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141 | Is Spiritual Warfare Real?
152 Plays2 months ago
Phylicia explains that spiritual warfare is real but why it's important to not be afraid of the forces of evil. Instead she outlines how to be properly prepared and reminds us that God is greater than any demonic forces, and Jesus' victory on the cross ensures our salvation from sin, death, and the devil. Referenced in this episode: ⦿ Every Woman A Theologian: https://phyliciamasonheimer.com/product/every-woman-a-theologian-hardcover/ 👩💻 Watch the entire Beginner Believer Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLybB3dkK5l8mBBBHlb6GteDUMJbTwYR8v Subscribe to Verity Podcast: ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/verity-by-phylicia-masonheimer/id1495210734 ———————————————— Verity Podcast is an Every Woman a Theologian company. We believe every woman should be a theologian. Every woman should be a student of the heart of God. Find our latest books, kids books, and hospitality product releases on our website, here: ➡️ https://rb.gy/h4szl3 Order “Every Woman a Theologian” ➡️ https://rebrand.ly/yju441w Our latest release: “A Christian Guide to Fundamental Mormon Beliefs” ➡️ https://rebrand.ly/vu6hcw1 Follow us on Instagram: 📸 Phylicia Masonheimer: https://rb.gy/qma0y8 📸 Every Woman a Theologian: https://rb.gy/zwyxld 📸 Verity Home: https://rb.gy/epiovd 📸 Faithful Kids: https://rb.gy/ke8r4t Please like, subscribe, and share our content—it means a lot to us and helps us continue to create the kind of content you need and enjoy!
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Transcript
Introduction and God's Supremacy
00:00:00
Speaker
Now you might hear this and go, hmm, now I'm terrified, and that is not the intent. Remember that God is greater than this enemy. God is greater than these demons. God is greater than these authorities, powers, and forces of evil. And that's the whole point of the Gospel is that Jesus defeated sin, death, and the devil to bring us the hope of salvation.
Verity Podcast and Series Overview
00:00:31
Speaker
Hi friends, and welcome back to Verity Podcast. Felicia Masonheimer here, your host and the founder of Every Woman a Theologian. We're in the middle of our Beginner Believer series, and this series is talking through some basics of Christian life and living, as well as basics of salvation and the gospel and walking out this faith that we believe.
Understanding Spiritual Warfare
00:00:51
Speaker
And so today we're going to be talking about spiritual warfare. What is it? What does the Bible say about it? And how do we practice spiritual warfare from a place of authority and confidence, not from a place of fear? Now, depending on how you grew up,
00:01:07
Speaker
whether you grew up in the church, whether you grew up outside of the church, you might have some familiarity with this concept or none at all. Some churches tend to overemphasize spiritual warfare where everything is spiritual warfare. The enemy is always trying to reach you to do something and you're a little bit maybe afraid of the conversation.
00:01:29
Speaker
In other churches, we might never hear about spiritual warfare at all. We don't even think that there is a spiritual reality to the world outside of the basics of salvation. And so we tend to blame anything that goes wrong in our life or anything that is difficult or hard on just the basic structure of our world, the brokenness of our world. And maybe we take a more humanistic, pragmatic,
00:01:56
Speaker
look at what those things are, ignoring the spiritual realities that are at play.
Ephesians 6 and Spiritual Warfare
00:02:02
Speaker
And so we're going to start with scripture as always, because that is our foundation. And when we start there, we can kind of build out an understanding of what spiritual warfare is according to the Bible, and then how we are to confront it as believers.
00:02:18
Speaker
We're going to be starting, and really we could spend a lot of time here, but we're going to be starting in Ephesians 6, verses 11 through 12. It says this, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
00:02:46
Speaker
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." So this is Ephesians 6, 11 through 13. You might be familiar with the armor of God, and we'll probably look more in depth at that passage at the end. But for now, I want to focus on what Paul is saying in this particular passage against the spiritual realities in this world.
Worldly Challenges and Spiritual Realities
00:03:11
Speaker
So if you grew up with no framework for spiritual warfare, it may be surprising to you that he's pointing out that the things that we wrestle against, the doubts, the discouragements, the brokenness and the trials of our world have a spiritual component.
00:03:29
Speaker
Now certainly there are practical scientifically explained things that are the product of the natural laws that God set in place and the natural laws that were broken by sin. I'm not saying that the enemy is specifically behind tornadoes or tsunamis or even that things like cancer are always a direct attack of the enemy. We live in a broken and fallen world and I myself have experienced that.
00:03:57
Speaker
through my own testimony, the fallenness of our world in relation to health, to fertility, things like that. At the same time, there is a spiritual reality at work in this world, and God is not the only spiritual reality. There's God, and then there also are spiritual rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers in this present darkness, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
00:04:25
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Now in scripture we don't have an exact transcript of Satan's fall, but we do know that Satan is referenced.
00:04:35
Speaker
as the devil, as Satan, Lucifer. We see this in Matthew four when Jesus battles with him in the wilderness. And we also know that he took with him one third of the angels when he fell. And these angels became twisted by evil and they are called demons. So we can't see them, but they are real. They are a spiritual reality, a spiritual evil that is in the world doing evil things.
00:05:03
Speaker
We also know that there is some kind of authoritative structure with these angels, similar to the messengers of God that we see in the Bible that are servants of the Most High. God's holy angels are his messengers, his servants. They go and do what God has called them to do. They are warriors and they have certain places and missions that they operate. The same is true for these demonic fallen angels and Satan.
00:05:31
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that they have a different kind of way of operating in the world, a way of having almost like a jurisdiction over certain things or certain areas where they're attempting to undermine what God is doing.
Authority and Victory in Christ
00:05:48
Speaker
Now, you might hear this and go, hmm, now I'm terrified, and that is not the intent. Remember that God is greater than this enemy. God is greater than these demons. God is greater than these authorities, powers, and forces of evil.
00:06:07
Speaker
And that's the whole point of the Gospel, is that Jesus defeated sin, death, and the devil to bring us the hope of salvation. A salvation that's not just eternal, but also present and earthly. And that when we walk in the authority that He's given us by His Holy Spirit, we overcome.
00:06:28
Speaker
the enemy. So whenever we read passages like this or we study angelology or demonology in the Bible, we don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that the enemy is somehow bigger or greater or more powerful than God because he's not. He is actually living in a state of defeat. He simply has not been finally judged yet. And we see this in Revelation.
00:06:51
Speaker
At the cross, Jesus dealt the death blow to the enemy's power and proved that he had authority over death, over the enemy, over the condemnation the enemy wants to put on image bearers of God. And so the cross showed the enemy that his time was short, but he still is permitted right now to operate in the earth
00:07:17
Speaker
while God is saving more and more people from his hold. So when we read Ephesians 6, 11 through 13, what we're reading is the battle plan for Christians who live in a world where the enemy has influence. We are not reading instructions for Christians to live in fear and anxiety and defeat. We are reading instructions for
00:07:46
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God's people to be prepared to face spiritual difficulty. So he says, put on the whole armor of God as if you're a soldier. You're arming yourself.
00:07:57
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And he goes on to say that you're going to put on the breastplate of righteousness, covering your heart, the helmet of salvation. You'll have the sword of the spirit and shoes that are the readiness of preaching the gospel. So you have all of these things that you're putting on by the Holy Spirit's power, equipped by God to face these spiritual realities.
Recognizing and Preparing for Spiritual Warfare
00:08:19
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So what does this mean for us? What this means is that when we get up in the morning, we don't just go ho hum, you know, another day being a Christian and, you know, I just don't know why things are, you know, difficult sometimes, or I don't know why I can't control my thoughts, or I don't know why I struggle sometimes to resist sin, or why I'm suddenly so full of discouragement in this season,
00:08:43
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If we just look at it through this humanistic lens, we won't acknowledge the spiritual reality that is very much at play in our lives. Not everything is a spiritual attack, hear me? Not everything is. But some things are. And to discern that, we have to be in prayer with the Lord, walking with the Lord and saying, God, show me how you want me to fight
00:09:10
Speaker
the good fight in my life. Show me how you're equipping me to face the doubts, the discouragements, the trials, the temptations that are coming my way, because they will come your way. And Jesus promised that on this earth and in this life, there would be pain, there would be suffering, there would be difficulty. But he said, take heart. I've overcome all of this.
00:09:32
Speaker
In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, for I have overcome the world done 1633." And so you should not be discouraged when you hear there's spiritual warfare. You should be perhaps thankful that you've been warned that there is a spiritual reality that you can now prepare to face. Think how unfair it would be if God just, you know, set us loose in this new and beautiful walk with Him and just said,
00:10:00
Speaker
go in peace and didn't say, hey, by the way, there's this enemy who wants to discourage you and he wants to defeat you and he wants to make you ineffective now that he knows that you're one of Christ's. He wants to completely stop any effectiveness that you have for God, any growth, any maturity, any freedom. He wants to keep you in bondage and keep you from living in the fullness of this faith that you hold.
00:10:26
Speaker
If he did not warn us, we could not prepare. And that's why Ephesians 6 is such a blessing because he's saying, keep your perspective in the right place. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. We wrestle against the spiritual force of evil. And so arm yourself so that you can withstand and stand firm. Three times in this passage he says to stand.
00:10:50
Speaker
It's interesting to me, he uses that language because I'm thinking being on the offensive, you would want to be pushing the enemy back, right? But instead he says, no, I want you just to stand, just to stand. And it reminds me of that passage, I believe it's in either Joshua or Deuteronomy, where God says to the people, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf.
00:11:16
Speaker
On your behalf, he's fighting for you against this enemy. He wants you to arm yourself. And he even says, I've given you the sword of the spirit, which is an offensive weapon and a defensive weapon. But ultimately stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. So when we talk about spiritual warfare, never think about this as me against the world. It's the whole church. It's all Christians together.
00:11:44
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and the Lord is the one fighting the battle.
Overcoming Spiritual Strongholds
00:11:46
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We're just obeying His orders.
00:11:50
Speaker
Now let's look at 2 Corinthians 10, 3-5. It says this, For though we walk in the flesh, in the natural human self, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 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.
00:12:15
Speaker
Okay, there's a lot here, but let's start in the beginning. It says, we walk in the flesh, so we live in a human natural body. But the way that we face our world and the ideas and the philosophies and the struggles and the trials is not in our natural self. It's not looking at the world pragmatically, it's not looking at the world only through this natural lens. Oh, it's just bad things happen and it is what it is. He's saying, no, we wage war
00:12:41
Speaker
in the spiritual realm. We have divine power. Now, that doesn't mean that we are divine, but that we have access to divine power. Where does that come from? The Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit destroys strongholds. What's a stronghold? Well, it's a fortress. It's a
00:13:01
Speaker
a place that's been built, a standpoint, an advantage, a place to retreat to in a military context, where in this case, the enemy can kind of hole up and claim as his territory.
00:13:18
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So a stronghold in a spiritual context would be a place, a behavior that the enemy has claimed as his. That is his spot, his territory. He gets to use that as like his staked out location.
00:13:35
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from which he can go out and influence other things or other areas. And you may have a spiritual stronghold in your life in some way. It could be a spiritual stronghold of fear or a spiritual stronghold that's a critical spirit, judging others constantly. Spiritual stronghold with words, with gossip and condemnation, either about yourself or about other people, could be a spiritual stronghold of addiction to pornography or alcohol.
00:14:05
Speaker
or even something like caffeine, where we're constantly returning to this thing that rules our life instead of Christ. Now, over the course of our lives, we might have different strongholds that the Lord wants to dismantle because the enemy will try to offer alternatives, right? And sometimes we overcome one area, the Lord frees us from one area, and then there's another area that needs work.
00:14:32
Speaker
That's the process of sanctification. We're not just being completely made holy in every single area immediately. We are righteous before God. Our standing is righteous. Go back and see the first episode of this series. What is the gospel?
00:14:48
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But we have to walk out that righteousness. And so God will progressively sanctify us and progressively make us more and more righteous as we allow him to defeat these strongholds that the enemy wants to set up. And so this power is not of ourselves.
00:15:03
Speaker
We should never be bragging about some kind of divine power or access that we have. That's not what the point is. The Holy Spirit wants to glorify God and He wants to glorify God's freedom. And so as we walk by the Spirit, instead of in the flesh, Galatians 5, we will be freed from these strongholds. We will find more and more freedom. And sometimes that freedom comes through really firm boundaries.
00:15:26
Speaker
So, for instance, in an area like, say, alcohol, you might need freedom from that boundary, but the way that the Lord provides freedom is in your obedience to say, I'm not going to bars anymore and I'm not keeping it in my house and I have an accountability partner and I'm going to AA. You're doing these steps that God is then using to free you.
00:15:45
Speaker
So it's not like magic, immediate freedom. Sometimes it is for some people, but a lot of times it's those steps of obedience that then break that stronghold and give you freedom against the warfare of the enemy. So that's the first half. We don't wage war according to our natural self, our own minds. We wage war according to the Holy Spirit's power. He destroys the strongholds in our lives.
00:16:10
Speaker
Then he says, we destroy arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Oftentimes this passage is used to describe taking our own thoughts captive. And I have an episode about that a couple of weeks ago. I did an entire episode on how to discern our thoughts
00:16:28
Speaker
with God. But what this is actually talking about is philosophy. It's talking about arguments against God. So arguments against Christianity. Things like the new age and manifesting and shadow work and all of this stuff that is coming up and is saying this is the way to find true freedom.
00:16:51
Speaker
He's saying these arguments, these opinions, these thoughts, we take those captive to obey Christ. We take them and we say, you have no authority here. Christ is the one who sets people free. And so what you're going to have to do as someone who is operating in the authority of Jesus
00:17:09
Speaker
is you're going to use your Holy Spirit-led discernment to take every idea, every concept, everything that's thrown your way as a good idea, even a God-ordained idea, and measure it against Scripture and say, does this obey Christ or is this the fruit of the enemy?
00:17:27
Speaker
Does this obey Christ or is this just a repackaged Gnosticism, a repackaged Arianism from the first century? Just a new version of an old lie. So discerning those things takes time and it takes those weapons of warfare that are mentioned in Ephesians 6, having the righteousness of God guarding your heart.
Being Watchful and Sober-Minded
00:17:49
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Having your salvation guarding your mind. Having the sword of the Spirit to divide what is true from what is false.
00:17:58
Speaker
Spiritual warfare is real. 1 Peter 5.8 says, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, seeking someone to devour. So the enemy wants to devour us. He wants to make us ineffective. He wants to just completely devastate us with that discouragement,
00:18:24
Speaker
I'm a failure, you know, self-focus. I can't do anything right. God doesn't love me. He will always return back to those old lies that he told in the beginning. Did God really say? That's what he said to Eve. Did God really say? So what he's doing is he's casting doubt on God's command and on God's love.
00:18:47
Speaker
Did God actually say this and was it actually for your good? He says to Eve, if you eat this, you won't actually die. So he's saying, God lied to you.
00:18:57
Speaker
When we are discerning spiritual warfare, the question we have to step back and ask is if I'm constantly feeling discouraged or I'm feeling doubtful about being in ministry or what I'm doing, which I do feel sometimes, that is something where I have to stop and go, is this true or is this the enemy's lie? Saying, God didn't call you to this. You're not good at this. You're not worthy of doing this. And then I have to ask, why am I believing this without checking it against what scripture has said?
00:19:28
Speaker
Why am I just accepting these thoughts as truth because they popped in my head? Why am I not asking the Lord, is this your voice? Is this true, noble, good, praiseworthy? Is this you?
00:19:42
Speaker
and your love and your truth? Or is this the enemy saying, did God really say that he called you to this? Did God really say that his word is trustworthy? Did God really say that you can be free?
00:19:58
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The enemy wants to deceive and steal and kill and destroy. And when we do not remain aware of that, if we are not sober minded and watchful, we can begin to simply take his lies as truth and then we are not ready to fight.
00:20:18
Speaker
because we've just decided whatever we hear in our head, whatever we read, whatever we see out there philosophically is true and we're following, now we're walking down a pathway of deceit and deception, drifting further and further from God. Be sober-minded, be watchful. Sober-minded, what's that mean? It doesn't mean boring. Sober-minded doesn't mean boring.
00:20:39
Speaker
What's sober? Well, it means that I'm able to think clearly. I'm abstaining from something so I can think clearly. I'm not silly. I'm not distracted. I'm just aware. I'm fully within myself. All of my capacities are uninterrupted. Now, it's interesting that in Leviticus, the priesthood of believers, the priesthood of Israel was
00:21:04
Speaker
not allowed to be drunk. Why? Now the whole nation of Israel was told avoid drunkenness, but specifically priests were told you should not be drunk and Nazarites in particular were not to drink wine at all. So it was a much more strict law.
00:21:23
Speaker
Why should they abstain from drunkenness? Why should a priest particularly abstain from drunkenness? Because it would inhibit his mental faculties, which he needs in order to serve as a minister of the gospel. Now, the Bible talks about alcohol all over the place, and it was drunk in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. So alcohol itself, wine, that's not the issue. What's the issue? Drunkenness.
00:21:50
Speaker
And I'm using drunkenness as just one example of a way that our mental faculties are limited or affected and altered. Peter saying be sober minded and be watchful. Do not be limited by a substance from hearing God's Holy Spirit. That was the issue. The priest could not hear God clearly if they were drunk.
Barriers to Communication with God
00:22:12
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And so I have to ask myself, what things in my life are preventing me from hearing God clearly? Alcohol's an obvious one. Marijuana would be an obvious one, right? But what about the media we consume?
00:22:27
Speaker
Is it pushing us towards discerning God's voice, or is it muddying the waters? What about the books that we read? Is it pushing me towards having a clear and sober mind, able to recognize good from evil, or is it making it difficult to discern that?
00:22:44
Speaker
We might be strong enough to absorb all of this content and media and sift it and just use it for entertainment, but what we are entertained by shapes us and it either equips us for spiritual warfare or it makes us weaker.
00:22:59
Speaker
my husband and I have been doing this alphabet dating thing where you take a letter of the alphabet and you design a whole date around it. So like the letter A, we might get Amchi Mumbai, which is a local Indian restaurant. And I think I made him watch the movie Austin Land about a Jane Austen immersion resort. He loved it, I promise.
00:23:20
Speaker
When we would go on these dates, one of us would plan the date and pick all the things related to that letter. So for the letter B, my husband picked the movie Behind Enemy Lines, which I had never seen before. And one of the things that stood out to me in this movie is that for the first part of the movie, they're on this carrier that has all of these fighter jets.
Preparation in Peaceful Times
00:23:42
Speaker
and they're bored out of their minds. One of the pilots, the main character, is just so sick of sitting here in the middle of the ocean waiting to do something. He just wants to fight.
00:23:56
Speaker
but his commander tells him that this floating around in the middle of the ocean doing nothing, this is when he's being prepared for battle. And so he basically tells him like, if you don't prepare here when it feels boring and mundane and like nothing is happening, you aren't gonna be ready when you do face the enemy. And then he ends up behind enemy lines and he has to face the enemy and all of that training that he did, all those pushups he did, all of that comes to bear in that moment.
00:24:26
Speaker
And I think it's the same with our spiritual lives.
00:24:29
Speaker
So we think it's just entertainment, it doesn't matter, right? It's just, my life is just my life. I go to the office, I come home, I do my commute, I take care of my little kids, whatever it is. And we think this doesn't really have any big significant impact. The habits that I have in my daily life, they don't really have a significant impact on the spiritual realm, but they do. Because how you live in the peaceful times is equipping you for the trials.
00:24:57
Speaker
how you live when everything seems calm or easy, what you're entertained by, what you're reading, what you're engaging in, the habits that you're forming, whether or not you're in the Word of God, all of that will bear fruit in some way. It might bear good fruit or it might bear bad fruit, depending on how you prepared. And when the trials come, when the enemy attacks, are you ready?
00:25:22
Speaker
not ready in a fearful way, but have you been digging deep into scripture? Have you been showing up to it? Have you been in prayer? Have you been thinking at least with discernment about what you watch and what you consume and how it's forming you, how it's equipping your mind when the day comes when you are facing spiritual warfare?
00:25:46
Speaker
You want to be ready to fight with God's Holy Spirit to stand still and see the Lord's salvation on your behalf, to destroy strongholds. And the way to do that is to spend time in his word, to be in prayer, to be walking with him, to be wise and letting him equip you and your mind for the battle that inevitably will come.
Reassurance and Resources
00:26:22
Speaker
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day.
00:26:35
Speaker
Psalm 91 says this,
00:26:42
Speaker
This Psalm reminds us that no matter what we face, how difficult it is, how hard it is, whatever the trial, whatever the pain, whatever the difficulty, whatever the attack of the enemy, you have a God who is bigger. His faithfulness to you is a shield and a buckler. He is covering you with his wings.
00:27:02
Speaker
You do not have to fight this alone, but you do need to be aware and awake, and you do need to be letting the Holy Spirit equip you for the battle. But then you can simply stand still and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf. If you enjoyed this episode or if you have enjoyed the Beginner Believer series,
00:27:23
Speaker
please like, subscribe, and share to help get the word out about what we're doing at Every Woman a Theologian. If you would like to know more about how to build a rich theology, how to understand the Christian faith and its history, you can grab Every Woman a Theologian in our shop at FeliciaMasonHeimer.com or head over to Amazon and grab it in its associated workbook and eight videos as well. You can read all of our reviews. We have over 1,500 reviews of Every Woman a Theologian on Goodreads
00:27:52
Speaker
and 4.5 stars. We would love to have you join in this community who is seeking God's heart, seeking to learn more about Him and to walk with Him in more depth every single day.