Table of Contents
Sit to be empowered, Walk to be blessed and Stand to possess – Part 3
By Abraham Israel
As we have clearly seen in the second part of this article it is the will of God for us to sit comfortably in the finished work of Christ, before we can start to walk effortlessly in the inherited workings of Christ within us through His Spirit. In the same way we need to walk effortlessly in the Spirit before we can start to stand strongly in the power of the Spirit of the Lord. So the spiritual activities of our Christian life should have this order of ‘sit….walk….stand’. Every time we reverse this divine order of sit, walk and stand, the result is a disaster. In other words Christian experience begins with sitting which leads to walking, after which we also learn to stand victoriously against all our spiritual enemies [i.e. Satan and his demonic cohorts].
We must know step by step to firstly sit with Christ in the heavenly places, then secondly effortlessly walk worthy of Him down here on earth and thirdly to stand strongly against our spiritual foes in the heavenly places. This standing before the foe is dealt by Apostle Paul in the final and the third section of the Book of Ephesians 6:10-20. It is usually called as the spiritual warfare section in our times. But it is what Paul calls as our standing position in which we learn to wrestle “with wicked spirits.”
"10 FINALLY, my brethren, BE STRONG IN THE LORD and IN THE POWER OF HIS MIGHT. 11 PUT ON THE WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD, that you may be able to stand against the wiles [i.e. strategies] of the devil 13...that you may be able to WITHSTAND IN THE EVIL DAY, and having done all, to stand. 14 STAND therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR WAIST...HAVING PUT ON THE BREASTPLATE 15 ...HAVING SHOD YOUR FEET ...16 ...TAKING THE SHIELD...17 ...and TAKE THE HELMET....and THE SWORD...18 ...PRAYING ALWAYS...BEING WATCHFUL" (Eph 6:10, 11, 13-18).
Standing strongly against Satan and his evil cohorts starts with the power of God’s might and ends with it. It cannot be started by us or be successfully finished by our own strength. Purely this spiritual warfare can be done only by the supernatural empowerment of the Holy Spirit only. It is not at all by our past spiritual experience, skill or expertise we successfully do this warfare activity of the ages, but it is by depending on the finished work of Christ we do it. We are made to stand strongly “in the Lord, and in the power of his might” by first knowing the values of His exaltation and then of His indwelling (Eph 6:10; 1:19; 3:16; 1 John 4:4). It is only after knowing the first two principles, the third principle of ‘standing’ can truly be fathomed.
The Greek word used for the English word ‘stand’ in Ephesians 6:14 is ‘histēmi' [pronounced 'hē'-stā-mē'] which means 'to stand immovable, stand firm like of the foundation of a building, to continue safe and sound, stand unharmed, to stand ready or prepared, to be of a steadfast mind of quality, one who does not hesitate, does not waiver.' The Greek verb ‘stand’ with its following preposition ‘against’ in verse 11 means ‘to hold your ground’. Armies march in to other countries to occupy and subdue. God has not told us to march but to stand ‘holding on’ which implies that the ground disputed by the enemy is really God’s, and therefore ours to hold on. We are not to struggle to gain a foothold on it. But with ease by the power of God we should continue to hold on to all the spiritual blessings of God which has been released in the physical realm of our life (Eph 1:3; 5:22-6:9). The spiritual blessings that will be tangibly felt on the physical realm will be peace inside the family, overcoming power over sin, sickness and death, joyful heart and satisfaction that come along with it, righteous boldness and prosperity in all areas of our life. Satan and his evil minions are sadistic foes, who are angry enough to “…steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10) all the blessings life of God that will be supplied to us because of continuing in the all the previous activities of ‘sitting and walking’. But we should learn to strongly ‘stand’ on the finished work of Christ and wage a defensive warfare based on it. The onslaught has been done and finished when our captain Jesus Christ died on the Cross, “Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them [i.e. Satan and his evil demonic cohorts], triumphing over them in it.” (Col 2:15).
There is a difference between the warfare that our Lord Jesus waged and the warfare we wage. His was an offensive war in which he defeated Satan in every move He made against him (Luke 4:13). The anointing authority of Jesus was based on His sinless nature by birth which He inherited and therefore His resultant perfect sinless life which perfectly pleased God the Father (Heb 1:4; Matt 3:1; 2 Cor 5:21). Do you know why the Bible doesn’t speak at all about the time period of the life of Jesus from His birth to the time He got baptized by John except in one or two references (Luke 2:21-35, 41-52)? Firstly, the reason the writers of the gospel didn’t go in to the details of the time between His birth to baptism is because Jesus lived as the epitome of a perfect human in all areas of His young life, without the sin nature with in Him. Because of the perfect life of Jesus lived before the very eyes of Mary the mother of Jesus from His childhood, she knew instinctively that God will answer the prayer of Jesus or His command even before a single miracle happened in the life of Jesus and His ministry. She had faith that God will give Jesus whatever He asks to God because of His sinless perfection (John 2:1-11). Secondly, the first Adam was tempted straightaway as an adult son of God because Adam was made that way so that he could take a conscious choice whether to obey God or not, but because the last Adam Jesus was born as a baby he has to wait for thirty years until he could be declared by God as a mature adult son to take a conscious choice for himself to either obey the Father without a question and redeem the fallen humanity or reject the offer of the Father (Gen 1:27; Luke 3:38; 2:7; 1 Cor 15:45; Matt 3:13-17). The Bible says, He had no sin till he took the baptism of John, in which God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that from that point of time all of those who believed in Jesus could become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21; Matt 11:12). Till he became our sin and identified Himself as our substitute during His baptism, Satan had no rights to tempt Jesus because of His sinless nature. Because all of our sins were laid on Him by God the Father during the Baptism He received from John the Baptist, Jesus was tempted in every way like every one of us in all things from then on, which the Bible describes as God “condemned sin in the flesh” “by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin” (Rom 8:3; Heb 2:17). The likeness of the sinful flesh started only from the time Jesus took baptism from John, to identify Himself with all humans on account of their sin nature (Heb 2:14). Yet not even one time he gave in to the temptation to sin. Jesus stood against the power of sin with the perfect mature spirit-man inside Him (Luke 2:52; John 11:33). Jesus learned perfect obedience to God through suffering in His soul and body (Heb 5:7-9; 12:4; Luke 22:44; Mark 14:33-34; Matt 26:37-38). Jesus became perfected when He hung on the Cross, no more to be tempted again by sin (Heb 5:9; 7:28). Not only He was perfected but he also perfected us who are believers because of divine substitution (Luke 13:32; Heb 10:14). Because of this reason sin does not have dominion over us the believers who are being sanctified until our physical death, in which our sin nature will be discarded from us forever (Heb 10:14; Phil 3:12; 1 John 2:5; 4:12, 17; Rom 6:14).
The holy prophet John the Baptist declared Jesus as the sinless lamb of God (John 1:36). The highest political leader Pilate could not accuse Jesus of doing even one sin (John 19:4). Even the hypocritical Pharisees and religious Jews could not accuse Jesus of one sin (John 8:46). Satan had no authority to tempt Jesus before His baptism because He had no sin nature at all like all of us who are the sons of Adam (Acts 14:15). In other words Jesus was tempted outside-in till His Baptism that he took from John the Baptist, after this event Jesus began to be tempted from inside-out in his soulish realm. This is the reason many times during His three and half year ministry, He was a broken and a sorrowful man who cried out to the Father in agony to release the heaviness that Satan brought upon His soul for no reason other than He carried our sin (Heb 5:7-8; Is 53:3). If God had not strengthened Jesus through an angel, Jesus might have died with His heart burst out in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper because of the pressure than he must have felt at that time (Mark 14:33-34; Luke 22:43-44). Only Jesus’ soul was made an offering for sin of mankind, it was not His spirit (Is 53:10). His perfect spirit was submitted in to the hands of the Father God by Jesus Himself as a sign of Jesus’ Faith, that God will resurrect Him three days after his death (Luke 23:46).
What does it mean when we say that Jesus was only tempted outside-in till His baptism? I mean Satan was able to tempt Jesus only through people physically surrounding Him and not through his soul (Luke 2:41-52). He had a father, mother, brothers, neighbors and towns men who were all fallen men. Through them Satan must have tempted Jesus until His Day of Baptism from John. Once He went through and accepted the divine exchange for us through His baptism He began to be tempted in the likeness of our sin nature (Matt 3:15; Rom 8:3; Matt 5:17; Heb 2:17-18). Because Jesus was a perfect lamb [i.e. spirit, soul and body] until the day of His death, He was the only perfect offering that God could accept on behalf of humanity because of a sinless nature and He did not choose to sin even once (Heb 10:12). Jesus had no sin because even until His death on the Cross He did no sin (2 Cor 5:21). He was only made to be our sin. In other words Jesus was tempted inside-out from His soul on behalf of us (1 Cor 10:13; Heb 4:15; Mark 7:20-23; John 6:63). For example in educational institution once a person passes all the required paper once, he is declared authoritatively by the school or university to be a graduate. In that way when Jesus overcame all the temptations like every one of us through the power of the Holy Spirit after His baptism even until His death on the Cross (Luke 4:14-15), He had passed each time victoriously by the power of God in all the unique temptation that comes to man in the tests of God and was declared to be an authority in all those areas (Heb 4:15; 2:18; Jer 17:10; 20:12; Deut 8:2; 1 Ch 29:17; 2 Ch 32:31; Ecc 3:18). So only after the Cross, Jesus does not have to die again because He has already passed the test once for all and hence God has declared in His authority that Jesus is the name above all names (Heb 9:25-26; Phil 2:8-11). One by one Jesus must have experienced all these different types of temptations from all the demons from the pit of hell and have conquered over them all during His three and half years ministry for people, that at the end of it no demons had any single hold in His soul over Him (James 3:6, 15-16; John 14:30). As a result Jesus exercised perfect authority of God on earth even to His death (John 19:10-11). The only difference is, Jesus chose not to use His authority to defend Himself which was a pact He made with the Father even before the foundations of the world, but submitted unconditionally to the Father’s will which bought our redemption through His death (Matt 26:53-54; Heb 4:3). Praise the Lord! It is done forever (John 19:30).
A person doesn’t need to write the exam that he has passed already. On behalf of us Jesus has written all our exams and had scored hundred percent in all subjects. And God has declared that exam to be the actual exam we have written and has declared and accredited [i.e. credited] to our mark sheet the same mark and has deposited a great blessings in our account in the spiritual realm on earth (Col 2:11-14). You may ask how this is so? It is because our forefather, who was the first Adam after desperately failing God’s exam, was seeking God’s remedy through a alternative solution of a sacrificed blood covered clothing of animal’s skin with which God clothed over them. This animal skin over their naked bodies directly indicated spiritual covering of God’s goodness [i.e. forgiveness and friendship] over their naked sin-ridden guilty soul. It represented God’s perfect sacrifice of Christ to wipe off completely all human’s sinfulness in the future which God had planned from the foundations of the world (Gen 3:21; Col 2:13-14; Rev 13:8). God declared all humanity to have failed the privilege to communicate to Him freely and receive all His blessings naturally because of sin in them from birth (Ps 51:5), but made a spiritual way through animal sacrifice which represented Christ’s sacrifice in the future. Christ was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was slain from the foundation of the world (1 Pet 1:20; Rev 13:8; Heb 4:3). Some people without understanding the wisdom of God say, why the whole humanity should be declared legally sinful because of the sin of one man (Rom 5:12, 18-19). If God would judge every man individually after the fall of man, humanity would have been lost forever under sin (Ps 130:3; 103:10; Jud 2:14). After all once sin came in to the world through one man legally, Satan would have thought that we are lost from God forever and began to harass man by the fear of death, but thank God for God’s grace (Rom 5:12; 6:16; Heb 2:15). Where sin abounded by our disobedience towards God, God’s grace abounded toward us because of the obedience of Christ towards God (Rom 5:20). It is to redeem us all through His love that He had declared us to be sinners (Is 63:9; Jer 31:3). As a result of sacrificing and standing between God and man, Jesus has once for all died as a ransom for sin toward God and has become the mediator of us all in relationship to God (1 Tim 2:5-6). Now once and for all time God sees us as friends with Jesus to whom belong all the privileges of God (John 15:14-15). To us belongs all the privilege of God’s blessing on earth because Jesus is our friend who sticks closer to us for eternity than a brother (Prov 17:17; 18:24). Having known the consequence of death for pledging to God on behalf of standing for humanity’s redemption from sin, He willingly gave himself to die for us and thus He loved us to the end (John 10:17-18; 13:1; 10:11; Prov 17:18). O what a grace! Praise you Jesus!
Because of the Divine exchange in which God imputed the perfect righteousness of Jesus to all who believed Him as their substitute before God and laid all their sins upon the sinless Jesus during the baptism of Jesus by John, Satan had authority to tempt Jesus in the wilderness (Matt 3:15; 4:1-11). After winning over all the temptations of the devil in the wilderness, Jesus victoriously “returned in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14) and started to teach the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. He was then glorified by all “and news of Him went through all the surrounding region” (v14) because of the kind of unconquerable authority Jesus exercised in spiritual arena which was directly influencing the natural physical realm of the material world and its inhabitants (Luke 4:15, 32, 36-37). Because of imparting the same invincible anointing upon the first twelve and then the seventy two other apostolic disciples, the impact upon the region where they ministered the healing power of the kingdom of God was so intense that Jesus himself said to the disciples, ““I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18). In other words Satan and his demons had no answer to counter the invincible anointing in which Jesus ministered and later imparted upon His apostolic disciples. Every time the demonic agents were commanded to submit under the name of Jesus, they unquestionably obeyed because of the power of the anointing that caused it (Luke 10:17; Acts 10:38). Jesus has finally once for all has won over Satan on the Cross and finally declared with a loud cry “It is finished!” (John 19:30), we just stand on His finished work of victory. In other words the war of the ages has been won, we just battle out to stand and hold the territory that we already own because of what Jesus has done for us. What a testimony! Praise the Lord!
Just like the invincible anointing of Jesus was imparted to the apostolic disciples in the first century we too are imparted with the same anointing of authority. This is the reason Jesus promised us, ““Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” (John 14:12). Jesus not only passed on His invincible authority to the first century believers but to us too which He himself confirmed when He prayed to the Father just before dying on the Cross saying, ““I do not pray for these alone [Who were “these” that Jesus described? The first century seventy two plus twelve apostolic disciples and all the believers who believed Jesus], but also for those who will believe in Me through their word [If we ask the question ‘who will believe through the first century apostles and believers words?’ It is all the believers of the Church age including our generation];” (John 17:20). O what a privilege to be part of the Church! After Jesus got resurrected he told the disciples, ““All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” (Matt 28:18). Hence the authority that Jesus holds through the Church and its member includes not only the over the earthly realm but also the heavenly including all the angels. If we ask the question why we are not seeing such great authority manifested in the natural earthly realm and also the heavenly spiritual realm through the believers? The answer is given in the next verses Matt 28:19-20, “19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.” Most of the believers now think that fulfilling this preceding verses which is usually called ‘The Great Commission’ is an option, but these preceding verses clearly shows that it is a command to be obeyed. As long as we implicitly obey this Great Commission command of Jesus, the authority of Jesus will be manifested in both the physical and spiritual realm through us. As long as each believer starts to make disciples of all people groups which is the command of Jesus to be fulfilled, the believers will be able to naturally ‘stand’ strong in the Lord and in power of His might. Praise the Lord!
Jesus emphasized at the end of the Great commission, “…I am with you always, even to the end of the age [i.e. present end time generation].” (v20). Here Jesus is giving us assurance that he will be with us particularly the end time terminal generation of believers because He knew that this particular generation will be facing the greatest onslaught of the demonic enemies till date (Luke 17:26-30; Rev 12:12-13). When Jesus is saying “I am with you always…” it means He is with us by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit who is God Himself is with us to give us protection from all harms of the evil one (Jer 42:11), to empower us to stand against the evil one and to be a witness for Jesus (Acts 1:8; 1 John 4:4), to guide us in to all truth by declaring the truth to us in our spirit continuously which will set us free progressively (John 16:13-14; 8:32; Rom 8:16), to make us courageous enough to stand so that He will go before us and fight the battle to victory every time we are attacked (Duet 20:4; Isa 35:4), to make us invincible against the attack and strategies of the enemy (John 16:13; 1 John 4:4; Rom 8:31, 37; 2 Kings 6:8-18) and to comfort us whenever we feel defeated, condemned, worried, fearful and weak because of our failures (John 14:16; 2 Cor 1:3-4). So be courageous to stand against the devil by witnessing and making disciples for the Lord, as a result the devil will flee because you are submitting to God in obedience to the command of the Great commission. The devil will flee away from you because by the power of God and His authority flowing through, you will bring all of God’s angelic hosts of heaven to stand on behalf of you (James 4:7; Matt 18:10; Heb 1:14). Fulfilling the great commission will make the one who obeys to ‘stand’ in the power of God, and the Bible also confirms this by saying, “Where the word of a king is, there is power…” (Eccl 8:4). Rise up and stand O believers of the end time! You are the sons of God who will apostolically turn the world upside down for His glory!
God is claiming back the dominion “…on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10) through His sons who are brought forth in to the end time apostolic glory (Heb 2:10; Matt 24:14; Eph 4:13; 5:26-27). Jesus is going to pour forth His love especially in our end times toward the Church which is symbolically called ‘the bride’ to adorn her with His glory ornaments just like a husband will lavish upon the soon to be united bride (John 3:29; Rev 21:9; Eph 5:25-33). Satan knowing that his eternal fate has been sealed for eternal fire, is still trying to cause as much damage as he can to the purposes of God by making people to usurp God’s authority over them (Rev 12:12-13; 20:10; 1 John 5:19). So God has called the Church to displace Satan from His deceptive realm by speaking the truth (John 8:44; Ps 15:2; 1 Tim 3:15). As the Church as a whole starts to lean on its beloved, it will start to come out of the wilderness of all the past dark ages, in to the end time glory to glorify Him in all things (Sgs 8:5; John 13:23; 1 Pet 4:16). So what is the truth that is going to be revealed to the end time generation in an unprecedented magnitude? The truth will be Jesus Christ’s ‘gospel of grace’ through the revelation of the word of God and His Spirit (John 18:38; 15:26; Acts 20:24; 14:6, 17). Jesus not only tells the truth of God but also is the embodiment of truth in Himself (John 8:46; 14:6). Thus Christ will be the head over all things and will crush Satan under His feet through His end time Church (Eph 5:23; Rom 16:20). This crushing of Satan’s power will be achieved in the end time through the abundant revelation of the mighty grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and thus will truly make the end time Church to reign over both the heavenly and earthly realm (Rom 16:20; 5:17). Praise the Lord!
Jesus waged war against Satan in order to gain victory. He carried on to wage war right throughout His ministry time from His baptism to the Cross where He completely defeated all of Satan and his demonic cohort’s power over the world and its inhabitants forever (Matt 4:11; 16:23; John 6:70; 14:30; Col 2:14-15). The Cross was the place where the whole satanic group was disarmed and made powerless. Jesus became the head of the whole universe from that time itself by creating in Himself one new man from the two nature which was working against each other inside man (Gal 5:17; Gen 6:3; Prov 20:27), thus making peace between God’s Spirit inside us and our spirit, making man’s spirit again to be interpenetrated with the Holy Spirit just like Adam was before the fall of man (Eph 2:13-15; 1 Cor 6:17, 19). This is the reason Jesus is called as the last Adam who became a “life-giving spirit” to those who call on His name (1 Cor 15:45). Now each believer has become a new man because the middle wall of sin nature which legally influenced every man through the law of sin was broken by Jesus obeying the law perfectly without even breaking one (2 Cor 5:17, 21). In other words through the spirit of Jesus flowed God’s Spirit to all man-kind as a water would flow through a channel (Matt 3:11; John 7:37-39). The sin nature of Satan has no more rights over us than a man on the street have rights over our house we own and live in the natural. Jesus has become our substitute of peace between God and man. We who have been in enmity with God before the Cross because of the sin nature legally dwelling in man, now because of Jesus’ perfect life which was lived out on earth as a substituted life on behalf of us we have become intimate friends with God because of Him (John 15:15). In other words even though a man might have tried to love God before the death of Jesus on the Cross in the Old Testament, he could not really love God because of the sinful nature which legally influenced every man. Thank God in the New Testament we have the new nature of God inside us. We can choose to love God because of His love living in us through His Holy Spirit (2 Tim 1:7).
His war was offensive; ours as a whole is mainly defensive. God proclaimed His Son as a victor over the whole realm of darkness on behalf of us, and the ground that was won by Christ He has given to us as a inheritance for eternity as His very own children (Luke 18:18; 1 Cor 6:9-11; Heb 1:14; 1 Pet 3:9; Rev 21:7).
This is the reason we sing the great song,
I’m pressing on the upward way,
New heights I’m gaining every day;
Still praying as I’m onward bound,
“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”
Refrain
Lord, lift me up and let me stand,
By faith, on Heaven’s table land,
A higher plane than I have found;
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
My heart has no desire to stay
Where doubts arise and fears dismay;
Though some may dwell where those abound,
My prayer, my aim, is higher ground.
Refrain
I want to live above the world,
Though Satan’s darts at me are hurled;
For faith has caught the joyful sound,
The song of saints on higher ground.
Refrain
I want to scale the utmost height
And catch a gleam of glory bright;
But still I’ll pray till Heav’n I’ve found,
“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”
Refrain
The invincible ground of victory that Jesus Christ has gained through His perfect life is the ‘Higher ground’ that has been given to us as a gift because of God adopting us as His very own children. Today we war against Satan by standing on that ‘higher ground’ gained by Christ, and we maintain and secure defensively all the blessings of God which has been already given to us in the heavenly places in Christ. In other words we are not warring to obtain victory, we just hold on to the victory that is already ours in Christ Jesus by commanding the enemy and making him submit to the authority of God (Luke 10:17). Our task is one of holding; we are neither attacking nor advancing. It is not a matter of marching to win but of standing in the sphere of Christ’s territory and substantiating it. We hold on to our inheritance by standing on the ‘higher ground’ against all the challengers.
We who have been under the law of sin have been predestined and adopted as sons of God by our faith in Jesus Christ (Eph 1:5; Gal 4:5; 3:26; Rom 8:15, 23). The adoption as the sons of God originally belonged to the Israelites as Abraham’s descendants in the flesh, but because the promise of God which was originally given to Abraham includes the whole world, Jesus Christ became ‘life-giving spirit’ through whom we have become partakers with Abraham to experience the same spiritual blessings and have become the spiritual Israel of God (Rom 9:4; Gal 3:16, 18; Gen 12:3, 7; Gal 6:15-16; 3:9; Eph 1:3). Hence all that Christ achieved for our life to be blessed and be a blessing is ours already, stand strongly in your inheritance to enjoy it as long as you live in this earth.
Within the universal governmental authority of Christ, the enemy’s defeat is a fact to us believer’s. The government of the whole universe has been upon the shoulder of Christ for the past two thousand years and it has been increasing through the Church ever since (Isaiah 9:6-7). We also see that Jesus referred to Himself as the “The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone….”. He took the Scripture from the Old Testament Book of Psalms and pointed it to Himself as the fulfillment of it (Ps 118:22; Matt 21:42). Even both Apostle Paul and Peter referred to Jesus as a stone and a rock (Rom 9:33; Acts 4:11; 1 Pet 2:8). A rock or the stone in the Bible points to the governmental authority with which a person will rule. This is the reason Jesus pointed to Peter and said to him, “You are Peter [which means ‘a rock or a stone’]” and then pointed to Himself and said “on this rock [i.e. a huge rock or a large stone] I will build My Church” and the gates [of authority and power] of Hell cannot be victorious against it (Matt 16:18). In other word Jesus pointed to Apostle Peter and prophetically spoke that God will use him to build the Church upon the foundation that Jesus would lay for the humanity on the Cross (1 Cor 3:11; Acts 2:42-43). From the foundation of the huge rock of Jesus’ finished work underneath him, he built himself as an apostolic rock through which God released His apostolic authority to build the Church, which happened again and again as described in the book of Acts 3:6; 5:3-5, 9-11. So only the prophet Daniel prophetically saw Jesus “cut out without hands” which means Jesus will directly start to reign over the whole universe not because of His own striving or by people electing Him through their support. Jesus was directly appointed as a king with the government of the whole universe under Him (Daniel 2:34). Daniel then pointed out that this authority of the universal government of God will strike the image of the feet of Iron and clay which is the final one world government of Antichrist that is coming soon in our generation and will completely break them in to pieces (Daniel 2:34). Beautifully this demise of the world government has been described by Prophet Daniel with the words which says, “Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold [i.e. all the earthly governmental authority which ruled the world under Satan’s influence] were crushed together, and became [powerless] like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind [of the Holy Spirit] carried them away [In other words the Holy Spirit took out God’s breath out of their nostrils (Eccl 12:7; Ps 104:29-30)] so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image [i.e. Jesus’ heavenly governmental authority] became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” Once when people tried to make Him as a stone through their own power, Jesus absolutely rejected it during His ministry (John 6:15). As exactly God promised Jesus, He glorified Him after His resurrection by giving Him the name that is high above all names in heaven, on earth and under the earth (Mark 14:61-62; Phil 2:8-11).
Church rise up and open your spiritual eyes and see for yourself that we already are ruled by a higher governmental authority and power that supersedes the natural worldly governmental power and authority. So only we submit to the worldly governmental authority as long as it is in line with our higher heavenly government (Rom 13:1-7). When it does not line up with our heavenly government’s law and order, then we start to be ruled by the law of the higher government in the natural (Acts 4:19-20; 5:28-29; 5:18-21; 13:12). Christ is our conqueror. In Him we are more than a conqueror because we do not even fight the battle, but just implement the authority of the conqueror as an ambassador on behalf of Him and His heavenly government (Rom 8:37; Heb 12:22-24; 2 Cor 5:20; Eph 6:20). See for example Alexander was called a conqueror because where ever he went and whichever place he fought he always won without even a single defeat at all until his death. So he is called by all as ‘Alexander the conqueror’. Because we are already standing in the conquered territory of our conqueror Jesus, where the enemy has been declared to be defeated officially, we do not fight at all or in other words fight to become a conqueror. We stand already as a conqueror in the authority and power of Christ within us and then as someone “more than a conqueror” we implement the authority and power of God over all our enemies [i.e. Satan and all his hellish demonic cohorts] (Rom 8:37). Christ on the cross made a public show of His triumph over all demonic powers and principalities by completely spoiling its power over people, which they exercised through their legal sinful influence over them because of one man’s disobedience from the beginning (Col2:15; Rom 5:19). This is the reason we are led by Christ in triumphal procession. The Greek word for the English word 'triumph' in 2 Cor 2:14 is 'thriambeuō [Pronounced 'thrē-äm-byü'-ō']' which means 'to triumph, to celebrate a triumph, cause one to triumph'. From this meaning we see that by making us to celebrate in His triumph of the finished work of the Cross, Jesus is causing us to triumph as "more than conquerors". What a wonder! Praise the Lord!
Exercise the authority and power of God daily in all situations knowing that “[in all our trials, tribulations and temptations] we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” (Rom 8:37). By using the authority and the power of God daily, you are actively obeying the word of God. As a result of that kind of implicit obedience God will release His mighty power through His angelic hosts, Satan seeing the power of God flow through your word of command coming out of your mouth, will flee in fear and terror (James 4:6-7). Praise the Lord!
Because the defeat of the enemy is already a fact in the life of a believer, and the Church has been placed here on earth to keep him in that defeated state, Satan is the one who must do the counter attack in His effort to dislodge us by screwing his lies again and again in to the mind of the believer in order to make us lose our active authority and power that comes by believing the truth rather than by our behavior. If we do not hear the enemy’s voice we are keeping Him defeated under our feet which is the place he is already placed by God and positioned in. But once we start hearing the lies of the enemy we lose our boldness [i.e. faith in action] to exercise God’s authority and power. This is the reason Jesus told in a plain language, “4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger [i.e. Satan], but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers [i.e. Satan and his demonic cohorts].” (John 10:4-5). We as the sheep’s of our Great Shepherd Jesus should reject the lies of the enemy who always says, ‘we are rejected by God because of our sinful behavior’. Instead believe that we are always for eternity “accepted in the Beloved” (Eph 1:6). We are not blessed by God for our behavior but for our belief, that will result in a good behavior. Good behavior is a natural byproduct and not a requirement by God to be accepted by Him. He is already very pleased and has perfectly accepted us because of our belief in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Beloved we are truly more than a conqueror! We should never struggle to occupy the ground that is already ours in Christ Jesus, but by faith use the ‘more than a conqueror’s’ authority that lies within us by our authoritative words spoken against the problems we face in Jesus name. Praise the Lord!
In Christ we are conquerors. Is that right? No, we are “more than conquerors” (Rom 8:37). In him, therefore, we stand. In this age after the Cross of Christ, we do not fight for victory; we fight from the victory of Christ. We do not fight to win; we implement the win of Christ. In Christ we have already won and have been declared by God as winners against the losers [i.e. Satan and his minions] eternally. Praise the Lord! In Him we are over comers, if we are already resting in the victory that is already given to us as a gift to us by God as His children in Christ Jesus (1 John 5:4-5; 2:14; Rev 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). Who are those who will overcome and shall inherit all the things that God has prepared on earth and then in heaven in the future? It is us believers who are the legal inheritors of our Heavenly Father’s property on earth and in heaven (Rev 21:7; 1 Cor 2:9-12; John 14:1-3). We do not try to be over comers, we are already over comers in Him who loved us and gave us His only begotten Son as a sacrifice of substitution for us in order to forgive our sins and thus bring us near to Himself (Rom 8:31-39). Because of this one benevolent act of God we are “in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor 1:30). Praise the Lord!
Once you start to fight against Satan to get victory, then you have already lost the battle because you are trying to implement something that is already done. In fact such fatal erroneous thinking comes because Satan must have often spoken his lies again and again in to your mind to finally make you believe his lies. He will always say that he still holds the power over you and that you need to fight to win over him. Once you resist his lies by speaking the truth of God against him, immediately he will run away (James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:9). Even in the life of Jesus when Satan tried to defeat Him, He quoted the truth by saying “it is written [in the word of God]” again and again to destroy the deceptive lies of the devil and win over him. After a certain period of time when the temptations ended, Satan ran away screaming but for opportune time to tempt Jesus (Matt 4:4, 7, 10-11). This is the same formula that we need to use in order to make Satan flee from us. Knowingly or unknowingly if you have believed the lies of the devil, you are acting in unbelief. Unbelief will hinder the authority and power of God to flow through you (Mark 6:5-6). So learn first to again SIT in the truth of the word of God. Only those who sit can stand. Our power for standing as like walking comes from our position of sitting in Christ. Once we renew our mind about the truth that we have been made to sit together with Christ, then will the power of God surge through us to make us stand and defeat the enemy (Rom 12:2; Eph 2:5-6). The strength for believer’s walk and warfare comes from the same position of sitting comfortably and resting in the finished work of Christ. If we do not sit before God we cannot stand before the enemy. God moves with us as He sees us seated by faith in our mind, Satan moves away from us as he sees us stand before him by the authoritative word of faith (Rom 10:8-11). This is the reason Apostle John said that the saints of the Church age, “…overcame [Satan and his demons]… by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.” (Rev 12:11). Here in the above verse death does not mean physical death but soulish death which is the continuous rejection of the lies of the enemy which he constantly speaks in to our soul. The saints separated themselves from such stinking lies of the devil. In other words because the saints did not love the tickling soulish lies of the devil but rather stood by faith in the blood of Jesus [i.e. the truth of God’s everlasting forgiveness] which has pronounced them as forgiven of all their past, present and future sins, they were able to overcome the enemy by declaring and instituting the victory that Jesus has already won for them on the Cross. Praise the Lord!
Satan’s main objective is not to make us to sin but to make it easy for us to sin, so that we may forget and question the perfect triumph of our Lord on the Cross. Once we question the truth of God, we are off the higher invincible ground that Jesus has gifted to us. This is the same thing that happened in the Garden of Eden. Once Eve questioned the truth of God by accepting the lies of the devil, she fell from the perfect glory of God in a matter of time (Gen 3:1-7; 1 Tim 2:13-15; Rom 3:23). Through our soulish mind, intellect and will, Satan will assault and try his best to spoil the rest in Christ within us or our walk in the Spirit. But for all his subtle attack, God has provided us His defensive armor like tightening our mind by the belt of rightly diving the truth (2 Tim 2:15), covering ourselves with the breastplate of God's imparted righteousness (Rom 4:5-6), shodding our feet with the preparation [i.e. put on your shoe and cover your feet] for standing firm-footed by the Gospel of peace (Rom 5:1), covering ourselves using the shield of saving faith (Eph 2:8), taking the helmet of salvation [by calling on the name of Jesus and confessing it through our mouth (Rom 10:8-9, 13)] and activating the sword that the Spirit uses by filling ourselves with the word of God (John 15:7). Finally praying at all times so that the Spirit may use all these weapons naturally through us as we keep standing by continuously wearing all these complete armor of God. In all these above weapons only the sword is used by the Spirit as defensive and also for offensive warfare purposes. All the rest are defensive weapons. This shows that the nature of the spiritual warfare we face is mainly defensive. Only on occasions like after the baptism of Jesus, the Spirit drove Jesus in to the wilderness to face Satan and defeat him offensively. We too in our lives are occasionally led by the Spirit in an offensive warfare against Satan and his faceless demonic cohorts, or even face to face with Satan like Jesus. But the main warfare for a believer is defensive, only occasionally or even rarely offensive. Even Apostle Paul in the propagation of the gospel faced such beastly demonic spirits coming occasionally coming against him as like it came against Jesus (Mark 1:12-13; Eph 6:17; 2 Tim 4:17; 1 Cor 15:32; 2 Peter 1:10; Jude 10). So learn to "...take up the WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD...TO STAND" victoriously against the devil and his evil minions (Eph 6:13).
We have been seeing the importance of wearing the whole armor of God. The whole armor of God consist of various weapon’s which need to be fully worn before a warrior can confidently take a fight against his enemy. In order to wear all these spiritual weapons from the weaponry of God which has been freely provided to us already to defend against the enemies of God, we must fully appropriate the victorious Christ-consciousness [i.e. His wisdom, thoughts and power (1 Cor 2:16; 1 Cor 1:30)] as something that we already have and His victory as our personal victory over the enemy. This Christ-consciousness and His covering over us will come to us more and more by understanding each weapons of the armor of God in details. The Holy Spirit will also transfer to us this Christ-consciousness [i.e. what Jesus Christ has done and achieved for us on the Cross] as we strive to focus on His voice and obey it implicitly (John 10:4, 14).
i) The Belt of Truth – The first piece of armor for the Christian warrior is the belt of truth. Jesus said “I am the truth” (John 14:6). The belt always holds our loins and other weapons kept in it very close and tight to our physical body. In other words, we do not hold the belt, but the belt holds us tight. In the same way the truth of Jesus is already holding our mind tight with all its weapons hidden in it because we already have the mind of Christ in us (1 Cor 2:16). Our mind is the place where the spiritual sperm of God is produced and hidden to give strength to our spiritual life. This is the reason Apostle Peter called our mind as “the loins” (1 Pet 1:13). The Apostle Paul expects us to be conscious of wearing this weapon- holding belt already. So only he says “Stand…having girded [i.e. loaded] your loins with truth” (Eph 6:14). We must first and foremost understand that because Christ is in us, the truth of God is in us (John 17:17). In other words, Apostle Paul is saying that you need to stand against the devil knowing that Jesus will guide you with His truth personally to expose the lies of Satan that comes in to your mind subtly now and then.
Say it out loud, “Praise the Lord, I am already wearing the belt of truth. I will progressively know more and more truth by abiding in the words of Jesus daily, which will make me to hear the voice of Jesus more accurately and tighten my belt of truth further up. I am spiritually becoming fitter day by day and all my spirit muscles in my inner man is constantly growing because I exercise it by resisting the devil and walking in the truth (John 8:31-32; Eph 3:16).” Because each believer is considered as a living stone and an embodiment of truth, collectively the assembly of believers are known as the “pillar and ground of the truth” (2 Cor 3:3; 1 Pet 2:4; 1 Tim 3:15). As much as you hear the voice of Jesus daily in your spirit man and are taught by him, that much of truth you will be able to fathom and apply in your real life situation (Eph 4:21). As you walk daily obeying the voice of Jesus which you will hear in your inner spirit man, other people around you will be able to see the manifestation of truth in your very behavior and life (3 John 1:3-4). Other’s whom you encounter in your daily life will be blessed tremendously through your life even as you learn to “speak the truth in love” day by day (Eph 4:15). Never forget to remember that you have already the mind of Christ within you, which also means that you as a believer can hear the voice of God and be guided by the truth of God personally.
Jesus Himself said to His disciples, “7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. 12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. 14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:7-14). From the preceding verses we need to understand that we cannot judge the truth from the lie of the devil unless the truth of God in us gets quickened by the Spirit. This is the very reason Jesus called the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of truth”. In other words the Holy Spirit acts as the conduit for the truth of God to flow from heaven’s throne to our hearts where we have enthroned God as our president and king. The Holy Spirit will speak to your spirit man with the truth about how you have become a new creature and are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus because of God’s substitution of Jesus as a sacrifice for all your past, present and future sin on your behalf (2 Cor 5:21). He will also reveal to you bit by bit of how Satan has been completely defeated on the Cross and the lies that he speaks to deceive you in to thinking that he still has control over you (Col 2:15-23). He will convict the world of sin through the believer’s words, actions and their life of truth. The Holy Spirit will reveal God’s will and future plan for our lives which God has prepared for us before the foundations of the world (1 Cor 2:9-12). This includes the job we should be doing, the spouse he has planned for us, the kind of friends we should have and even to the minute details which will make our lives as a blessed life on earth. Based on the authority of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will speak what he sees and hears Jesus speak regarding you and your situation in the now realm of God [i.e. rhema word that proceedeth always from the mouth of God for our present situations (Matt 4:4)] (Heb 12:22-25). This is the reason the Bible also says that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”. In other words it means, what you hear in your spirit man from the Holy Spirit can be nothing other than the very voice of Jesus who is in heaven (Rev 19:10; Rom 8:16). These are the only works that the Holy Spirit will do; all other works are of the self or the devil. Jesus himself has told us and assured us that the Holy Spirit will be our Helper and comforter, who will stand alongside us to guide us in to all truth and will help us experience the abundant life that Jesus came to give us (John 10:10). What a comfort to know that He is always by our side to guide us in to “all truth” progressively! Praise the Lord!
Many people wrongly believe that freedom from spiritual conflicts and bondage is the result of a power encounter with demonic evil forces. But the truth is, freedom from spiritual conflicts and bondages is not a power encounter; but it is a truth encounter. Satan and his deceiving minions are deceivers who will work undercover at all costs. But the truth of God’s word will always exposes their lies blatantly. Satan’s power is in the lie (John 8:44). God’s power is in the truth which gives freedom, liberty and power (John 8:32). Satan and his demons will scurry for the shadows when the truth of the light of God comes on. When demonic lies are exposed by the truth of God’s word and His voice, Satan’s plans are foiled. In short, lie is the bondage maker and truth is the bondage breaker. Lie brings and makes you stay in bondage to itself, but truth frees you and brings you in to liberty. Bondages are orchestrated by demonic “spirit of bondage” (Rom 8:15). Truth, freedom and liberty are orchestrated by the Spirit of the Lord in whom is liberty (2 Cor 3:17; Luke 4:18). Now in the present time the Holy Spirit is the truth who will always witness of the washing of water by the word of God and the resultant redemptive covering upon us with the precious blood of Jesus by the Spirit (Eph 5:26; 1 Peter1:18-19; Heb 9:14; 1 John 5:6). In other words there are two spiritual parents in the kingdom of God, who conceive us in to the kingdom of God and then make us grow thereby to maturity. Guess who? One is the word of God and the other is the Spirit of God (1 Peter 1:23; James 1:21-22; John 3:5-6, 8; Titus 3:5). We can only believe to obey the truth of God and purify our souls through the Spirit of God, it cannot be done by our own strength, power and might (1 Peter 1:22; Zech 4:6). We get sanctified by the Spirit all the way through our belief in the truth and not by our behavior, although our behavior will follow (2 Thess 2:13). The power of a believer is directly proportional to the amount of truth he has experienced in his real life scenario by believing it in his heart and has confessed it with his mouth against all impossible situations. When we pursue the truth, God’s power will accompany us (Mark 16:20).
Somewhere in the past many of us have consciously or unconsciously formed patterns of thinking and behaving which may be controlling us. This is what Apostle Paul described as a stronghold. Satan works through strongholds to keep our minds from focusing on Christ. But thank God, freedom comes by “renewing of …[our] mind” and by “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 10:5). Satan always will bombard his thoughts in to your mind and will trick you in to thinking that it is your thought. So only, we need to flush out constantly the lies of Satan that comes from the world’s way of thinking in to our mind through media, people and the false religion of Babylon that always says “work..work…until you die to please God”.
Jesus is the one who is the embodiment of God’s grace and truth, He teaches us the truth of God from heaven in the present time through His Spirit who is residing in our spirit man (John 1:14). The truth of God’s unconditional love of God and His forgiveness came to humankind through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Salvation through the grace of God without the least effort on the part of any man through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the “word of [the] truth” of the gospel (Ps 119:160, 43; 2 Cor 6:7; Eph 1:13; Col 1:5). Truth can now only manifest bodily when a believer walks in the power of God and in the character of God in their daily life which is called by Apostle Paul as the “manifestation of the truth” (2 Cor 4:2). As you walk day in and day out by practicing the truth of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness, you will soon become mature in your spirit man to rightly divide the word of God and apply it in all your real life situations just like Jesus did when He was on this earth (2 Tim 2:15; Heb 5:12-14; Jam 1:18; 1 Cor 15:20, 23).
Jesus told that it is God’s will for every man living in this earth to be set free from sin, sickness and death by faith in the positive power of God’s life (John 8:36, 39-40; Rom 8:11). When we are in constant touch with Jesus through His word quickened by the Spirit (John 15:7-8, 4), no crafty lies of the devil will ever be able to deceive us. The Holy Spirit not only hears and tells the truth which He hears Jesus speak concerning you in heaven, but also He will speak to you about God’s will and plan for your future and then will guide you to do it step by step and fulfill the will of God in your daily life (John 16:13). As you live out the truth of the custom designed will of God for your life, automatically the truth of God’s word which imparts the unconditional love and forgiveness of God will sanctify you progressively more and more in to His very own image which is in deposited in His only begotten Son Jesus (John 17:17, 19; Rom 8: 28-29). Everyone who is born of the truth of God hears the words and voice of Jesus who witnesses the truth of God from heaven to every man who receives it (John 18:37-38). The Holy Spirit acts as the satellite dish antenna to receive the voice wave of Jesus from heaven, whenever Jesus speaks personally to us. After receiving the voice signal from heaven, the Holy Spirit always speaks in to our spirit man inside us. It is up to us to tune in to the frequency of the Spirit, to hear the voice of Jesus in our soul. The better we suppress the distortions of the world that disturbs the signal from heaven, the better and clearer we will be able to hear. Eve was deceived in the Garden of Eden because she was not able to judge the lies of the devil from the truth of God, and was deceived in to disobedience (Gen 3:1-7; 1 Tim 2:14). This fall of man happened because Eve did not take time to fully understand and stand in the simplicity of the truth of God from her husband Adam, and hence was not under the covering of God’s protection because of lack of submission to God’s authority structure which starts with God, then Adam and then Eve (2 Cor 11:3).
But because of Jesus having been born as a perfect man of all mankind, we have come under the covering of the truth of God through Him (Eph 1:20-23). Jesus for our advantage has gone in to heaven, or else He can be speaking the truth to us at only one place at a time because of His physical limitation as a perfect man. Say for example he is present with you teaching and imparting the truth of God, he cannot be present to a needy soul in another continent. Apostle John has clearly described that this impartation of truth through the anointing, which comes as a result of becoming a believer in Christ Jesus is as a privilege for every child of God (1 John 2:27). Now Jesus can speak to every believer in all the continents at the same time from heaven through the anointing that abides in all believers. Another way of knowing that we are of the truth is by loving our brethrens by our loving actions of mercy and good deeds with good motives of Christ’s love behind it (1 John 3:17-19; Gal 6:9-10; Matt 10:40-42). People of the world can show mercy to other underprivileged people, but they cannot show it with the truth of Christ’s unconditional love as the fuel behind such actions. The apostolic man like Apostle Paul who did great things for God boasted in Christ’s unconditional love as his motivation to do such great things (2 Cor 5:13-14). Praise the Lord!
ii) The Breastplate of Righteousness – This is the second piece of armor for a Christian warrior. The Apostle Paul expects us to remember “having [already] put on the breastplate of righteousness” (Eph 6:14). The breastplate is a protective weapon that gives our heart the protection it needs from all the weapons of the enemy. The breastplate keeps us from imminent death. We need to be consciously moving in to the spiritual warfare by knowing that we are already covered with the blood of Christ. Once we receive the breastplate of righteousness from God while we are born again, we need not worry to keep it tight over our heart in order to protect ourselves from the weapons of the devil. The breast plate will hold us tightly. It stays over there forever, this is the reason Apostle Paul has clearly told us that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus because God has already placed us in Christ who Himself became for us “righteousness” from God (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Cor 1:30). This is why the Prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament foretold that “The Lord [will become] our righteousness” (Jer 23:6). That means Jesus by His death has taken responsibility for every believer’s heart to be protected from all the enemies weapons which may lead to death. He has become the guarantee to protect us to live and not die because of the effects of sin. We need to look to Jesus and follow his instruction to keep the breastplate from getting rusty. When we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead on our behalf, we get saved from all the weapons of unbelief of the enemy (Rom 10:9). After this one spiritual act of faith, we need to keep believing that we have been made right with God already and should confess it through our mouth to see the victory of God manifest over sin in our lives (Rom 10:10). When we put on Christ at the time of our salvation, we are justified [i.e. declared righteous] before our holy God. In other words from the moment we invite Christ to be our Savior and the Lord of our life, God declares us as righteous from that time onwards (Rom 3:28). Praise God! We have become righteous by faith in Christ which also gives us the rights to stand on the higher ground of Christ’ s victory, gain Christ and be found in Him because of Christ’s righteousness which is a perfect one achieved for us through His life, death and resurrection (1 Cor :30; Phil 3:8-9). Nobody can condemn us to death for any sin present in our lives because God who is the only righteous judge of the universe has declared us to be righteous and has justified us freely by His grace and unmerited favor (Rom 7:24-25 => 8:1). From the time we are saved to time we die and leave this planet earth, God starts to continually work for the good of every believer’s life and is not against us. This He showed openly through the death of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of all our sins (Rom 8:31-32; Eph 4:32). In other words, God has freely forgiven our past, present and future sins because of what Jesus has achieved for us individually on the Cross (Rom 8:23-26). Now that we have been declared as righteous by our faith in Jesus Christ, no one can condemn us for any of our wrong doings before God (Rom 8:33). The good news is, Christ sitting at the right hand of God is continually praying on behalf of us to God the Father personally, for us to be empowered to overcome all sinful habits and behavior’s of our past, which is keeping us from being effective in the kingdom of God (Rom 8:34). It is because of Christ’s love towards us that He is interceding for us. The question is, who can stop Christ in heaven from interceding for us because of His unconditional love towards us who are weak to sin often because of our indwelling sin nature within us? No not one. As long as Christ is praying for us, we will progressively win over every sin, struggles and battles because of God empowerment over us (Rom 8:35-39). Intercession of Christ continues until we physically die to reach heaven to see him face to face (Acts 7:55-56). Praise the Lord!
Our righteousness that comes through our effort to please God is compared in the Bible to a filthy rags that cannot be useful to cover enough of our spiritual nakedness which we inherited from our forefather Adam (Isaiah 64:6; Rom 5:12; 3:23). As a result, God can never be reached through man’s good works because it is unacceptable to God as a valid perfect substitute for God’s perfect righteous requirements. But our God graciously “imputes [i.e. puts in to our spiritual bank account] righteousness apart from works” (Rom 4:6). And he declares us who are ungodly as righteous, because we believe in the perfect substitutional sacrifice of Jesus Christ as our ultimate solution for pleasing God. Our faith in Christ Jesus is accounted by God for appeasing His righteous requirement (Rom 4:5-6). O what a grace!
To live continuously victorious and to be blessed with all the spiritual blessings which comes through the Holy Spirit, we need to train ourselves to stand firm in the righteousness of Christ by believing it against all the onslaught of the enemy. We need to train our minds to think always confidently based on the eternally constant and unchanging love of God (Jer 31:3), irrespective of the circumstances we may be going through based on the weakness of the flesh.
Learn to think and say to yourself, ‘I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. I am righteous because of what Christ has achieved for me on the Cross. All my past, present and future sins are forgiven because of the blood of Christ which was shed for me 2000 years ago on Calvary. God is not against me, but He is for me and He is on my side. God intimately loves me all the time because of my faith in Christ (2 Cor 5:21; Col 2:13; Rom 8:31, 38-39)’. Standing firm in our righteousness also requires us to live in continuous agreement with God according to 1 John 1:9 which says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Confession is different from saying, ‘I am sorry’ or asking forgiveness for something bad that we have done knowingly or unknowingly. To confess [homologeo.Gr] means to acknowledge or to agree. In other words, you confess your sin when you say what God says about it. Many times this is where the devil subtly will make you believe that a sin to be of a lesser sin or greater sin based on the devils thought that he puts and places in your mind. Satan may try to tell you that a particular besetting sin is not that much of a sin and that we do not have to agree with God about it as a sin. This is where the continuous fellowship with God will get severed, but it has nothing to do with our salvation which is wholly based on what Jesus has done for us on Calvary and not on what we do or do not do (Eph 2:8). So a sin is a sin no matter how big it is or how small it is. For example, even a lustful thought is equal to the act of committing it in the natural according to God’s standard of perfect righteousness (Matt 5:27-28). For example, you have entertained a lustful thought in your mind. Satan may say to you or make you feel that it is not at all a problem. But the result will cause the manifested presence of God or the goodness of God to be withdrawn from you. So as soon as possible agree with God and say to Him, ‘Dear Lord, I have entertained a lustful thought and I have sinned. Thank you for being faithful and righteous to forgive me of all my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Praise the Lord!’ God doesn’t forgive you because you have said this prayer, in fact you are already forgiven because you are the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor 5:21; Col 3:13). But because of this prayer, you have positioned and aligned yourself in continuous fellowship with God through His presence which is not possible without a confession (1 John 1:3). This confession is equivalent to a series of sacrifices and offerings in the Old Testament without which no one can enter the presence of God (Heb 9:7). In the New Testament confessional prayer acts as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God, which in turn will act as a covering and cleansing for all your present sin, by your faith in the ultimate sacrifice (Heb 13:15). The moment you confess and agree with God that you have sinned, instantly in the spiritual realm God will minister the effects of the blood of Christ and apply it over you. It may even be done through the ministry of angels who are said to be the ministering spirits sent forth to minster for those believer’s who have inherited salvation (Heb 1:4). Because of your confession you can continue in the blessing zone of God. In this way the breastplate of righteousness can be kept effectively and consciously in place and from getting rusty. Without confession you may become like a person who is searching forgetfully for a pen having a beautiful parker pen in his hand. This confession will give you boldness about your righteousness and will make you as fearless as a lion (Prov 28:1). Praise the Lord!
Though a believer fails to confess his present sins, God will never leave him because of His faithfulness in fulfilling His promises (Heb 10:15-18; 13:5; Matt 24:35; Ps 138:2). When a believer consistently lives in sin without confessing it, he may lose his joy of living in the blessings of God completely (1 John 1:3-4; John 15:7; 16:24). This is the reason Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Tim 2:13, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.” In other words: we do not lose our salvation because of our habitual and besetting sins, but we will be pruned and chastised because of the love of God so that we may be partakers of His holiness (Heb 12:10, 3-7; John 15:1-2; Prov 29:15, 17; 19:18; 13:24). There will be no victory, prosperity and fellowship with God through His presence without confessing our present sins (Prov 28:13; Ps 32:1-6). The very act of confession indicates that we do not like to continue in our sins which grieves the heart of God (Eph 4:25-32). Confession precedes restoration (Ps 51:4, 12, 17, 15). The relationship of a believer with God and his eternal destiny are not at stake when he does sin (1 John 2:1), but his daily victory, peace, joy and righteousness in the Holy Ghost is (Rom 14:17). His confession of sins clears the way for the fruitful expression of righteousness in His daily life. This is what Apostle Paul meant when he said, “…I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men.” (Acts 24:16).
iii) The Shoe of Peace – This is the third piece of weapon that is required
in the arsenal of a Christian warrior. Paul exhorts the believer to appropriate the shoe of peace by, “Having [already] shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15). In other words Paul is saying that the believer need to remind himself that he is positioned in peace with God through the gospel [i.e. good news] inside the kingdom of God, he is also saying that peace with God is not something to be received and achieved but something to be remembered and appropriated, because it is already within every believer as Jesus has promised (John 16:25-28, 16, 22-24, 33). Remembering the gospel of Jesus Christ by applying it in one’s life, will make your faith to soar and reach out to God without any hindrance. Such personal application of the gospel will make the believer to appropriate the resurrection power of Jesus Christ in one’s life and flow in it (Rom 6:19, 22-23; 2 Cor 5:14; Eph 3:10-11). The bottom-line of the gospel of peace is: God has already empowered us with all the spiritual empowerment that we will ever need to succeed in this earthly life, so that we can get counted and be rewarded now and also in our future life in eternity. This empowerment is something that is already given to us personally by Jesus through the word of God and the Holy Spirit (Eph 1:3; 2 Tim 3:16-17). Believer’s who have put on the shoe of peace by receiving Jesus as their Lord and Savior, need to believe that His-story of birth, death and resurrection to be their spiritual history in order to appropriate the power and peace of God in to their lives tangibly (Rom 6:5-12). When you receive Christ as your Lord and Savior you are united with the prince of peace (Is 9:6). After you have received Jesus Christ in to your heart by faith, you have peace with God right now and for eternity ahead (Rom 5:1). But the Peace of God is not the same as peace with God which we already have in us as believers. The grace and empowerment of the peace of God is accessed by faith in God through unburdening ourselves in daily prayers, we pray to God because we already have peace with God and trust him with all our problems, then by the peace of God which we have inside us we stand against the confusions of the devil (Rom 5:1-2; 10:17). In other words, Peace with God positions us and makes us eligible to receive the peace of God. Peace of God also means the empowerment of God to overcome all negative circumstances of life caused as a result of sin, sickness and death. Praise the Lord! In other words peace with God is something that we already have, but peace of God is something that is received from God moment by moment, by making prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to God whenever we feel anxious about anything and everything. As a result God has promised to guard our hearts and minds with the peace of God that surpasses all understanding (Phil 4:6-7). In distressing times like the time we live, what a comfort to know the peace of God and be ruled by it. This is the real abundant life that Jesus spoke about in the Gospel of John (John 10:10). Peace of God is something that we do not achieve by our own efforts, but is tangibly received by asking God and placing all of our burdens that come upon us daily. By focusing on God and dwelling in His presence we are guarded from taking wrong decisions by our impulsive, momentary and soulish nature and let our bad circumstances rule and ruin our lives (Isaiah 26:3). This is the reason God says, “Be still [in my presence] and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). When we have the peace of God within us we confess boldly like David, “The battle is the Lord’s” (1 Sam 17:47). As a result God’s power gives us inconceivable unction against the enemy to defeat and destroy his very existence in our lives.
When we have peace of God ruling our hearts and minds from anxiety that destroys human values and lives, then we will naturally become peace makers because of serenity, tranquility and spiritual maturity in our mind. Thus we shall be called as “sons of God” by God Himself (Matthew 5:9). O what a privilege! This Peace of God is in our hands to maintain, we can easily destroy it in our homes, neighborhoods and offices with our wrong words, malicious gossips and negative attitude. This is the reason Apostle Paul said, “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.” (Rom 12:18). Whenever you have destroyed the peace of God in your abode, don’t blame anybody else for causing it. Blame yourself for the sin of prayerlessness which is the root cause of the destruction of peace in your homes, offices and neighborhoods (1 Sam 12:23). Immediately stop for a moment and remember that the problem which persists is not because of others, but it is because you have not spent enough time unloading your anxiety to God in prayer with thanksgiving for His answers that will come through receiving the peace of God (Phil 4:6-7; Mark 11:24). The peace of God is the receipt from heaven that says that your problems have been received by heaven through your supplication and that the answer for it has already come (Matt 21:22). When you deposit your money in your bank, the bankers will just give you a receipt acknowledging they have received your money in to their bank and have deposited it for your future use. All you need to do after this process is to see the receipt and trust that your money is safely deposited in the bank and keep it safe in order to receive it later and claim it with interest anywhere and any other time. In the same way when you have the peace of God ruling your hearts it is a acknowledgment card and a receipt from heaven’s bank that you already have what you have asked for in the heaven’s bank, because God has heard your prayers and have stamped yes to your request. Whatever you have asked for will be in the bank until the time of need arises when God will supernaturally release all the things that you have asked for, from the starting time of your first prayer with thanksgiving that brought the peace of God within you to the time when the answer will be released in to the natural realm. But there is a important thing for you to have till then. It is the heaven’s receipt of the peace of God which must be show as evidence until the point of time when you will receive in the natural what you have asked for and believed in the spiritual realm.
Hours and days before Jesus was crucified on the Cross of Calvary, He promised that the Holy Spirit whom the Father God will send from heaven will bring in to remembrance all that is said by Jesus to teach us all things. When the Holy Spirit brings in to remembrance things Jesus has planned to impart in to our lives, the peace of Jesus will start to get imparted in to us which He has already given to us in the spiritual realm irrespective of the circumstances we may be going through in the natural. This Peace of Jesus should guide us in all our difficult circumstances of our lives journey on earth. And also Jesus has exhorted us that we should not at any cost let our hearts to be troubled and as a result destroy the peace of Jesus deposited within us, nor should we allow the troubles and the circumstances that the devil will try to bring in to our life, to take our focus away from Him by our continued lethargic prayerlessness (John 14:26-27). This Peace of Jesus is the peace with God that we already have which when remembered and renewed in our mind, will make us to go boldly to the throne of grace to receive grace [i.e. Unmerited favor of God’s peace and empowerment to overcome the negative circumstances we may be facing] in the time of our anxious need (Heb 4:16). Instead of griping, fretting and fuming about our bad circumstances over which we have no power, Apostle Paul agrees with the exhortation of Jesus discussed previously and says, “15 And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” (Col 3:15-16). In other words as you meditate upon the word of Christ and make it dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching, singing in the Holy Spirit and by singing with grace in your heart to God, the peace of God will naturally flood your soul and will preside in your hearts to guide you in to the destiny that God has for you. Don’t miss out God’s best by choosing things that may seem temporally good to you. Good is the enemy of the best. So learn to trust implicitly God’s ways, through which he will lead you. You may not understand logically with you finite mind all that God may tell you to do, but based on the peace of God in your heart proceed in the way God is telling you . When you lose your peace of God, immediately start praying to God until you are again filled with it. This is a life style of abundant life that you need to cultivate by disciplining yourself day in and day out. It is a hard work, but it is worth the cost we pay. God’s ways are always the best earthly, eternally and heavenly wisest choices you can make for your life. So choose God’s best and live a blessed life of God’s peace and rest.
The bottom line is, you have the peace with God through the gospel of peace as a believer right now (Rom 5:1; Eph 6:15; Luke 2:13-14), but the peace of Christ must also rule in your heart if you are going to live victoriously, and that is possible only when you let the word of Christ richly dwell in you through various means of self grace-activating ministries (Col 3:15-16). The shoe of peace also becomes a means of protection against the divisive schemes of the devil when you act as a peacemaker among believers (Rom 14:19). Peace makers bring people together by promoting fellowship and reconciliation. These peacemakers are considered by God in the mature category of His sons (Matt 5:9). Anyone under the inspiration of the devil can easily and contagiously release the pandemic of gossip, backbiting and slander which has the negative potential to divide a fellowship, but it takes the grace of God and the extraordinary move of God to unite all of the believers as one body in Christ Jesus. This peaceful coexistence of all believer’s can be achieved only by God Himself who is ever ready to crush Satan under our feet if we are ready and cooperative with God (Rom 16:20). Are we ready for peace and more peace? If yes you will have a blessed heaven on earth. Praise the Lord!
iv) The Shield of Faith – This is the fourth piece of weapon that is required
in the arsenal of a Christian warrior. A shield is not something that we can attach to our body and expect it to protect us automatically. First of all we must recognize the weapons of our enemy coming towards us in our direction and then block it using the shield we have. It is a weapon that is used only when the exact attack of the enemy comes against us. In other words only when the enemy attacks us with his doubt missiles of unbelief against the faithfulness of God and His word, then we take up the shield of faith and negate his missiles. It is one weapon that is used momentarily and not all the time. To recognize and see the weapons coming towards us, we must first bring the shield down to a lower level than our head. In other words, unless the Lord allows you to face the enemy yourself by bringing down your spiritual protection for a certain amount of time, you cannot move in to the territory that the enemy may be presently holding before you. Even though God will allow the spiritual protection to come down for a certain period of time, yet your enemy Satan and his demonic minions cannot go beyond the level that God allows them to go, God will never allow the enemy to go beyond your ability (1 Cor 10:13). O what a faithful God! The faith we have and speak out is the shield we have to block every flaming missile of thoughts from the evil one. The moment God brings His spiritual protection down, immediately the enemy of our souls will pounce in to the opportunity to tempt us, because he cannot tempt us all the time as he thinks unless God decides (Luke 4:13). When Satan went against Job in the first test of the spiritual warfare arena that God orchestrated, God only gave permission and power over all that he had and did not give permission to Satan to lay a hand on his person (Job 1:12). When Satan went against Job the second time in the ultimate test of spiritual warfare, God gave permission to Satan over Job’s body except his very life. It is like a Father allowing a trained warrior son to be proudly sent in to the battle field fully equipped and see his son win over his enemies. This is the same way Jesus faced Satan when the Spirit drove Him in to wilderness to be tempted and it is the same way God will allow us to be tempted in order to see the victory of His nature through His sons like us, who are being trained to be cherished for eternal honor (Mark 1:12-13). O what a God we have, who himself has said that He is a warrior (Exod 15:3). So only he is training us to be a fearless warrior in order to inherit and flow in His nature of faith. Faith always acts through our love for God and others (Gal 5:6). Our love for God and others will casts away the fear of Satan and his evil minions away from us, because in the nature of God’s perspective we will be seeing life’s troubles as a warrior son of God and live by God’s faith (1 John 4:17-19; Mark 11:22).In the natural realm a missile has the potential to completely destroy the target and set it in blazing fire to be burned till ashes are only left. In the same way, in the spiritual realm thoughts are the spiritual missiles which have the potential to destroy our abundant life which Jesus has already given us to enjoy. Satan’s main spiritual weapons of thoughts are released right in to our soulish heart to cause carnage to our spiritual life. If unchecked will cause us to bleed to death in our soulish mind, emotion and will (Mark 7:20-23). Apostle Paul has said in Eph 6:16, “above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.” Here Paul is emphasizing and exhorting us to use this shield of faith as a weapon more than all other weapons by saying “above all, taking the shield of faith”. In other words Apostle Paul is expecting us to take the shield of faith above all so that we may be able to put out all the weapons of fear, intimidation, doubt, evil and unclean thoughts, lustful desires of the evil one that he will usually release subtly in to our mind, making us to think that it is our own thoughts and desires. Don’t let the devil do your thinking which will bring separation between God’s abundant presence and you in your soul. Do your own thinking based on the prosperity of the word of God. Actually in such times of intense temptation as you allow the wrong thoughts to dwell in you without resisting it, you are not thinking for yourself but the devil is thinking for you and is making you believe that you are the evil that God hates. Don’t wait for another second, but immediately open your mouth and command the devil to go in the name of Jesus! He will immediately run away from you because as the word of God says, you are resisting the devil by submitting to God through obedience to His Word (James 4:7). And as God has promised in his word Satan will come under the authority of your anointed words and will flee away from you (Mark 11:23). If Satan is not ready to budge to your words, don’t stop. Instead continue to “Stand firm against him [in your spoken word of faith], and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering [as] you are.” (1 Peter 5:9, NLT). As you continue to do it faithfully, the anointing inside you will increase, and as a result the devil will flee screaming for a exit out of the place (1 John 4:4). The person of the Holy Spirit who is the anointing will increase His manifested presence through you when you move by faith. So only Apostle James said, “…Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (1 Peter 4:7). In other words it means, resist and keep on resisting the devil by being strong in your faith and he will surely flee away from you. Praise the Lord!
Faith says: Christ is exalted (Acts 5:31; Phil 2:9). Then comes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that comes by faith supernaturally with the outward evidence of speaking in tongues, it is one of the main evidence that the Lord Jesus is exalted and seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven (Acts 2:33). Faith says : We are saved by his grace already from the rightful penalty of our past, present and future sins (Eph 2:8). Faith says: We have access to God and his empowering grace through our Lord Jesus Christ freely anytime and anyplace in which we stand (Rom 5:2). Faith says: Jesus and God the Father already indwells in us through His Spirit (John 14:23). Faith says: In Christ we are already more than conquerors. Faith never sulks because of failure or discouragement because it is the antidote to all our lives problems. It is no wonder to see Paul emphasize about the importance of faith again and again, because it makes us to reach God’s hand and receive his answers (See Eph 1:20; 2:8; 3:12, 17). We must not ask the Lord to enable us to overcome the enemy, nor even look to him to overcome, but praise Him by faith because he has already done so; He is the victor. It is all about us standing in faith against the problems we face and winning over it by our patience and praise. We are in Christ and He is in us, we must not ask the Lord to enable us as though He is someone apart from us who gives us strength for victory only momentarily. Faith says: Lord you are my strength (Ps 19:14; 27:1; 28:7; 43:2; 62:7). Asking for enabling grace and help in time of crisis is not a great faith but only a little faith (Matt 8:25-27). But speaking the word of faith to calm the storms arising in our lives shows our great faith in Jesus’ words as the indisputable words of authority in which we stand by faith (John 14:12-13). This is the reason the writer of the Book of Hebrews has said, faith and patience working together will make us to inherit the promises of God in our lives (Heb 10:35-36).
Faith is a spiritual muscle that will only grow as we keep it exercising daily. Without exercising our spiritual muscles of faith, it will start to atrophy. We all have the ability to exercise faith. This is why God has given assurance in His word that a believer will surely live by faith and as a result grow in faith (Rom 1:17). Also the writer of the Book of Hebrews in his epistles has confirmed this fact by saying and referring the same verse from Hab 2:4 which says, “Now the just shall live [the life of God on earth] by faith [in His promises]; But if [anyone] draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him." If any believer draws back from exercising faith, God has no pleasure in him. In other words, if any believer is not practicing faith in His life by obeying God’s will of His word, it will not bring joy to the heart of God (Heb 10:38). God has clearly told that without faith in ones heart and life, nobody can please Him (Heb 11:6).
By faith we receive God’s strength to fulfill God’s wonderful will for our lives (Heb 11:11). By faith we dwell on earth, waiting for a permanent city whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11:9-10). By faith we obey God’s call in our lives and keep moving from place to place which he guides us, not knowing absolutely our final destination in which God will make us to dwell and enjoy (Heb 11:8). By faith we are divinely warned and we move with godly fear and we obey and do what God tells us to do, by which we condemn the world for its ungodliness and we become the heir of righteousness which is according to faith and not by our works. In other words, because we believe and have the faith of God, God will work through us and will justify us through God’s perfect work finished for us on Calvary (James 2:22, 26). If good works does not follow us, it means that we have not really believed. True faith will always result in actions. Simply to say, ‘If what we say we believe doesn’t result in action then it’s doubtful that we really believe it.’
Faith is not a means to an end. Faith cannot be expressed by looking to our self. Faith is a tangible spiritual material that comes and gets deposited in us as we look towards the giver of our faith Jesus Christ for solution to all our life’s problems and harsh circumstances (Rom 10:17). Looking to Jesus in order to receive faith for overcoming can only be done through our prayer and supplication (Matt 21:22). When we look to Jesus for our answer to all our lives problems, He speaks a rhema [i.e. God’s spoken word in the present time for a particular situation] word to us in our spirit man inside us, which will release God’s overcoming faith in us to overcome our difficulties if only we will hold on to it and persevere in it by speaking the same rhema word out of our mouth without doubting towards the mountains of problems we face (Matt 21:21). There are three important things to be done before the faith in us attains fruition to receive the promises of God. Firstly, Faith is received in our heart when we believe the voice and words of Jesus Christ speaking in our hearts (Rom 10:17, 10). Jesus at all times speaks through His written word and will always quicken it by the Spirit of God (John 6:63; Matt 4:4; John 15:7-8). This is called as heart faith. Secondly, we need to confess the words that we have heard from God through our mouth against the problems we face. This is called as speaking faith (Rom 10:10; 2 Cor 4:13). If we do not confess what we believe in our heart, our faith will soon die before fruition. It will then become dead faith, which is also called as mere mental faith because it lacks the resulting actions that accompany real faith (James 2:26). We cannot have faith without speaking the ‘word of faith’ through our mouth (Rom 10:6-8). Thirdly, we need to hold on to the confession of our faith done through our mouth without wavering in doubt (Heb 4:14; 10:23). This is called as persevering faith (Heb 11:13-16). During this period of perseverance, God may allow many faith tests to be conducted before He will reward a person eternally once for all, after all these tests gets over (Heb 11:17-18; Gen 22:1-3, 10-19). The testing of our faith will release the fruit of patience, character, hope and ultimately love for God and man eternally in to our soul, which will qualify us to receive reward eternally (James 1:3; Rom 5:1-5; 1 Tim1:18-19; 6:12; 2 Tim 4:7). The High Priest Jesus Christ will release the grace of God seeing our faith accordingly (Heb 3:1). Faith attains fruition in the crucible of hope and love (1 Cor 13:13; 1 Thess 1:3; 5:8). When we can’t see the circumstances change by our word of authority, we start to move in to hope that God is faithful to fulfill it and do not doubt it (Mark 11:14, 20-22). Doubt will destroy our faith and will make it ineffective (Mark 11:23; Matt 21:21). Even when we don’t see the negative circumstances around us get changed, we still need to persevere and hold on speaking and confessing the word of faith through our mouth. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is the originator and perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:2). Sin ensnares us through unbelief and doubt. Faith frees us from sin (Heb 12:1; Rom 7:24-25). So without fail, “Watch [perceive the evil strategies of the devil and pray to receive faith] , stand fast in the faith [by speaking out the victorious word of God through your mouth], be brave, be strong [to persevere and reach the finish line to inherit eternal blessings of God].” (1 Cor 16:13). Always focus on the eternal bigger picture that is being fulfilled by God day after day through your faith life of triumphant procession of patience. Victory is yours to enjoy if you will only stand patiently in persevering faith which has great reward! Praise the Lord!
The more you know about God and His word, the more faith you will have (Rom 10:17). If you want your shield of faith to grow large and protective, your knowledge of God and His word must increase (Hos 4:6; 6:3). For this reason Apostle Paul exhorted all the believers to “pursue…[after] faith” (1 Tim 6:11; 2 Tim 2:22). Inculcate daily the habit of reading the word of God and meditating it throughout your day, like a cow eats and then chews it back by bringing it in to its mouth. Cows have a very interesting stomach. It has four parts. When a cow takes a bite of grass, it chews it briefly, mixing it with large amounts of saliva. It then swallows this and it goes down to stomach number one. Here it starts to digest and break down into smaller parts. After some time passes the cow will bring this food back up again and chew it some more. When he swallows it this time it is smaller and finer and goes down into stomach number two. Here the water is taken out and the food is made into pellets. A little later the cow lays down and brings back up the pellets into its mouth where it chews away for hours. The food then goes to the third and finally into the fourth stomachs.
Just like a cow eats grass and chews its cud we are to meditate on the Word of God in order for our faith to soar higher and higher and be blessed because of hugely pleasing God in a big way (Lev 11:3; Heb 11:6). The purpose of meditation is application. We meditate in order to do it. We do the word of God in order to be blessed, successful and prosperous (Ps 1:1-2; Josh 1:8). As we assimilate the word of God daily, God will release new ideas in to our mind that will make us successful in every area of our life. Praise the Lord!
v) The Helmet of Salvation – This is the fifth and one of the most important we
apon in the armory of believers that protects the spiritual and eternal life within us based on what Jesus has achieved for us personally. Apostle Paul exhorts the believers to “…take the helmet of salvation” (Eph 6:17). It means one has to consciously remember the permanency of salvation that Jesus Christ has achieved for every one of us. Many of us believe after we are saved we need to strive in order to keep our salvation safe or else we will lose it. It is unbiblical to think like this. The word of God says that the salvation we receive is an eternal one (Heb 5:9). We are not saved by how we behave but by how we believe (Eph 2:8-9). We just believed in the finished work of Jesus Christ’s birth, death and resurrection to get saved and be forgiven of all our past, present and future sins (Acts 16:31; Col 3:13). As a result of believing, God has saved us, sealed us and given us the Spirit as a guarantee of our wonderful future from that point of time even to eternity (2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13-14). Because we did not save our self and seal our self, we cannot unsave our self and unseal our self of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is a supernatural act of God that can only be received and experienced.Many do not understand fully what is mean by salvation, this is the reason many times Satan makes them doubt their own salvation whenever their behavior do not line up to their expectation. Salvation is not a feeling, but it is a person. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). In other words when the Samaritan woman questioned about the legitimacy of the place from which God received the prayer and worship of men as Jerusalem or not, Jesus pointed to the Jews as the real source of salvation from which the person of salvation the Messiah had come pointing to Himself through which all prayer and worship will be accepted by God the Father without any precondition of any place or time (John 4:23-26). In another place Jesus told to the Jews, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life [and salvation]; and these are they which testify of Me.” (John 5:39). The same mistake many people still make thinking that salvation is in the Scriptures. But the bottom line is, Scriptures point us towards the Savior who saves us and give us eternal life. Eternal life and salvation is nothing but the very person of Jesus Christ (John 14:6; 11:24-26). The very fact that we are saved means, Jesus has come in to our heart through His Spirit to live in us and deliver us from all the evil and sinful influence of the world which brings only death [i.e. separation from God] (Rev 3:20; John 14:23; Rom 6:23). This is the reason Apostle John clearly has told in 1 John 5:20, “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” According to this Scripture, receiving the understanding of salvation and consequently knowing the true God, and also understanding how we are already positioned in Jesus Christ is salvation from the true God of heaven, and this is true eternal life. We cannot do anything to receive or inherit eternal life, because it is a gift that is given freely to those who believe and receive the adoption as God’s children through Jesus Christ, and as a result enjoy salvation for eternity ahead (Mark 10:17-22; John 3:16; Rom 5:18; Gal 4:4-5; Eph 1:5-6). Moses and David clearly understood this salvation in such a way that they declared statements such as, “The LORD [is] my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He [is] my God, and I will praise Him; My father's God, and I will exalt Him.” (Exod 15:2), “In God [is] my salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength, [And] my refuge, [is] in God.” (Ps 62:7). The Psalmist Asaph wrote, “For God [is] my King from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.” (Psalm 74:12). The major prophet Isaiah understood the fact that salvation is nobody other than the person Yaweh who is the Lord. So only he wrote, “Behold, God [is] my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; 'For YAH, the LORD, [is] my strength and song; He also has become my salvation.' " ” (Isaiah 12:2). When the just and devout Simeon saw the baby Jesus in the temple, he did not say, ‘I have seen a baby who is going to work out the salvation of God for every man.’ But He said, “For my eyes have seen Your salvation.” (Luke 2:30). What do we understand from all of these above Scriptures and clear expositions? We come to understand that salvation is the very person of Jesus Christ. The more we know Him the more we will experience freedom and deliverance from all evil (John 14:6; 8:32, 36; Rom 7:24-25).
We cannot lose our salvation because we follow Jesus and He has promised us, “27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.” (John 10:27-28). O what a promise and assurance to rest on! From the preceding verses we understand that once we receive eternal life, we will never perish because we are safe in the hands of our Chief Shepherd Jesus Christ (1 Peter 5:4). It because of God’s love He has saved us (John 3:16). Because God’s love is unconditional and an everlasting love, no devil or demon from the pit of hell can be able to snatch us away from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus or make us lose our salvation through our wrong behavior (Rom 8:38-39; Jer 31:3). This is the reason king David in the Old Testament was so confident about his eternal salvation and God’s unchanging love He said, “…If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there [by Your presence to lead me and hold me]” (Psa 139:8). Surely we must grow in our confidence like David to believe the permanency of God’s salvation as something eternal and secure rather than doubt it by our unbelief. David’s confidence in the unchangeable, merciful and benevolent character of God, pleased God so much that He called David a man after His own heart (Acts 13:22). When we ask Jesus to save us, he saves because of His love and becomes our Savior from that moment onwards to keep us that way forever. This does not mean that we never go astray, instead truly as a sheep in the natural we go astray and many times we get lost from Jesus Christ. Sin makes us lose the consciousness of God’s presence living in us (1 Cor 6:19). Even though we get lost from God’s presence because of sin in our lives, Jesus by His presence seeks to restore us through our repentance towards God (Luke 15:2-7). Jesus constantly seeks to restore to us the joy, peace and righteousness that we lose now and then through our repentant attitude of godly sorrow, for what we have done (2 Cor 7:10). Many believers once they hear the word ‘lost sheep’, immediately they think about a unbeliever whom Jesus is seeking to save (Luke 19:10). But a unbeliever cannot be considered as the sheep of Jesus because Jesus has said, “…he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” (John 10:3-4). This brings clarity that the sheep that Jesus speaks about are the ones who are saved and get lost in the world of sinfulness. They are the true lost sheep. In one way, all of us are lost sheep who are constantly sought by the Lord because we have a nature that sins all the time (1 John 1:8-9; Psa 51:5; Acts 14:15; Rom 7:14-17). We are the sinners who draw near to Him and hear Him often in the time of our need to receive grace and mercy (Luke 15:1; Heb 4:15-16; 10:21-23; James 4:7-10). As a matter of fact, the truth that David confessed to the Lord is what we must do in our lives too, He said to God, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; Seek Your servant, For I do not forget your commandments.” (Ps 119:176). Whenever we feel hopeless and lost in sin and our self, we should ask God to seek us or in other words to restore us the joy of His salvation (Psa 51:12; 23:3). When God seeks us we receive His joy, peace and righteousness restored as a sign of His seeking towards us. We are all not perfect and stay that way until we die because of our sinful nature within us. This sinful nature within us, will only get discarded from us forever when we die physically (Rom 7:17). This doesn’t mean we stay and dwell in sin willingly and not try to be perfect, instead we try our best to be perfect and purify [i.e. sanctify] our self by faith to inherit His promises on earth (1 John 3:2-3; Matt 5:48; Acts 26:18). But when we fall and fail from our perfection, we need to confess the committed sin immediately and again jump in to the bandwagon of the perfection of God already achieved by God’s grace in us through Christ’s finished work on Calvary (1 John 2:1-2; 1:9; 1 Cor 15:10; Phil 4:13; John 19:30). Our faith in the finished work of Christ is the victory we hold on to, and the same faith that we hold on to sanctifies us and transforms us from glory to glory to receive our rightful inheritance (1 John 5:4; 2 Cor 3:18).
The number one deception of the devil is to say to you during your spiritual conflict, ‘How can you continue in your sin [i.e. besetting or unavoidable weakness] and still say that you are washed clean by the blood of Jesus? Is it enough to just confess your sin every time to God? Does it really work? Are you not a guilty hypocrite? Is it not you who have chosen to sin intentionally?’ The devil will always plan to spree you successively during a period of time, exactly in your weak spots and will try to put in to your mind such thoughts of doubt against the very foundation of the word of God that you are standing in. Once you resist the devil by speaking words of authority saying, ‘I curse you thoughts of doubts in the mighty name of Jesus. Go!’ The thoughts of evil suggestions will not be able to stay further in your mind. On the other hand if you do not resist the devil vocally, slowly the thoughts of the devil will get conceived as a desire in you and will stay in your mind as a sin [i.e. lawlessness of breaking God’s word by doubting it (1 John 3:4; Rom 14:23)] and will destroy your faith in the word of God (James 1:14-15). Once faith is destroyed, death [i.e. separation from God’s power and presence] will come in to your life though fear (Heb 2:15). From then onwards the devil will slowly create a stronghold by having a foothold in your life and will start to control you using fear. The kind of special strategic days of Satan’s and his evil minions attack upon a believer life is what Apostle Paul called as “the evil day” in which the believer needs to “take up the whole armor of God, that [he]…may be able to withstand [the devil and his evil demons]” and thus do everything on the believer’s part to stand victorious by the power of God (Eph 6:13).
A believer does not sin willfully, but out of the weakness of the sin nature that dwells in him (Rom 7:17). You may be asking what about Heb 10: 26 which says, “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.” In context to the previous and subsequent verses, this “sin willfully” phrase is speaking about those who have willfully rejected the gospel truth of salvation through Jesus Christ. The good news of Jesus Christ is the only one sacrifice that appeases God’s wrath for sin (Acts 4:12; Heb 10:12-14). When a person rejects this Gospel truth of forgiveness through Jesus Christ (Luke 24:46-47), there is no more sacrifice left for a person to appease God for the consequential wrath of living by the impulse of the sin nature (Rom 7:20-25). The Message translation of Bible can give a better understanding about this passage like as we have discussed above, “26-27 If we give up and turn our backs on all we've learned, all we've been given, all the truth [of salvation through grace by faith as a gift (Eph 2:8)] we now know [by experience], we repudiate Christ's sacrifice and are left on our own to face the Judgment—and a mighty fierce judgment it will be!” (Heb 10:26-27, The Message). In fact a believer cannot sin willfully, because the Bible says, "We are [absolutely] sure that God's children do not keep on sinning [i.e. deliberately and knowingly but out of the weakness of the indwelling sin nature (Rom 7:20)]. God's own Son protects them [with His very own divine presence within them, which preserves them against the evil they face daily], and the devil cannot harm them [i.e. get a grip on them and touch them above what is allowed by God (1 Cor 10:13)]." (1 John 5:18, CEV). When a believer sins, driven by the passions of the indwelling sin nature daily and then comes to God immediately agreeing that he has sinned, one of God’s most amazing attributes is that He’s able to forget as well as forgive (1 John 1:9). And upon confession will immediately restore us, no matter how often it happens. This is the reason Jesus told Apostle Peter to forgive a brother as many times as possible through God’s grace, when he repeatedly comes asking for forgiveness by doing the same wrong again and again against him (Matt 18:21-22). [Note : In this verse "seventy times seven" is a hypothetical hyperbole which Jesus used to emphasize that one follower of Jesus should never stop forgiving another.] Cultivating such forgiving character through receiving God’s grace to forgive others will reflect our Heavenly Father’s nature as his sons and daughters on earth (Matt 6:9-10, 14-15). Even Apostle Paul forgave a sinning believer in the Corinthian Church so that Satan may not have an opportunity to gain a foothold in to their lives and ministries (2 Cor 2:10-11).
Unless you are continually confessing your sins and praying yourself back into fellowship with God, you not only won’t have authority over Satan, but he’ll have access to you. But just because Satan exercises his authority over you does not mean that the helmet of salvation is lost. Helmet of salvation cannot be lost because it is eternal (Eph 6:17; Heb 5:9). The devil can only control a believer as long as he continues to live in unbelief based on thinking himself as a slave of Satan, because of seeing and focusing on his own behavior and weaknesses. The moment he believes the nature of the eternal redemption that has been achieved by Jesus Christ and agrees with God about his sin nature which has sinned [i.e. to agree with God that he has succumbed to sins lure], God forgives and cleanses him as pure as Jesus Himself is (Heb 9:12; 1 John 1:8-10; 3:2-3). The act of confession of sins to God shows that a believer has submitted to God’s way of cleansing through the blood of the one eternal sacrifice of Jesus. Now if the believer resist’s the devil, he will run away because of God’s power, protection and authority over the same believer’s life (James 4:7). Confession precedes God’s continual protection. God is faithful to forgive us no matter how many times we come to Him in a day confessing of the same failures again and again. But the trick of the devil is to make us doubt whether God really means what He has said in his word about confession (1 John 1:9). The devil will try his best to take your eyes away from your simple trust in the faithfulness of the word of God. The devil who deceived Eve in the beginning, in the same way will also try to deceive you (Gen 3:1-7; 2 Cor 11:3-4). Reject Satan’s strategies and resist him with the truth of God’s eternal helmet of salvation.
When your shield of faith becomes little rusty, leaky and your daily victory elusive by your unbelief, be confident that the helmet of salvation which guarantees eternal victory and glory (2 Tim 2:10; Heb 5:9). Even when we are faithless and unthankful for His eternal salvation, Jesus Christ remains faithful to us eternally (2 Tim 2:13). In the metaphor of armor, the helmet secures coverage for the most critical part of your anatomy: your mind, where spiritual battles are either won or lost. In other words irrespective of whether you lose the battle or win on a particular day, Jesus keeps you secure through His eternal salvation, raises you up again and keeps you fighting as a warrior of God’s army (Prov 24:16; Psa 37:24). As you struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil on a daily basis, stand firm knowing that your salvation does not come and go with your success or failure in spiritual battle; Your salvation is your eternal possession (Rom 8:35). Because of His unconditional love [i.e. ‘agape’ in Greek] He saved us, in the same manner because of His unconditional love He keeps us safe and saved eternally. Truly we are saved by faith though His unconditional and unmerited favor of His grace and we stay saved by His unconditional empowerment through the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our salvation (Eph 2:8-9; 1:13-14). Praise the Lord!
People experiencing spiritual conflict tend to question this eternal salvation or doubt their identity in Christ. But know that this doubt is not from God, but from the evil one to destroy your faith and steal your supernatural joy of salvation (Matt 14:31; Mar 11:23; John 10:10). Satan never wants to see a believer to rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory because of believing the promises of God, so he will always sow weed’s of doubt to steal the joy and the resulting glory of God (1 Peter 1:8; Matt 13:38-40, 25-26, 22). By sowing weed’s of doubt, Satan may disrupt your daily victory, but he can do nothing to disrupt your position in Christ which God has positioned you in (1 Cor 1:30). However, if Satan can get you to believe that you are not in Christ, you will live powerlessly defeated as though you are not in Christ, even though you are safe and secure in Him. Never underestimate the power of believing the word of God as it is in the Bible. You have the choice to choose the helmet of salvation consciously by believing and live in joyful victory the rest of your life! Praise the Lord!
vi) The Sword of the Spirit – This is the sixth and the most powerful defens
ive as well as the single most powerful offensive weapon against the enemy in the weapon store of the believer. As the name itself suggests, this sword can be used only with the help and empowerment of the Spirit. In other words, only the Spirit of God can use this sword through us as we yield to Him against the enemy. Paul has clearly told the believers to “take …the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God [i.e. rhema word in the now realm according to the specific need of the circumstances we face]” (Eph 6:17). If we ask the question, how can we all practically take this sword and use it against Satan and his demonic cohorts? The answer is through speaking the word of God through our mouth against all the negative and bad circumstances we face (Matt 21:21). Jesus is the perfect example for us to look towards and follow. When Satan started to tempt Jesus, Jesus was so full of the Spirit that he started to speak out the word of God through His mouth to counter every lies Satan spoke to make Him disobey God (Matt 4:4, 7, 10). Satan had no way to win over Jesus because of His persistence, so the devil left Him and angels from heaven came and ministered to Him (Matt 4:11). In our lives too, when we are full of the word and the Spirit just like Jesus, we will be using the sword of the Spirit powerfully against the devil. After such spiritual warfare’s, we will feel a drain in the spiritual power because the anointing will stop to flow in the same intensity in which it flowed during the warfare; angels from heaven will surely come and minister to strengthen us with heavens power after such encounters.Satan can try to influence us by planting thoughts in our head and then observing our behavior, but he can never read or understand our thoughts. If we’re going to resist Satan, we must always do so verbally so he can understand us and be put to flight (James 4:7). We can always communicate with God in our mind and spirit because He knows the thoughts and intents of our heart (Heb 4:12). Our unspoken communion with God in our private sanctuary of our spirit inside us in our inmost being is the holy of holies in which God is residing in us. Satan cannot eavesdrop on us when we speak with God through the Spirit and to the Spirit who is interpenetrating our spirit man inside us (1 Cor 14:2; 6:17). But by the same token, if we only tell Satan with our thoughts to leave, he won’t leave because he is under no obligation to obey our thoughts. In other words we can only defeat Satan by speaking out. Satan will most directly attack us whenever we are alone or at night time.
Jesus always spoke the quickened word of faith against all the Satanic evil works of the devil and his minions (Matt 8:8-10, 13; Mark 11:12-14, 20-21). The sword of the word should be saturated in us so heavily so that the moment an attack of the enemy comes in, immediately the Spirit of God will quicken the stored word inside us and will bring it to our mind. After it comes to our mind, in faith we should release the quickened word against the circumstances that we are facing. Immediately the quickened rhema-word will suddenly destroy the strategy and lies of the devil spoken subtly in to our mind, and Satan and his evil minions will back off and will scurry for cover in to their lies of darkness (Heb 4:12). Some people are not aware of the way Satan is attacking the believers and therefore become very ineffective and powerless to face Satan and his evil minions. This is the reason Apostle Paul said, “3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 6 and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.” (2 Cor 10:3-6). From these preceding verses we understand that Satan and his evil minions attack us only through one channel, it is by releasing their evil thoughts in to our soulish fleshly heart to make us do what it wants us to do. Once we start to bid for Satan evil thoughts in to our lives, slowly it becomes a stronghold in our lives (Rom 6:16). But the mighty spiritual power that God has already given us is more than enough to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We take an evil thought captive when we curse it and bring it in to subjection and make it leave us. Once the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God flashes through our mind once, immediately we will be able to realize the wrong thoughts of the enemy trying to deceive us (Heb 5:14). When we realize a wrong thought trying to penetrate in to our mind, immediately we should command it to leave us in the name of Jesus! Thoughts are spiritual weapons that either God can use or the devil can use to influence us. They are also carriers of either God’s life or Satan’s death. God’s life will make us experience God’s joy, peace and righteousness. Satan’s death will make us experience momentary happiness, depression, peacelessness and all unrighteousness (1 Samuel 19:9-10; Mark 8:36; Is 48:22; 57:21). So only Apostle Paul asked the believers, “21 What fruit did you have then in the things [i.e. thoughts of the fleshly soul which is operated by the devil] of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things [i.e. thoughts of the fleshly soul] is death. 22 But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness [i.e. by processing and dwelling in the Spirit’s thoughts in your soulish mind], and the end, everlasting life.” (Rom 6:21-22). O what a privilege to live the eternal life of God on planet earth through thinking God’s thoughts of the Spirit! Praise the Lord!
vii) Prayer puts the whole armor of God in place – We have see
n in the previous six weapons, there is a lethal power in each weapon to make us fully stand against our spiritual enemies and retain all the blessings that Jesus has already released upon our lives. But all these weapons that we have seen in the armor of God should be in place over us always in order to defend our self and attack our enemy anyplace and anytime through it. So in order to put all the weapon in the exact position over our spiritual body of our spirit-man (2 Cor 5:1-4), Apostle Paul has told us to unlock the weaponry of God and position the weapons all over our spiritual body by “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints – and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel,…that…I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” (Eph 6:18-20). Here in this previous Scripture we learn the secret to keep fighting victoriously as a warrior in God’s army. Firstly we need to pray always to keep all our spiritual defensive weapons and the offensive weapon of the sword of the Spirit to be in place. In other words Apostle Paul is saying, make prayer your lifestyle rather than do it out of need, emotionalism, want, circumstances…etc. In order to make prayer our lifestyle, we need to discipline our self and start with at least 15 minutes a day and keep working towards adding another 15 minutes. After we start to pray for half an hour regularly, then go in for one hour a day. Then pray for 2 hours, and then for more. In order to pray with discipline we need to consider prayer as the most important thing in our life next to God Himself. As we pray with discipline, an attitude of prayer will get developed inside us. This attitude in our spirit will make us to understand consciously the prayer of the Spirit, which He is praying in all the believer’s twenty four/seven/three sixty five (Rom 8:27). As we start to hear and comprehend the awesome prayer of the Spirit done in the perfect will of God, slowly we will start to speak it through our mouth and even within ourselves in our spirit man inside us, which Apostle Paul called as praying “in a tongue” or “[praying] with the spirit”, “groaning within ourselves” through which “the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us … which cannot be uttered” (1 Cor 14:14-15; Rom 8:23, 26). This is the reason Apostle Paul said, “16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thess 5:16-18). Rejoicing, praying and giving thanks always go together and is the will of God for every believer. Paul is exhorting us to pray always because that is the only way we can always be ready for battle all the time, with our entire weapon suits intact. One of the most powerful way we can pray always is through praying in tongues, in which the prayer we make goes beyond our intellect in to the deep things of God through the Spirit. Because our spirit man is joined interpenetratively one with the Holy Spirit, whatever words the Spirit of God speaks, immediately the signal will be received in to our spiritual man inside us (1 Cor 6:17; 2:9-12; Rom 8:16). This prayer of the Spirit is the prayer which our spirit-man will pray literally (1 Cor 14:14). When we pray in a tongue, our mind will be blank. So we can choose to use our mind for intellectual prayer through our thoughts to God. Or else we can ask God to release the interpretation of tongues in to our mind through the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 14:13, 15). In this way we can keep our focus on the various needs which the Holy Spirit will be praying through us and keep agreeing with it through our yes and amen thoughts to the thoughts of God which we will receive by interpretation (2 Cor 1:20). This is the apostolic pattern of prayer for us, our family, our city, nation and nations around the world. Such prayers of the Spirit in tongues will be answered hundred percentages without fail by God, because the Holy Spirit only prays the will of God all the time (Rom 8:27). Many times we may not understand even a iota [i.e. smallest word] of what we are praying, but it is the purest way of praying by faith in God, believing that all things God will work together for our good through the prayer of the Spirit (Rom 8:28). In other words, we give words to the prayer of the Holy Spirit in order for the Spirit’s prayer to be prayed through us (Acts 2:4).
If we ask what will happen if we do not pray such prayers? The Holy Spirit will still be praying for us, but the answer cannot be received by us unless we let Him pray verbally through our mouth. God knows all our problems even before we ever pray to Him (Matt 6:8). But there is a powerful spiritual principle that God has set in the spiritual realm, it is the principle of answering humans only when they ask (Matt 7:7-8). God gave Adam’s race the dominion over all the earth under Him (Gen 1:26; Ps 115:16). In other words God has kept Himself out of the active earthly physical rulership and intervention, unless asked by His apointee and co-regents. This is the reason Jesus exhorted the believers again and again to not lose heart but keep praying and asking even when they do not see the answers tangibly (Luke 18:1; Matt 7:7-11). When the Lord revealed His omnipotence to Job, He said to him, “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth?” (Job 38:33). In other words God was saying to Job, ‘See fella, I have framed spiritual principles in heaven and have set it to rule over the physical earth, can you set it again to make it work differently by your own effort?’. When God has set the spiritual laws of heaven to respond to earth in an orderly fashion, He has bound Himself under it and he cannot break it (Titus 1:2). This is the reason God values His word even above His great name (Ps 138:2). His word is already settled in heaven and He speaks those same words again and again to fulfill it in its exact appointed time for each generation (Ps 119:89; 147:15; Eccl 1:9). And one of those spiritual law that He has set in heaven is to respond to earth only when His co-regents ‘ask and keep asking’ for help and resources seriously with good motives to do His will and bidding (James 4:3-4). Every single prayer done to God is heard by Him and the answers will tangibly manifest at the appointed time! So be encouraged saints and keep praying, your miracle is on the way!
There are only two methods to pray to God. (1) One is “pray with the spirit” with unknown tongue and the (2) Second is to “pray with the understanding” in our logical mind (1 Cor 14:14-15). But there are various types of prayer to be prayed in various situations. They are (1) Prayer of confession (Ps 51; 32), (2) Prayer of praise (1 Chron 29:10-20), (3) Prayer of thanksgiving (Neh 11:17; Ps 116:17; 107:22), (4) Prayer of intercession (Is 53:12; 7:16; 27:18; Rom 8:27, 34; Heb 7:25), (5) Prayer of supplication (1 Tim 2:1), (6) Prayer of agreement (Matt 18:18-20), (7) Prayer of identification (Dan 9:1-20; Rom 9:2-3; Exod 32:31-32), (8) Prayer of weeping (Ps 30:5; 39:12; 126:5; 56:8; 2 Kin 20:5; Job 16:20; Jer 31:16; Acts 20:19) and (9) Prayer of actions [like lifting up our hands (1 Tim 2:8; Ps 141:2; Heb 13:15), dancing (Ps 149:2-3), groaning (Rom 8:26-27), rejoicing and leaping (Luke 6:23; Ps 27:6), heart prayer with minimal lip moment and no voice (1 Sam 1:12-13; Neh 2:4), clapping (Ps 47:1; 100:1), kneeling (Ps 95:6; Rom 11:4), standing (1 Kings 8:22; Matt 6:5; Luke 18:11-12; Mark 11:25; Gen 41:46), falling on the face or prostration (Gen 17:3; Num 20:6; Job 1:20; Mar 5:22) and bowing with our face toward the ground (Gen 24:26-27; Exod 12:27; 34:8; 2 Chron 7:3; 29:30; Neh 8:6)]. To “[pray]…always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” means that we use various methods and types of prayers for various circumstances under the empowerment of the Spirit. Supplication means ‘a seeking, asking, entreating and entreaty to God in order to come out of a state of need, indigence, want, privation, penury.’ To supplicate is to honestly expect a legal and an officially authorized answer from a person in higher order and authority who has the ability to provide for our needs. To intercede is to ‘speak to God on behalf of someone’ in order to entreat God to show His benevolent, merciful, gracious and loving character in spite of the unworthiness and sinfulness of the recipient. Worship in itself is a prayer of giving worth-ship to the Lord for all his goodness, mercies and magnificence. The bottom-line is, our various methods and types of prayer’s when done earnestly under the empowerment of the Spirit, not only affects us and our family, but it has the potential to build up the saints inside the Church. Prayer of faith for the spiritual growth of saints inside the Church and for the unbelievers in the world to be saved (James 5:15), is the greatest ministry that every one of us must be involved in and it carries a great eternal reward for eternity ahead to cherish (Eph 6:18; Matt 5:11-12, 44; Heb 10:35; Rev 11:18). We must also mandatorily pray for all the leaders in our churches and the para-ministry [itinerant evangelists, teachers, prophets and apostles] leaders in the whole body of Christ. Most of us receive much through their ministry, but we do not care to support them through our prayers and finances (Gal 6:6). Because people have such lethargic attitudes spiritually towards their leaders, they are not able to receive much spiritual blessing in their life (Luke 16:10-13). If the leaders in the body of Christ are not able to stand against the devil, how can the sheep’s be kept in unity, be blessed and empowered to stand against the devil (Mar 14:27)? So only the sheep should pray for the shepherd and the shepherd should love their sheep which God has given them to equip and protect (Eph 6:19-20; Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:2-4; John 10:11-14). If we do not pray for the ministers of God, we will not be blessed and empowered enough to know the “mystery of the gospel” in our life, through the bold proclamation of the ministers of God (Eph 6:19-20). The ministers of God are given as a Christ’s gift to us, so that we may be equipped for the work of ministry in our own lives, homes, work places and neighborhoods (Eph 4:7-16). The fivefold ministers of God edify us till we all come to the unity of faith. The unity of faith comes as a result of growing in the knowledge of the Son of God through the edification, exhortation and comfort of the offices of the fivefold ministry of the Church of God (1 Cor 14:3; Eph 4:11-16). This unity of faith makes us to stand in the stature of the fullness of Christ and to be a perfect man like Christ Jesus spiritually when He lived on earth. By becoming a perfect man in the stature of the fullness of Christ we will naturally stand victoriously against all demonic devils and will glorify God like Jesus in all things that we do ultimately (1 Cor 6:20; 10:31). The key word ‘stand’ has been perfectly explained as a life style to live rather than a head knowledge to know and has been clearly defined and explained through all these above spiritual weapons of the armor of God. So use it all daily and reap the reward of a blessed life of the authority of Christ lived out bodily in this earth (Rom 5:17). It is important to understand and keep in mind that prayer, all prayer, is about relationship and not ritual. In the Old Testament, prayer was often compared to sweet incense, showing that our prayer is a personally pleasant experience to God. Praise the Lord!
We know that our Lord Jesus is seated “far above all rule, and authority,” and that all things have been put “in subjection under his feet” (Eph 1:21-22). The Book of Hebrew says, ““8 You have put all things in subjection under his feet.” For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. 9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.” (Heb 2:8-9). This previous verse says that Jesus tasted death for everyone of us and not for himself. In other words, Jesus had no need to die in order to be crowned with authority and power. He already was the second person of the God head, who himself is God of all (Col 1:15-17). Jesus became like us so that we can become like Him. In other words, Jesus became naturally human like everyone of us, so that we all can become supernaturally divine like Him in power, character and glory. Jesus died to make us empowered with the Holy Ghost again as the first Adam was before he fell from the perfect glory of God due to disobedience (1 Cor 15:45; Matt 3:11). We receive the Holy Spirit from the Father God through His [i.e. Jesus Christ’s] name (Luke 11:13; John 14:13; 15:16; 16:23, 26). We live the spiritual life of victory through our continual sacrifice of praise and thanks giving to the name of Jesus (Heb 13:15; Ps 22:3; 8:2; Matt 21:16; Ps 68:1). All our past, present and future sins are forgiven us for His name's sake (1 John 2:12). We do our work and labor of love by ministering to the saints, which shows our reverence toward His name (Heb 6:10). We depart from iniquity just because we name the name of Christ and we represent it through our lives on earth to others (2 Tim 2:19). We count our own masters and bosses worthy of all honors in our workplaces and offices, so that the name of God and His doctrine may not be blasphemed among the heathens (1 Tim 6:1-2). The very reason God has visited us who were Gentiles and enrolled us in the Church is because of His desire to take out a people for His name among all nations and bring them to obedience to the faith for His name (Acts 15:14; Rom 1:5). We count ourselves worthy and rejoice when we suffer shame for His name like the apostles did in the first century (Acts 5:41). By faith in His name, people are made whole (Acts 3:16). We chase demons in His name, we speak in new tongues by believing His name, we lay hands and make people recover by faith in His name and even if we eat poison unknowingly when we represent His name, it will not hurt us or make us die (Mark 16:17-18).
So what is in a name? Why the name of Jesus Christ is invoked again and again in our lives?
What is the power of someone's name? It is a word or expression in which someone is represented to us. When I mention or hear a name, it brings to mind the whole man, what I know of him, and also the impression he has made on me. The name of a person represents the personality of Him and His power (Ps 106:8; Ezek 39:25). The name of a king includes his honor, his power, and his kingdom. His name is the symbol of his power. And the name of Jesus embodies and represents the glory of the Unseen One who is seated at the right hand of the power of God (Mark 14:62; Eph 1:20-21). The Name of Christ is the expression of everything He has done and everything He is and lives to do as our Mediator (Rom 8:34; John 14:14; Mark 16:20).
What does it mean to do a thing in the name of another? It is to come with his power and authority, as his representative and substitute. Using another's name always presupposes a common interest. No one would give another the free use of his name without first being assured his honor and interests were as safe with another as with himself. Because we seek the kingdom of God like Jesus did when He was on earth, Jesus has given us who believe Him the power of attorney to represent Him on earth as His ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20; Matt 6:33, 10). In other words when we say 'In the name of Jesus Christ, I rebuke you devil of lust, uncleanness, sickness...etc’ It is equal to Jesus standing on the spot and speaking to the mountains of evil acting in the world (Matt 21:21-22). When the Apostles Peter and John worked out a miracle of healing and healed a lame man from his mother’s womb, even the ungodly Jewish leaders recognized the authority of the name which the apostles were proclaiming and demonstrating and asked them, “…By what power or by what name have you done this?” (Acts 4:7). From this we learn that whenever we use the name of Jesus by faith, there will be a tangible manifestation of heavenly kingdom authority displayed in the earthly realm through our actions and words (Acts 3:6-7, 16). O what a privilege to represent Jesus our Master!
Today the name of Jesus tells us that God has committed all authority to His Son (John 5:26-27, 30; Matt 28:18-20), so in the very name itself there is power (Phil 2:9-11). It is not only that he has such a name, but we are to use it like the apostles and first century believers did. In other words, Jesus was exalted not for himself but for us saints in the Church to manifest "...the manifold [i.e. many-sided] wisdom of God might be made known by the Church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places...in [the name of our] Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph 3:10-11). In three passages in Jesus’ very last speech just hours before the crucifixion on the cross, Jesus repeated the words, “ask in my name” (John 14:13, 14; 15:16; 16:23-26). This shows how important Jesus considered the theme of His name to be understood by the disciples in order for them to grasp the authority that will be deposited by God and will be given for the very same disciples to use in the absence of Jesus after His death and resurrection. Now God has placed the authority of the name in our hands for us to use. So only Apostle Peter said that the name of Jesus is “given among men” (Acts 4:12) to be saved and then to use it on earth as His representatives.
As already seen in Hebrew 2:8, God the Father has spiritually put the whole universe under the feet of Jesus, yet we do not see the full manifestation of it in the natural world. Apostle Paul expressed this truth clearly when he called Satan as “the god of this age”. He is called the god of this age because he is still ruling over people and controlling the world system of governance through deceiving people through infusing soulish thoughts of darkness in to their minds and making them bid themselves for his own evil plans to be fulfilled in the earth (2 Cor 4:4). Many people because of accepting Satan’s deception, they reject their only hope of the gospel, which has the ability to flash forth light and save them for eternity from sin, death and the wrath of God (2 Tim 1:10). God has set a final date for Satan’s deceptive ministry to be abolished in the world system on earth, when Jesus comes to rule for a thousand years during His Second Coming (Rev 12:9; 13:14; 20:2-3).
On the other hand, if we ask the question why are we not able to see the absolute authority of Jesus over the earth still? Firstly, the appointed time of God for the manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth in the physical realm has not yet come. It will come only at the time of Jesus’ Second coming to the earth. After Jesus comes to the earth, He will officially inaugurate the kingdom of God and will let the Tribulation saints alive at that time to inherit the physical seventh day kingdom prepared by the Father God from the foundation of the world (Matt 25:31-34). In this kingdom of Jesus, angels will not be ministering or ruling the world (Heb 2:5). But it is we the saints of Jesus Christ who will rule and reign along with Him (Rev 19:7-8, 14).
Secondly, there is a recruitment drive that is going on now in the kingdom of God through the test of endurance of faith (2Tim 2:12). Each person will be placed in different hierarchies of glory and power in the kingdom age, according to the performance and endurance of each believer in this present spiritual endurance test and fight of faith (Heb 10:35-36; 1 Cor 15:41-44; Rev 2:26). Right now we are ambassadors and soldiers in recruitment drive for the army of God, which will rule the earth in the future with a sure promise of promotion even to the top (2 Cor 5:20; 2 Tim 2:3). The army of God on earth is really a boot camp in which the “fight of faith” is a daily routine for great honors and positions in the future (1 Tim 6:12). Each person in the army of God who is trained and chosen for eternal positions of power and authority, must endure hardship as a good soldier, must compete with right motives [i.e. to glorify God (1 Cor 6:20; 10:31; 4:5)] like an honest athlete, must work hard like an untiring farmer (2 Tim 2:3, 5, 6). When these basics are done and learned day by day, the future is bright and secure for all these generals and soldiers in training.
Each person will be rewarded in heaven individually and will be crowned with honors before they will take up their position in the kingdom of God for a Millennium and ahead, according to each ones performance on earth (Matt 10:41-42; 1 Cor 3:4; 9:17-18; Matt 25:21, 23; Col 3:24). Those who play religion and Churchianity will lose all their reward because of their graceless works (Col 2:18; Rom 4:4). Each person can win even up to five crowns for their service for the Lord on earth. These are more like badge of honors in recognition of the sacrifice, skill and hard work of each person like in a national military honors. The five different crowns are the Everlasting Crown (Victory) in 1 Cor 9:25, Crown of the Soul Winner in Phil 4:1 and 1 Thes 2:19, Crown of Righteousness in 2 Tim 4:8, Crown of Life in James 1:12 and Rev 2:10, and the Crown of Glory in 1 Peter 5:4.
The Crown of Victory is for believers who overcome the temptations of this world and live a victorious Christian life. The Crown of the Soul Winner is for those whose evangelistic endeavors bring others to salvation. The Crown of Righteousness is for those who long for His appearing. The Crown of Life is for those who persevere under trial, and the Crown of Glory is for those who are shepherds of God’s flock, elders, preachers, teachers and mentors of the young.
Thirdly, the name of Jesus has been given to the Church in order for us to extend the kingdom of God through His authority to the ends of the world (Eph 1:22-23; Matt 28:19-20). We should not be asking God why Satan is still ruling most of the world. Instead we should be using His mighty name to destroy the works of Satan by expecting the Lord to crush Satan under our feet (Rom 16:20). When we use the name of Jesus under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, it destroys the works of the enemy (Isa 10:27). If we ask how such things happens? The name of Jesus establishes and releases the authority of God on earth through our mouth (Acts 10:38; 1 John 3:8; 4:4). We the saints have been given the authority and the power of attorney [i.e. a promised transfer of authority and the power working behind it, written and signed by the authority (John 14:12-14)] to speak and work mighty signs, wonders and miracles on behalf of Jesus by using His name (Mark 16:15-18). Praise the Lord! O what a privilege!
The moment we step in to the authority of Jesus and stand by faith, the power of the age to come will get behind us to establish the higher and greater authority of Jesus on earth through us (Acts 4:29-31, 33; Heb 6:4-5). Saints are you ready? You are asking me for what, to speak the word of God with mighty signs, wonders and miracles done through the authority of Jesus which is already in us (1 John 4:4). Faith is the spark plug that fires the spiritual engine inside us, which in turn will release the power of God continuously over every resistance of the enemies of God and will finally make us reign over all the circumstances and obstacles that we will ever face. This type of supernatural life lived out boldly in the world, can only make us effective and purpose driven people of the kingdom of God. So by standing in faith, reign as a purpose driven kingdom saint in your life on earth (2 Cor 1:24; Rom 5:2)!
The power invested by God in the name of Jesus can only be realized as we seek God for the experiential revelation of it by using the name of Jesus boldly (Acts 4:29-31). God’s word is His written will which guarantees our rights to use His heavenly resources (Matt 4:4, 7, 10; 24:35). The more we fix our eyes on all the promises of God and personalize them using the name of Jesus, the more effective the power of God will start to flow and work through our lives (2 Cor 1:20). If a particular thing is in the word, then it is our rights to claim and exercise what is written in it for our profit (2 Tim 3:16-17). Consider first the official statement of how Jesus even before his death on the Cross has delegated and given us the power of attorney in his kingdom to use His power, glory, money, property, all the heavenly blessings and the inheritance of His Heavenly Father.
King Jesus’ official written document says, “18 “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.19 “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”” (Matt 18:18-19). Here in the preceding verses we must understand that a mighty heavenly supernatural power is released by the corporate prayer of agreement among saints on earth. Earthly agreement in the name of Jesus precedes the release of heavenly supernatural power. When any two person agrees for anything on earth by asking the Father God in the unity of the Spirit, our Father in heaven moves on behalf of such prayers and sends the heavenly angelic agents to reinforce and fulfill it on earth (Matt 18:10). Whenever we come in to agreement concerning anything by gathering together in His name, the power of Jesus’ presence will be corporately present with the Holy Spirit representing Him in person (John 16:7). This powerful presence of God will release the supernatural authority and power of God’s throne room presence on earth, which will establish and extend the kingdom jurisdiction of God on earth through us. This exact place of alignment in God’s kingdom presence is where all the satanic principalities and powers will suddenly recognize God’s authority resting upon us in the spiritual realm and will be subjected to us in Jesus name (Matt 8:29; Acts 19:15; Rom 16:20). We can bind things of evil on earth only as much as we know the things that are already bound in heaven at that particular period of time. In other words as much as we walk in the perfect knowledge of God’s heavenly will on earth, that much of heaven we can express through our lives.
All the kingdoms establish a representative system that delegates responsibility to appointed citizens to serve as envoys or ambassadors of the kingdom. It is the same in the kingdom of God, where the saints who are its citizens are given the responsibility to officially represent the heavenly kingdom of God on earth (Eph 2:19). This is why Jesus said that you are “in the world” but “not of the world” (John 17:11, 16). In other words according to Jesus, we represent the heavenly kingdom of God as his ambassadors on earth that is ruled by the kingdom of the world, which is working under the strong spirit influence of the Satan and his demonic cohorts (John 18:36). When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, Satan claimed the kingdoms of the world and its glory as his own and he said that he will choose to give it to Jesus if only he will bow down and worship Satan. Jesus neither rebuked Satan for telling a lie, nor did he start to accept what he said as the absolute truth (Matt 4:8-10). But Jesus by speaking and standing on the word, He established the authority of God on earth which superseded Satan’s half lie. According to God, anything less than the absolute truth of the word of God is a lie. Jesus upheld the word of God by rejecting the deceitful lie of Satan. Here Satan told a partial truth and a partial lie. What Satan said was partially true because Adam willfully lost his authority to Satan. Because Adam submitted his will to Satan’s lie by accepting his suggestions as the truth rather than the word of God which was taught to him directly by God, he became a slave of Satan. Adam sinned by his disobedience to God in the Garden of Eden (Rom 5:12; 6:16). The whole humanity from that time started to be ruled by the deceit of Satan and his evil minions because of one man’s sin and disobedience to God (2 Cor 4:4). The partial lie of Satan was that the kingdoms and the glory of the world was his, but in fact it was a deceitfully stolen authority which actually belonged to Adam. Only Adam the dust being with an eternal soul and empowered spirit inside him and his descendants were designed to have the legal authority of God on earth to rule it according to the original creation design. God did not design the earth originally to be owned or ruled by Satan the spirit. It is the subtle tyranny of the devil which made man to lose authority on earth due to distorted and unstable mind caused by Satan and his demonic minions.
We as the ambassadors personify and embody the king’s kingdom and authority (Luke 17:21; Rom 14:17). Because we are the ambassadors in the kingdom of God, we are the property and responsibility of the kingdom and the king’s name which we represent. Therefore we should not concern ourselves with our own personal needs (Matt 6:31-32). We need to represent the kingdom interest in Jesus name always and the kingdom will take care of all our needs (Matt 6:33-34). None can be saved and become a kingdom citizen without knowing the name of Jesus, and none can be effectively used of God as a mighty kingdom apostolic delegate or an ambassador without knowing the authority of the name of Jesus. But because we have believed in His name for the forgiveness of all our sins, we have been brought near to the Lord God of heaven (1 John 2:12; Eph 2:13). We have already come to Mount Zion of God’s throne in heaven, our names have been registered in heaven as a kingdom citizen (Heb 12:22-23; Luke 10:20). Now we are the sons and daughters of God with whom the authority and the resultant power of God dwells in the name of Jesus inside us (Gal 3:26; 1 John 4:4). In the name of Jesus, the whole of heaven will be backing us in the spiritual realm, if only we will choose to use it according to God’s will of His word written for us in his instruction manual (2 Tim 3:16-17).
Again God’s will of His word says, “23 “And in that day [after My resurrection] you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in My name [because you have lacked the revelation of the name and the power of it through the Cross, which personalizes the power of God individually and makes you appropriate God’s power and live powerfully on earth as the sons of God (Luke 24:25-27; 1 Cor 14:20; Col 2:15)]. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. 26 In that day [after My resurrection] you will [all] ask in My name… [to the Father, I mean, I will not need to ask the Father for you.]”” (John 16:23-24, 26). Jesus also have promised us personally, “19 Behold, I give you the authority to trample on [demonic] serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” (Luke 10:19). All of these above verses clearly points out that we have already been delegated with a supernatural authority and power to use His name to destroy all the works of evil that comes against us and others. Now thank the Lord by confessing the following personalized word, “I thank you and praise You Lord for giving me delegated supernatural power, strength, authority and competency to completely destroy even the highest demonic order of snakes and scorpions, overcoming all the power and pressures of the devil: and no demon shall by any means can hurt me.” (Luke 10:19). O what a privilege to be part of an ambassadorial team of Jesus!
The power of the name of Jesus operates in three directions. Firstly, when it is spoken through our mouth, it releases the authority of God on earth and destroys the work of evil. In our daily spiritual warfare, it acts as a mighty weapon against the satanic powers, to bind and bring them into subjection (Mark 16:17; Luke 10:17-19; Acts 16:18). Secondly, the name of Jesus used at the end of our prayer makes our petition to God the Father as something that is always acceptable to Him, without any pre-qualification on our part (John 16:23). In other words because of having received the power of attorney from Jesus, we can pass on any heavenly cheque or petition to God by signing His name [i.e. the name of Jesus] on it at the end (1 Cor 1:2; John 16:23-24). The Father God releases whatever we ask of Him immediately as a faith-seed deposit in our heart, because He is the source of all good things and never denies us anything even once (Mark 11:24; James 1:17). The faith seed will start to manifest in the natural after a certain period of time, when the appointed time comes the miracle which has been in germination comes to fruition. After which what we have believed is in our hands as a tangible material through which we glorify God by being filled to the full with joy, thanks giving and praise which is a sacrifice to God. Thirdly, the name of Jesus spoken over ourselves gives protection from evil (Pro 18:10). Invoking the name of Jesus over ourselves and our family will make us spiritually covered with the blood of Jesus. When the name of Jesus is spoken over a physical space, it causes the authority of God to be established in that place. No demon power can invade or occupy that place after that marking has been done (Ezr 6:12).
Heavenly governmental authority always supersedes the world’s earthly authority. We make the world system of governance bow to our Heavenly Father’s supernatural governance of heaven through manifesting its authority on planet earth through our lives. So saints what are you waiting for? Start today and agree with the Holy Spirit to align your life on earth in the will of God and start to express heaven by becoming an ambassadorial embodiment of it. Praise the Lord!
Apostle Paul in a plain simple language has told us to, “…be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” (Eph 6:10). It is not our power, strength and financial status that gives us prominence in our spiritual life, but it is the strength and the power of God which makes us loaded with the lethal heavenly fire power of the Holy Spirit. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit all the evil strategies of the devil will be revealed plainly to us by the Spirit (Eph 5:18). Like the Prophet Elisha told to the king of Israel all that the enemy planned in order to destroy them [i.e. even to the words in his bedroom], so also the Holy Spirit will reveal to us all the evil strategies of the enemy of our souls (2 Kings 6: 8-12; 1 Cor 2:6-16; Eph 3:8-11).
This revelation of God will not come to us automatically. Unless a person seeks honestly for anything he wants and desires in the kingdom, he will receive or get nothing from heaven (Matt 11:12; Luke 11:9). This is the reason we need to seek from God a revelation to our hearts by His Holy Spirit of “the counsel of His will” (Eph 1:9-12). Do not plan a work and then ask God to bless what you do, the name of Jesus will not effectively work if we use it just as a rubber stamp to carry forward the work which we have conceived in our fleshly self-will. It will work effectively only to those who are aligned in His will and believe the truth of God’s word without any distortion in it (1 Thess 2:13).
We have to learn in our life that if God does not move, we dare not move an inch to the left or right, forward or backward. If we do not learn this important principle early in our spiritual life, we may end up as ship wrecks later in our life (1 Tim 1:19; 6:10). We must only depend on the power of God to fulfill the God given assignments in our spiritual life. If we depend on our natural gifts, we may not feel a need to pray and cry out to God which is the most important thing that God expects us to do in our lives (Luke 18:1). Any work that we do based on our own ability and strength will be disqualified for a future reward (2 Cor 5:9-11). Such fleshly works achieved for God’s kingdom has no eternal value. All our self conceived work apart from God is only wood, hay, stubble which are easily flammable materials that will turn in to ashes once it goes through the testing fire of God (1 Cor 3:11-15). The test of fire on the day before the marriage ceremony of the lamb will reveal all the motives of our heart with which we have done all our works (1 Cor 4:5; Rom 14:10-12; Rev 19:7-9, 14-16). Any work done except for the glory of God through His strength will not qualify to get God’s eternal reward (Heb 9:28).
God never asks us to do anything we can do with our own ability or resources. He will always ask us to do things which we can never do with our own strength and ability. The vision of God will always stretch us to our maximum dependence of God, making us live, breathe and have our being in Him (Acts 17:28). It will make us to confess like Jesus who said of His absolute dependence on the Father saying, "...the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me." (John 5:19, 30). Just as God the Father has sent Jesus in to the world, Jesus has sent us as an apostolic ambassadorial delegate in to the world to impact it with the message of the gospel (John 20:21; Mark 16:15-18). Jesus has told to us His ambassadors saying, ""I am the vine, you [are] the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." (John 15:5). In other words Jesus is telling to us that we cannot do anything of eternal value without being attached to Him in dependence for our achievement. May we learn to pray in our hearts, “O Lord, deal with me!”
When we come to an end of our works and strivings, His work always begins. Whenever we slowly move from the Spirit to the flesh, immediately God will withdraw His inspiration and power that follows it. Then when we come to the end of our works and strivings again, His work will always continue. Only those things that are purely of God in Christ can only survive the test of fire for eternal reward. Stephen described Moses, after his Egyptian education, as a man “mighty in his words and works.” (Acts 7:22). Yet, after God had dealt with him, Moses had to say: “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” (Exod 4:10). When a born orator comes to confess before God, “I can’t speak,” then he has come to a place of God’s perfect will and alignment to be greatly used by God. This discovery comes through a crisis and then a lifelong process of keeping our self in death through our identification of being “baptized into the name” (Acts 8:16; 19:5). When we experience the initial crippling touch of God’s hand like Jacob which will weaken our natural strength, then we will stand forth as prince with God on the stable ground of resurrection life in Christ alone (Gen 32:22-32). Once we stand in Christ’s power of His resurrection, death no longer has any hold over us (Rom 8:11). This is the place of strengthlessness where God can easily testify of us like He said of Moses, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.” (Num 12:3). This way is not an easy one to walk but a costly one where all our life purpose and priorities will have God as our central focus and the very purpose for our existence will be for the glory of God alone. Everything in our life will be “to the praise of the glory of his grace” (Eph 1:6, 12, 14). But the price we pay to get aligned in this costly way of God is worth it on the payday, because the reward that we will get on the payday will always be infinitely much greater than the price we have ever paid (Mark 10:28-31). God’s way is a sure way to fruitfulness of life and ministry, he requires us to get trained through this school of purifying fire so that he may finally provide his trained mature graduates His backing in what they will do in the name of His Son Jesus (Isaiah 64:4).
When the work we do is wholly of God, He will commit himself in wonderful ways. Then in utter obedience to him, you can use his name, and all hell will recognize your authority. As all the demons, powers and principalities from the pit of hell confessed in the first century that they know Jesus and apostle Paul, so also will be in our end time generation (Acts 19:15; 16:16-18; Mark 1:24). When God commits himself to a person, he will always come out powerfully to prove that he is with him. When God commits Himself to a whole group of people, He will always show himself tangibly through them and make people understand that He is the author of the whole thing. The good news is God has committed Himself to the whole Household of Faith, which is the universal collective Church of the living God. You and I are individual members of the Household with whom the Lord will stand and authenticate through the power of God that we are indeed His heavenly ambassadors of the kingdom of God, and will display us as a special treasure before the world’s system of governance as we continue to walk in the perfect will of God. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
When God created man in the Garden of Eden, God’s desire for us was to rule and reign as His co-regents under His sovereignty on earth. In other words, God wanted man to rule the earth just as He is ruling in the heavens (Genesis 1:26). This is the reason the Bible says, “The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s; but the earth He has given to the children of men.” (Ps 115:16). This above verse does mean or it is equal to God discussing among Himself saying, ‘Let us make a model ruler like us and put him in charge of a small place called earth and make him rule over the whole place created, just like us.’ God’s image is a rulership and dominion image (1 Chronicles 29:11-12; Daniel 4:34-35). I believe God’s original purpose of creating mankind was to replicate his rulership of heaven on earth through the guidance of His Spirit in the spirit of man (Ps 32:8; Rom 8:16). The leadership edge over all the environment of earth was lost when man due to his disobedience lost the God connection that he had in his spirit with God. Man was severed from the source of creative leadership qualities that he had inside him after his willful disobedience to God’s voice. In other words in God’s original creation we were all designed to be rulers and leaders. Nobody was designed to serve another man except to God who is the universal owner of the entire universe (Ps 24:1). This severed relationship with God inside his spirit-man was what God called as death [i.e. spiritual death] (Gen 2:17). As we see Adam did not die physically the moment he disobediently ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but instead of a physical death they spiritually died and “the eyes of both of them were opened” (Gen 3:7). In other words both their physical eyes were controlled and covered with the glory of God to see God as the central focus of their existence before the fall of man. They were looking to God till then for instruction to rule over their natural world. If you think that man has to learn and educate himself in order to know about life, earth and its environment, then My question to you is, ‘Which school teacher taught Adam the alphabets and science in order for him to name animals that he saw? In which science college did Adam study in order to receive a degree and become a Biologist to name animals? In which business school did he learn in order to tend and keep the garden efficiently so that God without a second thought recruited Adam and put him in to the garden to be a manager and a president of it straightaway?’ (Gen 2:19-20, 15). We must understand, because Adam had a divine connection to God in his spirit-man inside him at that point of time before the fall, the divine wisdom of God flowed in to him to make him the leader who he was created to be. God’s wisdom is the glory of who He is in essence of His qualities (Job 38-40:2; Prov 2:5-7, 10-13). The moment their God connection was severed in their spirit man, they were not able to look or feel God as their purpose of existence because the spirit-man inside both Adam and Eve got separated spiritually from God, instead their physical eyes started to see the world from the perspective of their own limited acquired knowledge that came by experience rather than a divine infinite knowledge that was flowing previously as a river inside both of them (John 4:13-14; 7:37-39). From that day on till the day of Jesus’ resurrection and Pentecost, mankind had been living with no spiritual water to quench the eternal thirst with in him (Eccl 3:11; John 20:22; Acts 1:8; 2:4). So in order to find the purpose of the existence of man, he has to search and bring back the eternal material of God’s Spirit life back in to him through accepting Jesus Christ as His Savior (John 3:5; Rom 14:17).
Ever since the fall of man, all humans have started to take counsel from their soul which does not have the ability to judge spiritual things (Psa 13:2). The soul of man only has the ability to judge only the things seen through the eyes and so have immensely fallen short of ruling the world which is not just physical but also spiritually influenced through good and evil angelic beings (2 Cor 5:7; Heb 1:14). The angelic spiritual influence and rulership over the physical world did not come by creation design, but has been put in to the hands of the angels due to man’s failure in the test of obedience toward God in the garden of Eden (Heb 2:5; Rom 5:12; Job 38:33). Just as the law was added because of transgressions and passed on to man by the direction of angels through Moses, till the Seed of Jesus Christ should come to whom the promise of blessing the world through God’s grace was promised (Gal 3:19; Acts 7:53; Heb 2:2; John 1:17; Gen 22:18; Gal 3:16), so also because of the fall of man the world has been put under the subjection of angels until the times of restoration of all things, in which a new world system of governance and a new kingdom authority structure will be dispersed through saints who will rule the world along with Jesus Christ in His Second Coming to the earth (Heb 2:5-15; Acts 3:21; Rev 3:21; Matt 19:28; Luke 22:28-30; Rev 19:8, 11-16). When Satan and his evil minions rebelled just before the emergence of the world, the spiritual atmosphere over the earth got contaminated by sin (Job 38:4-7; Rev 12:3-4, 9). Satan is a perfect sadist who hated God’s idea of placing mankind to be above himself. Satan was averse to the idea of God because up to that point of time in eternity past he was the only one next in-line in authority to God (Ezekiel 28:1-19; 1 John 4:4). Once the rebellion happened God threw these evil angels out of heaven and they were the ones that were causing the confusion in the beginning to avert God from going forward to create man in His own image (Isaiah 14:12; Gen 1:2). Satan was jealous of man who was going to be created in the very image of God, so only I believe Satan said “I will be like the Most High” (Gen 1:26-28; Isaiah 14:13-15). In other words Satan didn’t want man to have authority over him and be closer to God than himself. In the original creation Angels were created to spiritually serve as a ministerial servants under both God and man (Matt 18:10; Ps 91:10-13; Rev 18:21; 19:10; Heb 1:14; Ps 104:4; 103:20). But all the angels never knew this fact until God proclaimed the blue print of creating the earth to Satan and his angels, after which God began to create the heavens and the earth in the beginning of eternity past (Gen 1:1). Satan was present in the Garden of Eden with right mind serving God (Ezek 28:13-16). When Satan was trading the things of God to fulfill His ultimate project earth, he was trading a lot of authority with the angels under him. This was the point of time when he got filled with violence within because of God placing man in a higher position than himself and his coworkers (Ezek 28:16). This is when he started to rebel against God by thinking the five ‘I will’ thoughts and he sinned ultimately against God (Ezek 28:16; Isaiah 14:13-14). From this time onwards, after the first sin of lawlessness against God was conceived, Satan convinced one third of angels who worked under him to act against the will of God by forming a separate kingdom in which he promised them a better future under him than with God’s kingdom (Isaiah 14:13-14; Ezek 28:2; Rev 12:3-4, 9; Eph 6:11-12; Col 1:16; Rom 8:38). Satan formed a kingdom hierarchy structure apart from God’s universal Kingdom authority structure and began to separately rule over them promising a great future under him (Matt 12:26; Matt 6:10).
Adam was created to be only lesser than God Himself (Heb 7:7). So only the Psalmist said, “For You have made …[man] a little lower than [God] the …[Creator] (Elohim.Hebrew), and You have crowned him with glory and honor. “ (Psalm 8:6). [Note: The meaning for the word ‘Elohim’ is exactly translated as God who is the Creator. But the Jewish tradition has wrongly translated it according to their tradition, calling God as angels just because they found the word to be pluralistic. But Christians have no problem in interpreting it as God the Creator in a pluralistic way because we know and believe the doctrine of trinity.] Thus we know that Satan and his demonic minions became jealous of supposed to be created mankind’s higher position and greater intimacy with God even before the first Adam was created. But as God’s purpose began to unfold further with the creation episode (Gen 1:2-3), Satan and his evil hordes who followed him immediately took up residence legally there on the second day the Lord created the atmosphere or air. This is why one of the titles that Paul gave to Satan is the Ruler of the kingdom of the air [i.e. atmosphere of heaven directly above the earth] (Eph 2:2). Also for this reason God didn’t pronounce His work on Day 2 as Good. Then after God created man on the sixth day to exercise dominion over the earth (Gen 1:27-28), God saw everything He had made in the right hierarchy and order in which it should exist, and it was very good in His sight (Gen 1:31) [Note: When God created all the things on the first five days, except the second day He said that “it was good”. But after the sixth day of human creation “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Gen 1:4-5 [first day], 9, 12-13 [third day], 18-19 [fourth day], 21-23 [fifth day], 28-31 [sixth day])]. This shows that man was created to be the jewel and apex of God’s entire creation. This is why God said in Isaiah 66:1, “Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest?” ” In other words, God was saying, ‘I started my creation with heaven [i.e. His throne] and ended with the earth [i.e. His footstool], How can you build a resting place for me?’ From the above verse we should understand that the earth was God’s destination project and the creation of “heavens” and the angels were His intermediary project to fulfill his destination project the earth. Man was the reason God ventured to create the heavens with all His angels. This is the reason God’s word says, “For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham.” (Heb 2:16). In this preceding verse the seed of Abraham are people who have inherited salvation through believing Jesus Christ (Heb 1:14). These seed of Abraham are the born again ones who will have a God connection inside their spirit-man and the Spirit’s witness as God’s children because of faith in God (1 Cor 6:17; Rom 8:16).
If we ask why God has not saved the angels who have sinned in the past? Firstly, man was deceived by the devil to sin by disobeying God in the ultimate test on behalf of all humanity, but angels took a conscious choice to act against the very project of God they were supposed to build. Secondly, angels had only one choice, which is to continue with God to fulfill his purposes or act against Him to receive a just retribution later. The two third of angels [i.e. good angels] continued with God to fulfill His purposes, one third of angels followed after Satan their master and ended up as demons [i.e. bad angels] (Rev 12:4). Praise God we are the majority with God and have two third majority of angels with us, than the one third minority of angels who are with Satan. Christ came to renew and fulfill the fallen project earth to bloom back to the pre-fall state, which was thought by the angels to be as though it was hopelessly derailed. These demons and their master Satan never understood the original reason and purpose for His first coming to the earth through which Jesus was going to fulfill God’s plan by creating all things new through His death (2 Cor 5:17). He started to recreate fallen human beings first by becoming a life-giving spirit and thus infusing God’s life back in to the humanity which was lost and alienated during the fall of man in the garden of Eden (Titus 3:5; Eph 2:10 (AMP); 1 Cor 15:45; Col 1:21). After the rapture and then the resurrection of all the tribulation saints during Jesus Second Coming to the earth, Jesus has planned to renew the rest of creation through God’s mature sons along with Him during the thousand year Millennial kingdom period, in which Jesus the Messiah of mankind will rule the earth with a rod of iron forcefully (Rom 8:18-23; Acts 3:20-21; Rev 20:4; Matt 19:28). If Satan and his evil cohorts had understood this truth, they would have never killed Jesus on the Cross (1 Cor 2:6-8).
The earth was originally created by God with all its creation to inhabit it with man ruling over all of God’s beautiful creation (Is 45:18; Gen 1:26-31). O Glory! This was the right authority structure which God intended for all the creation. At this point of time after the sixth day, Adam was the “son of God” made in His own image to rule the earth (Luke 3:38; Gen 1:26). Adam was the next in line co-regent with God, holding in him a mighty authority and dominion over all the earth and over the heavens too. He had authority over heavens and all the angels of God under him (Rom 16:20), because of this reason now the name of Jesus is deposited with authority over those on earth [and its environment], in heaven [over the prince of air (Satan)and powers of heaven (Demons)] and under the earth [i.e. all the angels imprisoned in Hell and Hades which was prepared for them (Matt 25:41)], and is given to the Church [i.e. all the believers] to exercise dominion over these three realms and exhibit the manifold wisdom of God to the angelic rebels who did not keep their proper domain in the heaven but sinned by possessing and ruling over men who were created in the image of God (Eph 1:17-23; 3:10; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6). At this point of time even though Satan was a rebel ready to pounce on Adam to steal the authority, he was holding no legal authority under God. As a roaring lion waiting to devour his prey, he wanted to set a trap for Adam’s authority to be stolen legally and then use it illegally to steal, kill and destroy him and his descendants. Even though the creation was perfect, the spiritual atmosphere over the earth was looming with sin-ridden Satan and his demons legally ready to tempt Adam and Eve from the air. Until Adam lost his authority, Satan could only be a spectator to all of God’s creation. Once Adam submitted his God given authority to Satan, then he legally set his foot on earth and began to rule it through his lies (Job 1:7). If Adam did not give in to Satan’s temptation, Satan and his evil minions would have been judged, annihilated and banished forever.
We know from Gen 3:1 that "the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made." When God speaks about the serpent, he was first speaking about a natural serpent and is comparing the natural serpent’s character with a spiritual serpent who is called Satan (1 Cor 15:46; Rev 12:9). At that time Satan was cunningly working behind the scenes in the garden of Eden legally, to topple up the universal purpose and the will of God in the earth, which God had planned in the eternity past to establish through man (Acts 15:18; Heb 4:3). Satan knew that if he can make Adam to accept his lies, then Adam’s authority that God has given to him can be used freely by Satan himself to fulfill his own agenda and establish a separate kingdom apart from God’s kingdom. Satan’s utmost desire was to receive worship from man and thus bring man below him in hierarchy, than to be a servant to man which was the will of God (Matt 4:8-10; Heb 1:13-14). Satan wanted to rule man forever and set his heart like the heart of God to receive worship from man (Isa 14:14; Ezek :2, 6, 17). But he was disappointed when God spoke judgment against him immediately after the fall of humankind and thus man was prevented from getting ruined by him forever (Gen 3:14- 15). I believe serpent at the time of creation stood straight as some cobras makes itself look bigger and more threatening by spreading the skin at the back of its head and stand straight at least to half the size and more of its original body length. The way all the serpents go now and moves on its belly presently to travel from place to place is because of the curse of God after the fall of man (Gen 3:1). And the curse from God and the enmity which came as a result of the fall, between snakes and humankind still continues to this day (Gen 3:15). To this day the snakes which stood straight and craftily close enough to the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden, is a deadly hated abomination to man even to this day. Because Satan found the snake as the most crafty of all animals, birds and living creatures, and closer to humankind at the time of creation (Gen 3:1), he negotiated with it to use its body and must have lied and promised to the snake to give something better than how God has created it to be. This is where the serpent of old called the Devil and Satan (Rev 12:9), deceived the serpent of the earth and got it cursed by God (Genesis 3:13-15). Whenever we think of serpent, we only think of Satan metaphorically from the Bible and forget that the natural physical serpent itself got deceived by the spiritual “serpent of old” who is Satan. I believe this is the reason in the Millennium rule of Jesus on earth, the Bible says, ""...and dust [shall be] the serpent's food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain," Says the LORD." (Isaiah 65:25). In the Millennium the original purpose of God will be fulfilled up to a certain extent before the whole earth will be destroyed at the end of Millennium rule of Jesus as the king of kings in this planet earth. The reason why I say that the original purpose of God will be restored only up to certain extent is because, still sinners will be living during the Millennium which will bring the curse of God in this planet earth (Is 65:20; Zech 14:16-19). These sinners will be the children’s of the believing saints who would have survived the Great Tribulation wrath of God and the persecution of Antichrist, and have entered as the sheep’s in to the Millennium kingdom rule of Christ through the Judgment of Nations at the beginning of the Millennium (Matt 25:31-46).
I believe that all animals were more artistic, creative and communicative before the fall. Only after the fall of man, all the animals, birds and all living creatures slowly began to suffer from the curse that came because of sin, after which all of it has started to groan for deliverance through the revelation of the sons of God (Rom 8:19-22). The “times of restoration of all things [which includes mankind, animals, birds, trees, environment with all its living creatures (Gen 1:28)]” in God’s timetable will be from the starting time of the thousand years reign of Jesus Christ on earth [i.e. Seventh Millennium after the creation of all things], even up to the end of it. During this time the glory of God which was lost after the fall of first Adam will be restored through the last Adam (Acts 3:21; 1 Cor 15:45-49). The glory of God will fill the earth with the knowledge of God (Isaiah 11:9). Due to corruption of the knowledge of God, all the animals became wild and aggressive to the extent of killing each other for its own survival. In other words all the animals, birds and other living creatures of the sea became mentally damaged to the point where it had all lost its ability to communicate with each other and also with man after the fall in the Garden of Eden. The knowledge of God which became corrupted in animals, birds, sea creatures and mankind during the fall will again be refilled with it. This is the reason the Bible clearly says that in the Millennium, "6 “ The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. 9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 11:6-9).
Did you notice that in the preceding verses the Bible says, that “the nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. 9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” What does it mean by this? Because the serpent itself lost the glory of God being deceived by Satan, in the millennium Jesus will restore it back, and the mentally damaged mind of the natural serpent will be healed to the extent that a nursing child shall play by cobra’s hole and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. Praise the Lord!
Satan needed a physical body to manifest himself through as a physical creature on earth, in turn to communicate to man in the Garden of Eden. So he chose the serpent which was crafty and close to mankind in order to tempt him from the outside-in [i.e. through a physical body of a serpent], because mankind did not have the original sin nature, which he had inherited from the first Adam only after the fall. In other words before the fall of man, because man did not have the sin nature or fleshly nature of sin which gives legal permission for Satan and his demons to speak in to his soul [i.e. mind, will and emotion], Satan had no way to tempt man inside-out subtly without concealing his identity. This is the reason Satan appeared to Jesus as a personality in the wilderness in order to tempt Him. Jesus did not have the sin nature for Satan to tempt him inside-out (2 Cor 5:21). And because Satan was defeated completely by Jesus in the wilderness itself, He referred to Satan as the strong man who had been bound by the Spirit of God through Him and is subject to Him (Matt 4:11; 12:29; Luke 4:13-14; 10:17-18). When Jesus defeated Satan in the wilderness he was completely throw out of heaven, who until then acted as the representative of humans in heaven (Luke 10:18; Rev 12:7-10; Job 1:6-7; 2:1; Zech 3:1-5). Actually the spirits were not given permission to operate on earth physically through creatures, but only act as a servant to man and a representative of man before God in order to protect him and the creation under him (Matt 18:10). This is the reason the Legion who recognized the perfect authority of Jesus when he was doing his approximately more than three years ministry on earth, asked for permission to enter in to the swine (Mark 5:5-13). Satan and his demons cannot express themselves until they find humans who are willing to do his evil works (John 8:44). In fact without a physical body the devils cannot express itself on earth (Matt 12:43-45).
So what do we learn from all these things? We can understand that Jesus has already defeated over all the Devils from the pit of hell. What was lost because of the fall during the creation time has been fully restored by Jesus during the redemption time before two thousand years when Jesus came to the earth. So learn to stand daily in the redeemed power of Jesus Christ through invoking His name over yourself and others to activate the power of God. Learn to rule over the three realms that God has set under us during the creation and subdue it for the glory of God. When you are truly connected to the head Jesus Christ, His authority over those in heaven [i.e. angels], over those on earth [i.e. the creation and the demonic realm of the spirit] and over those under the earth [i.e. imprisoned demons in hell] will be displayed by you in your daily life using His name as an ambassador on behalf of him (Eph 1:22; 4:15; 5:23; Phil 2:9-11; Eph 1:22-23; 2 Cor 5:20). This is what it means to truly stand in creation and redemption. The original purpose of creation which has been renewed through redemption is ours by standing in faith (Gal 3:26; Rom 8:18-19; 1:16-17). Hallelujah!
Satan always uses three channels of temptation through which he keeps people under his control. The three channels he used after the creation of the first Adam, he tried to use it against the last Adam [i.e. Jesus Christ]. But the good news is, Satan who deceived the first Adam was not able to win over the last Adam in the wilderness before two thousand years where he lost his control over humanity once forever (1 Cor 15:45; Matt 4:1-11).
The three channels of temptation are the,
(1) Lust of the flesh – Physical appetites and their gratification in this world,
(2) Lust of the eyes – Appeals to the self-interest,
(3) Pride of life – Self promotion, self- exaltation and tests the word of God.
Satan used the same temptation routes to draw away Eve from God’s perfect will, through which he reached Adam effectively and stole away his authority (1 Tim 2:14; 2 Cor 11:3; Rom 5:12). And he is still using the same old formula to draw people away from God. The Apostle John said to the believers, “15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:15-17). From this preceding verse we can understand that the Apostle John has warned us the believers not to indulge ourselves in these channels of the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life through which Satan tempts and deceives a believer to sin. When a believer indulges consistently in to such a lifestyle of giving in to the three channels of temptation, it will cause the life of the believer to become dry spiritually, lifeless, purposeless, ineffective and powerless. He will not be able to feel the love of God in his life and abide in the salvation blessing of God’s tangible overwhelming presence. Only a faith person who is full of hope will be able to truly enjoy the peace and joy that comes overflowing in to one’s life and ministry (Heb 6:19; Ps 16:11; 1 Peter 1:8).
Firstly, Satan usually uses the lust of the flesh to draw us away from the perfect will of God (Galatians 5:16, 17). The first temptation to humankind was the lust of the flesh. The Bible says, “1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” (Gen 3:1-4). In these prior verses, Satan first appeared though the serpent and started to appeal to the physical appetite of Eve and its gratification under his world system of governance apart from God. The same type of footprints we see in the wilderness temptation of Jesus before He started His ministry. Apostle Matthew wrote about it clearly by saying, “1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. 3 Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”” (Matt 4:1-3). Here we see, as Satan appealed to Eve’s appetite in the time after Creation, he appealed to Jesus’ fleshly appetite during the time before redemption (Luke 4:1-4). Satan always controls his subjects by keeping them in dark about the spiritual truth which is the word of God. God purposed in the beginning to establish sons through His heavenly spiritual truth of His kingdom and not subjects. So only the battle for ‘submission’ came after the fall of man and not before it. Before the fall, man only knew of God’s glory and intimacy as his son and daughter (Gen 1:27; 3:8). This is the reason after we are redeemed we are not called as subjects or servants but sons through faith (Gal 3:26). Have you ever noticed that Adam is described not as a “servant” but “the son of God” by Luke the physician (Luke 3:38). Jesus Himself clarified the original purpose of God for every human by sharing the parable of the prodigal son. In this parable Jesus told that when the prodigal son decided to seek God the Father’s presence, he was willing to join him as a servant. In other words, the lost son had no rights any more to claim any rights in his father’s house because he has already departed with all his rightful property and have completely wasted it. So he was willing to subject himself to be as the father’s servant and work under him in submission to his rule. In the same way, we too have often departed from God the Father and have always been wasting all our rightful spiritual property by always sinning. Finally coming to our right mind we realize that we are in complete poverty for spiritual survival. Then we are even willing to serve God under the law just to receive his blessings in our life at least. But we see the Father ran to the lost son and embraced unconditionally as his very own son (Luke 15:11-32). When we too received Jesus Christ as our Savior and repented to serve him as a servant, God the Father embraced us as his sons unconditionally and has adopted us in to his family (John 1:12; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5; Rom 8:14-17). Many times we waste all of our Heavenly Father’s property and come before Him as penniless and poor sinners. But without any question, he embraces us unconditionally and gives us a party as His very own son to rejoice. O what a privilege to be his sons! What do we learn from this metaphor? It conveys God’s original purpose for us is to be His sons and not servants (Luke 15:18-24).
Because Jesus immersed Himself in to the word even from His childhood and was mature in it even at the young age of twelve (Luke 2:42, 46-47), the Spirit of God used the word in Him as a sword to defeat Satan (Luke 4:1, 4; Eph 6:17). What can we learn from this? If we faithfully put the word in us through sincere learning, research and, meditation and be filled with the Spirit of God through seeking God intensely through fasting and prayer, the Spirit of God will take the word of God stored inside us and will use it to defeat Satan and all his demonic cohorts through our lives (Eph 5:18; Matt 17:19-21). O what a privilege to act as God’s sons!
In this temptation of Jesus’ physical flesh in the wilderness, we see an important truth. Satan is not omniscient, but at the same time he is not blind too. We can easily recognize that he had learned about Jesus’ noticeable susceptibility to physical temptation by monitoring Him go without food for forty days. What can we learn from this? Satan and his demonic cohorts are watching us too for our weak spots and our vulnerability in our appetites for food, rest, comfort, and sex. Our susceptibility to give in to temptations greatly increases when hunger, fatigue and loneliness increases. Whenever we are tempted in these areas to meet our need independently apart from God’s will of His word, we are tempted to fulfill the lust of the flesh. If we ask ourselves, what is the solution to overcome such temptations? It can be found out in the answer that Jesus gave to Satan, “[when]…He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”” (Matt 4:4). In other words Jesus said to Satan, ‘The word of God that God speaks to man in his spirit though God’s Spirit, for each and every tough circumstances that a man faces in his life is powerful enough to sustain him in this planet earth’ (Rom 8:16). O what a strength we receive when we hear him speak! Praise the Lord! We need to fill our mind with the word of God so that we can keep hearing Him in our spirit-man continuously in all our times of our need. I believe this is why the Psalmist said, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." (Ps 46:1). When we resist the temptations of the flesh by speaking out the word of God through our mouth, we are resisting the devil and the devil will flee away from us (James 4:7). Even if the devil does not flee immediately, we need to keep resisting the devil’s desire to trip us in to sin. When we do resist the devil actively through our confession of the word of God through our mouth, we are submitting ourselves to God’s authority of His word and declaring our dependence on Him to rescue us from temptation. Immediately God’s angels will do and fulfill God’s word by receiving strength from God to dispel Satan and his demonic followers (Ps 103:20). They will keep you in all your ways because of God’s command over you and act as ministers of flame to burn away the darkness that comes from Satan and his demonic minions to eat away the truth of God in our mind (Ps 91:11; 104:4). Never forget that we already have the mind of Christ within us (1 Cor 2:16). If we resist satanic darkness from influencing our mind, we will be men and women of sound mind to prosper in this world (2 Tim 1:7). When God’s protection is over us, "The angel of the LORD encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them." (Ps 34:7). The angels of God will literally dispel, pursue and chase away Satan and his demonic angels to keep us safe in God's will of prosperity in our spirit, soul and body (Ps 35:5-6). In this temptation Jesus has lifted up the authority of God’s word more than what we as humans usually feel as real and desperate for immediate attention, which is our flesh driven physical bodies. What Eve lost by wrongly thinking and spiritually seeing the forbidden fruit as “good for food” (Gen 2:17; 3:6), Jesus gained by declaring “Man shall not live by bread alone…” (Matt 4:4). Mankind’s feeling was restored by Jesus to follow our belief in God’s word.
Secondly, Satan uses the route of the lust of the eyes subtly to draw us away from the word of God and consequently wear down our confidence in God. The second temptation to humankind was the lust of the eyes. The Bible says about Satan saying to Eve, “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened…” (Gen 3:5). Satan appealed to Eve’s eye and said things contrary to God’s spotless character of truth. Without a second thought she gulped the lie of the devil and thus was drawn more towards the act of transgression. In other words Satan wants us to believe his lies and make us to continually believe that the world has a better, posh way of life than what God has designed for us in this earth under His rule and kingdom dominion (Matt 4:8-9). When we believe this lie that Satan puts in to our mind, we then start to desire what the world has to offer than our relationship with God. We start to think and place more confidence in our point of view than in God’s eternal, unchangeable and absolute command and promises of the word of God. In this channel of temptation, Satan always appeals to our eyes and develops a unrestrained desire in us to make us have what we see (James 1:14-15). Then fueled by the lust for what we see, we try to grab it all as though we need it all. We justify ourselves by even reasoning within ourselves saying that God wants us to have only the good things of the earth in our life. We even assume that God will never withhold any good from us and lustfully claim all that we desire intensely without restraint. The lust of the eyes causes an unrestrained desire of self-interest and moves us towards fulfilling it independently of God.
In the same way Satan approached Eve after the Creation, he approached Jesus before the redemption when He was in the wilderness and appealed to his eyes, showing the whole world as his to offer , and he will give to Him if only He will worship him and show his allegiance to him more than God (Luke 4:5-7). In other words Satan was telling to the Lord Jesus that though God’s word says, “The earth is the LORD’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein.” (Ps 24:1), yet God is not in full control of this world because it belongs to me and not to Him in reality. He showed to Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time” and was trying to prove that he was holding the authority. In fact what Satan said was partially true because of the fall of man, just like what he told to Eve was partially true because their physical eyes opened itself to experiential evil by falling from the perfect glory of God (Rom 5:12; 1 John 3:4; Gen 3:5, 7). Partial truth is in fact a lie. Truth is always an absolute and does not accept any error. In other words a statement can either be fully true or fully wrong. There are no partial truths with God. So only Jesus said to the people “I am the truth” (John 14:6). He did not say I have the truth with me. If he has said I have it, it is not an absolute. Truth is God Himself.
So if we ask ourselves, how can we overcome the lust of the eyes in our day to day life? Jesus has already given us the answer and has showed to us how to resist Satan by saying to him, "...Get behind Me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.’” (Luke 4:8). Jesus overcame the lust of the eyes and self-interest by having a single-minded devotion to worship God and none other than Him. In other words Jesus has totally rejected the lie of the devil and has proclaimed the word of God as the final authority to decide whom we should worship. He lifted up the authority of God’s word as absolute more than what can be seen through one’s eyes. When Jesus was tempted in the area of the lust of the eyes, Satan showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and began to bombard Him to accept all the kingdoms of the world directly from him by worshipping him. The Bible says, “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire…" (Prov 18:1). Satan wanted Jesus to accept his offer of the kingdoms and thus isolate himself from God’s will which was to save many through the Cross and then receive all the kingdoms of the world from God at the end of His suffering and perfect obedience (John 6:39-40; Heb 5:7-9; Phil 2:5-11). If Jesus has accepted Satan’s offer, he would have sought His own desire to be fulfilled and would have got the whole salvation plan of the Father God to be aborted (John 6:38-40). But Jesus stood victorious for us, not for Himself and finally won over the temptation. When we stand firmly for the will of God to be fulfilled in our lives, we will overcome even the most severe temptation of the devil as easily as Jesus overcame Satan by the power of God’s quickened word. Praise the Lord!
What Eve lost by wrongly thinking and spiritually seeing the forbidden fruit as “pleasant [desirable thing] to eyes” (Gen 2:17; 3:6), Jesus gained by declaring “You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.” (Matt 4:10; Luke 4:8). In other words it means, let nothing in the world make you take your eyes of God as the supreme one to be desired and be consumed by it (Matt 10:37). Desire for anything more than for God and His word is idolatry (Col 3:5; 1 John 5:21). Jesus won the test of eternity for us. Mankind’s seeing was restored by Jesus to follow our belief in God’s word. Thus now we “… walk by faith [in the word and the promises of God like Jesus], [and] not by sight [like Adam and Eve our first physical parents].” (2 Cor 5:7). As a believer we throw away our self interest and take the Cross of God’s will for our lives and follow the way that Jesus has followed, in order to fulfill God’s will for our lives rather than our own desires (Mark 8:34; 10:21). When we follow Jesus wholeheartedly, our motives will automatically slowly get perfectly aligned to God’s will for our lives, at the same time we need to continue to fulfill and pursue the will of God day in and day out till we die physically at the end of God’s appointed time on earth. Once our motives become purified, the appeal to the lust of the eyes working through us will lose its power over us as we worship God and derive our joy, peace and satisfaction only from Him. This kind of life style is the secret to overcome the lust of the eyes.
Thirdly, Satan uses the channel of the pride of life to make us self-sufficient apart from God. When a person is full of self-sufficiency, he forgets the all sufficient, able and more than enough ‘God Almighty’ [El-shaddai - (Gen 28:3; 35:11; 49:25)]. The Bible talks about this third appeal to Eve when he said, “…you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:5). In other words Satan was telling to her, ‘Because you will be like God [i.e. self-sufficient], you will not need God’. Satan appealed to Eve’s pride in order to tickle her to think that she can become self-sufficient apart from God; she fell for this last trap which brought her a great humpty-dumpty fall not only for her and her husband, but for the whole humankind. It is foolish to think that we can live self-sufficiently. In fact, we were not designed to live self-sufficiently but rather live by depending on Him as a child depends on its father to live on earth. This is the reason God has put in every man a God-shaped vacuum which is intensely drawing every man toward God and creating in every man a strong desire to be filled by God Himself (Ecc 3:11; Is 57:15). God’s will is for every man is to be filled by God in this planet earth and walk on earth as his honored sons and have dominion over all the creatures and environment, in order to subdue [i.e. control by ruling over] the earth under him (Eph 5:17-18; Gen 1:26, 28). By doubting God’s good intentions for mankind, Eve trusted Satan the deceiving spiritual serpent who craftily deceived her and Adam in to submitting their God-given dominion mandate in to his hands (Rom 6:16). This is what finally happened as the Bible says when Eve finally gave in to fulfill the temptation, “6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.” (Gen 3:6-7). In other words because of the fall of man sin entered in to the world system of governance which was in the hands of Adam then, and sin [i.e. lawlessness] caused fear, self-rejection and insecurity in the heart of every human (Gen 3:10). Man began to be ruled by fear, worry and sense of shame from that time onwards. Humankind had lost the glorious sound mind which God gave at the time of creation and got mentally repaired mind which crippled all humans. The source of God’s infinite knowledge through His Spirit was lost and man began to grope in the demonic darkness until Jesus came and restored it two thousand years ago (Acts 17:26-28). Praise the Lord!
The same way as Satan approached Eve to finally topple her up from her God given authority, Satan tried to tempt Jesus. Luke the physician in his Gospel has written these incidents in the chronological order, which is comparably in the same order as that of Apostle John who describes these types of different temptations as various channels of Satan’s temptation schemes through which Satan tempts a believer in the present world system of governance as written in 1 John 2:16. The Book of Luke says, “9 Then he [i.e. Satan] brought Him [i.e. Jesus] to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here. 10 For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you,’ 11 and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” 12 And Jesus answered and said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the LORD your God.’” 13 Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.” (Luke 4:9-13). Based on Malachi 3:1 which says, “Behold, I send My messenger, And he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight. Behold, He is coming," Says the LORD of hosts.”, the Jews who lived at the time before Jesus entered in to his ministry believed that the Messiah will suddenly appear in the temple . By choosing to jump from the pinnacle of the temple, he could have come to the temple floating in the air. By coming in this way, all the Jews would have immediately accepted him as the Messiah. But it was not the Father’s will for His life.
Here Satan appealed to the pride of life in the humanity of Jesus. If Jesus would have given in to the temptation, he would have acted independently of God the Father. By acting independently the plan of salvation rescue for the whole humanity would have been once and for all aborted forever. But praise the Lord, Jesus victoriously stood for us and brought eternal victory in to all our lives. From the time of His Baptism to the Cross, Jesus did not live for Himself but for us. He was not tempted for His own substantiation, but for us all.
Independence openly declares defiance against any authority God has placed over us through His word and causes us to self promote, self- exalt and test the indisputable word of God’s authority. God has not created us to be independent but to live in continual dependence upon Him. So only Jesus sarcastically spoke of a rich fool who tried to silence his crying soul by saying “…Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’ ( Luke 12:19). Jesus emphasized that this fellow was foolish because God has not created humans to live independently apart from Him. In fact, God created humans for fellowship with Himself and share His love toward Him and other fellow people (Matt 22:36-40). Jesus was directly emphasizing that any time God decides to take the rich fool away from his human body, he will end up as an isolated soul in hell fire without God for eternity (Matt 10:28; Luke 12:4; Ps 104:29-30; Luke 12:20). This is the place where every man who seeks to be independent without God will end up. God will give up His entire great prosperous plan for a particular man which is in heaven to be shattered because he values the choice of every man more than anything. The deceitfulness of riches has made this rich man to act as a fool by only thinking about his present day to day existence and not God’s original purpose of eternal existence after his physical death (Luke 12:13-21; Matt 13:22). In other word Jesus was telling the covetous religious people to concentrate towards God to live eternally rather than on isolating themselves away from God by concentrating to lay up treasure for themselves and be deceived as though they were going to live in this earth without death forever. Death is inevitable, before it comes if we can remember God and invest in to His will for us, God will remember us after our death to make us live with Himself for eternity with Him (Isa 55:6; Eccl 12:6-7; Luke 23:39-43).
Pride will make you test God; humility will make you trust God. God resists the proud but gives much grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5). Pride will always isolate a person from others [i.e. including God] and will make a person to live selfishly and independently. God resists a proud person actively; it does not matter whether that person is a believer or not (James 4:6). God resists the believers pride as much as he opposes an unbeliever’s pride (Isaiah 63:10). The only difference with a believer is that He will chastise and not deliver him completely to eternal demonic soulish destruction (Heb 12:5-7). God in His unceasing love will always chastise the believer as his child (Prov 3:12; Ps 103:13). The temptation of the pride of life is intended by Satan to steer us away from God by making us to think that we can be our own god. When you become self-confident rather than God-confident, beware you are on your way to your own destruction because of your pride (Prov 16:18). Whenever you think that acceptance of people is enough for you, beware you are not guided by God’s Spirit but by demonic drive for power and position (Matt 22:16; John 6:15). Riches cannot deliver you from God’s wrath and remember when you are intensely pursuing after wealth, you are coveting after something other than God and it is absolutely an idolatry that God hates. Thus you are operating with an evil eye (Prov 11:4; 28:22). Continuing to live such lives will make you stray away from the faith in your greediness to acquire more wealth, and thus pierce yourself with many sorrows. Love of money is the root through which the devil will always bring evil of all kinds such as lying, bribery, adultery, murder, jealousies, etc… (1 Tim 6:10). So beware of covetousness which is idolatry (Col 3:5). Keep yourself away from such idols (1 John 5:21).
And also in the third temptation we see Satan challenging Jesus using the Scripture but taken out of context. When God’s active sword of the Spirit which is the quickened word of God is used through us by the Spirit, the out of context usage of the Scripture by Satan will be easily brought to light very easily (Heb 5:14). In Luke 4:9-11, we see Satan quoting the scripture out of context and as a result wanted Jesus to think more highly than he ought to think about himself, and thus isolate Himself as exclusive apart from the purpose which has been designed by God the Father according to His will for his life (Rom 12:3). It was more of a test to the word of God and thus a challenge posed to God in order to prove what he has already promised to be true. It is like saying, ‘God if you are true to your word, show up and prove your word.’ It is also like saying to God, ‘Hello God, I don’t think you are faithful to fulfill your word. If you are prove it?’ This is purely sinful because it is the unbelief of Satan which makes a human to question a loving God with such a out of context‘…it is written or if’ statement (Rom 14:23). Man should be tested in order to be proved and made perfect because of imperfection in us, God should be trusted because of His absolute perfection (Eccl 3:18; Ps 11:5; 7:9; 2 Sam 22:31; Prov 3:5). Jesus chose a child like trust in the promises of God. He chose not to test the word, but to believe and trust the word of God with implicit obedience. Thus because of believing the whole counsel of the word of God as perfect, the Holy Spirit was given the opportunity to quicken the right word of God for that opportune time. Thus, through the sword of the Spirit, Jesus destroyed Satan completely and made him to flee until he can get another opportune time (Luke 4:12-13). We too if we are believing the whole counsel of the word of God as absolute and trust it with our whole heart, in our lives too the Holy Spirit will quicken the word of God and use it as His sword to defeat all the satanic strategies which are constantly planned to destroy us and others. Praise the Lord! This is the reason Jesus told to the panicking father who wanted his son to be delivered from demonic possession, “…If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” (Mark 9:23). In other words Jesus was telling this father, if you can believe the whole scripture to be the absolute truth and trust in it with your whole heart; your son will easily be delivered from Demonic possession by God’s power flowing through your spoken word that comes by the Spirit through your mouth. Praise the Lord!
What Eve lost by wrongly thinking and spiritually seeing not the forbidden fruit as something evil but considered the whole “… tree [as] desirable to make one wise” (Gen 2:17; 3:6), Jesus gained by declaring “You shall not tempt the LORD your God.” (Luke 4:12). To think ourselves as wise more than the word of God is to indirectly mock Him saying, ‘I know more than you God.’ Eve desired to be wise as God Himself and thus thought more about herself than she ought to think of herself in her mind (Rom 12:3). Eve dabbled in to Satan’s territory of unbelief and rebellion by accepting the evil thought of Satan. This is why when Satan puts such thoughts of unbelief in our mind to destroy our faith in God’s word, we should rebuke Satan immediately in the name of Jesus and should resist his evil ideas and cast him out. When we do this faithfully Satan will scurry for cover and we will prosper by the power of God. Our mind will become a prosperous mind, just like the mind of God which is not influenced by anybody’s thinking except the thoughts shared between the persons of the Trinity. What do we learn from this? Do not ever test the word of God and as a result tempt God, rather trust God’s word as absolute and walk trusting God irrespective of your circumstances. Depend on God and His word by trusting and obeying implicitly rather than to try and understand with your logical mind. This kind of implicit obedience can be inculcated only by learning to “walk in the Spirit” (Gal 5:16, 25; Rom 8:1). So choose to walk in the Spirit of grace and STAND like Jesus and reign in this life for the glory of God over Satan and all his evil demons (Zech 12:10; Rom 5:17)!
The more you want an answer from God for your prayer, the more you need to be sure than you are standing by faith and not by sight. Our standing with God is purely based on faith and not by any special privileges we avail. God is not partial with any human, in fact He is the same to everyone who comes to Him in faith. The Bible wonderfully says, “[God]…is not partial to princes, nor does He regard the rich more than the poor; for they [are] all the work of His hands.” (Job 34:19). In other words, this verse clearly says that all man and woman are equal in the sight of God, irrespective of social status, wealth and race. In fact, He is only pleased when we come to Him in faith and confidence in His promises.
The Writer of the Book of Hebrews says, “…with out faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6). Apostle Paul agreed with this truth saying, “[We] stand by faith” (Rom 11:20). We cannot “stand” any other way, other than the faith way. Faith qualifies a man specially to receive the favor of God and thus experience the grace of God in his life. Grace is the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome the evil tendency within us which always causes us to sin by our unbelief (Rom 14:23). The Bible beautifully says, "But He gives us more and more grace (power of the Holy Spirit, to meet this evil tendency and all others fully). That is why He says, God sets Himself against the proud and haughty, but gives grace [continually] to the lowly (those who are humble enough to receive it)." (James 4:6, AMP).
Proud and haughty people will trust in their own soulish feelings rather than the eternal unchanging promises of God (Mark 7:20-23). When we move in faith it shows our humility in trusting the promises of God rather than our feelings which changes as fast as the weather in a stormy day. The evil tendency of our soulish nature will always act in opposition to our pursuit of faith which takes place in our inward spiritual man (2 Tim 2:22; Rom 7:22-23). But faith in our spirit-man will always win in the end of each ordeal in our lives because the mind of our spirit-man works supernaturally through Jesus Christ every now and then like a spark that comes out of a spark plug and fires the whole engine cylinder to combustion (Rom 7:24-25). The faith in our spirit-man when channeled in to our soul, will burn every kind of evil and unbelief that acts against our spiritual-man, and will cause the prosperity and blessings of God to flow from our spirit to the soul and then to the physical, financial and social strata of a faith man. Faith is the hand which reaches in to the heavenlies and takes all the blessings of God in to the natural world. We reach out to the spiritual realm of God through the supernatural hand of faith that God has given us to receive much grace [i.e. supernatural favor and empowerment of God] by which we stand secure spiritually, soulishly, physically, financially and socially through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5:2). Faith makes a person to excel and prosper by God’s favor in all the areas of his life. Life lived by faith on earth will decide our future glorious position in heaven.
God has committed Himself to those who violently stand the ground of dispute on earth by faith. This is the reason Jesus said, "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent [in faith] take it [What? All the empowerment and blessings of the kingdom of heaven] by force." (Matt 11:12). The blessings and empowerment of the kingdom of heaven is accessible only to those who are violent in their spirit against all the evil unbelief, fear, worries and strategies of the devil and his evil demonic cohorts. God will always stand for those who believingly stand with Him violently based on his promises. Before Elijah could stand before the demonic power of the stronghold of Jezebel’s Baal, he learned to stand before the God who lives to empower His people. The Bible clearly reveals the secret to Elijah’s supernatural power which he himself revealed by saying, “As the LORD of hosts lives, before whom I stand…” Here we see that Elijah knew in his mind that he was standing before God all the time and this resulted in a supernatural confidence against all the demonic powers and strongholds of Satan. This supernatural confidence had given a strong assurance inside Elijah that God will defend for him all the time because it is he who has sent Elijah to regain the lost territory of God, which Satan has deceptively taken and made it in to a stronghold through Jezebel’s evil mind.
Elijah is described as a man who is like any one of us. He had sin nature dwelling within him which made him fearful enough to make him flee in to the wilderness after one of the greatest onslaught of God’s power demonstration through him face to face with Satan and his evil minions (1 Kings 19:1-3; James 5:17). Elijah the mighty valiant warrior of God became fearful like a little child and fled for his life when he was attacked by the Jezebelic spirit of fear and intimidation (1 Tim 1:7). Faith and fear cannot go together. The presence of the one will make the other ineffective. Faith is a positive force of God that will thrust us to move higher in God unhindered by any opposing forces. Fear is the negative force of Satan that will paralyze and cripple our faith which reaches out to God’s supernatural physical, spiritual, soulish, financial and social provisions. When we doubt the word of God, fear creeps in to us subtly. When we believe the word of God, faith rises up tangibly in us. When we believe, it destroys our doubts. When we doubt, it depletes our faith. Fear intimidates us, makes us miserable and full of anxiety when we allow it to influence us, faith empowers us and makes us live the abundant heavenly life of God on earth with joy, confidence and expectation in God’s ability (2 Tim 1:7; Matt 21:21-22). So what will you choose? It is up to each individual’s faith level that God’s supernatural activity can be seen through their lives (Rom 12:3, 6). God honoured Joshua’s faith by promoting him to be the chief commander over the whole nation of Israel after Moses died (Num 14:30; Josh 1:2-5). Joshua the faith warrior chose the life of God and served God along with his whole family as a gratitude toward God by faith (Jos 24:15). In those days the prophets did not have the privilege of the eternal sealing and indwelling of the Spirit of God like us in the New Covenant (Heb 13:5), so when they allowed the spirit of fear to overcome them, God was not able to move in to them to strengthen them by His mighty power. It took some time for God to deal with Elijah’s fear, self-pity and self rejection which He finally dealt in the appointed place of the mountain of God [i.e. Horeb] after which Elijah was given a new apostolic commission and a mandate to fulfill, before God could fulfill his final desire to depart the earth (1 Kings 19:8-9, 4).
Elijah could not carry himself to the appointed place of God, but the strength of the heavenly supernatural food supplied through the angel of the Lord strengthened him to appear in the appointed place of encounter with God (1 Kings 19:4-8). What do we learn from this? We cannot carry ourselves to the appointed divine place of encounter with God, except through God’s supernatural revelation of Himself through His angels, dreams, visions or the whisper of His word spoken in our spirit man (Job 33:14-16). We have to come to the end of ourselves before God can cause His supernatural provision and strength to appear to us and through us to others. Once Elijah appeared in the appointed place of God, God did not cajole and pamper Elijah with nice words to make him understand that he has moved out from faith in to fear. But God casually said to Elijah, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9). Here we notice God speaking to Elijah as though he did not expect the mighty Elijah to appear in that place of wilderness. In fact God might have had many other plans of supernatural transportation in the Spirit and sudden vanishing in the Spirit had not Elijah let the spirit of fear paralyze his faith. Elijah had a reputation all over Israel for vanishing suddenly by Spirit travel. When Elijah suddenly met Obadiah on his way and told the god-fearing in charge of the house of Ahab to go tell his master that Elijah has arrived in town to meet him by the word of the Lord after three years of prophetic drought, he immediately replied,“ And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from you, that the Spirit of the LORD will carry you to a place I do not know; so when I go and tell Ahab, and he cannot find you, he will kill me. But I your servant have feared the LORD from my youth.” (1 Kings 18:12).
All the people of Israel knew the invincibility of Elijah, except Elijah who got intimidated by the spirit of fear working through the empty threats of Jezebel (1 Kings 19:1-2). Here we see a classic example of a man who is like us in every way. He not only failed God’s expectation, but he failed miserably. But the God whom we serve is a faithful God, who comforts us in all our trials and tribulations (2 Cor 1:3-4). As the Bible says, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.” (2 Tim 2:13). Even though Elijah did not have iota of faith in the supernatural ability of God to protect him in his trouble at that time, God was faithful to His word. He comforted Elijah through His supernatural provision, but he did not allow the bad attitude of Elijah to continue.
Elijah gave out the reason for His fear, self-pity and self rejection to God saying, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.” (1 Kings 19:10). In the preceding statement of Elijah we see that he took his eyes off God and turned it upon himself. Fear made him to think about himself rather than on God’s power and protection. We can see clearly Elijah pointing to God about his own achievements and belittling all other people of Israel by placing them all under one banner name “Israelites”. Then he was boasting about himself saying “I have”, “the children of Israel have forsaken Your…torn down Your…and killed Your…” and “I alone”. Elijah was trying to make himself as exclusive before God and was trying to justify his fearful actions before God. Fear made him to think that he was the only one who achieved with God and all others have turned against God. This is a subtle form of pride which conceals itself in self-pity. God was putting Elijah under His operating table and bringing out of His heart the spiritual malignancy that marred his life up to that point of time, so that he can live fearlessly in his future time on earth. In his final thrust of self-justification before God Elijah said, “I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.” In other words, Elijah was saying to God, ‘God you know that I am the only exclusive one to follow you, where were you when I started to fear for my life and run away from Jezebel in to wilderness for protection? If you have not failed me at that time I would have stayed boldly before Jezebel.’ Fear made Elijah to justify his failure before God. In fact, when Elijah spoke to God he did not even remember that God had supernaturally provided food for his body to sustain itself or he would have died in the wilderness itself. Fear makes us to forget the goodness of God. It sucks out the ‘attitude of gratitude’ completely out of us like a vampire.
After all these things God did not pacify Elijah through his wise words, but “11 …He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. 13 So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”” (1 Kings 19:11-13). In other words, Elijah expected God to come in the wind and break Jezebel in to pieces like He broke the mountains, but God did not come and manifest as Elijah might have thought. Again after this Elijah expected God to shake the earth and kill Jezebel, but again God did not come as Elijah might have expected. Again after this Elijah expected that God would manifest and consume Jezebel like as He showed Himself before the Israelites when the fire consumed the sacrifice and licked all the water in the trench round about it. Elijah expected God to act according to his preconceived ideas of his puny mind. Finally God whispered to him through a still small voice showing to Elijah that He is a person with His own agenda and will, and that God’s will is not a thing of one’s imagination to be bendy to whatever way one thinks. When Elijah heard the small still voice of God, he did not like to hear God anymore with his frustrated mindset. So he wrapped his face in his mantle and stood in the entrance of the cave, little realizing that God can speak through the spirit-man inside him, as loud as He speaks through the air outside him. Elijah was asked by God the same question in the above verse the second time, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:13, 9). Did the Lord not really understand what Elijah was doing alone in the wilderness cave, other than seeking solace and safety from being killed? No, the Lord was asking Elijah after the supernaturally manifested encounter of Himself with Elijah, ‘Are you willing to change you wrong mindset and then pursue by faith what I want you to do? This fear and self-focus is not my will for your life. ’
Elijah unfortunately was stuck to his wrong mindset by giving to God the same answer as he gave before saying, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.” (1 Kings 19:14). Here we see a classical example of a mighty man of God ruined by his own wrong mindset. Elijah was not able to accept to God that he has acted by fear and not by faith, even after the supernatural encounter. Job humbled himself in dust and ashes before God and changed his wrong mindset to receive a restoration of double blessings in his life. He not only gained what he had lost through the trails but much more than that, which is gaining a stature with God for eternity (Job 42:5-6, 10, 12; Ezek 14:14, 20). But Elijah the great prophet was so mentally affected by the spirit of fear that he was in no mood to accept that he was wrong, even after he saw the glory of God manifest before his very eyes. I believe he was so close to God and moved with God so much that he literally stuck to his point of view unmoved. Never forget we may go wrong by our puny mindset because of our unbelief, but God will always be right irrespective of circumstances we go through. He can only use us as much as we can believe him by faith; there is no end to power with God if we put no end to His ability in our mind. It is usually we who limit the power of God by our own limited thought patterns. When we tempt God by sticking to our own thoughts rather than accepting His eternal unchangeable thoughts, we are tempting Him and limiting His activity through our lives (Ps 78:41-42). We may not understand all the thoughts and plans of God immediately while we are going through trials and tribulation of great sort like Elijah. But we need to encourage ourselves like David and push towards our destiny, this is true faith which will always wins in the end (1 Sam 30:6). God never explains to us why he acts in a particular way unless we humbly align ourselves enough to accept his will without any precondition. Here Elijah was saying to God indirectly through his words, ‘Here I am, let your will be done but according to my own way of thinking.’ God cannot use us much if we are not able to humble ourselves and accept our mistakes when He brings it in to our remembrance. God will always without doubt use all those who are willing to humble themselves and correct their wrong ways to align themselves in His perfect will for their lives. Here Elijah was not willing anymore to change his wrong mindset, so God finally had to raise up the next generation to fulfill His perfect plan at least through their lives.
Then God clearly said to Elijah, “15….Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria. 16 Also you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place. 17 It shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and whoever escapes the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. 18 Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” (1 Kings 19:15-18). Here in this prior verse we see that God giving the apostolic general Elijah the command to raise up the next generation in faith to defeat the enemies strategies. Once Elijah accepts the command of the Lord then the Lord gave an answer to his intriguing question that made Elijah to self-justify before God. God made it clear to Elijah that he was not alone in being zealous for the Lord, but the Lord has reserved a remnant of seven thousand believers who never bowed before the local idol that Jezebel promoted instead of the Lord Jehovah. From this we can understand that the answer for all our questions in life will be solved only as we start to obey God’s custom designed plan for our individual lives by faith. As we start to move by faith, our spiritual vision and direction for our lives will become clearer and clearer, until it will shine forth in zenith before the very eyes of our understanding (Prov 4:18). Are you ready! You are asking me for what? To move and stand in faith like never before and destroy the demonic strongholds that is hindering our growth in Christ. Break all of them in the name of Jesus and glorify God like never before in history. Saints we are at the verge of one of the greatest revival of all time. It is the end time revival and proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with all apostolic signs and wonders done through saints like you and me (Acts 8:1, 4-5)! Praise the Lord!
Elijah did not fulfill the commission of God fully by anointing Jehu and Hazael, but he knew that if he has trained Elisha enough, the evil Jezebel will be ultimately killed according to God’s prophetic word, and thus God’s plan for his life will be fulfilled through his spiritual son Elisha. So he concentrated on his spiritual son Elisha so much that he guided him by being close enough to train him, until the time he literally went up by whirlwind into heaven. Elisha got so emotionally attached to Elijah during the short period of spiritual training for impartation, that he cried out “My father, my father…” as Elijah was taken up in to heaven (2 Kings 2:9-12). We need such spiritual fathers who are ready to pour out their being to prepare their spiritual sons to carry out the plans of God that they have missed in their generation. Elijah imparted so much in to Elisha’s life that the moment Elijah left him, he moved by faith calling on the name of God saying “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” (2 Kings 2:14). Believe me, God moved mightily by the faith that Elijah had imparted in to Elisha. A mighty miracle of the same Elijah’s order took place in a matter of seconds through Elisha. We need spiritual fathers who are not afraid and insecure, but feel joyful that their sons will move beyond the miraculous they have experienced. It needs a true heavenly Father’s heart to train spiritually, sons like Elisha’s who have been chosen by God. Be open to God, God is raising up a Elisha-generation through Elijah’s of the previous generation. If God is moving you and preparing your heart for such a place of training or with a fatherly heart of giving out to others, yield yourself by faith. Through your life many sons and daughters will be raised up to turn the world upside down for Jesus! Praise the Lord!
I believe even in our generation the Lord has commanded many prophets and apostles to raise up the next generation through introducing and cultivating them in the anointing of the Lord, to finish off the two thousand year old apostolic commission and mandate to preach “the Gospel in all the world as a witness to all nations” so that the end can come upon the earth for the kingdom of God to be established forever (Matt 24:14). Many old warrior generals of the army of the Lord are getting in to a physical and mental place of tiredness like Elijah and are not ready to change their old pattern of thinking for the new one. I believe the Lord is saying to them to build up a new anointed army before they can leave the earth as they have wished to the Lord. As they raise their spiritual sons and daughters in the kingdom of God, God will impart a double fold anointing over their sons and daughters to fulfill the call of their generation, along with the call of the previous generation to be fulfilled much more effectively in a shorter period of time than that of their old war veterans (Isaiah 44:3; 59:21). God has been preparing the heart of both the spiritual fathers and also the spiritual sons to follow one another in the coming days. The spiritual fathers will be directed by the Lord to call the sons for the training and preparation of the anointing impartation which has been planned by the Lord. They will throw their mantle over them and will call them for a life of servanthood and discipleship, before God can release the double portion of the anointing over their lives. Actually these types of relationship are not planned by us but it is ordained by the Lord. The spiritual sons will willingly serve the spiritual fathers until they depart to be with the Lord, after which the double portion of the anointing that has been received by faith already will begin to manifest gloriously over their lives. These spiritual sons will change the destiny of nations and will completely root out all demonic strongholds that have been continuing to oppose the army of God which has been trying to establish itself as the sole ground and pillar of truth.
The vacant places for ministries in a new generation are always filled by the person whom the Lord chooses and trains in order to release them in to their destiny. The Lord will always train a yielded vessel and will always instruct and teach out of His law and then will cause him to rest from the days of adversity till He uses them to dig a pit and wipe out the wicked through them (Ps 94:12-13). David has also clearly said that God chooses each and every individual believer for His own purposes to be fulfilled and causes him to approach Him and dwell in His courts (Ps 65:4). O what a blessedness to dwell in the sweet presence of the Lord, saints! Praise the Lord!
Apostle John has clearly emphasized the importance of faith in the life of a believer in 1 John 5:4 saying, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has [already] overcome the world—our faith.” Who are those who are born of God? In other words he is asking, ‘who are those who are having the DNA of God within them?’ We are those who are born again in the spirit and have the DNA of the life of God in us, which is His promised Spirit which has been given personally to each one of us as a gift and a guarantee within us for eternity ahead (John 3:3, 5-8; 1 John 5:11-13; 2 Cor 1:21-22; Heb 13:5). If we are a believer in Christ Jesus, God Himself guarantees that we will ultimately win over the world naturally because of the God-potential and His character within us. Then the Apostle John points to the source of the God-potential and His character of faith within us which empowers us to overcome as long as we focus our mind on God’s strength and power. Our faith is spoken as that which has already overcome the world [Note: it does not say that faith will overcome the world, but it says that faith has overcome the world]. In other words, our life of faith is the tangible victory of Jesus that is applied moment by moment in our life by the power of the Holy Spirit which makes us to be overcomers who sit with Jesus on His throne (Rev 3:21). There is power when we are standing as overcomers by faith which acts as a domino effect to makes us rise higher up in the power of the throne through our lives each time as we face the resistance of the enemy. This is the reason even Apostle Paul after facing overwhelming setbacks of the enemy confessed and rejoiced openly saying, “9...most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” ( 2 Cor 12:9-10). The way to go higher up with God is to be pushed lower down by the enemy’s power and might. The more we get knocked out by the enemy and still lean on God in faith, the higher up we travel with God. The bottom line of all these things is to ‘stand by faith, for this is true victory’.
The life of faith revitalizes and rejuvenates us (Rom 4:20). Praising God and giving thanks for what He has done, is doing and is going to do, will destroy all the doubts of the enemy through which he subtly tries to creep in to our mind. Praise brings the supernatural intervention of God in to the physical realm. When Apostle Paul and Silas were locked in to the stinking third-graded rotten flesh and human bone filled prison, they did not cry out to God for help to rescue them from their life threatening circumstances. Instead they began to move in the Spirit and have a prayer and worship meeting right in the midst of their trying circumstances. You know what happened? Let us read right from the Bible, “25 But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed.” (Acts 16:25-26). O praise the Lord! The supernatural heavenly power of the Lord’s kingdom superseded the power of the worldly kingdom to free them. In other words, a not-from-here Kingdom have indeed invaded the earth at that time (John 18:36). What made it happen? It is the praise and prayer that came by the faith of the apostolic commanders-in-chief, brought the supernatural heavenly power of the universally invincible kingdom of God in to force in the natural world ruled by Satan through men (Matt 11:12; 2 Cor 4:4; Luke 4:5-6).
Do you see what does it means to “stand”? We do not try to gain ground, but we just release the prayer of praise by standing on the ground which the Lord Jesus has gained for us by defeating all the evil principalities and powers on the Cross (Col 2:15). When we worship our Lord by our continuous prayer and praise, it shows that we dare not to let ourselves be moved away from the victory of faith that has been given to us when we were born again (Jud 1:3). When our eyes are opened to see what Christ Jesus has done for us already, praise flows from our heart freely just as the water flows through a steep pathway of a mountain river. This is the reason Apostle Paul after seeing the power of God flow through his life of praise, exhorted the Church believers to, “18 … not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but [to] be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. “ (Eph 5:18-20).
The great man of God Watchman Nee says, "Praise that is the outcome of effort has a laboured and discordant note, but the praise that wells up spontaneously from the hearts at rest in him has always a pure, sweet tone.1"
How true it is in our lives too. When we live our lives in faith’s rest, our praises too will well up from our hearts spontaneously with a pure and sweet tone just like sweet smelling incense before God. God will only be pleased with such lives. The enemy will tremble only before such people who have learned to stand against him in kingdom culture of praise and thanksgiving. Praise is the language of heaven which releases the power of heaven on earth.
The true life of a Christian consist of realizing that he is seated with Christ in the heavenlies, which in turn will empower him to walk by the power of Christ within, and finally when contested by the opposition of enemy will make him stand in Christ against them and then destroy them completely by the power of truth. We begin to sit, walk and stand by resting in the finished work of Christ. And this rest becomes the source of our strength for a steady walk of victory by faith. At the end of our spiritual warfare we find ourselves possessing the blessings of God on earth and for eternity the things that has been showered by God freely upon us (Rom 8: 32). Praise the Lord!
Footnote:
1 Watchman Nee, Sit ,Walk ,Stand, (Secunderabad: First OM Authentic Books edition, 2006), 68Bibliography:
Nee, Watchman. Sit ,Walk ,Stand, Secunderabad: First OM Authentic Books edition, 2006
Jack Kelley, www.gracethrufaith.com, 2009
My Regards
As I am finishing this three part article, I sincerely thank My Lord Jesus for having guided me line by line to write this. I would not have written this three part article, had not the Lord impressed on me to write this. As I was led by God to read the book of the Apostle Watchman Nee, I was inspired at the end to write a book based on what I have learned from him. To tell you the truth, this is how I started to write these three part articles. All the concepts are not the same, but as he laid the base I started to build upon it by the grace of God. I also thank all the writers whom I have read in the past, they have helped me to be what I am today. May the Lord deposit His great righteous favor upon them all eternally. Praise the Lord!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment