All Episodes
Previous Next
June 16, 2019 - Praying Medic
25:22
113A Spiritual Warfare 101

Some tips on conducting successful spiritual warfare. My website: https://prayingmedic.com/

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Who is on the broadcast today?
Susie Q, Blonde Laura, Truth Sayer, Casey Stengel17.
Hey Casey!
Aloha!
Hey from San Diego.
Hope you're all having a good day.
Hope you all had a chance to wish the president a happy birthday.
Best president ever.
Hey from North Carolina.
You're still at work in Scottsdale?
I'm sorry!
I'm at work.
This is what I do for a living.
It's my job.
Training and equipping the Saints for the work of ministry.
Ephesians 4 11 is what I do.
Alright, I want to get to the subject of today's message.
Which is Spiritual Warfare 101.
This is going to be, well, I plan on making this a short message.
And I'm going to ask you to think carefully about everything I say.
Before you quote me or misquote me, before you take something I say out of context, Please think carefully about everything I say in this message, because it is very easy to take things I say out of context and distort the meaning of it.
Spiritual warfare is a very tricky thing, and there is a lot of really bad teaching in the church about spiritual warfare.
And I'm going to use a couple of illustrations about spiritual warfare.
So I get a lot of prayer requests from people who are under spiritual attack.
They're either feeling spiritual oppression.
They are running into demons in their dreams.
They feel like all the doors are closing.
They feel like they're just under some type of spiritual attack.
All right.
And that is actually a very common experience.
It is common to experience those things even more when you start pursuing God.
And if you dare to step out into the supernatural and start praying for people to be healed, You're going to experience more attacks.
All right.
Now, this is basic 101.
If you start to think that you can set people free of demons and start doing deliverance and physical healing, you are going to be attacked.
Period.
You are going, trust me, it happened to me, it has happened to everybody that I know who dared to start walking in the authority that God has given us.
The attacks increase.
And the attacks, when you begin to take the battle to the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of darkness is going to push back.
They want to scare you.
The enemy wants to frighten, intimidate, and scare you into thinking, you know, if I go back to just my quiet little life and I don't try to get people healed and I'm not like involved in deliverance or anything like that, maybe these attacks will quit.
Alright, I'm just letting you know.
If you dare to operate in the authority that God has given you, if you dare to exercise power and get people healed, you are going to suffer attacks.
You're going to experience attacks.
It'll get an increase for a while.
And what God wants you to do is He wants you to realize you're an overcomer.
Why would God call us overcomers if we have nothing to overcome?
We have to overcome The enemy, blood of the Lamb, word of our testimony, loved not their lives to the death, right?
If you're an overcomer, you have to have something to overcome, and the kingdom of darkness is always trying to get in our faces, trying to get us to back down, to stop doing what we've been called to do.
So, just realize, there is an enemy, the enemy is real, And God is trying to train and equip us to become overcomers.
To live as overcomers.
And that means fighting the good fight and doing battle now.
I received a message from someone this morning on Twitter.
I receive a lot of these messages.
And this person asked me to pray for them.
No.
that God would protect them from the enemy, from attacks of the enemy.
No.
It is a normal request to ask God to protect you from the attacks of the enemy.
The Bible says the name of the Lord is a strong tower.
He who goes into him will be kept safe.
All right?
And there's a lot of scripture passages that talk about how the Lord can protect us.
He puts a hedge around us.
He protects us from the enemy in certain ways.
Psalm 91.
But Psalm 91, you have to realize, applies to a specific type of person.
A lot of people just pray Psalm 91 over themselves, thinking that if I pray Psalm 91 over myself, I'm covered.
Well, it doesn't actually work that way.
Psalm 91 says, He who makes his abode, his shelter, under the wings of God.
So if you want the promise of Psalm 91, you have to live in the shelter under the Lord's wings.
You have to live close enough to Him that He is able to protect you.
And a lot of people don't do that.
They just pray Psalm 91, but they don't live the lifestyle where they are actually under the shelter of God's wings.
It's a choice.
And so, it requires you to live a certain way.
You just put that in a comment.
I wasn't going to talk about that, but it is true.
Alright, so let me give you an example.
If you were a teenager, and you were skinny, and you were kind of nerdy, and you get picked on by kids in the neighborhood a lot, And you're getting beat up, and you're getting picked on.
It happened to me a lot when I was a kid.
Not because I was skinny, just because I had older brothers.
It would be tempting to ask God to protect you from the attacks.
To protect you from being picked on.
It would be tempting to ask God to stop these attacks from happening.
That's one solution.
God, make the attacks stop.
Alright, but there's another solution.
What if you go to the gym and start working out?
What if you grow in wisdom?
What if you go and learn martial arts?
What if you become a more loving and compassionate person?
What if you learn to operate the gifts of the Spirit?
One solution is asking God to stop the attacks.
knowledge and praying for them to be healed?
Or what if you just backed them down because you went to the gym, grew, and became stronger and bigger, and when they saw you coming down the street a year later, they're like, yeah, I'm not going to mess with that person.
He's got muscles, he's ripped, he's going to the gym, we'll find somebody else to pick on.
One solution is asking God to stop the attacks.
The other solution is to strengthen yourself so that you can back down the attacker.
What does that mean spiritually?
That means if you're being attacked by evil spirits, Fallen angels, demons, whatever.
And look, if you're being attacked on social media by people, realize your fight is not against them.
Your fight is against the evil spirits that are controlling them, right?
And a lot of us think that certain people have it in for us, and they talk bad about us, and they slander us.
And we think, oh, that person Well, they may be, in a sense.
But really, most of those people are under a spirit of control.
They're being controlled by a spirit.
And these spirits of control, Jezebel's spirit is a good example, they tend to control groups of people.
They control people, they ultimately want to get control of people who have a voice.
in society and then they kind of twist their thoughts and manipulate them and get them to operate out of envy, insecurity, pride and arrogance.
And they control people and they get them to circle the wagons and attack people.
And then they draw people in who support them.
Not naming names.
But the battle is not against the individuals.
It is against the spirits that are controlling those people, right?
So we do not wrestle against flesh and blood.
We don't wrestle against people.
We wrestle against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.
So these people that are attacking you and attacking me, You just have to realize they're under a spirit that is an evil spirit that is controlling them, getting them to dance to their tune, and going out and attacking people.
Right?
So your prayers and your warfare are against the evil spirits, not the individuals.
Which is why I don't attack people who attack me.
I don't have to attack them.
My battle is not against them.
My battle is against the evil spirits that are controlling them.
Right?
That's the battle.
So, I do warfare against evil spirits and fallen angels, principalities, powers, whatever.
Alright, so, if you start to battle against the people that are opposing you and attacking you, you have already made your first mistake.
You don't battle them, you battle the spirits that are controlling them.
That's effective spiritual warfare.
If you can defeat, disable, or just completely ignore the evil spirit that is controlling these people that are attacking you, that's how you win the battle.
And I win a lot of my battles just by ignoring people.
Uh, you know, fly.
Whatever.
Fly.
Okay, go away.
Fly goes away, and I win the battle.
I mean the fly is trying to get my attention.
We're using a metaphor here.
We're using an example.
An illustration.
I could spend 30 minutes of my day running around my house looking for a fly swatter and chemicals and things to try to just go to battle against that fly.
I'm going to destroy that fly.
I'm going to kill that fly.
It's going down.
This fly is just ruining my life.
But what's the point of wasting a half hour doing a Periscope and doing a YouTube video and writing a blog post about a fly that came into your room that tried to annoy you?
Why not just ignore it and just keep going with your life, right?
And the people who attack me, they're like flies.
I'm like, I'm not gonna spend a half an hour You know, doing a video or writing articles or, you know, slamming these people.
It's like, look, there's this fly.
Just ignore it.
It'll go away.
But, again, a lot of the battles that I win, I win because I just ignore whoever's trying to get my goat.
They're trying to get my attention.
That's their goal.
They want my attention.
They want me to be angry.
They want me to react.
They want me to repost their stuff.
I never give my enemies what they want, ever.
Look, I learned a long time ago, if you don't want people pushing your buttons, don't tell them what your buttons are.
As soon as you show someone where your buttons are, they're going to start pushing them, if they have an agenda against you.
So, I do not let people know what my buttons are.
And I dang sure don't let them push my buttons.
I don't give my enemy what they want.
It's not gonna happen.
I know what they want.
So part of spiritual warfare is knowing what does your enemy want and not giving your enemy what they want.
If your enemy, if you're operating in healing and deliverance, and this evil spirit keeps attacking you, trying to get you to back down so The Bible says resist the devil and he will flee from you.
That enemy wants you to back down.
You do not give ground to your enemy.
You keep on going.
The Bible says, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Okay?
You have to resist the agenda of the devil.
Yes, screw tape letters is a really good example of that.
My novel that I'm coming out is actually written in the style of the screw tape letters because I found that book just so ingenious the way Lewis wrote about the agendas of the enemy and how they manipulate us into doing things or not doing things.
So, I want to tell you about a story about a woman who taught me about dream interpretation.
Her name is Melody Pash.
Heck, she may be on this broadcast.
I don't know.
Melody is a very prophetic person.
She is a prophetic mother of sorts.
She mentors people in dreams and visions and prophetic revelation.
She is extremely talented and very experienced in this area.
And years ago she had a series of dreams where the Lord was showing her something that she needed to know about herself.
Now, I'm just going to say this about dreams.
Many times when you have a dream, And you seem like you're just getting your butt kicked, dream after dream.
Some, whether it is, maybe you're in the city and there's a group of thugs that are beating you up and chasing you and trying to kill you or hurt you.
Or it's actual demons that are chasing you and trying to torment you.
When you have those dreams, God is showing you a part of your life.
He's showing you how you're operating in the Spirit.
He is showing you the way in which you are operating in spiritual warfare, basically.
So, here's an example.
If you have dreams where you're driving a car And the brakes don't work and you keep driving the car and you go through intersection and going through town and the brakes don't work and you can't stop the car.
Symbolically, those dreams are telling you that your life is somewhat out of control.
You're in an out-of-control life and you probably have difficulty saying no to people.
The brakes make your car stop.
If you are in a car, in a dream, And the car has no brakes.
It could be that God is telling you that you have trouble saying no to people and you need to learn how to say no.
Maybe you have a problem with people-pleasing.
Maybe you just say yes to everybody because you want to be accepted.
But that dream could illustrate the idea that you need to start saying no.
If you are in a car that is the steering wheel doesn't seem to work very well and the car is careening all over the place out of control.
Steering wheel is what determines the direction of the car.
Your car often represents your life.
So if your steering wheel doesn't work, God is telling you probably that you have sort of lost control or direction of your life and he needs you to get a hold of it and get back in control because other people are probably steering and directing your life.
Manipulation.
Controlling Spirit.
Especially if you're in a dream and somebody else is driving the car.
If you're in a dream and you're in the backseat and it's your car and someone else is driving it, God is probably telling you that your life is being controlled and steered by someone else.
Right?
So, just kind of giving you some feel for the symbolic ways in which God speaks about your life through dreams.
Now, Melody, this friend of mine, had a series of dreams, recurring dreams, where she was being attacked by this really hideous looking demon.
She would, in this dream, this demon would appear and it would have a weapon and it would start to attack her and she didn't have a weapon and she would get killed and she'd have another dream a couple nights later Same demon appears.
It has a weapon.
She doesn't have a weapon.
It comes at the hacker.
She's like fending it off with her arms and hands and she gets killed.
She has another dream.
Same demon comes back.
She looks around and she finds, like, a stick.
So she picks up the stick and she tries to, like, fend off this demon and it kills her.
Then she has a dream again.
And the demon's there.
It has a weapon.
It comes after her.
She looks around.
She picks up a hammer.
She is trying to, like, fend off this thing and take a swing at the hammer and she gets killed.
Each time she had the dream, She looked around and found a slightly more effective weapon.
She found a baseball bat one time.
She takes a swing with the baseball bat and the demon kills her.
But she's getting better weapons.
Her weaponry is being upgraded.
Now at the same time that she's going through this, she is learning about spiritual warfare.
She's learning about how to do warfare against evil spirits.
Yes, it's she's a warrior being trained.
God is training her symbolically showing her you need to develop better weapons Because these demons are kicking your butt so she has another dream and she ends up with like a small gun handgun and And she gets killed again by the demon.
And she has another dream, and another dream, and the last dream that she had, this demon comes after her, and she has a lightsaber, like from Star Wars.
She just chops this demon to pieces, and that was the end of those dreams.
She never had any more.
God was showing her, in these dreams, symbolically, how she needed to develop better weapons against the enemy, right?
And that is, you know, if you think that God is not talking to you, you have these dreams, well, God is talking to you.
Sometimes you'll suffer real attacks from real demons in dreams.
Sometimes God will show you like a training scenario in a dream with demons or evil people to help train and equip you spiritual warfare.
But the point being, rather than asking God, oh God protect me, don't let these attacks come at me, what we all need to do is we need to learn how to develop and use our weapons of warfare.
Sword of the Spirit, Belt of Truth.
All right, let me, you know, if you go to Ephesians 6, weapons of warfare, helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness, right?
Sword of the Spirit, belt of truth, shoe of the gospel.
Let me give you an example.
How is the Belt of Truth a weapon?
The enemy will lie to you, to discourage you, to demoralize you, and to get you to think you're not worthy.
Somebody on the chat said, I feel so unworthy.
I feel like God doesn't want me.
I feel like God doesn't care about me.
I feel unworthy.
I feel like I've failed God.
Every single one of those is a lie.
You have not failed God.
You are not unworthy.
You are worthy.
He cares about you.
He loves you.
You need to take the truth from the Bible and apply it to those lies that those stupid demons are feeding you.
When you hear those thoughts, you're under attack.
When you hear a thought that says, you are unworthy.
God hates you.
You've disappointed God.
You've disappointed everybody.
You're a failure.
Those are all thoughts from the enemy and you need to take the truth from the scriptures and block out those lies and forget them and push them out of your mind.
That is a battle of the mind.
You need to renew your mind to the truth.
That God loves you, cares about you, you have not disappointed him.
He adores you and he has a good plan for your life.
Okay, that is taking the belt of truth and using it against the lies of the enemy.
That's just an example of this how spiritual warfare is done.
All right, so I'm going to wrap this up here real quick, but I just wanted to illustrate How the end game for us is not... Now, let me just say this.
I have angels that follow me around.
I get messages from people all the time who talk to me about the angels they see around my house and in my room.
I have seen a lot of angels.
I can sense their presence.
And yes, God does protect us with angels.
So there's nothing wrong with asking God to protect you.
He will protect you with angels, but he is not going to prevent you from being attacked on social media.
He's not going to prevent, he's not going to subvert someone's free will who wants to talk crack about you on Twitter.
I'm sorry, that's not going to happen.
God does not interfere with people's free will.
He will give you angels.
He will give you protection in a sense.
But he is not going to stop people from doing Periscope broadcasts where they talk about you.
He doesn't interfere with people's free will.
So, the attacks will continue.
How you choose to deal with the attacks is up to you.
We are digital warriors.
You know what warriors do?
They fight.
You don't lay down.
You don't scream and cry and ask for God to make the attack stop.
You grow up.
You get spiritually mature.
You grow in wisdom.
You grow in knowledge.
You grow in revelation.
You grow in your ability to use the tools, to use the weapons of warfare, to warfare, to do warfare effectively.
That is what we're called to do.
Capisce?
All right.
Cool.
Love y'all.
I'm gonna get going.
Gotta get working on this book again.
Take care.
▲
Export Selection