Standing Firm in Spiritual Warfare and God's Restoration

We don't live in a neutral world; we live in a heavily contested space. In fact, we are in a war. So what's the first thought that comes to mind when you think of the devil? Maybe you think of a cartoon character in red tights and horns, or maybe you think of one of those disgusting creatures from The Lord of the Rings, one of those Orcs. If there is a real devil, then we should understand who he is and how he works in our lives. [00:40:55]

But the reality is somewhere in between, right? The scriptures give us this middle path that we live in a supernatural world that we cannot always see the reality with our eyes, but it does exist. There are demons and a Satan that's at work in this world, even if I can't see it, even if I can't put it on a scale and measure it. [00:43:31]

My first point is you have an enemy. We have an enemy, and as I've been working on this message, I'm telling you that it's amazing how the heaviness that comes upon you when you start talking about spiritual warfare, you start talking about the devil, our enemy. It's amazing the heaviness that comes upon you that is unlike even other messages that I share. [00:43:53]

One reason why I think we are ill equipped and we are ineffective and we are struggling to make an impact in our world is because we don't recognize that we have an enemy that is active in our world. Every person alive today lives in a world that's filled with evil, with the Demonic, and to understand that is important to understand and be able to explain how this sort of thing works. [00:45:17]

The Christian worldview has an understanding and an explanation, whether you like it or not, that seems to make sense. We have a loving God that created this world, and he created this world and everything in it was good. It was good, it was good, it was good. And because he created us with a certain amount of Freedom that we can respond to his love, love requires this element of freedom. [00:46:39]

This Freedom was used to reject God, and in the Supernatural world we see a fall from the presence of God with the Demonic, with Satan, and we see this evil that begins to come and take place working in this world that God created. It wasn't long, and we have the first man and woman that reject God, that rebel against God as well. [00:47:42]

When we see this unmitigated evil that takes place, like a school shooter that loads a gun and heads to an elementary school, begins killing little children, we struggle to find a understandable explanation why. Everybody asks why. Well, in the Christian worldview, we have an answer to the why. It is the evil that exists here in this world. [00:48:53]

But the world struggles to have an explanation. I don't know if you've ever been to the doctor because you've got an illness, you got a sickness, you got problems, and you can't figure it out what it is. So you've Googled and tried to find your answers, and you can't find the answer, so you break down, go to the doctor, and they run test after test after test, and they can't seem to find the answer. [00:50:01]

We live in a culture that doesn't understand the evil that we have that's going on, and as a result, they don't know what the solution is. And so they try to find political Solutions, and, well, if we spend more money on education, then that'll solve the problem. And everything that they throw falls short, and it doesn't have an answer. [00:49:21]

How do we hold this view that our universe was created by loving God and we rebelled against God, and we see as a result this evil that has come into this world? How do we understand why would a loving God allow this sort of thing to happen? It goes back to the freedom from which we were created, that to have this ability to love him and respond to his love. [00:49:56]

Jesus has come to reclaim this world that was lost to sin and to the enemy. Jesus describes this conflict this way in John 10:10: The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, but Jesus says, I have come that you may have life and have it to the full, you may have it abundantly, you may have it flourishing. [00:50:38]

The enemy is not going to sit back and let you have the marriage that you want to have. The enemy is not going to sit back and allow your children or your grandchildren to drift into godliness. The enemy is not going to allow your finances to be uncontested. You see, your giving and your money matters to God, not because he needs it, but because it's a spiritual matter. [00:56:29]

We need to see the reality that we have an enemy. We need to recognize that we are at War, and if we pretend to be civilians in the middle of a war zone, we're going to become a casualty. So my third point is that we have to fight. The scriptures tell us that we need to resist because Satan wants to disarm you. He wants you to become passive. [00:57:38]

We have an enemy who has strategies in which to attack us and to divert our attention and to cause us to not be in the fight. He wants to lead us down this gradual drift of complacency, and yet God has created us with gifts and talents and abilities. He has a calling for us. He has a special plan, purpose for us, but the enemy stays busy keeping us busy and distracted. [00:58:32]

James 4:7 says submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. The resistance is how we fight. Submission is how we begin to prepare ourselves to fight, to humble ourselves before the Living God in order that we might be connected with him, in order that we might be empowered by him, in order that we might receive the grace of God so that we can resist. [00:59:40]

Sometimes people, they come to church and they get discouraged because they quickly realize that this church has problems. There's some issues here. These people don't have their act together. I thought this was a church. What's the matter with this place? But sometimes we forget that the church is a place where people can find healing and help, that the church is supposed to be a spiritual hospital. [01:00:06]

We need to stop wrestling with flesh and blood and start wrestling in the spiritual realm with the principalities and the powers in our culture. Where we don't have a Satan in our theology, where we dismiss the supernatural, what happens is in our secular world where there is no God, where there is no Satan, we make people into our Satan. [01:03:28]

As Christians, we've got to fight the right way. So how do we fight the evil one? Remember, you have an enemy, you're at War, and you have to fight. So how do we fight? How do we resist? First of all, we resist by living in the opposite Spirit. The church has always recognized how the evil one has used sexuality and money and power and created Idols in our hearts. [01:04:29]

If we want to live in the opposite Spirit, we've got to be prepared to resist these idols and these Temptations from the evil one. And so in church, we encourage people to become generous instead of greedy, to resist the idol that money can become in our life. We encourage people to practice servanthood. Everybody ought to be serving in some capacity so that we can resist the idol of power. [01:04:57]

When a young person remains sexually pure, that's a sign and a Wonder in our world that we live in. I think it's a sign and wonder to see generosity practiced in our world today because it requires spiritual warfare to go against the spirit of this age. Jesus is in a war for planet Earth. First John says he's here to drive out the works of the evil one. [01:06:16]

Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed—you might say landed in Disguise—and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. We are sabotaging against the enemy, against the works of the devil, against the flesh. N.T. Wright says the call of the Gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love. [01:07:06]

Remember, we've been given a new identity in Christ. We've been adopted into a new family. We've been filled with the new spirit, been given a new heart. We have a new life through Christ. The old Andy is gone. You can talk about him all you want, but he's gone. So my question is, as we wrap this message up on Satan, on the devil: are you being restored or are you being devoured? [01:11:08]

Our struggle is real. We have an enemy. We are at War. We have to fight, but we don't fight alone. We certainly have our Brothers and Sisters in Christ that join us together. You know how encouraging it is when we gather together for prayer and fasting on the third Monday of the month, and I'm not the only one here. [01:13:12]

But greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. Sometimes that means we're crucified and we die and we're martyred for our faith. Sometimes that means we die bankrupt. Sometimes that means every friend abandons us. But we have a hope that goes beyond this world, that we can be Overcomers in this world, Lord, through Christ. He's the one who strengthens us. [01:14:51]