Christians are at war, and it’s escalating. I’m not talking concerning the war in Ukraine, or Palestine, and even the war on terror. This war is a spiritual war and all and sundry is involved in it. As Christians we must understand this and learn how you can fight on this war.
Not a cosmopolitan war
This is how the scriptures describe this war: “For though we live on the earth we should not carrying on a cosmopolitan war, for the weapons of our warfare should not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and each proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being able to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete” (2 Corinthians, chapter 10, verses 3-6).
From this we see several things:
- This will not be a cosmopolitan war
- The war is of a spiritual nature
- The battleground for this war is within the mind
- In Christ we have now spiritual weapons to fight and win
Nature of this war
This is a war within the spirits of individuals, and it’s fought in our minds.
The scripture above shows that we should not capturing cities, ground, or strategic assets as occurs in physical war. Instead, we’re capturing thoughts, arguments, and attitudes. We capture prideful, lustful, jealous, envious, devious, and evil thoughts to eradicate them from our pondering.
Our objective is to remove disobedience to God and replace it with obedience. And like all war, we must discover the enemy and learn how you can fight them.
Who is the enemy?
The scripture tells us that on this war our enemies are spiritual: “For we should not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness within the heavenly places” (Ephesians chapter 6, verse 12).
It is the satanic forces of evil which might be arrayed against mankind for the only real purpose of destroying us, each physically and spiritually.
How does the devil attack?
As it is a war within the spiritual realm and the thoughts of men are the battleground, the first way that the devil fights is to influence our thoughts.
He inflames the weaknesses of our flesh and uses them against us, “Let nobody say when he’s tempted, ‘I’m tempted by God’; for God can’t be tempted with evil and he himself tempts nobody; but everyone is tempted when he’s lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it’s full-grown brings forth death” (James chapter 1, verses 13-15).
The devil is the nice tempter and he puts temptations before us on a regular basis. Temptations to sin begin within the mind and flesh, and that’s where the battle for supremacy is fought. The devil uses our weaknesses to tempt us, hoping that we are going to succumb and fall into sin.
Overcoming temptations
The Lord has provided weapons to fight this war and win against these temptations.
God has provided many pieces of armour, and we must learn how you can use it: “Therefore take the entire armour of God, that you could have the opportunity to face up to within the evil day, and having done all, to face. Stand due to this fact, having girded your loins with truth, and having placed on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of religion, with which you possibly can quench all of the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in any respect times within the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all of the saints” (Ephesians chapter 6, verses 13-18).
These are the seven weapons of spiritual warfare, five of that are defensive pieces of armour and the opposite two are weapons of attack. All are vital but space doesn’t permit me to cover them in depth.
The spiritual weapons
The defensive weapons are armour designed to guard us. Briefly, they protect us after we keep our mind girded up by knowing, believing, and at all times keeping the five pieces of armour on the forefront of our minds, especially when under spiritual attack.
The offensive weapons, that are prayer and the word of God, allow us to fight back.
An example of the facility of the word of God as a weapon was seen when Jesus was tempted within the wilderness by Satan, which is described in Matthew chapter 4. Every temptation that the devil threw at Jesus was answered in the identical way; “It is written…”
This is the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, in motion. When we have now a deep understanding of the word, we can also throw off devilish attacks in the identical way.
