Kingfisher Leadership
1st March 2018
Kingfisher Leadership news The Bible wisely points out that: “The person who loves God will avoid all extremes” (Ecclesiastes 7:14, NIV), and this is very true in the area of Spiritual Warfare. There are three extremes in this area that we particularly need to avoid and lead others to avoid:
Our three challenges for 2018: 3 - SPIRITUAL WARFARE
The extreme of DUALISM. Dualism sees life as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. When good things happen, you can see that God is ‘winning’ and when bad things happen, satan is getting the upper hand. In Spiritual Warfare, this translates to a sense of needing to defeat satan rather than declare the truth that he already is defeated.
Spiritual Warfare is about policing what has already been established, not about policymaking
The extreme of TRIUMPHALISM. This can be expressed as follows:
Because Christ has won the decisive victory on the cross and satan is a defeated foe, so there is nothing to worry about. We don’t even really need to take him seriously. Added to which is the Hollywood picture of satan just being an object of fun. The extreme of PESSIMISM. At this extreme, Christians feel weak and powerless to pray confident, assertive prayers. What’s the point? The problems of society are far too big and complex for me to be able to do anything about. Anyway, all this stuff about wrestling with the demonic sounds like something out of a horror movie… not real life.
In this third instalment of what we believe God is particularly drawing our attention to this year (the first being Authority and the second being Jubilee) , we are considering something that has always been rather controversial - the subject of Spiritual Warfare. What is Spiritual Warfare?
Spiritual Warfare is about seeing the personal evil and suffering and the structural evil and suffering, and recognising that to just campaign against those things on a human level is like picking fruit from a tree… the fruit is going to grow back. You need to look at what is producing the fruit and deal with that if you want the fruit to stop growing. What’s producing the fruit of evil and suffering is satan and his demonic forces. That’s where Paul directed his energy. And that realisation, actually, was very good news, because, although Paul was powerless to affect the laws of the land, he knew that the spiritual powers behind all of that had already been dealt with: “In this way, God disarmed the evil rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross of 1 Christ” (Colossians 2:15)
Kingfisher Leadership
It wasn’t a hopeless task trying to bring about change in the world, because the spiritual reality behind all that is evil in the world has already been dealt a death blow by Christ on the cross. Spiritual Warfare, then, is not us defeating satan in prayer… it’s us policing satan in prayer, demanding that he and his demonic hoard live in the light of the defeat they suffered at God’s hands as Christ broke their power on the cross. That’s the crux of spiritual warfare: we’re here to enforce the victory that has already been won – we’re not here to try and win the victory. That’s what Jesus was emphasising in Matthew 16:19, when he said: “I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; what you prohibit on earth will prohibited in Heaven, and what you permit on earth will be permitted in Heaven” (Matthew 16:19, Good News Bible). The Greek word used for prohibit is ‘dedemenon’ which actually means ‘having been prohibited’. Likewise for ‘what you permit on earth will be permitted in Heaven… the Greek word there being ‘lelumenon’… ‘having been permitted’. Why is that important? Because we only have the authority to prohibit what has already been prohibited in Heaven and we can only permit what has already been permitted in Heaven. It doesn’t matter how loudly or strongly we proclaim it, if it hasn’t been prohibited in Heaven it won’t be prohibited on earth, and if it hasn’t been permitted in Heaven it won’t be permitted on earth.
1st March 2018
We’re the police, enforcing what has already been established – we’re not the policy makers. We don’t have authority to make things up like, for example, “I claim such-andsuch a person for Jesus Christ that they will become a Christian”, because in Heaven only free will decisions are permitted. We can pray that the eyes of their heart will be opened so that they can see the truth and be led by the Holy Spirit to make a wholehearted, free-will decision to follow Jesus Christ, but nothing that will take away their free will right to choose. Spiritual Warfare is about enforcing what has already taken place and been decided in the Heavenly realm. What happens in that Heavenly realm absolutely affects what happens in the physical realm. And what happens in the spiritual realm is influenced by Christians taking up their rightful authority and declaring on earth what has already been declared in Heaven. In Heaven, for example, the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and selfcontrol – is the very air that people breath, and so it can be declared here on earth. In Heaven, where people are in a right relationship with God, satan is banished, so here on earth, Christians who are in a right relationship with God, have authority to tell the demonic to go… and they must obey. “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you”. (James 4:7, NLT) Humbling yourself before God is making sure you are in right relationship with Him and there is no outstanding, unconfessed sin to get in the way. Resisting the devil is then a simple matter of telling him to go. Spiritual authority; Jubilee; Spiritual Warfare - it’s time to reclaim our true identity and purpose!
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