What does it mean to go through spiritual warfare? When someone becomes a child of God, they not only reap the many blessings and promises God has for His children but they have to come against God’s enemies. The Lord foremost enemy is Satan whose soul purpose is to destroy God’s work but Jesus came in order to “destroy the work of the enemy.” 1 John 3:8
Before I start talking about this, I want to speak on this verse found in Ephesians 6:12 and it reads, “For we do no wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” This verse speaks so much volume! What gets manifested in the natural first occurs in what is called the spiritual realm in heavenly places. Now I can talk about heavenly places in another post because that itself will need some explanation but for the purposes of this post, understand that what happens in the spiritual realm will have its effect in the natural realm. For example, when someone is known to be racists, they are under a demonic influence under principalities of racism. Stay with me! I know we grew up conditioned to think something else but this is biblical. How to break this is that we have to war in the spirit!
This verse clearly states that our war is in heavenly places! Not in the natural! A lot of times we are arguing with people about certain things and we don’t fully comprehend that this war that you are fighting is not something you will overcome in the natural. Our weapons are not carnal (meaning that we don’t have physical weapons to come against these spirits). God blessed us with supernatural weapons to overcome these demonic spirits. Some examples of some battles that you may be going through can be generational curses, addiction, dealing with unsaved family members, illnesses, etc. All these things require us to go to battle in the spirit!
See the amazing thing about God is that He fully equipped us with everything that we need to overcome and conquer these battles. Our God is a good God and the same spirit that rose Christ from the dead is the same spirit that is in all of us. The unfortunate side is that many of us go through life ALLOWING the devil to defeat us with these minor battles he throws our way. Aren’t you tired? How much longer will you allow Satan to have dominion over your life? See we tend to go day by day thinking that the devil is on the same level as God. This is a lie from the pit of hell! “Greater is He who is in me that he who is in the world.” 1 John 4:4. Don’t give the enemy more power than he already has because he doesn’t even have much!
Now if you’re finding this hard to understand, I have to ask you, what does your prayer life look like? How long do you pray for? How often do you pray? How often do you fast? What exactly are you fasting? Reflect on these questions. Seriously, because if you are only praying once and a blue moon and you never fast, and the only time you really seek God is for an hour on Sundays well trust me, you are no threat to the enemy. Just like in Acts 19:15, “And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?’” God gave you dominion to win these battles with the devil!
Finally, I want to mention that you don’t fight FOR victory, you fight FROM victory. The day Jesus died on the cross is the day victory was proclaimed! When the enemy knows that and is the reason why he attacks so hard. If you living for the enemy, in sin with a weak prayer life, you really aren’t a challenge for him. The Spirit of God is in you and you have dominion over your life. We sometimes get stuck in the “I’m just waiting on God” mentality. While this is true in some parts of our lives, you have to understand that God is waiting for you. You are a soldier for the kingdom of God. Think of that term soldier. You will never see a soldier out in the field unequipped. They have their armor on and trained knowing that they could potentially get hurt, but they are always on guard. This is the mentality we need but for the kingdom! No, it will not be easy, the bible says in Isaiah 54:17, “No weapon form against me shall prosper”. It never said there will be no weapons, they just won’t prosper. We are soldiers for the kingdom of God here on earth; put your armor on and get in the prayer closet!