Spiritual Warfare 101

          Gaining victories in the battle surrounding trust:  MAIN HEALING LESSON 23

This teaching on the elementary focus of spiritual warfare is just one of the 24 lessons in our workbook for personal transformation, "Matters of the Heart."  All 24 lessons will be helpful to the person seeking restoration and freedom and have been posted on this web site. They are available as a complete set in our workbook which can be purchased as a download or ordered through the mail. The lessons are also available on CD and DVD as 24, 1/2 hour teachings. All scriptures are from the NKJV unless otherwise noted.
 

Introduction 

A principle of simplicity
Now that we have worked our way through the many strongholds that typically afflict and hinder the new life in Christ, these lessons could seem overwhelming. “It’s too complicated!” is the legitimate cry of a heart yearning for freedom as well as transformation—for we know that we need a principle of simplicity or we will quickly fall again into bondage. Jesus said “narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14).

It is hard, but simple
Children live in the Kingdom far better than we do (Luke 18:16). The really hard part is re-learning to stay surrendered to the Giver of Life. An old hymn summarizes the walk nicely: “Trust and obey, trust and obey; there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” This Lesson is about the warfare around trusting (the “narrow gate”); the next lesson will be about guidance—finding the sometimes “difficult” path of obedience to the Spirit.

The elementary task
Spiritual Warfare 101 points us to the elementary battle of our daily life in Christ. Our job as soldiers is to make sure that our hearts stay surrendered to the Lord throughout the day—keeping us willing and able to trust and obey our Master and Commander (who is also our Lover and Friend). Either our hearts are moving towards surrender or they are drifting into the Great Rebellion. The level of peace and confidence we have in God will declare the issue.

This is the battle for one’s own life—and it is waged in the heart (Pr 4:23). In boot camp all new recruits are issued rifles and taught to protect their lives and the lives of their buddies. In the “battle” of daily life your rifle is your heart! The enemy wants to get his finger on the trigger of our heart and start firing it off at others or ourselves. And such “misfires” are almost irresistible when we don’t keep our heart clean and clear in the Lord (of stronghold issues). But suppose the Lord gets His finger on your heart, then He can use you to give mercy and peace and patience where it is needed as you go through your day. That’s much better isn’t it? So our heart is a powerful weapon for advancing either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of darkness. We need to get this Spiritual Warfare 101 down!
 

Teaching summary

God is always at work!
Here is a principle of simplicity that companions with trust and obey: no matter what the enemy is doing, God is also at work to accomplish His purposes. This is especially true of the dynamics of transformation taking place every moment of every day. The great battle of daily life is for your heart! Learn to trust His Hands and seek His Face.

1) His Hands are at work on all things in our lives with one purpose in mind. We need to know and understand and be in agreement with that purpose or our lives will not make sense, nor will we realize the focal point of the enemy’s attacks. His Hands conform you to Christ.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son... Romans 8:28-29

2) His Face. What is God’s work on our interior? His primary purpose is to transform us into the Image of His Son from the inside out—by revealing His Image to us (the Father reveals the Son; the Son reveals the Father). His Face transforms us into His Image (see Lesson 8).

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.  2 Corinthians 3:18

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  2 Corinthians 4:6These two great works of God are going on all of the time. Always the Father’s Hands are upon us to raise up whatever we surrender to Him and to work through all things to increase our willingness to surrender all—even if we are fighting what He is doing. At the same time the revelation of Jesus Christ is working within us at all times (however little we may be aware of it) to transform the way that we live and to enable us to surrender to the Father. But this process can be greatly enhanced by our cooperation! We can choose to surrender to the work of His Hands; we can choose to seek His Face and re-surrender at any moment.
 

Let’s see how this plays out

The Father has His Hands on our lives like a Master Potter working with absolutely everything (the good, the bad and the seemingly indifferent) to accomplish His great desire—to refashion us into children who display the nature of His Son. As a potter exerts great pressure with his hands to center clay on the wheel, so the Father works through the stress in our lives to bring us again and again to the place of inward surrender. Like un-centered clay we often try to fly off the wheel! But under the pressure (“humble yourselves under the mighty hand…” 1 Peter 5:6) we finally stretch our faith vision to see something in the Lord that helps us to yield our stubborn resistance and say, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” His Hands helps us to seek His Face! From this hallowed place of surrender the Father is able to raise us into new life—just as a potter raises the centered clay into the form he envisions.

Since the Father is working 24/7 to conform us to Christ, it will certainly help us to cooperate with Him if we gain vision for what that looks like. Though outward works are important fruit to cultivate, for the purpose of this course, let’s consider what it means to be conformed to Christ in terms of the inner life (Gal 5:22). Would you like to go through your days the way Jesus did? No one alive has walked through daily life with more love, more peace, or more joy—and no one alive has ever had a tougher assignment to carry out! Consider:

• Love and joy. Jesus walked through a world of sinful people who caused no end of problems and persecutions for Him, yet He was able to keep joy and love alive in His heart, because He was really good at forgiving sinful people. Would you like to go through your day free of hurt and offense like Jesus did? You have Him inside of you willing and able to help you forgive.

• Acceptance. Jesus suffered the unjust rejections of many people He deeply loved and cared about, yet He was able to live with His heart secure in the knowledge that His Father’s love for Him was perfect and that His Father would never reject Him. Would you like to go through your day protected and filled by God’s love for you like Jesus did? You have the same Father.

• Peace and guidance. Jesus was able to live in moment to moment dependence upon God’s control of the world, not His, and yet He was peace filled all of the time no matter what the enemy was stirring up, because He kept trusting the Father with all things and was willing to obey in all things. Would you like to go through your day with peace and trust like Jesus did? You have a new nature in you that loves to live by trusting and obeying God.

• Stress free. Jesus saw people whom He completely loved all around Him that were carrying heavy burdens and living with great anguish and injustice, but He never got burned out, over-burdened, angry or depressed in trying to be God’s instrument for helping them. Would you like to be able to care for others in your daily life the way Jesus did? He is right beside you wanting to help you learn of Him how to let Him carry your burdens.

This is the way of life that Jesus wants to live in us by His Spirit and our Father is so zealous for giving it to us that He is making ALL THINGS serve this higher purpose. What’s to stop us?
 

The enemy cannot stop this work--he is a defeated foe

The enemy can do nothing to stop this work of the Father’s Hands—for God absolutely hates every evil and has determined and declared that ALL THINGS will be made to work for the good of the people He is redeeming. Meditate on this life changing truth: the enemy cannot make the evil he does through human sin stick to anyone. God will overturn it all and make even the worst things the enemy does work for our good. So how does the enemy make evil stick? By getting us to bind the hurt, pain and injustice of the past to ourselves through bitterness and unbelief in God’s promise! We are being manipulated into becoming our own captors!

The enemy's two main counter strokes
If God is working upon us through all things by His Hands and working within us through all things by His Spirit to conform us to Christ, then the enemy (having read the Book) is also working through everything to oppose God’s work by 1) tempting us to doubt that all things are working for our good (thus trying to counter the work of His Hands) and 2) by drawing us away from the revelation of Jesus Christ (thus trying to counter the work of His Face). As someone once said, the enemy has WMD’s of his own—weapons of mass distraction.

Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. James 1:13-15

It is a daily battle
Once we are no longer beholding our God with a heart of confident faith, we are prey to the enemy and of little threat to his kingdom. Even worse, we are unwittingly being re-shaped into the image of the fallen one (who is the most un-forgiving and anxious being in the universe). Have you been tempted to doubt the work of God’s Hands? Have you been distracted from keeping your eyes on Jesus? Then be prepared to fight!  Spiriture warfare is real--you simply must learn to fight back, or be continually carried off captive until someone else is sent into your life by the Lord to rescue you. Only you can fight this battle for your inner state, though all of heaven with be helping you and standing with you. Even so, when it comes to your heart, you alone get to choose what you want to believe and you get to choose whose image you want to gaze upon!

Fight the good fight of faith! 

(2 Timothy 4:7)
 

Interested in going deeper?

Don't just give these truths a "head bob"!
For further study and for help working these truths into your heart and life, see Spiritual Warfare 101 part 2 (Head to Heart Guide 23) and "work out" with exercises, discussion questions, review of main points, digging deeper, more scriptures, model prayers, renunciations/affirmations and practical steps of life application.

Or better yet, let us minister to you in person
     --at one of our Savannah Seminars...