Standing Firm in Spiritual Warfare: Our Victory in Christ

**Synonym and Rise Up as His Kingdom**

All right, I was... I'm excited for this Sunday. Be there or be square!

So, next announcement please. We also have a Women's Conference this Saturday, the 8th and 9th, here at Revenue. Ladies, if you have not signed up for that, you can register at the church center. We have a guest speaker, a couple from all the way from Hawaii, who will be speaking into our lives that weekend. So, don’t miss out on that!

Next, please. All right, making sure that was it. We also have Fall Retreat coming up the weekend of October 6th through 8th. Poetry in Garbage, Germany, is going to be a phenomenal weekend. We've got an awesome lineup for that weekend. You can find registration on the Church Center app as well. When you go to the "More" section, find Fall Retreat, and you can put your information there.

I encourage you, singles, to take advantage of Airbnbs and other hotels to lower the cost a little bit. The chance is a lot, but there's also lodging available on-site, which is an MWR facility, and you can get discounted rates based on your rank. So, take advantage of that as well.

You have been notified to jump on it and take advantage, because if it's anything like Spring Retreat, it will be one of the best weekends!

All right, you'll turn in your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter 6. As you're turning there, I absolutely forgive me, I have a lower voice this morning. Angie's going to give a testimony at the end of the service about yesterday, but I'm a little croaky this morning, so just work with me.

All right, Ephesians chapter 6, starting with verse 10. He says, "Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength."

Lord, I pray with this word. God, I pray for Your anointing this morning. God, I ask that You want to breathe into this place this morning. God, let Your word be encouragement. We'll even let Your word be a challenge and a conviction to us, O God, to bring us closer to You. God, I ask, O Lord, that Your power would go forward, that Your word would fall in power and might, Lord, and that we would see a change this morning based upon Your word, Your word alone. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. So, we have finally got to this point. We have finally got to this last section, starting off with "finally." So, what have we covered to lead up to "finally"?

God is a loving Father, so rich and generous in blessing, whose will was accomplished through His Son, Jesus Christ. Having chosen us in order to see us holy and blameless in love before Him, even prior to the foundations of the world, He predetermined that we would be adopted, wrapped in according to the good pleasure of His will to be His sons and daughters.

Romans 8:16-17 says, "The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God's children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him."

Glorified in Christ Jesus, as God exercised His power in Christ Jesus, having raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at the Father's right hand in the heavens, with all men and earth subject to Christ's authority.

And by God's grace, we who believe and claim His lordship in our lives have been saved, and with His life changing us, we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Amen. We are seated with Him as His workmanship, a new creation in Christ Jesus for good works, which were prepared by God ahead of time for us to do.

So, having been seated with Him, we also have unity together in Christ. No longer identified or classified by physical appearance or circumstance, we who believe have been reclassified as saints, recognized as friends of God with a covenant and a promise. Amen.

Amen. He gave us His peace, the peace of God, to live out a life worthy of His calling, to do the good works He called us to do, to live and serve in ministry, to reject darkness and evil, to live in the light and love, to be imitators of God and follow the example of Jesus Christ, to be wise and humble in submission to one another in the fear of Christ, content to contend with our own flesh, remembering where we used to be one way, but now we're a completely new way in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Amen. So, leading up to this point, Paul has encouraged us. He's talked about our relationship with Christ. He talks about what God has done for us and how He's paved the way for us to have a relationship with Him, being a loving and generous Father.

But he's also said, "Hey, we need to model Christ." Christ is the master; He is the template that we need to follow. So, follow Him. Paul said, "Follow me as I also follow Christ."

To follow Christ as the example, He's the one that's the cornerstone. Don't imagine... we don't have any spiritual engineers in here, we understand that, of course. So, He is a template that keeps the straight edge for every single one of us. We follow Christ, and because we follow Christ, that changes how we identify ourselves.

That changes how we look at the world around us. That changes how we live out our lives as we model what Christ has done before us.

But Paul here in chapter six, he's got to step it up a notch, and he's saying, "Hey, there's more. There's more here to be concerned about. There is a struggle you will have to endure and a resistance you must put in place to an enemy who's strategic and pointed right at you and me."

He says in Ephesians 6:10-13, "Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil."

See, there is an active plan of attack on your faith and on your life right now, a strategy designed to derail and destroy your faith in Christ, to get you focused on circumstance and inability rather than a focus on Jesus.

I think Paul goes on to say, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens."

These rulers, these authorities, these cosmic forces of darkness, evil spiritual forces, and the original Greek text refers to a spiritual realm of demonic forces that are active on this earth and are completely opposed to Christ Jesus, opposed to His word, opposed to His kingdom, which includes us, the saints of God.

Did Paul reference earlier in Ephesians 2:2 that we lived a life in which you and I previously walked according to the way of the world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in disobedience? That same spirit is the one that is dead set on derailing your faith right now, and he is trying to fill you with distractions to get you to focus on your circumstances that may not be lining up with how you want your circumstances to wind up.

But this idea really gets you focused on those things, and you won't pay attention to what Christ is going to tell you.

More importantly, you have victory this morning. 1 John 5:19 says, "We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one."

If you ever felt someone was out to get you, let me break that a little bit this morning: there is someone that's out to get you. It is the enemy of your soul. But fear not, for Jesus Christ has already overcome the world. Amen!

He already has the victory, and He has extended that victory to you and me as the saints of God. Amen.

Amen. So, Ephesians 6 goes on to continue, "For this reason, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to resist in the evil days, and having prepared everything, take your stand."

Man, I love this scripture because this is telling us to get in a posture that says, "Bring it on!" I can stand because God has already put in place His authority to stand against you.

And the thing is about this wonderful fight in our Christian spiritual warfare is that...