warfare

In this transcription, the speaker talks about the existence and power of evil forces, specifically Satan and his demons. They emphasize that although Satan was defeated by Jesus on the cross, he still exists and tries to deceive and influence people. The speaker encourages listeners to recognize the lies and negative thoughts that come from the enemy and to pray and use the name of Jesus to combat them. They share a personal experience of praying for a difficult coworker and seeing positive changes. The speaker encourages others to do the same and reminds them that the battles they face are not against people but against the enemy. Good morning, it's five till midnight. We find ourselves in this war, in this war against an evil force and sometimes it's helpful to give that force a name so we can recognize it. The force we're fighting against, in this case hell, does not want to be given a name. It does not want to be recognized. We see this in the church all the time and the church sometimes recognizes that it exists but does not recognize what it does, the power that it holds. Or it just claims it's a defeated foe and we don't have anything more to do. Or that it's impotent and does not affect us today, especially us in America. Nothing could be further than the truth. For Satan is a defeated foe and let's give him a name. His name is Satan and he took a third of the angels with him. That's a pretty powerful force. And don't think they're just sitting around other countries or sitting on their hands just waiting to do something and that our church is so powerful and that we're so powerful they never affect us. So these critters, these things, they are a defeated foe. Jesus defeated them 2,000 years ago on the cross. He stomped on Satan's head. He crushed his head. But the snake still slithers. The demons still look for strongholds, they look for places to go. They're not in captivity yet. They still exist. They are very, very real. So it's easier for the church, it's easier for us just to pretend like they're not there, like they don't exist. But yet we call them other names. We call it schizophrenia. We call it just fear. We have lots of names we call them, and indeed some of them do have the names of schizophrenia and fear, but we normalize it, we naturalize it, saying these things should happen. As a Christian, you and I have a responsibility to understand or even discern what is spirit and what is not. What is a mental issue, disorder? What isn't? There's lots of things we can do to keep our souls in a lively, non-depressed state. We can exercise. We can get fresh air. We can determine to think good thoughts. We can look at the world around us differently. But for many of us, that's not a choice. For many of us, we've been damaged, or we've been told a lie, and that's where the enemy starts. He starts with a lie. The lie might say something like, I'll protect you, or you're no good, or you need to be afraid, or maybe God's not here. This lie can be spoken into us in many different ways. It can be spoken in by the media, by the music we listen to. It can be spoken in by TV shows, or directly between our ears. So the spirit world is real, and we are spoken to by the spirit world. We are lied to. As a matter of fact, I would say we are lied to on a daily basis, because many things that we look at, situations we come into, people we see, we wrestle against them. We might wrestle against the attitude of work, a co-worker, a neighbor, someone who does not like us, disagrees with us, has a really rotten attitude. These forces are everywhere, but they can be changed, because the Bible says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against every power, principality, and forces in high places. These things have to bow to the name of Jesus. This is where our enemy lies. If we look at that rude co-worker, and we put the blame on him or her, the obnoxious person, you know who I am talking about, or maybe for you as a customer, we will put the blame at their feet, without giving Satan ever a thought. What if we started out there, what if we started out blaming Satan first? You say, well that sounds ridiculous, Satan is not the one talking, but let's just imagine for a minute, maybe it is Satan talking, maybe it is those thoughts, those tapes that play in their ears, that are talking, that they've learned so many times, they've played over and over and over again in their head. Maybe those things come into count. The tapes that say, I don't want to be here, or this is going to be an awful day, or the tapes that just make them angry, you've had them play in your ears before. When you got upset or angry over something you never meant to, or was not of that much significance, you've experienced it, or you got upset at that co-worker. See these demons pass themselves on from one person to the next, that person who is demonized comes into the room and starts arguing with us, and that thing will spread, it's like a wildfire, then it ruins our day, and we have to go on and live with it, or we pass on to someone else, maybe we go home, pass it on to our spouse and our kids, and we snap at them, why? Because the lie, it might morph, but it continues on. So it's in the recognizing, it's in the recognizing that these things are not of God, they're not natural, they're supernatural, and we can, with a word, command them to stop. I found myself coming into conflict with a co-worker a while back, and my natural eyes looked at that person and thought, they're just a jerk. And they were being a jerk, they still do from time to time, but I have to take and face value what the Bible says, that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but we do wrestle against principalities and powers, and things seated in heavenly places. So I determined to pray for that person, I prayed for him going to work, I prayed for him in my morning prayer. And eventually I start seeing some changes. It doesn't mean I didn't have to confront him, and I did confront him. He was short and to the point. But now I'm starting to see things move, I'm starting to see things move in another direction. As I pray, as I lift him up on the way to work, I say, Lord, please bless him, please bless him financially, spiritually. But Father, I ask you to come against contention in the workplace, I ask you to come against this animosity that's in our workplaces, just build it up over the year. Where people aren't talking to other people. And God is doing it, he's bringing those walls down. He's bringing the walls down. I'm just suggesting this, I'm asking you to do this. When you come up against the situations, those people that you disagree with, that you are counter to, you're not getting along with, however you want to call it, just consider there might be something a little deeper, there might be a voice in their head. And you can bind that voice, just say in the name of Jesus, voice I bind you, you're not going to talk to this person again. In the name of Jesus, I put a blinder over that person's eye so they cannot see the lies. You can lose them from bondage. If Satan is saying something to them, or has them in bondage, you can simply say, in the name of Jesus, I lose you from that bondage. You can free your neighbor by prayer, even if you're not sitting in the same room or talking directly to them. Let me encourage you to do this, and I think you'll find that a lot of the battles you face are not the people, but they're the presence of the enemy. And we are to do war with the enemy, not to entertain them. We're not to stare at them, we're not to speculate on them, we're to get rid of the enemy, we're to silence him and get rid of him. That's what we're here for. We can do that through the word of God, by speaking it, by praying it, by commanding it. It's five till midnight.