When the eyes of our mind almost make us see through the clothing of a person of the opposite sex, speak out: “Your purity, Lord Jesus!” It is also helpful to draw one’s eyes away from the tempting thing so that the thought can disappear with the confession.
Speaking in tongues at the moment of temptation helps a lot! Do you still wonder why the apostle Paul said, “I speak in tongues more than you all”?(1Cor 14:18) – he needed to! With temptations all around him, he needed the power of God constantly in his life. If he were to edify others, he needed to be edified himself, first! (1Cor 14:4)
How do we activate the Christ-life in us, at the time of temptation or weakness? Jesus always used Scripture whenever he was at a crucial moment. In Mat 22:24-28, when the Sadducees posed him a difficult question, with the motive of proving their doctrine that there is no resurrection, the Lord told them that their question was wrong in the first place (Mat 22:29).
Right after that, the Pharisees put forward their brightest boy, a lawyer, also with an evil motive, to try to measure His wisdom with another difficult question (Mat 22:35), and the Lord answered him also with Scripture, concluding that all the law and writings of the prophets are upheld by these commandments (Mat 22:37-40).
In the same manner, we are to speak out the verse that applies against the temptation and you will be amazed at how powerful God’s Word is. This is exactly what Jesus did when the devil tempted Him in the wilderness. For example, when tempted to indulge in gluttony, say, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Deu 8:3; Mat 4:4).
By allowing the power of Scripture to flow through us, in times of temptation, we are allowing the Christ-life in us to manifest, and we get instant victory over the enemy of our soul.
Loving Not Our Lives Even Unto Death vs. Pride of Life
The issue here is answering the question, which shall we prefer, eternal life, or biological/temporal life?
Jesus warns us that if we value temporal life over the spiritual, we will lose it for eternity (Joh 12:25).
The pride of life consists of boasting, self-exaltation, and self-worship.
The sting about pride is not that it exalts self, but that it denies and rejects God! (Psa 10:4).
If you think about it, pride is the bedrock of all sin. Therefore, if any effort is to be made by any Christian against sin, it must be directed primarily against pride.
God intentionally tucked in this weapon at the last because He meant it to be the knock-out punch. If we can lick pride in our lives, we lick sin. Period.
So, how does one use this weapon against the pride of life?
Consider others better than ourselves (Php_2:3).
Instances will come when we are tempted to assert ourselves over another. This does not happen only in the secular setting, but even also in the church. This happens everywhere we go, because of our pride, we do things we don’t have to, we speak things we didn’t mean to, and we think thoughts we ought not to, towards or about other people.
Can you recall the time you were queueing at the cashier and this person overtook your cart as if she never saw you? Or, when you were racing to get into the lift which was about to close, and none of the people inside who saw you, bothered to hold open the door for you because there was still space for you? And, men drivers, do you love it when some driver cuts in on you, forcing you to suddenly brake? Loving thoughts don’t have a place in your mind during those times, yes?
But take those very same situations, and you think of the person with the cart as the spouse of your boss, and those people in the lift as the board of directors in the company you’re working in, and that careless driver happens to be your boss. Does it change everything? It does because you’ve put yourself in a lower position relative to them. That’s what humility does. That’s why sin finds it hard to inhabit the heart of the humble and contrite person.
Love your enemies (Mat 5:44).
This is the hardest nut to crack in the Gospel, so that people just give up and spit it out or throw it away. But guess what gets in the way of obeying this? It certainly is not hate, or lack of compassion.
This is what our Lord commands us to do, to “agapaō” our enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate (detest/love less) you, and pray for those who despitefully use you, or (slander/insult) you.
We make a gross mistake when we set this commandment aside for later and try to “compensate” by trying to excel in the other graces and ministries. Because when we do that, we are putting up a building on the wrong foundation (1Cor 13).
Let us never forget the warning in Rev 2:4, because when we lose our first love, we lose all other loves. Human love is extremely shallow, but our love becomes extremely deep when we love the Christ that is in our spouse, the brethren, or even unbelievers who are made in the image and likeness of God.
Digressing a bit, we should never fear death, anyway. All of man’s fears (fear of heights, darkness, closed spaces, etc.) boil down to the fear of death. God has delivered us from all fears (Heb 2:15), and now we look at death only as a passage into eternal life with Christ (Php 1:21). Before I became a born-again Christian, I used to like watching horror movies. Before I knew it, those horror scenes formed part of my psychology and I developed a fear of vampires, fear of darkness, and fear of very tight spaces. After I saw Count Dracula kill his victims and transform them into vampires by biting their necks and sucking their blood, my blanket had to cover my neck when I slept at night. I also had to have some source of faint light when I slept just so I could see things that might be moving around in the room. I also can’t imagine myself inside a coffin six feet in the ground, alive. The bottom line was fear of dying; the manner of dying just has many forms.
The beauty in all these is that heaven’s weapons are not just effective one on one against the evil darts, but can also be applied one against three or even three against one! Hallelujah! Our weapons are truly mighty in God!
Conclusion
“It’s all in the mind y’know.” — George Harrison
The battleground for our souls is in our minds. He who conquers the mind conquers the soul. And we decide who wins because whom we allow to conquer our mind will win our soul.
The person who says that it is difficult to control the mind is either lying or deluded into thinking that way.
We have to disabuse our thinking patterns and start believing that God has given us mastery over our bodies, even over our minds.
Try this mental exercise to prove to yourself that you can control your thoughts.
- Close your eyes and first imagine a red apple on a table,
- Put beside it a bunch of green grapes,
- Put behind it a bundle of ripe, yellow Philippine bananas,
- Put all these in a crystal fruit tray.
- Look at all of the objects, then suddenly,
- Make them all disappear in an instant.
Were you able to do that? That is clear proof that you have perfect control over your mind.
The stark truth is that God has completely equipped us with all that we need to be consistently victorious.
He demonstrated this in Christ Jesus, and He wants us, His children to demonstrate the same to the world. Today, the people around us may not know how we’ve overcome, but in eternity, all men will see and know that we overcame by the Blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony, and by not loving our lives even unto death.
God created you, a born-again believer to be victorious, not a victim in the battleground of your mind!
How About You?
Friend, if you died tonight, where do you think you will end up? If you are unsure of your eternal destiny, now is the time to make your life right with God. You see, all human beings (me included) are sinners! If you would honestly assess yourself right now, you probably have lied to someone. Or have taken something that did not belong to you. You might have looked at someone with lust in your heart. Or hated someone and wished him/her evil. Or, use God’s name as a cuss word. If so, that makes you a lying thief, an adulterer, a murderer, and a blasphemer! Considering God’s moral law known as the Ten Commandments, I think you know where such kinds of people end up already. You, like me, are in a dangerous position!
But the good news is that God sent His Son Jesus to Earth on a rescue mission! That’s what it says in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
All who turn to God in humble repentance, coming back to The Creator and asking for forgiveness, believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who gave His life on the cross as payment for sin, Who rose again on the third day, ascended to heaven and is coming back to take all His believers with Him to heaven, you can receive forgiveness for your sins and be restored into a relationship with God!
All you need to do is repent, ask Him to forgive you and entrust your present and future to Jesus Christ. If you are sincere, the Bible says you are SAVED and made as new again! “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “WHOEVER BELIEVES ON HIM WILL NOT BE PUT TO SHAME.” (Romans 10:9-11)
You can stop being ashamed of what you’ve made out of your life. Guilt does not have to haunt you until your dying day. Accept the offer from Jesus and the receipt of His Gift of eternal life today. Hurry! This offer is good only until the Rapture!
If you’ve decided to believe in Jesus, let me know! I wish to help you grow in your new faith in the God of the Bible Whose promises never fail.
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Until then, God bless you!
Musings of Anax Jos 