Good morning.
It is only fitting this morning that our message be on spiritual warfare, because our dear sister, Rae Walker—if there is one characteristic that the Lord Jesus manifested through this sister, she was a warrior. The joy of the Lord was her strength.
And today, I think it is only fitting, as the Lord has worked it out, that we be sharing on this area of spiritual warfare. Rae, we love you, and we still do.
Well, this morning, as we come, I have this burden on my heart: that we be awakened, that we be aware. As I have shared in these previous messages on spiritual warfare, one of the real obstacles that we have to overcome is the obstacle of passivity—of just not recognizing the wiles of our adversary.
He has cloaked himself so well. His wiles are so deceptive that, most of the time, his activities go unnoticed in our lives until there is some extreme tragedy or something in our lives that causes us to be awakened to the fact that we are in a warfare.
Now, in 1 Peter 5:8, the Lord is very clear. He says:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil,
as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
That is our adversary. We need to be awakened to that. I was impressed this morning, as I was coming and had these things on my heart, that we just cannot ever become passive in this matter of spiritual warfare.
In Nehemiah 4, I think it is so interesting. It says:
But it came to pass, that when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, heard that the walls of Jerusalem were made up, and that the breaches began to be stopped, then they were very angry,
And conspired all of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder it.
Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night, because of them.
In other words, the enemy had become aware of this wall of testimony being built, and they became very angry. In the beginning, they did not perceive that these people would be able to perform such a feat. But as they began to see the wall being raised, the enemy, it says, became angry.
They began to conspire against the children of Israel, against the children of God who had set their hearts to return and build a testimony to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to God. And they were angry.
But immediately, when the light or knowledge of the enemy’s plans became evident to Nehemiah and the children of God, they became alarmed—not in a negative way, but they were awakened to the fact that their adversary was going to do all that he could to hinder them and possibly attack them.
I think it is very interesting: right away, they went into their warrior mode. It says:
Therefore set I in the lower places behind the wall, and on the higher places,
I even set the people after their families with their swords, their spears, and their bows.
And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people,
Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible,
and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.
Brothers and sisters, what is on my heart today is this: Are we fighting for our brothers and sisters? Are we fighting for our sons and daughters? Are we fighting for our houses? Are we fighting for our children?
We are in a warfare. All are at risk, and we need to be aware of the enemy’s attack. We cannot be passive and say, “Yes, I know I have an adversary. I heard a message on it seven years ago.”
My brother just said that the first message he heard when he came here seven years ago was on warfare. Well, obviously seven years was apparently too long to wait to speak on it again.
But we cannot be negligent. We must be vigilant in this area.
Interestingly enough, not only did their alarm system go off, they armed themselves. And it says in Nehemiah 4:17:
They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens,
with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work,
and with the other hand held a weapon.
They stood and built as they were prepared for the assaults of the enemy. Not only that, but they prayed. I love this prayer. Listen to this prayer:
Hear, O our God; for we are despised:
and turn their reproach upon their own head,
and give them for a prey in the land of captivity:
And cover not their iniquity,
and let not their sin be blotted out from before Thee:
for they have provoked Thee to anger before the builders.
In other words, as they realized the significance of the warfare they were in, it was not like, “Well, okay, yep, yeah, I have an enemy. Jerry spoke on it, but I remember something about a bear.”
No, no, no. They were intense over this matter. Their prayers were not simple prayers of, “Lord, protect us from the enemy.”
If you listen to this prayer, you see that the prayer was quite authoritative and aggressive in nature. In other words, they were angry with their adversary, just as the adversary was angry with them.
I am not sure if we have ever—sometimes we need to actually get fed up with our enemy’s tactics in our lives and address the issues, which we will get into later.
The thought being that this warfare is real. It is not to be taken lightly, brothers and sisters.
It is not that our lives should be focused on the warfare. Our lives have to be focused on Jesus Christ, but we have to be aware of our enemy at the same time. On one hand, we build with one hand the testimony of Jesus; on the other hand, we hold a sword in our hands.
One of the things about the Roman sword—which we will get into when we discuss the armor later—was that it was a short sword for close battle. In-your-face warfare. It was not like fencing at arm’s length. This was a close-up battle. It was hand-to-hand combat. That is the kind of combat we are in.
Well, two words: detect and reject. We have to detect the wiles of the enemy in our lives, and then we have to reject his wiles in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I came up with four A’s. Kenny is real good at this, but unfortunately, as we know, Kenny could not speak this morning. So I came up with four A’s. I call it the Quad-A Plan.
Now, we have AAA. A lot of ladies like to use AAA because they feel assured that if they are out somewhere and their car breaks down, if they have AAA and a cell phone, they feel much more secure—and they should—and able to get help in time of an emergency.
Well, I came up with the Quad-A Plan, a little bit better than the AAA plan.
Do not forget the Quad-A Plan: alarmed, armored, armed, and authoritative prayer. I think we saw that example in the book of Nehemiah.
Well, let us look at Ephesians 6. I will just go as far as we can get with this this morning. I do not know that we will get through all the armor, but we will see.
Ephesians 6:10:
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
So here we move from this alarm stage, where the Lord is beginning to make us aware that we have an adversary and some of the wiles that he has, so that in our spirit we can detect, “Yes, this is indeed the adversary.” Today we come to this matter of the Christian armor that is needed.
First of all, we have this belt, this girding about with truth. It is around the center, around the hip area—the strength is in the hips. The belt of truth.
We have the breastplate of righteousness, this breastplate that covers this vital organ called the heart, and also our conscience, as we will see.
We have the sandaled shoes, the gospel of peace, for our feet—in other words, our walk, our daily walk, this matter of peace.
We have the shield of faith, which is used as a shield against fiery darts attacking us in our body. We have the helmet of salvation. Of course, the helmet goes over the head—the mind. That is where our brain is, and sometimes I wonder where it is, but it is for the mind.
Then it speaks of the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Of course, that is an action taken by your hand. Your hand is designed for action and to accomplish things.
Then, of course, it speaks about prayer. Prayer itself is not the armor, but without prayer none of the rest will be of any value to you. Prayer is, you might say, the thing that energizes and makes it all work together in Jesus Christ. It releases the power inherent in the armor and gives power to the weapon, which is the sword of the Spirit.
So what do we have? The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword which is the Word of God, and then prayer.
Now, as you listen to these, you begin to get a picture of what this armor is. In John 14:6, the Lord Jesus Christ says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He is the truth.
In 1 Corinthians 1:30, it says that Christ Jesus “is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” He not only is truth; He is our righteousness.
In Ephesians 2:14, it says, “For He is our peace.” Christ. In Galatians 2:20, it says, “I live by faith,” but not my faith—it is the faith of the Son of God. Christ’s faith.
Salvation: in Luke 2:30, when the Lord as a babe was brought into the temple, Simeon held up the baby and said, “Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Without Christ there is no salvation. All salvation is in Jesus Christ.
And of course, the Word: John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus Christ.
So what is our armor? It is pretty evident. It is Jesus Christ. Ultimately, He is our armor.
When we think and talk about the various aspects of the armor, you cannot really separate any one aspect of the armor from Jesus Christ Himself. Without Jesus Christ, there is no armor in your life. That is why your relationship to Jesus Christ is so extremely critical in this warfare.
If you have a distant relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ, you effectively are not putting your armor on. You are not wearing your armor. We need to have a good relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. He is our armor.
When we talk about the armor and the various aspects of armor, we can never separate any individual piece from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is not that we are armored with things; we are armored with Him.
Romans 13:14 says:
Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is your Christian armor. That is your protection. That is your safety.
But there is another aspect. It says, “Make not provision for the flesh.” Now, what is the flesh? The flesh is basically our self-life: our self-desire, self-pleasure, and—key point—self-will.
It says, “Make no provision for it.” Why? Because it is indeed the flesh that gives the enemy his foothold in your life.
You can be armored with Christ, but if we are not taking up our cross, denying ourselves, and taking up our cross daily, he has a foothold in your life by which he can establish a beachhead, so to speak.
Those familiar with warfare understand that when we went into Europe, they hit the beaches and established a beachhead. Some of y’all have seen Saving Private Ryan. If you can bear through the first thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan, that is horrific. I am not sure it even met the reality of what those men experienced that day.
I had an uncle who went through it, and he could not talk about it. There was such a tremendous amount of firepower, but they had to establish that beachhead. Once they took the beachhead, they could move inland.
So the enemy establishes a beachhead in our lives, and that beachhead is so often our self—our self-will, our self-desires.
I think it is interesting that the Lord Jesus, right before He was going to the cross, said in John 14:30, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.”
That is why the enemy could not get to our Lord. The Lord had a self, but it was pure; it was not like ours. But He chose not to live by it. He said, “Not My will, but Thine.”
In the garden, it was settled: “Not My will, but Thine.” The enemy could not challenge our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, our Lord did go to the cross. He allowed Himself to be crucified there to become God’s Lamb.
I am sure the enemy thought that he had wrought a tremendous victory that day when he saw the Lord Jesus Christ crucified by the hands of men. As you know, the devil himself never put our Lord Jesus on the cross, but he incited men to do it. He was the instrument behind it.
But in what he thought was victory, he found his defeat, because the Lord Jesus overthrew death. He rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of the Father. It says He has taken the keys of death from our adversary.
Brothers and sisters, we need to be clear today: one of the greatest beachheads the enemy has is our self-will. It is our self-will, and we have to be so careful with that.
Last week, I read Psalm 91:1 because I felt that, in the midst of this, we had to know that God was in control. Ultimately, if we would stay and dwell in our Lord Jesus Christ, that is our protection.
Let me read Psalm 91:1 again:
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High
shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I thought about that this week. The shadow of the Almighty—as long as you are in the shadow of the Almighty, you are okay. As long as you are in the will of God, you are protected.
As long as you are in the shadow of the Almighty—the will of God, not self-will but His will—you are safe. The shadow of the Almighty. It struck me so deeply that our safety is in being in the will of God.
Regardless of the trials and tribulations we experience, if we are in the will of God, the victory is there. Just as our Lord Jesus Christ went to Calvary’s cross, He was in the will of God.
He suffered mightily on the cross. He went through a tremendous trial on the cross, but He came out in victory—a victory that secures every other victory in this world and in our lives personally.
The will of God. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our armor. As we consider this armor, you can never separate the thought of any one aspect of the armor from Jesus Christ Himself.
I think one of the greatest examples of this is David and Goliath.
When David went out to face Goliath, he did not wear any armor—at least, he did not wear the armor of that day. Saul offered him his armor, but he would not put it on.
You say, “That seems to be a contradiction.” It is not, because God was his armor that day. It was God. It was in the name of the Almighty God that he faced Goliath that day.
Go back and read the story. It was in the name of God. He was armed with God Himself that day as he went out, and he was not fearful. He faced Goliath: “Who are you to come against the armies of the living God?”
He was bold. He could be bold because he was armored in God. He was not fearful because he was confident in his God. He was confident in the fact that the cause for which he was in was God’s cause. It was God’s will, and he stood for God’s will that day.
And Goliath was defeated. Tremendous story. Yes, David had his armor on that day. He did not have a sword; he had a sling. But he used his weapon efficiently and actively, and he did not falter in that battle.
In Ephesians 6:11, we have read it, and we will get back there because we are going to be looking at that quite a bit:
Put on the whole armor of God.
“Put on.” That is an active word: put on. Sometimes we think because we are Christians, we automatically have this armor on. Well, we do have Christ, but there is something the Lord says you have a responsibility for, and that is to put on.
We are in Jesus Christ, but the Lord is saying there has to be something that happens in man’s will. You are always having to make a choice, brothers and sisters. God says we have to make active choices, not passive choices.
We cannot just wake up in the morning and think that this armor is automatically on. Yes, we are the Lord’s; we belong to the Lord. He has a sovereign hand in our life. But the Lord wants us to exercise our will.
I am not talking about willpower. Just exercise our will and say, “Lord, today, You are my armor. You, Lord Jesus Christ, I put You on as my armor. I take You as my armor.”
Just as we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, let me see if I can explain it. The Lord Jesus Christ has already offered Himself as a sacrifice on Calvary’s cross for your life and for mine.
We know that if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are saved. We come into His salvation. The salvation is already there; it is already available. But how does it become real to you in your life? You have to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
That is an act of your will. You have to go through that process. It is not an act of the mind.
Sometimes we say, “Well, do you know the Lord?” “Yeah, I know about Jesus. I know about Jesus, yes. I have read some history about Jesus. I believe in Him. He is a historical character.”
That has nothing to do with His Lordship or His sacrifice on Calvary. Accepting it in your mind is not the issue. We have to make an act of our will to accept the Lord Jesus Christ in our life and make it real.
So, put on the armor of God. It is an act of will. Brothers and sisters, we have to make Christ active in our lives. We have to have the promises of God real in our lives. We have to have the work of Calvary made real in our lives. It is always done through a choice, through an act of will.
Listen to these things:
Romans 13:12: “Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.”
Ephesians 4:22-24: “Put off the old man” and “put on the new man.”
Romans 12:1: “Present your bodies a living sacrifice.”
Can you present yourself a living sacrifice to the Lord in the morning? This is consecration. Do you consecrate yourself? I am afraid, because I am so guilty—I can speak on this, I think.
I just get up in the morning and go. I am not putting on anything except my clothes, and I am lucky to get all those on. The other morning, I walked out and my wife said, “Jerry, you sure you got everything?” I said, “I’m not sure of anything.”
She said, “Well, okay, have you got your cell phone? Have you got your badge? Have you got your wallet?” She went through the list for me. Thank God, that was one morning I got out with everything.
One brother even proposed that it might not be a bad idea in the morning, when you get up, to put on each piece of the armor before the Lord Jesus Christ. But all I am pointing out is this act of will—not willpower.
It is not that you are exercising willpower in this thing. It is that you are submitting your will to the will of God and saying, “Lord, I will that You be my armor today. I am going to put on Christ today. I am going to put off the old man.”
All acts of will are a choice. All the work of Christ is made active personally in your life through some choice of will in your life. That is why your will is so important to the enemy.
He cannot attack your will directly. Did you know that? He cannot force you to do anything. He can influence you, trick you, deceive you, by working through your mind to get to the will.
Your mind, as I think Brother Sparks said, is the great battlefield. The citadel, the castle that he is trying to get to, is your will. He wants you to make a choice.
That is the way he got to Eve. He started toying with her mind, putting doubt in her mind about God, and he got her to make a choice of will which was contrary to God’s will.
Brothers and sisters, one of the greatest enemies in our lives, one of the greatest tragedies for us as Christians—and I speak of myself personally, particularly for the last two years—is passivity.
Just being passive, thinking it is going to get all right, thinking that, you know, I am armored. We need actively, by an act of will, to put on and put off, as it says.
One brother says we need a liberated will, a will to do the will of God—not a passive will, but an active will.
You might say, “Well, Jerry, I am pretty weak in that area. Some people are very strong-willed; some are weak.” But it does not matter whether you are strong-willed or weak-willed. The issue is not getting a stronger will in the sense of willpower.
The whole issue is submitting your will to the will of God. That is where your will gains its strength to do the will of God: by being submissive.
“Not my will, but Thine, Lord.” That is the secret for the will. The secret of the strength of your will is, “Not my will, Lord, but Thine be done.”
Sometimes in our lives, we recognize that we are not willing. God’s will becomes very clear to us sometimes, right? But we are just not willing, and we struggle with it.
There is a prayer we can pray: “Lord, I am willing to be willing.” The Lord will answer that prayer.
But even that is not enough. Paul said in Romans 7:18, “To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”
Will is critical. There has to be an act of will, but even then the power is not from the will. Paul said, “I will,” but I still cannot perform.
Philippians 2:13 says:
For it is God which worketh in you
both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
The power is God’s. The power does not lie in your will. All we have to do with our will is to be willing, and the power is of God.
First, the Spirit moves in your spirit. The Lord uses your mind, if it is attuned to Jesus Christ that day. He uses our minds, and we begin to realize there is something in our spirits that the Lord is trying to say to us.
Eventually, He gives clarity through your mind that this is what the Lord is after. You are able to discern the will of God through your mind.
Then comes the critical issue: now that you know the will of God, you need to choose the will of God. “Lord, I choose Your will. Lord, in this particular area, it is very difficult for me. I do not want to do it. That is not my will.”
“I would rather do this, or I would rather go here. I cannot face this problem. I would prefer at this point in my life not to face it.” The Lord says, “You need to face it.”
You say, “Lord, not my will, but Thine be done.” Then His power is released through this act, or choice, of your will to energize you in your spirit to actually perform God’s will.
That is what it means by taking up the cross and following the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross is simply where my will and the Lord’s will form the cross.
But when our will is joined with God’s will, the power of God—the Holy Spirit—is released in your life to do the work.
Some of y’all are probably familiar with the old steam engines, the old trains. I think one came through Ashland a couple of years ago, and we had all the photographers up there to take a picture of this old steam engine.
Interestingly enough, a steam engine is practically just a boiler. It is like putting a pot on the stove and letting her boil. Now, of course, if you do not have a lid on it, you never develop steam, do you? It just boils off.
But if you have a pressure cooker which seals it in, that is basically what that train engine was—a pressure cooker, for all of you who still use those things. My wife has not used one in a long time. We have microwaves and things around, and Foreman grills, man.
But anyway, the steam engine would generate all this tremendous amount of pressure and steam. I do not even know what a train engine weighs, but look at how much weight there has to be in a train. Yet they would develop this steam. It is a powerful energy.
The steam has to drive a piston that drives the wheel. The way the steam is put into the piston to drive the wheels is that the engineer has to simply turn a valve—throw a valve. A little valve.
Consider your will as that valve on the steam engine. There is a tremendous energy and power in the Holy Spirit. It is the same Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead and ascended Him to the throne.
The same power is in you because Christ is in you. But brothers and sisters, I think so often we just never turn the valve.
Either because our will is opposed to the Lord—in other words, it has gotten rusty and frozen in place, and you might need a little WD-40 on it. But once you throw that valve, the steam is released and the work is done.
I wanted to spend some time on this this morning because I believe so often in our Christian life we have forgotten about this little thing called our choice, or our will. It is so critical to make Christ real in your life, to make the work of Christ real in your life.
Just this little act of will—you have no idea the power that it releases.
A lot of times, brothers and sisters, when the adversary is attacking and things are going on in our lives, it is just happening to us. We are saying, “Lord, help me. Lord, help me. Lord, help me.”
In His grace, He does. But I think the Lord wants to say, “What is My will in this issue?” If you can find it out, and if you can come into agreement with My will, all the power of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself that raised Him from the dead is available in this situation to deal with it, to make Christ real in this situation.
You see that really our whole lives, all that we experience, are designed actually to bring us to the place where we are willing to be willing, so that the power of God can be manifest on this earth—in your life and in my life.
Often we find ourselves lying on the ground, beat up, and our prayer is, “Lord, help me.” Now, it is a legitimate prayer. But sometimes our prayer needs to be, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ.” We will get into that later.
The whole armor of God: put on the whole armor of God.
We may talk about the breastplate of righteousness, and it is really righteous acts in your life. We have the righteousness of Christ, but that righteousness needs to result in a practical righteousness in our life—good works.
Now, you are not saved by good works. But when you are saved and you come into a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and His life is working in you, one of the fruits should be practical righteousness.
You may be living a righteous life before the Lord, and there does not seem to be anything offending your conscience, but you forget to put on the helmet of salvation that day.
Then the enemy starts throwing those darts at your mind, trying to put doubts in your mind—doubts about yourself, doubts about your relationship to God. He may even get you to doubt that you are saved, which puts you in a tremendously weakened condition.
Doubt that you can be forgiven for what you have done. Doubts about a brother or a sister. Imaginations start to flow, and all of a sudden you find yourself overwhelmed and defeated.
Not because you were not living a righteous life, but because you did not have the helmet of salvation. So it is important that we put on all the armor, brothers and sisters, and that we use the weapons that are given to us. It is important that we be completely covered in Jesus Christ.
One little point that so many scholars point out—and it is so right—is that there is no armor for the back.
All the armor is on the front. The helmet surrounds your head, but you have the breastplate, the shield, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. But there is nothing behind you.
In other words, if you are running from the enemy—and let me make it more practical—if you are running from your situation, which we do, you have no armor to protect you back there. The enemy has you totally vulnerable at that point.
You have to face the issue. You have to face it head-on. The great part about it is, when you are turned in the right direction, you can also look over the enemy’s shoulder and see the Lord there.
We have to be so careful not to lie down in this battle. When warriors get wounded in battle, they have to continue to fight. You just cannot stop fighting. You have to continue.
And the Lord Jesus Christ—I do not want already to have people wearied out, thinking, “Lord, I’ll never make it through.” But we have already been there, some of us, saying, “Lord, I’ll never make it through this,” and you are here today.
You are here today because of the grace of God. If there is ever a safety net, brothers and sisters, there is a safety net for us as Christians, and it is called grace: the grace of God. We thank God for His safety net.
But the Lord wants us to stand in battle, armored with Jesus Christ. Armored with Him.
It is right at twelve o’clock, and I am just fixing to get into the armor. Maybe it is best that I stop here today, and we will continue on another time.
We do want to pray for Will and his wife and family. Obviously, they are already in the victory of Christ this morning. But we also want to pray for Kenny and Linda.
The reason Kenny could not speak this week is because Linda has been in the hospital almost all week now and had a couple of very tremendous hours.
I remember last Sunday night, when we met, right as we were fixing to go out, Kenny said, “Jerry, Linda’s running a fever.” Immediately, I grabbed Kenny and said, “We’ve got to pray and stand against this, Kenny.”
The enemy has tried to take Linda from us so many times during this past year. So we prayed and we stood. Kenny got home and, of course, he took Linda to the hospital. Her fever had gone to 103 by that point.
I am going to make a point. He got her to the hospital, and when he got her there, her blood pressure was okay. But on the way, Linda had complained to Kenny and said, “I’ve got to get a new blood-pressure cuff. It’s not working. I tried to take my blood pressure and it wouldn’t work.”
Well, the problem was, her blood pressure was so low it would not read. But by the time she got to the hospital, her pressure was up. I really do believe the Lord intervened that night—not because of my prayer, but because there was an awareness.
I really felt such urgency that night in prayer concerning that. Now, as we know, the next day her blood pressure did drop, and we had to deal with that. I think recently it was bleeding because of the blood thinner she was on.
The only point is that she is in God’s hands, brothers and sisters. She really is. If you know Linda, she is a very active warrior herself.
But on the other hand, we submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and we resist the enemy. I read that verse of Scripture to us last week.
Next time, we will get into the more practical aspects of this armor. But today, we need to remember this little Quad-A Plan.
We have to detect and reject. We have to detect our adversary—that is the alarm system. We need to be armored. We need to be armed with the sword of the Word, God’s Word.
“I do not accept this. Christ was manifested to destroy the works of the devil.” I can declare that. I can use the sword of the Spirit. That is authoritative prayer.
Okay, we will get more into these things.
Lord, we just come back to Thee today in the name of Jesus Christ. We say, Lord, reveal to our hearts in these days what You are doing.
Lord, we want to be submissive to Your will. We want to be willing to be willing. We want to put ourselves in a place, Lord, that Your power and authority can be released in our lives.
Lord, we stand in the mighty name of Jesus today, that You are the Victor. You are the Victor over this assembly. You are the Victor over every brother and sister in our midst.
Lord Jesus, regardless of what we face, what we see, or what we think, it does not change the victory that has been wrought in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, on the cross.
It is that victory which we proclaim. It is in that victory in which we stand today. Lord, we put on Jesus Christ today, and we put off the flesh, in Jesus’ name. Amen.