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Fighting Spiritual Battles
The Praying
Woman
Have you ever felt
like the more you do for Christ, the more you suffer in other areas of your
life?
The enemy is most
annoyed when we live a righteous life and he will do anything in his power to
stop us in our tracks.
Thankfully
for us, he doesn’t have any power over us when we know how to fight back the
right way.
Here
are four ways to fight your way through a spiritual battle…
The Shield of Faith
In preparing the Ephesian church for a spiritual battle, Paul
wrote, “In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can
extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Ephesians
6:16).
Why would
Paul describe faith as a shield?
It
might be because if the believer rightly understood their standing in Christ
and that they are held firmly in the grasp of Jesus and the Father’s hands (John
10:28-29), then they might understand their faith is only as strong as the
object of their Faith, and that is Jesus Christ.
Every
believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1).
The Breastplate of Righteousness
This
“bulletproof” vest is the shield of righteousness and a shield that the enemy
cannot penetrate.
Maybe you don’t even know you have one, but the fact is that 2
Corinthians 5:21 states we have the very righteousness of Christ: “For our
sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.”
If God
is for you, what do you have to worry about if anyone is against you (Romans
8:31)?
The Sword of the Word
Satan
and his minions most likely know the Word of God better than we do, as Satan
quoted Scripture quite easily when He tempted Christ in the wilderness (Matthew
4:1-11).
Actually,
Satan misquoted the Bible or took verses out of context, and today the subtle
enemy is still doing it, even from behind a few pulpits.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to the Christian since “even
Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians
11:14).
Therefore, we need to take up “the sword of the Spirit, which
is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17).
If you memorize or hide God’s Word in your heart, it can help
you resist temptation and possibly not sin, as the psalmist wrote, “I have
stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Psalm
119:11).
The Helmet of Salvation
We
Christians must use caution with what is allowed into the “eye gate” or into
our minds because it can cause us to stumble into sin, which is why God gave us
the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18).
We want to protect what goes into our minds, so we must “take
the helmet of salvation” and then put it on (Ephesians 6:17),
“for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have
divine power to destroy strongholds.
“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the
knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians
10:4-5).
Overcoming your spiritual battles
I
haven’t written anything new because the Bible gives us all we will need to
prepare for and then engage the invisible enemy.
Ephesians
chapter six equips the believer, but it is up to the believer to take up the
full armor of God and to do it before the enemy attacks.
God will not put it on for us. “Therefore take up the whole
armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having
done all, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:13).
The
Praying Woman
This
group is a source of encouragement and Christian advice from sisters in Christ.
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