Stand Firm: Knowing Your Identity in Spiritual Warfare

We need to know who we are in Christ and we need to know who we are without Christ. One of our weapons that we need to know, we need to know the word. If you don't know the word, you're gonna have a hard time doing that. You remember when Satan came to torment Jesus and Jesus took up a sword and they went to battle out in the desert, out in the wilderness? No. Me neither. What did he attack with? The word. Each time he said, it is written, it is written, it is written. Satan knows the word. Satan quoted the word. How are you going to fight an enemy that knows the word better than you do? We might wanna get to know God through the word. We're gonna need him. It's gonna be part of our battle. [01:07:03] (56 seconds)  #KnowTheWord

He said, the other night I woke up in the middle of the night and I rolled over and there's that demon sitting on the corner of the bed just frothing at the mouth and screaming at me. And I looked at him and I said, it's you. And I rolled over and went back to sleep. You see, we get busy fighting sometimes a battle that's already over. We get busy fighting a battle that's already been won. Our father has won the battle and he has given us victory over the enemy. Why do we then sit there arguing with the enemy about who won or how we won or how it takes place in our lives? [01:03:04] (40 seconds)  #VictoryAlreadyWon

And you know what happens? This is attack in a different way. Almost every drug addict that I saw go to jail or rehab and come out what attacks them the most when they get out are not drugs. It's relationships. It's normally the opposite sex and relationships that occur there and feelings that occur there and it takes them down a dark road. Why didn't they see it coming? Because they thought they were battling cocaine and they thought they were battling meth and they didn't realize they were battling Satan. [00:49:19] (37 seconds)  #BattlingTheRealEnemy

This is the truth that will set you free. We're gonna need not only to know the word, but we're gonna need to know the truth about how to apply that word accurately to our lives. And I'll give you a clue to what the truth is. I I hear it said often when we have a service of any kind and somebody will come up to me afterwards if I've I've been preaching or would tell me about it when we hear someone else talk. And one of the most common things to say is, oh, I know somebody needs to hear that word. Really? Because god didn't draw him here today to hear it. He drew you. Maybe god thinks you're the one that needs to hear the word. [01:08:05] (39 seconds)  #ApplyTheWordToYou

We need to recognize the root of it. Would you like to know the root of the weapons that we'll we'll talk about with the breastplate and sword and the shield and the shoes and and all of those things? Here's the root of what your armor is. If you wanna fight a spiritual war, then you're gonna have to know a few things. One, you're gonna have to know who you are in Christ. you know who you are in Christ? I don't think a lot of us know who we are in Christ because we go around begging for things that we already have. [00:59:04] (31 seconds)  #IdentityInChrist

Go watch a movie. Non Christians, atheists, agnostics, the rest of the world knows that we're in a battle against evil. What is nearly every movie that we see? It is an allegory for the battle against evil. Somehow, the church has forgotten. the world knows it to be true. What we've got to understand is that we have to fight this in a spiritual way. It's not a physical battle. You cannot reason your way through Try talking to someone that's stuck in drug addiction and just give them logic and reason. As doctor Phil would say. See how that's working for you? It doesn't work. [00:53:17] (53 seconds)  #SpiritualNotJustPhysical

I look them right in the eye and I poke out my chest and I get ready to fight. That's how I deal with someone confronting me wanting to attack and the problem is if I'm not careful, I won't be squared up against the right enemy. I'll be squared up against the person that said something rough to me or the substance that's waging war against my body. And when we do that, we give freedom to the enemy to act in a way that we don't see because we're too busy looking at the surface. [00:48:04] (35 seconds)  #FightTheRightEnemy

You know who I am without Christ? I tell people this all the time. I told the guy in the hot tub this. Without Christ, I'm a high school dropout, criminal drug addict. I'm a murderer. I'm a thief. I am a disgrace to humanity, and humanity is pretty bad. And without Christ, there is nothing good in me. I once thought there was and I set out to prove that there was and I found out there wasn't. And I actually proved the opposite of it. And then Christ came in and showed me how to have something good and glorious in me. And what I learned was that what he means when Paul says in Ephesians that Christ in us is the hope of glory, is that the fact that Christ's Holy resides within you is the only hope you have of anything and everything glorious being made manifest in your life. Amen. [01:06:03] (59 seconds)  #ChristTransformsLives