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Spiritual Warfare

Cape Cod pastor Ed de la Cour gave this message at the Peniel ministers conference August 2000.

The Place of Prayer in Times of Increasing Spiritual Warfare

How do you know when you’re at war?

America realized she was at war on the morning of December 7, 1941.  In reality, war was already underway for several years, but our nation slumbered comfortably until that morning.  Now, knowing that the war was 'on', America went to work getting ready.  Before D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies spent many, many months preparing for the invasion of Europe.  Germany was bombed nightly, and then daily. Soldiers and war material were transported to Britain.  Training and invasion preparations occupied the time and the minds of the Allied war effort until the big day arrived.

Before the Allies entered into warfare, they knew they needed to be ready.  England had already taken a brutal beating at the hands of the Luftwaffe.  The Allies could not afford failing to secure a beachhead at Normandy.

When Saddam Hussein so angered the U.S. and frightened the Arab world with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the Coalition of Nations bided its time for months before taking direct military action. Again, preparation was crucial.  Troops and supplies had to be delivered to Saudi Arabia.  And, long before ground troops were committed, it was the air war that secured Coalition dominance in the conflict.

In spiritual warfare, prayer can be likened to the preparations for war and the air war over Iraq.  There is no success in spiritual conflict if there is no prayer.  Simply put, the Christian life is warfare.  Our enemy is real and vicious, and he is not a gentleman.  To think that we are victors because of Christ, and that the enemy of our souls cannot touch us, is both spiritually naïve and ultimately foolish. 

On the other hand, Christ has triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2: 13 – 15), and we are positioned with Jesus in heavenly places which gives us access to the heart and power of the Father. We are not without strength and supernatural power.  Galatians 2:20 teaches us that we are not striving and working and doing combat alone.  The Christian who ventures out alone, or with brave speech, to slay the dragon, is the one who becomes a battlefield casualty almost immediately.  Instead, in prayer we allow Christ to live His life through us, and in so doing find that the victory of Jesus is my victory also.

As we consider the place of prayer in times of increasing spiritual warfare, I decided not to make this teaching about the spiritual forces of wickedness, or about demons, or about the various techniques of spiritual combat.  Instead, we are going to take our time in three particular areas that will be of assistance to us in our times of prayer.  We will pay attention to the vocabulary of prayer, the context of prayer, and the weapons of our warfare.

We learn to pray when the roof falls in, when we come under enemy attack, when we find 'the foundations are being destroyed.'  We learn about prayer when our lives or our future hang in the balance and we place our lives and our future in the hands of God.  Like Mel Gibson, portraying a gentleman farmer who has become a pacifist in 'The Patriot', we often decide to enter the war when someone we love is hurt or destroyed by the power of enemy attack.  The problem for most of us is that our faith is doctrinal, but not experiential.  it takes spiritual conflict to make soldiers out of company clerks and farmers.

Having said that, we need to know that we are not praying to some god who is just a bit bigger than we are, or who has some token amount of power.  Instead, our God, the God of the Bible, is the Creator and Sustainer, Ruler and Redeemer.  Our God is Conqueror of each and every situation.

When I have struggled with the plots of wicked men, it has so blessed me receive God’s Word and to find my doctrine of God, my appreciation of Who God is, growing.

Psalm 18: 1 – 3.  I believe that the Christian needs to know that our God is not only transcendent and omniscient, but is also here and now.  I am glad my God is imminent as well as infinite.  In these few verses, we see how the Psalmist uses his vocabulary of prayer to detail and describe how God ministers in a warfare situation.

First of all, in the Psalm’s introduction, we read that this is a song David composed to celebrate the Lord’s work in delivering him 'from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.' So this is war!

My desire here is to encourage you to include words like these in warfare prayer.  This is how our God is characterized in His Word.  These descriptions are true and valid and show God to be active in the life of His child.

David calls God his 'strength', 'the horn of my salvation'.  I need to know that God is strong and that His strength is used for my deliverance.

He says God is his 'Rock'.   When I was a small boy, I remember the Prudential Insurance man coming to our home regularly to pick up our insurance premiums.  Prudential’s logo has always been the Rock of Gibraltar, that massive hunk of stone that guards the entrance to the Mediterranean from the Atlantic.  If there ever was a symbol

of strength and permanence, it’s Gibraltar.  In Deuteronomy 32:4, Moses sings, 'He is the Rock', referring to God’s provision of life-giving water in the wilderness.  Paul identifies that Rock in 1 Corinthians 10:4 as Christ, a supernatural place of protection, provision, and the source of life and hope.  Listen, when you pray, you can call God and know God is your ROCK!

God is also your 'Fortress', and your 'stronghold'.  God is a place of protection where the believer is safe from harm.  Do you remember 'The Guns of Navarone'?  Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn had to attack and destroy a Nazi gun emplacement that the Nazis considered impregnable and impervious to attack.  Their small force was able to infiltrate and blow up this mighty fortress, this mountain stronghold.  Well, unlike Navarone, our God  is 'a mighty Fortress, a bulwark never failing!'

My God is my 'refuge' as well as my Fortress.  He’s a shelter from the storm.  He’s a hiding place when the bully is after me.  When He holds me safe in His arms, I am unafraid in His presence.  In Franconia Notch, New Hampshire,  you may have seen Boise Rock.  In the early 1800’s a man named Boise found himself far from home and in a raging blizzard.  He took shelter under this huge boulder, killed his horse, hid within its body

cavity and waited for the storm to end.  He found shelter and refuge, even as we find protection in God when there is no where to run and no place to hide.

Finally, God is my 'shield'.  In Ephesians 6:16, we are to 'take up the shield of faith.'  We find that Jesus is our shield!  Jesus took the fiery darts, the flaming arrows that the enemy of our souls meant for you and me.  He protects me.

Words such as these declare the positional reality we enjoy in our relationship with God in Jesus Christ, who does not change.  This was reality for David and it is reality for you and me.  God is always our strength.  He never grows weak or becomes bored with us.   He has given us this ground on which everyone who enjoys a living relationship with God may stand.  Words like these offer us a vocabulary for prayer.  When I am assailed, when my weakness is breached, I need to know that I can call on God who is my Rock, my Refuge, my Fortress, my Shield, and my Deliverer.  We need to know that our God is our Rock, our Fortress, our Deliverer, our Shield, and our Refuge.  Why?  Because we are at war!

Now we want to give thought to the Context of Prayer and how the strategies of spiritual war are God-given.  The context is this: All around you seemed peaceful and calm.   Suddenly, the roof falls in, the ruling body of your church decides to call for a vote of no confidence, and you find that every friend you had has become an enemy.  When the chips were down, somebody ate them!

I want to share with you something of a conversation I had recently with a pastor named Harold.  Harold has served his small church for fifteen years as a bi-vocational pastor.  He is 70 years old.  He says his church is fraught with despair and discouragement.  There is no peace and there is no calm.  The roof is always falling in!  As soon as Harold wins someone to Christ, he says the devil takes someone else away into sin.  As a result of the warfare waged against him, the church is physically and spiritually debilitated. 

Harold says he doesn’t want to become bitter from the experiences of his life in ministry.  He said to me, 'I want to stay sweet', and not become bitter.  Yet his voice overflows with the pain of his ministry.

While I am impressed with Harold’s heart, with his desire to win souls to Christ, and his own faithfulness to his calling, what the enemy has done in this situation angers me.  The devil has destroyed this church, sucked the very life out of it.  Even though he wishes to stay 'sweet', the truth is he is no longer sweet.  He is overwhelmed and undone by the unfolding of the enemy’s plot against him.

I don’t know what can be done to help Harold and the thousands of churches that are carbon copies of this church, but I do know that Jesus knows this church and that He has the power to save, and to deliver.  The Lord’s strategy may be different from church to church, but there will be no alternative to prayer. 

Harold is at war, and right now he is a casualty.  The circumstances change from church to church and from person to person.  Sometimes the attack comes from within, from trusted 'friends'.  And sometimes, the attack comes as an avalanche from every quarter.

2 Chronicles 20 contains an example of warfare prayer in the midst of a surprise, Pearl Harbor attack.  Jehoshaphat woke up one fine day to the news that a vast army was only 40 miles away, having just taken the town of En Gedi, halfway up the western shore of the Dead Sea.  All at once, he found himself at the mercy of several invading nations. There had been no warning, and now there was no time to plan, to strategize, or even to think. I am amazed at this, but Jehoshaphat did not run away or try to sue for whatever peace he could get.  Instead, he called the nation to fast and pray. 

Jehoshaphat stood before the people and offered the prayer that is quoted in verses 6 through 12.  Remembering what we saw in Psalm 18, Jehoshaphat possessed a prayer vocabulary that understood the majesty of God.  He acknowledged God, and God’s history with Israel.  Now, it’s not God who needs to be reminded of history!  It’s us!  We’re the ones who need to cry out to God: 'Father, there’s no one like You!  We have no where else to go for help, but to You.  You are our hope and our shield!'  Now, there’s this incredible threat to God’s people, and their existence hangs by the merest of threads. 

Jehoshaphat even asks God to judge these who come to destroy the people of God.  War is not a diplomatic waltz.  Asking God to judge God’s enemies is really only asking God to do what God says is His job anyway.  Romans 12: 19, 'Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay", says the Lord.'  The devil’s job description is to steal, kill and destroy… to be filled with fury… to deceive and to lead into condemnation.  But it is God’s work to deliver!  1 John 3:8, 'The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.'  We can call on God for deliverance! 

In spiritual war, we recognize that we have no options.  Jehoshaphat’s prayer ends in a simple statement of dependence on God.  We have no alternatives.  We have no hope apart from You, God.  We are looking to You… hoping in You… trusting in You.  And then, as the prayer ends, a great hush fell over the assembly as the people of God stood before the Lord.

It is when the Spirit of God comes upon Jahaziel that God gives the strategy for their deliverance.  The strategy God gave him resulted from fasting and prayer and involved praise and worship used as a means of declaring trust in God, even on the battlefield.   I have no doubt that Jahaziel’s family tree is given so that all would know who to blame if that plan were not from God!  God’s strategies often seem strange or weird, and this one is amazing!  The worshipers were to go first, at the head of the army, like artillery batteries!  Then, Jahaziel said, 'You will not have to fight this battle.  Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you.'   Here’s the deal: whatever it is that threatens you… or is about to overwhelm you—don’t fear it and do not be discouraged by it.  This is God’s battle, not mine.  This is God’s war, not yours. That’s hard to receive, isn’t it?  Certainly I should be doing something!  Yes, and here it is: Watch God work!  Focus your heart and mind on the Lord.  Take up your positions, be alert and self-controlled; stand your ground and 'see the deliverance the LORD will give you.'  Jehoshaphat took the prophet’s words to heart, and encouraged his people in 2 Chronicles 20: 20, 'Have faith in the Lord your God and you will be upheld; have faith in His prophets and you will be successful.'

A few years ago, we found ourselves in a similar position in our church.  War was at every hand, and we had no alternatives, just like Jehoshaphat.  Through some prophetic words, God shared with us that the foundation of our church was rotten and would be removed.  That was at least two years before anything happened to fulfill that word.  We had to trust God for deliverance, that God would honor the word we’d received, but that He would also honor His Word.  All that sparked in us a deeper desire to enter His presence, perhaps similar to what we see in verses 18 and 19.

The next day, Jehoshaphat marched down to the Pass of Ziz, about seven miles from En Gedi.  Instead of chariots going before the army, worshippers led the way.  Worship and praise were the artillery and the air cover for this battle.  As the people of God stood their ground and worshipped—which is exactly and diametrically opposite to what the spirit of this world would dictate—God fought for them.

We ourselves had no strategies.  I can well remember being out-gunned, out-maneuvered, and out-foxed at every turn.  All we knew to do was to cry out to God, to pray, to seek Him—and watch while God did what only God could do.  Today, we can claim no credit and no glory for ourselves.  It was not my intelligence, my good looks, or my sterling spirituality that won the day.  God fought for us; the battle was His, and the victory is His!

In this context, worship is not in the manner of your normal Sunday service, and it becomes an aggressive act in the Spirit.  When we praise God, we are seeing God drive back the forces of darkness.  When we praise God—(and is not praise a kind of prayer?)—God gives strength to our hearts… God gives His peace to our minds… and the presence of God drives out the fear of men.  How else could this army of singers march out to meet such a formidable foe unless they were strengthened by the presence of God?  Praise stirs up new faith and kindles fresh hope in God.

'We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on You.'

Wait on God for the answer.  I imagine that the people of God stood out in the hot sun for a while as the Spirit of God began to well up in Jahaziel.  Listen for Him to speak, and when God does speak, resolve to obey Him.  God will never lead you to disobey His Word.  He will never lead you into sin.

Remember, whatever you are facing, and no matter what strategy God may give you, nevertheless, this is God’s truth for you and me: verse 15: 'The battle is not yours, but God’s.' and verse 17: Stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you.”

I’d like to share with you how God led us as a church, the particular strategy He gave us in response to prayer.

Probably most churches have covenants, and probably most of those are of the store-bought variety that are pasted into the cover of the hymnal.  That was certainly the experience of our church.  We have discovered that God is a covenant making and keeping God.  And we have discovered that God takes covenants seriously!

In prayer, we began to believe that our church was guilty of breaking covenant with God.  Our church needed to come under new management, not ruled by the pastor, some controlling board, or by the people.  Our church needed to realize that only Jesus Christ could be Lord of the church.

We read our church history once more, and for reasons I cannot fully explain apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, we saw things we’d previously ignored, or failed to see as important before.  For example:

+ A church split a century ago over the relocation of the building one-half mile away, which spawned a rebel congregation called 'The Peoples Church'.

+ A lawsuit over which side of the split would get the organ. 

+ The men of the church built the Christian Education wing in 1961.  The writer said the building would be 'a fitting memorial to themselves', which certainly speaks of a man-centered spirit.

+ The pastor who served the church in 1974-1976 committed adultery, abandoned his wife and children, and was forced to resign, which left bitterness and unforgiveness in his wake.

+ Relational explosions, rebellion, gossip, slander, divisiveness, issues of command and control, that permeated the first eight years of my pastorate, and came to a head in 1994 and early 1995 when we lost one-third of the church.

+ A death spiral of dwindling attendance and resources since 1995.

The leaders of the church began to seek God for wisdom as to what he would have us do, and we prayed for some means whereby our church could begin again.  The Lord gave me a statement of Covenant of Re-Dedication that the church leaders ratified and the church body was asked to sign on the last Sunday of December 1998.  A copy of the Covenant of Re-Dedication is attached.

By far, the greatest weapon at my disposal was prayer alone in the sanctuary on Saturday nights while I was preparing for Sunday mornings, crying out to God, asking Him to judge the motivations of my heart, pleading with God to demonstrate His faithfulness.  And God was faithful to answer, not in my way, nor on my timetable.  The period between 1986 and 1995 was our introduction to the realities of spiritual warfare.

We have seen the current interest in spiritual warfare grow massively in the last thirty years.  And over that period those interested have moved the pendulum from believing that the devil is a figment of a first century worldview, to believing that demons were under every couch!  There is an aspect of popular Christianity, found especially in modern Charismatic thought I believe to be very dangerous.  God has not given us authority to rebuke the devil.  As a weapon of warfare, this approach has troubled me for years.  However, hearing no corrective teaching on the subject led me to think I must be off base, until I heard a teaching on the subject by John Paul Jackson.  I will recommend his book to you: Needless Casualties of War, (Streams Publishers, Fort Worth, TX, 1999).

In military warfare, those who come home at the end will tell you there is great virtue in keeping your head down and not exposing yourself to enemy fire.  Soldiers who single-handedly charge a machine gun emplacement are not heroes; they’re stupid.  Have you charged in blindly, exposing yourself to enemy attack? 

In spiritual warfare, many believers are quick to pray to Satan, ordering him to do, and not to do things, rebuking him, reviling him.  They begin to target territorial spirits over cities and nations, and end up exposing themselves to severe counter-attack, and even death.  My concerns began to surface when I read Jude 6 – 9.  It is not our assignment to bring 'a slanderous accusation against' the devil.  If the archangel Michael would not revile the devil, it seems a wee bit out of line for me to do so!  He asked God to rebuke the devil.  Rebuking the devil is God’s job, not ours.  It is God’s province to judge, to exact vengeance, and it is His place alone.  Even when Jesus dealt with the devil, he was not rude or disrespectful.  He allowed the Word of God to do its work.  He did command specific spiritual entities when these spirits invaded His jurisdiction.  But Jesus never 'tore down' princes over Jerusalem or Rome!  To get into a shouting match with the devil is risky business.  If you want to challenge Satan to a duel, you will lose.  We do not defeat the devil by acting the way he acts, with anger and accusation.  Warfare that God honors has more to do with the Fruit of the Spirit, with humility and repentance, with worship and prayer, than with shouting and claiming authority over the devil.

It is deceptively easy for us to focus on the enemy, to make his desires and strategies the emphasis of our prayer life.  Yes, I need to be 'aware of his schemes', but I dare not put my eyes on him.  I need to put my faith and my hope in God, to 'seek first His kingdom and His righteousness'.'  I need to take seriously James 1:5 and ask for God’s wisdom.  There’s another weapon!  God promises if we’ll seek the wisdom of God, He’ll give it.  Godly wisdom, James says, 'is … pure… peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.' (James 3: 17)

What we are doing now is looking at some of the weapons of our warfare.  Since we are not struggling with flesh and blood, our need for humility is great.  Our enemy will try to incite us and to inflame our passions, but people are not really our enemy.  Our enemy takes captive the hearts, minds, and thought processes of people.  Those who seem to be the 'bad guys' are really just pawns on the board, prisoners of war themselves, who are in desperate need of the delivering power of Jesus.

Christians have never done well with submission, but submission is another weapon in our quiver.  Any student of church history can speak of the Crusades, the Inquisition, Protestants burning each other at the stake.  But God says we are to submit because we are in God’s Army.  He is the Commander-in-Chief, the Captain of the Host.  It is vital that we practice agreeing with His purposes: 'Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.'  I would love to believe that my purposes are God’s purposes, and that he agrees with me.  But that’s just not the case.  James 4:7 says, 'Submit yourselves, then, to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.' Before the devil runs and hides, we first consciously yield to God’s will.  For the Christian, it is not 'my way or the highway'.  It’s not 'MY WAY', but Yahweh!

Repentance is a major weapon God has given us.  Psalm 51 is a great place for the Christian to begin.  David was repenting of adultery, murder, covenant-breaking, and lying.  We can see ourselves in need easily.  Before we engage the enemy, we need to make sure there are no holes in our armor, no skeletons in our closets, no vulnerabilities that need to be protected.  If we are entering spiritual conflict, we need to pray and seek God for the gift of repentance and a heart for submission to the will and purposes of God.

Further, repentance is needed when we ourselves are in the wrong.  I know that we are spiritual leaders, but often we are the problem.  Too often our own pride gets in the way.  We become taken with our 'power', with our authority as pastor, with our authority as the wife of the pastor, or with the wrongs of those who are seeking our dismissal.  We come under attack when we allow the enemy to use us for his purposes.  Have you ever been so angry with someone that you were out to 'get' them?  When we gossip, when we manipulate or scheme to achieve our own ends, we need to know that we’ve been recruited to serve the devil’s purposes.  We don’t realize it, of course. But here is where we need to allow the Spirit of God to speak into our lives and into our situations.  Church leaders, we need to repent for the power we have sought to control, and for the 'guilt trips' we have brokered.

2 Corinthians 10: 3 – 5 Paul speaks of strongholds that have taken up residence in the minds of people—our minds as well as the minds of others.  These fortresses of thought, these strongholds of false thinking are there because we have given them permission to be established there.  Once present, they set up 'neural pathways' that blind us to the activity of God.  We make excuses as to why God no longer works in some area of life.  We will surrender the lives of family members because we have accepted the lie that their current situation is impossible.  We give up on our communities because, 'That’s just the way they are'.

Who told us God no longer works?  Who informed us that some situation is impossible?  Who says that spiritual death in our communities is ordained by God and cannot be changed?  Did God say these things?  NO!  The father of lies spoke; we listened and believed him!  Our enemy is not some nasty person, but the one who sets up and maintains these strongholds, these bastions of unbelief.

I believe two of the most potent weapons at our disposal are humility and repentance in prayer.  When we come before God with humility and repentance, strongholds are broken.  Now, God can tell the difference when we are going through the motions.  He knows our hearts and knows when repentance is real.  He knows when we are trying to manipulate the God of Heaven.  Our arms are too short to pull the wool over God’s eyes!

Instead, in prayer, determine to be honest to God.  I have had to confess many times that I am unable to discern my true motives.  I have asked God to judge my heart, to 'see if there is any offensive way in me.' (Psalm 139: 24)  If I am under attack, it is very hard to see clearly in the fog of war.

I need to open my heart and mind to the Word of God so that I am receiving from God.  We who read Scripture all the time can become inoculated to the things of God.  So I ask God to renew my receptors.  I choose to believe His Word and repent of my 'stinkin’ thinkin’'.  'God, make the changes You need to make in my life, so that I can war effectively.'

As we humble ourselves before God, repent and turn from our own exceedingly wicked ways, and seek God’s face, He does work.  He will change us, mature us, grow us, and

'Train my hands for war, my fingers for battle.' (Psalm 144: 1)  I believe it was Eugene Peterson who wrote, 'Discipleship is a long obedience in the same direction.' 

We are in a time when spiritual warfare certainly seems to be increasing at every hand.  We all have questions about what God will do.  I do not know when your marriage will be healed… when your son or daughter will come home… when God will work to heal your church… when the devil will be defeated in your circumstances.  But I do know that the Lord our God has called us to stand firm, to see the deliverance He will bring, to use the weapons He has given us, and to trust Him for the outcome. 

COVENANT OF RE-DEDICATION FOR THE

 FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF POCASSET

In the holy presence of God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

We, the body of Christ gathered as the First Baptist Church of Pocasset, make this covenant in agreement together with our Leaders and before our God:  

We confess that our history has been marked by man-centered decisions, evasion of God-given responsibilities, and failure to seek, follow, and live only for God and His Kingdom.  We ask for the forgiveness of our God. 

We acknowledge that God’s love has been great toward us, His faithfulness unwavering, His mercy overflowing, and His grace poured out on us in the Lord Jesus Christ.  With Israel we proclaim: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God is one.  Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.' 

We agree that we are the Lord’s servants in this world and Christ’s ambassadors, entrusted with 'the ministry of reconciliation' (2 Corinthians 5: 18-20). 

To that end, we pledge to keep our hearts responsive to God and to maintain an attitude of humility before the Lord and before each other. 

We pledge ourselves to a personal and intimate walk with God in which we will strive to obey His direction given through the present-day ministry of His Spirit and revealed through His Holy Word.

As Christ’s body here in the First Baptist Church of Pocasset, we declare that this church belongs to God and to God alone; that He is its Lord, Builder, and Foundation;

that we shall serve no god but the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, forsaking the wisdom of men and of this world to seek instead the wisdom of God, to obey Him and Him alone. 

In prayerful agreement, we, the body of Christ gathered in the First Baptist Church of Pocasset, offer ourselves this day, December 27, 1998, freely and without reservation into the service of our Lord and Savior. 

/signed/

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