Ministering: Pastor Dele Olubi
The fact that you are alive is warfare on its own and that you are a believer makes it double warfare. If you don’t understand this, you will attribute a lot of things that happen to coincidence.
Ephesians 6:10-18; Isaiah 59:17
From previous teachings, it has been established that the armor mentioned in the scriptures is what God goes to war with. God will not give you an armor He has not tested and until you have fought your battles, you cannot fight the battle of the Lord. A pattern is found in David who hadtime to train; about 13 years between when he was anointed and when he came into kingship. Looking at the kingship of David and Saul, you will see differences in the way they were anointed and where they came from. The same pattern in David was observed in Jesus. God allowed Him (Jesus) to be tempted. You cannot fight the Lord’s battle when you have not fought your own battles by being tempted and proved. Note this, your battle starts from home (Acts 1:8). Whatever you don’t have, you cannot give.
The devil fights us on different fronts because he knows we won’t achieve success if he can hold us down. We may even be in warfare and not know it. Therefore, an understanding of all areas in which the enemy will fight us is necessary.
1Thessalonians 5:23 – Paul prayed that our spirit, soul and body be kept blameless. The devil will fight us on all these three planes. Satan is always after you not being in tandem with God. Whenever he fights you, he wants to turn you to an enemy of God. He wants you to fall out of favour with God.
Although I do not belong to the group who attributes spiritual implication to every trivial thingthat happens, but I do believe that the devil is behind a lot of things that happen. He wins sometimes because we have owned a lot of things to coincidence. Not everything that exists in the empirical realm can be explained by physical standard. The first warfare happened in Eden in Genesis 3 without a bow and an arrow. It did not look like warfare when it happened but it was. It was just a discussion and at the discussion table, the battle was fought and lost. Unfortunately, many have also lost warfare in very simple ways because rather than paying attention to those things, they left them to chance.
In Luke 20: 27-40, the question of the Pharisees sounded like ordinaryary question but it took someone in the person of Jesus to discern it was not. That question was from the devil because when Jesus by divine wisdom answered them, they left him and brought no other question (verse 40) which was also how the devil was silenced when he tempted Jesus. When we answer questions by divine wisdom, demons are silenced. As Christians we must not be deceived to believe that the devil does not exist.
We must not be ignorant that some trades have devils they are dedicated to. Some family businesses and associations are also dedicated to Satan. The bottom line is that certain spirits rules the world but we trust God to give us victory all the time because Jesus won the victory for us. 1 Corinthians 15:57 – We have victory over sin and death through Jesus.
Daniel 1:8
You wil recollect that the declaration of the Hebrew men not to be defiled with the king’s food led to warfare. You must understand that the earth is only a battle ground. They were not only better because they ate vegetable and water, God was involved. Our decisions can spark warfare. Abimelech took Sarah as wife when Abraham entered his land and it looks like an everyday occurrence but that decision initiated warfare because Sarah would not have been able to birth Isaac (the promised child) if Abimelech had slept with her. When God fights for you, it’s not because there is nothing for him to do but because an army had come against you. Satan can marshal things against you, he can even use the least expected people because he is angry. Some people attribute too much to the devil. However, we don’t fight our battles from the attitude of suspicion and fear but from victory.
1 Thessalonians 5:7-8
From this scripture, we see that there is a position we have to take. A drunk can never be sober, and if you are not sober, you cannot be vigilant. Never take off your helmet of salvation.Also, have no part with demons (1 Corinthians 10:20). Don’t forget the place of prayer. Put God in your consciousness at all time. Be in fellowship with brethren. It is your brethren that watch your back. Devils hang around prophecies. The devil is not omniscient, but when we declare a thing, he can stand to oppose it. Therefore, you must learn to handle prophecies properly. Be prayerful. When you are confronted with things, come from the stand point of prayer. Only accessing the throne of God can dispel some of this things. We must be people who understand the court of heaven and how to approach the throne of God. God is just, andtherefore we must know how to present our case before Him.