Date: November 8, 2018 ()

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Our lesson today is on how to use the tools that God has given you to do spiritual warfare. The Bible says we do not fight against flesh and blood; instead, we fight against hidden things. You think people are your enemy, but they are not. It is things behind them that are your real enemy. God knows that and He wants to use the things that He has given you, through you, to fight these battles. There are a lot of wars going on today. What do they use to fight wars in the natural? Guns, bombs, big ships, planes, night vision goggles. My son-in-law is in Iraq and he is coming home in 10 days. He has had to use a lot of things there. Those are real battles and real enemies, for sure. As a Christian, you have an enemy. That enemy is the devil. Why does he not like you? Why does he want to destroy you? The reason is that he hates God. The way he gets back at God is by attacking one of God’s children, you. Think about it. A parent knows exactly what I am talking about. If someone goes after one of your children, as a mother, you become like a mother lion. “You better not get near one of my kids.” Especially if they are out to destroy your kids. If your child starts running around with someone that is bad, you get after it. You are not going to let it happen because you are not going to lose your child. That is the way it is in all of Christianity. With all you go through fighting the battles that come on you all of the time, sometimes you feel like you are helpless. But you are not. God has tools for you.

God has a lot of tools for you. Each one will work in the particular situation that God wants it to work in. You have to learn to walk with God and say, “Lord what do I need to do here?” The Holy Spirit will tell you, “Do this,” or “Do this.” What works one time might not work the next time, so do not ever get the idea, “Well I do this all of the time and that works.” You do not know that. You do not know at all. It could be that God says, “No, I do not want you to do that one this time. I want you to do this one.” He will lead you. He wants you to win. You are armed for battle. If you say, “I am a very weak Christian. I don’t really know much about God,” you are still a threat to the devil. The weakest Christian intimidates the devil. Why? You have the Blood in you, because you have the Life in you, because you have Jesus in you. You are a threat. What the devil tries to do to you is keep you ignorant so you do not know who you are fighting or how to fight him. You just have to learn.

One of the best tools is the Word of God. Maybe it is the best. God wants you to know the Word so well that you know what Scripture applies. As an example, maybe your children are not serving the Lord. You did the best you could to try to raise them to serve, or maybe you did not do a good job at all. Maybe you were living such a worldly life that you did not even think about what God says about how to raise kids. Now they are messed up. What do you do? What verses do you claim? What verses do you stand on to fight the spiritual fight over their lives? A good verse is Jeremiah 31:16, “Refrain your eyes from weeping. Your children will come again to their own border.” You can stand on that verse and believe it. Another really good verse to stand on and fight spiritually for your children to come back to God is Isaiah 54. It says, “My children shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of my children.” It actually says, “Your children will be taught of the Lord.” When you are doing Scripture for your own life, you make it personal. You say “My children are taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of my children.” Your children may be in the biggest mess you have ever seen and you think there is no hope for them.

Speaking the Word of God over your situation has great power and great effect. That is why you need to know the Word of God. You may say, “I don’t know how to read the Bible. I don’t even know where you look.” Ask some people who know. If you look in the back of the Bible, it will give you topics you can read. It will show, when you are worried, read this verse. When you need comfort, read this verse. You can just pick out one of those that touches your heart. When you read it, it becomes personal to you, “It is mine.” You can take that verse, write it out and put it where you will see it all the time. I put them on my car visor so that when I put down my visor, there is the Bible verse. I might put it in my kitchen cupboard so that when I open the door, there it is. I put it on my computer monitor. That way, it keeps the Word of God before me. It also has to come out of your own mouth. Do not just read it, speak it out loud. When you feel the least like doing something, that is the time you most need to do it. The Word of God is so powerful.

Another tool is to use the name of Jesus. The devil will let you use any name but Jesus. How easy is it for you to say “Jesus”? There is power in that name. Just try it. Demons hate it. They will flee at the sound of the name of Jesus. Pastor Cho is the pastor of the largest church in the world, about 750,000 people in South Korea. He is a very powerful speaker, a very powerful man and very anointed by the Lord. I heard him speak in Dallas. Pastor Cho said, “The Japanese tortured my family as Koreans. I hated them. God said to me, after I had this big church with all these people, ‘I want you to go to Japan and I want you to help them start churches.’” Pastor Cho said, “Lord, they tortured my family. I don’t want to do that.” He said, “I want you to do it.” Forgiveness is a big warfare tool, forgiving your enemies. Pastor Cho went and was in a hotel room one night, trying to go to sleep, and he said, “The devil came in my room.” You might not believe this, but I trust this man and I believe him. He is not a liar. He said, “The devil came into my room. He said nothing, but he was so fearsome. I was paralyzed with fear. I saw him and he had mean eyes. I was so afraid. I could not move my body. I was stiff, I could not think, I could not do anything. All I could say is ‘Jesus’. It was so weak and pitiful, but the devil left, just like that.” There is power in the name of Jesus. Jesus says, “Use my name.” It is such a powerful name. Do you know someone real powerful where you are, where you work, that if you say, “They said so-and-so,” then everyone says okay, we better do it then. That is the way the name of Jesus is. They have to do it.

The blood of Jesus is another tool. Let me tell you, the Blood is alive, Jesus is alive. It is life changing to understand the blood of Jesus. There is power in the Blood. Do you know that song? My grandmother used to sing that to me when I was a little girl. “What can wash away my sins, nothing but the blood of Jesus.” There is power in that blood. It can wash away sins. Your sins can be forgiven. Turn to God and say, “God I am so sorry. Forgive me and heal me. I want to serve you.” His power will defeat the enemy in your life. You will be set free. It does not matter how bad you are, you can be set free. There is not one of you that is so bad that you might think, “God couldn’t help me.” There is no one too far gone. I do not care what you have done. You can have a good life, you can live a right life. You can use these tools to win the war that is raging all around you.

One tool that not many people know about is fasting. Isaiah 58 says, “Is this not the fast I have chosen.” It goes on and describes it, “To loose the bands of wickedness.” You can fast when there is a real problem in your life. You can fast when you need God to move powerfully. Does it make God move for you to fast? In other words, He will not move if you do not fast. It is not that. But, it is one of the tools that God gives. God says, “I want you to fast. I will do something if you will fast.” How do you fast? You can go without food and water. You can only do fruit juices. You can fast all day and eat at 6 o’clock at night. God will tell you what to do. I can promise you there are some things that are so difficult, that you have to fast. Jesus said, “They only come out with prayer and fasting.” If you cannot get an answer or get anything to happen with what is going on in your life right now, fast. God will tell you when to start and when to quit. One time the Lord told me to fast for five days. I thought, “I don’t know if I can do this or not.” After about three days, it was not even a big deal. In fact, I thought, “This is easy. I could do this the rest of my life. I am going to lose a bunch of weight. This is going to be great.” The Lord had told me, “I want you to quit at 5 o’clock on Friday.” About noon on Friday I thought, “I could go the rest of my life and never eat. Look what could happen.” I want to tell you, at 5 o’clock I could have eaten your leg. When God was through, He was through, and it was over. But, it worked.

Group prayer is another tool. The Bible says, “If two or more of you will agree and pray, I will do it.” It is a great warfare tool to call your friend to pray. Have you got a good friend that you can call up and say, “Would you pray with me about this? I have a real problem going on in my life and I don’t know what to do about. It is bigger than anything I can handle. Will you pray with me?” They do, and you see the answer. Group prayer, especially a large group, is important. Are you in a Bible study? I am not sure that it is possible to be really connected to the Lord and see His great things happen in your life just by showing up at church on Sunday. I think you have to have more than that. I think you need a personal daily walk with God, daily reading the Bible, and I think you need a group of people. None of us is able to do it by ourselves. You have to have other people around you who are so sold out to Jesus that they inspire you, lift you up, and challenge you. You have to have them, and group prayer is a big deal. Get in a prayer group, have a prayer group. Keep a list of how the Lord fought those battles and won just through your group praying.

The next one is praise. There used to be lots of books written about the power in praise and the power in worship. What you are experiencing now might be new to you. God has been fighting battles for people for thousands of years. In the book of Kings, there was a king name Jehoshaphat. If you think you have problems, put yourself in this guy’s place. Try being a king in a small country with a small army, and you hear that the worst army on the face of the earth is coming after you. What would you do in that situation? He panicked. I guess every one of us would. He did not know what to do. He got the people all together and said, “We have to fast and pray.” A prophet said, “The Lord says the battle is not yours, it is Mine. You do not have to fight, I will fight for you.” Jehoshaphat kept thinking, “What am I going to do, how am I going to do this? I am going to go out and fight them but what am I going to do?” What he did had to be an idea from God. I doubt there is a war on the face of the earth fought that anyone would do what he did. God was fighting for Jehoshaphat and telling him what to do. He put the praise team, the choir, in front of the warriors. How would you like to be in the choir? I bet your would have a lot of faith in God then. It would be like, “Oh Lord, I trust you.” That praise brings God on the scene. In Psalms there is a verse that says, “God inhabits the praise of His people.” When you are going through a hard time, the last thing you feel like doing is praising, but it is the most important thing. You have to do it to have God inhabit the situation. It shows faith, it shows trust. Even more than that, God loves praise, God loves worship, and He is free to come in and work. Praise and worship are wonderful warfare tools. Do you have good Christian music? Do you have music that really leads you into the presence of God? If you will play that, even when you do not feel like it, it will work. I cannot tell you enough that most of us, when we are going through hard times, do not feel like doing what you ought to do. We just want to sit around and be depressed or worried or sleepless. If you will use these tools you will see miracles and amazing results. You will see things happen when it could not happen. It will happen because God is using these spiritual tools.

Obedience is another tool. Would you think that is a good warfare tool? It is a really big one. When you are obedient, God can move even quicker. It is hard to be obedient sometimes, especially when God is telling you, “I want you to do this,” but all of your emotions are telling you, “No, you don’t want to do that. You can’t do that. That would be wrong. Don’t do that.” You are thinking, “I want to obey the Lord.” It is hard to be obedient. Jesus was obedient even unto death. If He could do that, you can do what you are going through right now. What does the Lord want you doing in this situation you are going through? Ask Him. “Lord, tell me.” Sometimes I cannot hear him and I need the answer. I will say, “Lord, I must really be deaf. I am so sorry. I know you are trying to tell me because I know you want to help me, but I cannot hear you. Speak louder.” He does. He wants you to know which tool to use.

Another tool that I cannot live without is praying in tongues. I know some of you do not believe in this tool. The devil hates this. Why? Because it is the only language he cannot understand. He can understand any language on earth, but he cannot understand that one. There are times when you can pray in the Spirit and you know the answer is coming. When you finish praying, nothing has changed. Everything is as bad as it was. In fact, you might even get more bad news. There is something about praying in the Spirit that the absolute prayer that needs to be prayed, gets prayed. Have you ever looked at Ephesians 6 about the armor of God? In Ephesians 6, it says “Put on the whole armor of God.” I think people forget the last sentence in there. They think about all of that and then they do not pray in the Spirit. It says, “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” You have to learn how to do that. It is a piece of the armor. God will use it because you are praying the way the Holy Spirit wants you to pray. I just got back from Africa. While we were there, something funny happened. There was a loud noise outside our room one night. I had earplugs in. I can sleep through anything. I can sleep standing up. My roommate said, “Betty, get up, get up. Something’s out there. There is a man at the window and they are making loud racket.” I was half awake and thinking, “What do I do.” You would have laughed so hard if you had been there. I picked up my Bible and thought, “Where is that verse in Ephesians? What does it say that I put on my head? What do I put right here?” When you are in a panicked situation, what can you remember? Then all I could remember was “Pray in tongues.” I will just pray in tongues. It turned out to be a false alarm. It was men protecting us, but we did not know it. I had taken the time to learn the warfare tools and to be able to move into them instinctively and you need to be able to do that.

A really big warfare tool is the prayer of relinquishment. You can get so worried about your children, husb and, finances, job and future that it overwhelms you. You can get to the place where you say, “Lord, I am tired of worrying about it. I don’t know how it is going to happen. I have done everything I can think of and none of that has worked. You keep telling me to turn it over to you and it is hard to do. Okay, here, I relinquish it to You.” When you do this, you untie God’s hands. Have you ever thought about the fact that you might be tying God’s hands by trying to get in there and make it work your way. God says, “Just get out of the way, and give it to Me.” Sometimes your problem is so great, you take it back. You are worrying about it again, and God says, “Give it to Me again. I cannot work until you give it to Me.” Right now if there is something you are struggling with, give it up. You will be so glad. There is such power in that warfare tool.
The next one is binding and loosing. In Matthew 18:18, it says, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” You can bind the devil. I have done it. You have the authority. In Luke 10:19 Jesus said, “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. People that are into witchcraft, like witch doctors or JuJu think they have all this power. Jesus said, “I give you power over them. I give you power over all the power of the enemy.” You just have to learn how to use it. One way is to say, “Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus. You will not get my husband. You will not get our job. You will not get our business. I bind you in the name of Jesus.” This is binding. What could you loose? If you have family situation where everyone is made at each other, you could loose laughter. You could say, “Lord we are all so tense, we are all so mad, I just loose laughter and joy in our family again.” And He would. You could say, “I loose peace.”

Peace is another spiritual warfare tool. They are all so powerful, I never know which one to say is the most powerful. Peace is really powerful. People get you agitated or angry, they do you dirty, life is unfair, and you get so frustrated and lose your peace. But, if you can say, “God I have lost my peace. Give me my peace back.” Then everything smooths out because you are calm and God is able to work again. Peace is powerful. That is why there are peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers. They go into those hard situations and bring peace to it.

Joy is another tool for spiritual warfare. Would you think joy would be a warfare tool? Once when I was sad, my husband said, “Ask God to give you a singing heart.” I thought, “Oh, okay. God would you give me a singing heart.” The next thing I know I had the joy of the Lord, I was happy. Nothing changed, but I was happy. Then things did change. You can do this. I am telling you, you can do this. Do not say that you cannot because you can.

One you would never guess is a spiritual warfare tool is talked about in Malachi 3. This Scripture talks about tithing and giving to the Lord. It says, “Will a man rob God? But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ In tithes and offerings. Bring those into the storehouse.” In Malachi 3:10, it says, “Try it. Let Me prove it to you.” It is the only verse in the Bible that says, “Do this and let Me prove it to you. Your crops will be large for I will guard them (you see, warfare). I will guard them from insects and plagues. Your grapes will not shrivel away even before they ripen. They will ripen. All the nations will call you blessed.” Even in regular life going on, God says, “If you give in my kingdom, tithes (that is 10% of your income) and offerings (that is above that)” God says, “I will rebuke the devourer.” That can happen in your life. I do not think people realize that. Some say, “If I give my money, I will be broke.” God has an economy that is not based on the world’s economy.

The greatest warfare tool is love. If you cannot do anything else right, walk in love.

QUIET TIME QUESTIONS

1. Who is the real enemy?
2. Why does he attack?
3. How do you pray Scripture over a situation?
4. How can you tell what is the best warfare tool to use in a particular situation?
5. How do we untie God’s hands while working through situations?
6. How much authority do we have over the devil?
7. What is the greatest warfare tool?

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