If you want to engage in spiritual warfare you must be ready to do battle. And the first step is to realize the battle is real and it is raging all around you. You need to understand the deceptions of your enemy that he would not deceive you. Friends, we must not be deceived.
The weapons of the spiritual warrior are truth and wisdom. It is your flesh that thinks the war is in your strength. It is in your surrendering to God that He can use you. It is in your trust in God that He will protect you. It is not you that will prevail, but the Lord who reigns in you.
I wrote a series entitled “Tactics of the Devil” that describes some of the ways the Devil is waging war against the Christian in our day. So many Christians are afraid to talk about the Devil, worried that if we do he may get us. But the way he gets us is in our ignorance of him.
The Devil does not have to turn you against God, only to doubt Him. Doubt is at the root of a powerless Christianity that renders a saint paralyzed to the purposes of God.
“Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Has God indeed said…'” (Genesis 3:1). Know the Word, then stand on the Word.
Even the Devil will quote scripture, but he will never live it and he will always twist it.
The deficiency in self-sufficiency
The self-help teaching of our day is the trickery of the Devil meant to destroy you by your own hand. “In his self-sufficiency he will be in distress; Every hand of misery will come against him” (Job 20:22).
You cannot receive the sufficiency of Christ relying upon yourself. Every effect is limited by its own cause.
The Devil always speaks to your flesh, to promote you or demote you, and wins so long as your focus is on yourself. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5).
Self-sufficiency is the enemy of dependency on Christ.
Satan’s most powerful weapon against you is you.
If you depend on yourself then you depend on a fool. Jesus said, “…without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Depend on the only One you can depend on, Jesus the Christ.
The Devil cannot overcome Christ in you, but only your reliance upon Him.
You can trust the Lord more than anyone, especially yourself.
It is the Devil that tells you to try harder. “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
Next to Satan, nobody can deceive you like you.
Often Satan does not even have to bother with you, as you take yourself out. Don’t use excuses for the inexcusable. Don’t justify the unjustifiable. Jesus said to the religious of His day, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts…” (Luke 16:15).
You cannot have the victory over evil unto there is first a surrender unto Christ.
Anyone can tell a good story, but it is only a saint surrendered unto Christ that can live it.
Deceptions of the deceiver
The greatest weapon of Satan is to convince you there isn’t even a war.
Put down the olive branch and pick up your sword. The enemy is not your friend, nor will he ever be so long as you are a Christian.
The greatest weapon the enemy has against you is the lie that he is not even there. He is there. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
As a saint, you are not just operating behind enemy lines, but in the midst of the enemy’s camp. You must know the enemy to defend yourself.
The greatest weapon the Devil has in spiritual warfare is in deceiving you that the fight is in the natural realm.
Stop focusing on that person who is attacking you, but the spirit behind them. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).
You cannot win spiritual battles fighting in the natural realm.
Blessings to you,
Paul
All Scripture is in red and uses the NKJV (New King James Version) translation unless otherwise noted.