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Spiritual Warfare

 



1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

The Scewtape Letters is a book written by C.S. Lewis, published in 1942, the book looks at the sinful condition of mankind through the eyes of a junior demon named Wormwood.  Wormwood receives instructions on how to secure the damnation of a man named Patient through letters from his uncle Screwtape.  This book isn’t an allegory of the Christian life as is Chronicles of Narnia, this is the Christian life, right down to the nitty gritty.  The second that we make a decision to follow Christ the devil unleashes all of the forces of Hell against us to destroy our faith and our testimony.  He wants to make us useless to God.

Regardless of whether you believe it or not when you became a Christian the devil marked you as a victim.  He put you in his cross hairs.   You are on his blacklist and he will stop at nothing to tear you down and turn you into a hollow shell of a Christian.  If we continually give in the the little temptations he sends our way then we become desensitized to sin.  Our heart grows cold toward the things of God and we eventually get to the point that we can’t even recognize what sin is anymore, at that point we become useless to God and others.

The good news is we can fight back.  We don’t have to be doormats to the devil and his demons.  Christ has given us the way to fight back.

Luke 10:19 “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and  scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall  by any means hurt you.”

We don’t have to fear the devil.  We should respect the fact that he has power and we can’t face him and defeat him alone.  We have to rely on a power much greater than his, much, much greater.

1 John 4:4 says “greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.”  

Stand on that truth always.  Remember that the devil may have an awesome amount of power, but it is God who controls his leash.  The devil can’t do anything without Gods permission.  God controls what he does, how much he does and to what extent he can do it.  God is in complete control of everything in the universe and beyond.  Remember from the book of Job, how Job lost everything.  The devil took everything from him and God allowed it.  This is a picture of the trials and tribulations that we must face as Christians in order to grow in our faith.  God knew how much Job could handle and the devil could not go past that point.  and remember that in the end God gave job back 7 times what he had lost.

Christ said that he gave us the power.  We have power over demons.  We have power over sin and temptation.  You can read all through the new testament and see the power that the early Christians had.  We still have the same power available to us today, the only roadblock is our faith.  Without faith we have nothing.  Jesus said that with faith the size of a mustard seed we could move mountains, but most of us don’t have enough faith to move a grain of sand.  We may think we have strong faith, but the truth is if we did have the faith that we think we have we would be doing mighty things for God today.

Take the time today to examine your life and your relationship with God and get things right.  If you honestly want God to show you your faults and areas of your life that need changing he will.  Take that time today and be honest with yourself and with God and have a true life changing experience.

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