Preparation for Warfare - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, May 16th. We face unseen conflicts every day. Today's podcast gives you a better understanding of the spiritual world and helps you chart an effective strategy to be prepared for spiritual warfare. I want us to look for just a moment and look at the nature of this battle that you and I face, because the truth is that we do face a battle. When you wake up in the morning, you are into a battle. The moment you trust that Jesus Christ is your personal Savior, you are born again onto a battlefield from which you will never leave until God calls you home. You were born into a battle that will never cease. It does not mean the intensity of it will always be the same, but the battle will always be there.

There'll never be a time when the battle's over. And this is a spiritual battle because what Satan is after, he's after every part of us. He wants to get us in our body. He wants to get us in our soul, our mind, will, our emotion, our conscience, our consciousness. And he certainly wants to deal with our spirit to do anything he can to tear us away in our thinking from Almighty God and our relationship to him. It is that personal relationship that you and I have with Jesus Christ that is his ultimate target. Now, he'll hit us in our body.

He'll hit us in our emotions. But what he's after most of all is our personal relationship with the Father, knowing that he absolutely cannot tamper with our spirit. That is, he cannot separate us from God. He cannot in any way reach down and take us and destroy anything about our eternal security.

We're eternal and secure because God, in his love and grace, has made that a reality. So since he can't take our spirit, what he will do, he will harass us every way possible to make us miserable in life and to keep us from enjoying the Lord and being the kind of witness God wants us to be. We are soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to understand who the enemy is and how he works. We need to understand this is a battle. We need to be dressed for the battle, which he describes in this passage.

We need to understand what the manual says. We need to be in training. We don't need to listen to the propaganda of the devil.

We don't need any of that. We need to walk united together, standing firm and standing strong as the people of God. If you are a child of God, you end up with the Holy Spirit. The power of God is living on the inside of you. That power is accessible to you, available to you any moment.

That power is always there for every single decision. So if you and I choose to be disobedient to God, no matter what that act of disobedience may be, what we have done is we've sided up with the devil in that particular decision. He can't make us do it. We've agreed with him. He says, no, look, this is not going to hurt you a little bit of this, not going to bother you. We've said, OK, I think you're right.

He can't make us sin against him. Now, I want us to see what is our responsibility. Look, if you will, now in verse 10, he starts off this alarm. Now, alarm is a sound or signal that danger is close by. Something is about to happen.

So that's why we call this an alarm. Listen, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. When he says he says be strong in the Lord, the word means to be empowered.

And it is in a present tense, which means here's what it means. It means continually being empowered. This is not something we do for ourselves. This is something Almighty God does for us. That is, God is continually empowering us to do to become in every decision, no matter what.

He's the one who's doing it. Now, listen to what he says. He says, finally, be strong or be. He says to be empowered by.

Now, what is he talking about? Simply this, that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is living on the inside of us in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Listen, he is the source of our strength. Now, there's not a single one of us who can match it with the devil.

Not a one of us. We're not as smart as he is. We're not as powerful as he is. Is he more powerful than we are? Yes, he is. He's smarter than we are. Yes, he is. He's had more experience.

And he has. Listen, he's brought down the greatest. He's brought down the greatest.

There's not a single one of us who's smart as the devil. You can't play games with him. You can't laugh about the devil. He's got your life at stake. He's doing his best to listen, to destroy you.

You don't laugh about towards somebody who's trying to destroy you. And so when he says be strong in the Lord, what is he saying? He's simply saying this, that you are not to so live our lives in this battle that we listen, that we draw our strength. We draw our strength to stand against the devil from the presence of the Lord Jesus. He is our strength. He is the source of our strength.

So we're not to try to draw this from ourselves. And so he says we're to draw it from him. Now, I want you to look, if you will, at Ephesians chapter one. Go back to the first chapter and look in this 19th verse. You're going to find three of the same words in Paul's prayer here that we just saw in the sixth chapter.

Now, watch this very important, the most important part. He says in verse 18, this is a prayer. He says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of God's calling in your life.

What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints? That is what he's going to do as a result of what of having us as his children. Look at this. And he says, I want you to know what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us, of his empowering toward us. This is what he says. I want you to understand how great the power of God is towards you.

Now, watch this. That is you who believe these are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might. Now, look at that and go back to Chapter six for a moment and look, if you will, in verse 10.

Notice what he says. He says here, finally be strong in the Lord, in the strength of his might. He said here, spoke of the power of the strength, he says, and strength of his might. Now, what is he talking about here? He's talking about divine strength. He's talking about divine power. But I want you to notice what he says.

Look at this now. Be strong. He says how? In the Lord, the Lord God, Jehovah. And that is the sovereign, absolute, complete, final ruler and all authority in the world.

Now has been the past and forever shall be. That is, there's absolutely no strength and no power to compare to the power of Almighty God. He is listen. He is omnipotent. We say Satan is not Satan's not omniscient. He doesn't know everything.

He doesn't know your thoughts. He's not omnipotent. He's not omnipresent.

He's not everywhere. He doesn't have all power. And you and I will say and quote to other people, he that is within us is greater than he that's in the world. There is a power that is within you that is greater than the power of Satan.

Now you say, well, I have all this strength and why am I not strong? OK, here's the thing I want you to listen to. Are you listening? Say amen.

All right. Look at this now. Go back to this sixth chapter again. And I want you to look at these words for a moment. Look at these words. When he says in verse 10, look at them now. He says, Finally, be strong in the Lord, be empowered in the Lord and in the strength, the strength of his might, of his authority.

And listen carefully. Power and authority are not the same. Power and authority are not the same.

And when you look at this passage, you understand authority is not necessarily power, but rather authority is power that is imparted in a given situation or given circumstance. Now, let me illustrate it by this. Let's say that you are a policeman, that you're a traffic cop. And in this big intersection, we don't use lights here. And so we kind of have you to direct the traffic over on this side of four lanes. There's two big 18 wheelers loaded. Two three pound trucks, four or five cars on this side. Same thing on this side, a whole bunch of cars.

I'm just lined up back. It's just like, you know, like traffic in the afternoon. They're just everywhere. Now, on the front up here is a little beetle bug. That is a little Volkswagen bug.

Real small. And so you're standing out there. Let me ask you something. Do you have more power than that Volkswagen bug? Couldn't that Volkswagen bug run over you if it wanted to? In other words, if you just stood there and he could run over you, couldn't he? Now, you know an 18 wheeler can, so we're not even worried about that one. Let me ask you a question.

What stops the traffic? Your power or the authority you represent? You have authority that you have. Listen, authority is power delegated to us. Now, listen, here's what he's saying in this passage. He says, Be strong in the Lord. And listen, and in the strength of his authority, not our authority, but his authority, Jesus said, All authority has been given to me in heaven and earth. You go. I'm going with you.

What's going with me? The authority and the strength of Almighty God. So that when you and I come to face the battles with Satan, listen, we think about it this way. We think, well, it's me against Satan. No way.

What is it? It is strength that you and I glean from a relationship with Jesus, from the presence of Christ living on the inside of us. And so we can say to Satan, Get out of my presence.

All of us, I'm sure, have been in times we've been in prayer and we'd be into the Spirit of God working in our life. And we'd be talking to the Father and Satan just fire some arrow. I mean, you think about something you have no business thinking about whatsoever.

You think, where in the world did that come from? You didn't think it up, Satan. He just sent you one.

Well, haven't you been in those situations and circumstances where you just felt all bundled up and you think what in the world's going on? What Satan's doing? He's confusing you. He's frustrating you. He's making you anxious. He's doing everything he can to cause you to make the wrong decision.

Here's what he's saying in this passage. You and I, listen, we have not only the strength of God, we have the delegated authority to be able to say, Satan, get out of here. Leave me alone. And there have been times when I wake up in the middle of the night, me telling the Lord and Satan try to work on me.

I just say, Satan, get out of this room, get out of this house, get off this ache and get out of this block. So that's foolish. No, it's not. You know why? Because when you say in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by His precious blood, He is gone. You know why?

He hates the name of Jesus and he hates the very eye of the blood of Christ. That, listen, that isn't somebody says, well, that's just hocus pocus. I'll tell you what. You try it.

It's not hocus pocus. It is the power of God released in a human being. And that is exactly, listen, every single believer has Christ living on the inside. So we have the strength of God. But the strength of God's not enough. We need the authority of God in life. Listen, we have divine authority. When can we exercise that authority? Only when we're walking in the Spirit.

Listen, God's not going to allow us to exercise divine authority if we're living in the flesh, living in our naturalness, doing our own thing, living in disobedience to God. Somebody says, well, suppose I'm right in the middle of it. I'm having a difficult time. Then you cry out to God.

You cried to God, Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by your precious blood. I call down your strength. I need your strength. And listen, can we speak to Satan?

Absolutely. Listen, when you tell him to be gone out of your life, he's got to walk out. If you're walking in the Spirit and you're exercising, listen, remember, it's not our strength. We can't shove him around. Remember that what you and I do, we're calling into that circumstance the authority of the sovereign of this universe. And Satan cannot do anything God doesn't allow him to do. Why would God just allow him to keep on tantalizing us and harming us or whatever he's doing when we call upon the name of the Lord? This is not to say that you and I cannot go through situations and circumstances that are painful and difficult. We say, God, where are you?

Right here. God, why did you let this happen? I got a purpose in mind. And so oftentimes we may have to say, Lord, what's your goal for me in this difficulty and hardship? But that doesn't mean that I have to yield to the devil. It doesn't mean that I have to succumb to his temptation and it doesn't mean I have to give up and be discouraged.

So we're talking about two different things. We're talking about Satan trying to destroy you, trying to get you to make the wrong decision and trying to get you to follow the yield of some temptation. We have the power of God and the authority of God. It is his strength. He says we are being empowered. Now, listen, I can be empowered, but if I don't take advantage of it, if I don't act out that power, if I don't exercise my life out of that strength, then I have to do it in my own. And this is why we are weak and we have a long list of things I gave you. This is why we falter and fall. You have the strength of God available and you have the authority of God behind your life.

The authority of God is from the word of God, from the Spirit of God. Now, he says, first of all, my responsibility is to be strong. The second thing he says, we have two responsibilities and that's to stand firm. Look at this.

Now, he says it four times, but you only see three and I want you to show you where the fourth one is. Look at this, if you will. He says in verse eleven, put on the full arm of God that you may be able to stand how? Firm, entrenched against the schemes of the devil. And then if you'll notice, he says in verse thirteen, therefore take up the full arm of God that you may be able to resist an evil day. That word in the Greek is the same as the word here, stand, stand firm, only has a prefix on it. And it's used here to say resist or stand against in the evil day. And having done everything to stand firm, stand firm. So four times he says this. Why would he say stand firm?

I want you to notice something. What's missing in this whole passage on warfare is this. And he tells us what our armor is in a few moments.

But nowhere in this passage does he say, forward march. Nowhere does he say attack. What does he say? He says, get ready for battle. And what I want you to do is I just want you to stand firm. God doesn't want you and me fighting the devil. He doesn't want that. What does he want us to do?

He wants us to be strong in him and he wants us to stand still and watch him do his marvelous, miraculous thing. When I think about a lot of battles I've been through in my life and some of them have been very private and some of them have been very, very public. And I would like to think I would always I'm sure I probably haven't always, but it's best I know my heart I have. I've never fought a battle I've never fought against. I have tried to be still, be quiet and see what God will do.

I'm here to tell you something. You never lose. You never lose.

Arming yourself in the arm of God, being still, being quiet and watching God do his work. He says, we're to stand still, stand firm. Now, he says, stand against. That doesn't mean we just lackadaisical say, well, you know, just any old thing goes. He says, no, stand against. That is it.

Listen, it'll be difficult sometimes. Listen, oftentimes, sometimes those Roman standards would have spikes in them so that when the enemy came, they would hold those huge shields up. Oftentimes two by four covered them completely. When they would line up, it'd be like a solid wall. They were entrenched. They stood very firm.

Even a horse and a chariot can run over those shields when they bent them back. They were so entrenched where they were. And so when he says stand firm, that doesn't mean we're just going to say, well, God, what are you up to? No, we're aware of what's going on as strength is in the Lord and we have taken our stand against evil, against sin, against the devil, against this temptation, against this trial, against this persecution. We've taken our stand. Now, what is it we have to do? We are to trust him.

So when you say stand how? This is the way we stand. We stand in the strength of Almighty God. We stand patiently waiting for him to intervene in that circumstance. We stand dressed in the armor of God, the helmet of salvation to protect our thinking, the breastlet of righteousness, to protect our emotions. Girdle of truth to protect what we believe.

And so on. We listen, we stand in the authority of Almighty God who stands with us. Listen, and we stand confidently. We don't have to be fearful. We don't have to flee. We don't have to falter.

We don't have to fall. We just stand and watch God do his work. And listen, this is what resting in the Lord's all about. It's not fight.

It's resting in the Lord. That's not inactivity. Listen, you ask any soldier on a battlefield when he's entrenched and waiting for the enemy to attack. Well, well, are you just being passive?

No. That's why he says stand firm and stand against. Take a stand against knowing that Satan is going to attack or you're facing that attack. Now, listen, we're in a battle.

We're either going to win it or we're going to lose it. Now, ultimately, every believer has the victory. Our name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. We're heaven bound.

We're going to heaven. What we have to be careful of is that we don't let Satan destroy us while we're here. He doesn't destroy our testimony and our witness. He doesn't destroy the work of God. We don't want Satan to cheat us out of the blessings of God.

We don't want Satan to deprive us that lose our reward in heaven. So there is a battle. And he says the two things I want you to remember. I want you to understand the nature of this battle. It is indeed a personal battle.

No question about that. It is it is a spiritual battle. It's a real battle and it's a tough battle. He says, I want you to do two things. I want you, first of all, to draw your strength from the Lord.

Act out of the authority he's given you. And then you stand and watch God fight your battles, bring you through triumphantly, no matter what you face in life. Friend, if you want God's best in a world that is so bent out of shape and so messed up and fouled up, even in the midst of all this, you can still have life at its best if you place your trust in Jesus Christ.

Because without him, look who your friend is. Without Christ, you've got the devil as your leader. You say, I don't believe in it.

You know what? That doesn't make a bit of difference in the world. That's exactly what he wants you to think. He doesn't want you to believe in it, because if you start believing in him and identifying what he's doing, you want to change.

He doesn't want you to change. But my friend, when you change by the grace of God, you'll understand what you've been missing. You want Christ to be your captain.

You want God the Father to be your commander in chief. You want life at its best, yours for the asking, if you will trust him as your savior. Father, we love you and praise you and bless your name and ask that the Holy Spirit would seal this message, seal it so tight it cannot be escaped.

No one can ignore it. But its fruit will be the salvation of those who have lost. Its fruit will be strengthening for those who feel weak and those who, seeming they are faltering and falling over and over again. We love you and praise you that you are trustworthy, reliably present, always there in every circumstance of life in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to Preparations for Warfare. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.