I wonder if we could turn to those Scriptures that we have been looking at in these last two times: the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 6.
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints,
and on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh;
for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds;
casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God,
and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called.
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
So we bow together in prayer.
Lord, we want to thank You that we have been in Your presence, and Your Spirit has opened up our hearts to You. Lord, we just want to praise You once again for all that You are to us.
But now, as we come to Your Word, we need You, Lord. We need You in an especial way. We do not want just to hear a sermon, or some kind of biblical outline. We want to hear You, Lord.
To that end, we need that anointing that You have provided. You have so marvellously, so fully, so sufficiently provided an anointing of power and grace and wisdom. We want to stand into that anointing for the speaking, and for our hearing also, Lord, that this time may be a time in which You can fulfil all Your purpose for our being together.
Lord, then we commit ourselves to You, and we shall give You all the praise and the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I do not think I can go over, really, what we have said in the last two evenings, but I know that those times have been recorded. They are both very necessary to anything that we have to say this morning. Although you may gain something from this morning, you need those other two times to fully understand and balance what we have to say this morning.
The fact of the matter is that you and I, as children of God, are born to battle. We have to recognise that very simple fact: we are in a hostile spiritual environment. We have been born into a world that lies in the evil one.
Although we are joined through the Head, our Lord Jesus, Who has won a complete and absolute victory over the prince of this world and cast him out, we as the Body have much work to do in declaring, establishing, and realising that victory in our local, personal, family, and business relationships.
I have spoken quite a lot about the battle. I have spoken quite a lot about our present world situation and where we are. Anyone who has not woken up now, I doubt will ever wake up.
I just fear sometimes, going around the Lord, that we are unbelievable. No wonder the Lord called us sheep. Sheep are unbelievable creatures for dumbness. Goats are so intelligent, and sheep are so stupid. The Lord calls us sheep, and for some reason we are always looking in the wrong direction, always getting into the wrong areas, and I do not know what else.
It seems to me that if a child of God has not woken up to the fact that we are in the last phase of this age—however long that may go on—we are in that last phase. I wonder whether they will ever wake up, because the signs are now so clear and so defined that, if we are not alerted by those signs, I wonder whether we ever will be.
Well, I am going to resist the temptation to go back into that matter. What I want to point out this morning is more of the areas of this battle that we are in, how to face it, and how to establish that victory which is ours in the Lord Jesus.
Is it not interesting what the Apostle Paul says to the church at Corinth? That church was an unbelievable church. It was so gifted, so clear as to its calling. He says that the testimony of Jesus was confirmed among them. Now, I think that is something tremendous. There are not that many companies of whom you could say, “The testimony of Jesus has been confirmed amongst you.”
Yet, in his opening words of the first letter, the Apostle Paul speaks to the church at Corinth and says, “You are so gifted, you are so enriched, you have such understanding, and the testimony of Jesus is confirmed amongst you.”
But in this very company there were factions and divisions. In spite of the gifts of the Spirit, in spite of the manifestation of the Spirit, in spite of their understanding of their calling, in spite of the fact that the testimony of Jesus was confirmed amongst them, there were still the most unbelievable situations.
There were those who said they were of Paul, those who said they were of Apollos, and those who said they were of Cephas. Then there were those who were exclusives: they were of Christ, and would not touch the others with a ten-foot pole—as you say over this side. On our side, we say a barge pole.
Then you had a son living with his father’s wife. Can you believe such a thing in a company in whom the testimony of Jesus was being confirmed? There were believers taking other believers to law. Can you believe such a thing?
There were people getting drunk at the Lord’s table. Well, that is by the way, but it shows you what kind of wine they were drinking at the Lord’s table. I mean, they were getting drunk on the stuff. It is unbelievable.
I tell you, if you were in that company, you would have said, “I am out. I am not staying in this company one single moment longer. I am getting out of this thing. It is a hellish pothole. Every evil thing is in this book.”
Yet this was a true church, in the sense that it was founded on the Lord Jesus; in the sense that it was not denominational or institutional. It was organic. It was under the government of the Lord Jesus, gifted by the Holy Spirit, led by the Holy Spirit, and inspired by the Holy Spirit—and with every kind of moral problem you can imagine.
Now the Apostle Paul says to them, “Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.” These people were warring according to the flesh. They had all kinds of arguments with one another. If someone takes someone else to court, there is obviously some kind of war going on.
“We do not war,” he says, “according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God”—or, in the power of God’s presence—operative and functional when used in the presence of the Lord, “to the casting down of strongholds.”
Do you not think there were satanic strongholds in that company of God’s children? Do you not think the indulgence that could lead to drunkenness at the Lord’s table was a satanic stronghold? Do you not think this party spirit, dividing the church into factions, was a satanic stronghold?
Do you not think that some of these other cases of immorality were demonic, unclean spirits pressing in upon the people of God and bringing all the filth and depravity of the Corinthian world outside right into the heart of the church of the Lord Jesus, the Body of the Lord Jesus?
Do you not think that there were imaginations that needed to be hurled down through the weapons of the Spirit? Do you not think that there were high things exalted against the true knowledge of God in that company? Do you not think there were thoughts that needed to be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ?
Every problem amongst us as the people of God starts with a thought or an imagination. Believe me, you can take this matter on the local level. There are things locally that can be strongholds. There can be imaginations and high things exalted against the knowledge of God.
Take, for instance, evolutionary theory. What a high thing exalted against the knowledge of God that is. Take humanistic philosophy. What a high thing exalted against God. This is on the wider scale: local, national, and international.
When we come to our own fellowship, this dear, born-of-God company of God’s children, there can be satanic strongholds. What Paul was really saying was this: Where are the brothers and sisters who can hurl down this stronghold of the enemy?
Where are the brothers and sisters who can cleanse the atmosphere, without trying to impose their ideas on one another, but cleanse the whole atmosphere and bring every heart into captivity to the obedience of Christ? Where are the brothers and sisters who can war the warfare of the Spirit and throw down imaginations?
Sometimes I find people have a fixed imagination about another brother or sister, and nothing can shift it. They have something in them that is suspicious, or something they feel, and it does not matter what happens: everything confirms the suspicion, because it is the enemy’s work. It has to be cast down.
This “casting down” is a very strong word in Greek. In some of the more modern versions, I think it is “hurling down.” It is something that has to be thrown down, hurled down. It is not done by noise, and it is not done by human might and power. It is done through weapons mighty through God.
The sword of the Spirit is the only way that you and I will ever be able to deal with this.
I could confidently predict that the work of the Lord here will not go through into another generation in health, soundness, power, and the glory of the Lord unless we learn how to war the warfare of the Spirit.
There have got to be people who can take these things behind the scenes and somehow drag them out before the Lord and execute them in the name of the Lord, so that the various things which the enemy would use to destroy, impose his will upon the people of God, or frustrate the purposes of the Lord amongst us, may be dealt with.
That is my burden. That is the matter that I was asked to talk a little bit about in these times: the whole question of spiritual warfare. I do not have any doubt at all that it is absolutely strategic and vitally necessary for any company of God’s children to understand and experience.
Now I would like to underline one or two things in the light of all that. We have no need to be afraid of the enemy. Why do we give the enemy more than we ought to?
That he is a vast intelligence, that he has a planned strategy, and that he has cunning devices, we must recognise. We are not up against some simpleton, some empty-headed moron that we can very easily outwit, or some kind of creature that, if we make enough noise, will fly out of the door with his tail between his legs.
This is not the enemy we are up against. We are up against superior intelligences. These angelic beings, created by God, fell. They have enormous intelligence, and, since they are created beings, they have experience.
These beings have been on the job for at least six thousand years. Over those six thousand years, they have gained a lot of experience with the human race, especially with believers. They have accumulated such understanding and experience with believers that they are no match for us. Therefore, it is possible that we fear, though we have no reason to fear.
Absolutely, there is not a strategy of the enemy that has not been brought to nought by the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. There is not a principality or power, evil Lucifer himself, who has not been brought absolutely to nought by the work of the Lord Jesus.
Every one of them has been stripped naked through the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. Once you begin to understand that, that is tremendous.
As the Apostle John says, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” If we only understood that the Lord Jesus in us—the great Victor, the One Who has cast him out, the One Who has completely destroyed his works and brought his power to nought—is in us by the Spirit of God, we would have nothing to fear.
What we have to learn is how to come under His headship and how to remain in absolute safety in Him. If we could only learn how to remain in Him—and that is what it means to put on the whole armour of God—then we would learn the lessons of victory.
Before I speak a little more on the principle of corporate spiritual warfare, for what do we pray in this warfare of the Spirit?
Firstly, it is for the realisation of God’s purpose. I can put that in a word: it is in Ephesians 1, “to sum up all things in Christ,” or, to put it another way, “to head up all things in Christ.”
This is the end of the Lord. This is the purpose of God. Everything that is happening amongst the nations, and everything that is happening in us as those who are saved by the grace of God, has this great end.
All gospel work—the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom in all the world for a testimony to all nations—has at its end a summing up of all things in Christ.
We know there is an enemy, and he is seeking to do every single thing possible to frustrate that eternal purpose of God: to head up all things, or sum up all things, in Christ.
What are we praying for? We know that God the Father purposes that in the Messiah everything is going to be summed up and headed up. We know that is a glorious purpose, and that the Lord is going to fulfil it.
Anything that robs the Lord Jesus of His glory, anything that robs the Lord Jesus of His headship, anything that robs the Lord Jesus of His fullness, is something you and I can come against in the name of the Lord Jesus. This is one of the goals of spiritual warfare.
Here is the second thing, and it is not always understood, especially in more spiritual companies. The end of spiritual warfare is to pray for all men, for kings, and for all in authority, that we might live a peaceful and tranquil life, that the gospel may be preached, and that all might come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus.
I do not understand a lot of God’s people. They are so separated from the world, so exclusively separated from the world. They feel the world is going to hell, and, as far as they are concerned, they are only bothered about their own salvation, their own fullness, their own deepening of spiritual life, and possibly getting to the throne and reigning. That is the only thing that bothers them.
“Why should we pray for the presidency here in the United States? It is the world. Why should we pray for the White House? It is the world. Why should we pray for the State Department? It is the world.”
Now, it is the world. I do not have any problem about that. But in 1 Timothy 2:1 it says—we had better read it so that you know it is there:
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men;
for kings and all that are in high place;
that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity.
Then he goes on to say why. I say anyone who does not pray for the leader of their nation or the government of their nation is transgressing. They are actually disobedient to the revealed will of God.
The church of God is meant to be salt in the world. The church of God is meant to be a city set on a hill that can be seen by all men, a light that gives light in darkness.
We, as the people of God, are not meant to spend all our time praying for political things or economic things. But we are meant to pray that God Himself will bring righteousness into the government of a nation. Anybody who has lived under unrighteousness or totalitarian iniquity will know exactly what I am talking about.
However weak, worldly, or humanistic our governments are, we have a responsibility before God to pray for the preservation of righteousness, purity, and some kind of incorruptibility in government. We need to pray out corruption and pray in incorruption. Do you understand what I mean?
May I take this one step further? When Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, he was about to be executed by the very king he was telling everyone to pray for, judged by the very people in high place. These were godless men. They had no respect for the Word of God, and no respect for the Lord. In fact, the Roman emperor believed that he was God in the flesh.
I can hear some spiritual people saying, “Pray for him? Well, the best thing to do is pray that he be removed into hell as quickly as possible.”
Yet here we have it in the Word. It is not just here; it is in Peter’s letters and in Paul’s letter to the Romans. You will find it not just in one place, but in a whole number of places. We have to be subject to the ordinances and laws of our country. We are to pray for those in authority.
This is very, very important. It is not that we want to be sidetracked or diverted in our prayer ministry, but there is an area of prayer where only those who know something of prayer warfare can touch things in national government—areas even in what we call political life—that will enable a country to live in peace and tranquillity so that the gospel may be preached and all men may come to a knowledge of our God and Saviour.
In some very amazing way, the true church of God is a spiritual upholder of law and order in a nation. It is the spiritual custodian of that law and order.
There are times when, in the sovereignty of God, He says, “It is over,” just as He did over Nebuchadnezzar. In one night, Nebuchadnezzar passed away, and in his place came Cyrus—not just a different man and a different nationality, but a wholly different ideology.
When God says that the time of Marxism has come to an end, it will come to an end, no matter how much they try to keep it going. It is over. It is the same with any other form. We must always remember this: God is absolutely sovereign.
Why do we have to pray when God is absolutely sovereign? Is that not a good question? If the Lord can do all things anyway, why do we need to pray? I do not have a good answer for that question.
All I know is that, in some amazing way, when Daniel started to pray with fasting for those weeks, all wheels within wheels began to whirl. He had no idea that he was an essential cog, almost, in those wheels that were setting in motion whole great empires right down to our present time.
There were principalities: the principality of Persia and the principality of Greece. They were fighting one another, and the archangel Michael was involved in this fight. It is all so strange to us that we can hardly understand it, except that here was a man at the heart of it, in prayer.
He was having a very hard time in prayer until the angel, who had been waylaid for almost three weeks by the fight going on between these principalities, finally got through to Daniel and said, “O man greatly beloved.” You know the story.
I do not think it is fanciful to say that when believers in a company like this really know something about spiritual warfare, they could, without hardly knowing it, set in motion whole kinds of things—wheels within wheels—that have enormous significance.
It is not that we give ourselves great status and think we are going to win the whole world. No. But as we are under the direction and government of God, we cannot but influence things. If the Lord directs us to pray about certain things and gives us the power to pray, then we find, in some amazing way, that we are being used of the Lord.
Why does the Lord need to do it this way? I can only believe that He is teaching us something. There is no area in which the Lord can teach us more about how to reign, how to overcome, how to administer the will of God, and how to realise the works of God than in intercession.
It seems to me that the Lord almost says, “Now listen, you here in Richmond have got to learn how to discern My mind, how to will My will, how to realise My will in different situations. I am not going to stand aside and do it all. If you do not enter in and stand with Me, then things will fall apart. Things will become more and more difficult, frustrating, and unpleasant. More and more collisions and incompatibilities will arise in your midst.”
“I am going to stand aside and let the whole thing happen until you learn how to know My will, discern My mind, and with Me work in the dealing of these things in a spiritual way.”
The third object of our prayer warfare is for the house of God. That is obvious. I hardly need to dwell on it in this particular company. Here we are at the very heart of God’s purpose: the house of the Lord, the building of the house of the Lord.
What a battle it is to see the house of the Lord understood. That is the first battle. The second great battle is to get some building taking place. We can know all of it up here, and yet there is no building taking place, no relatedness to one another.
Now, do not get all upset about this. People have always got this idea that the house of the Lord is perfect. The stones somehow come, shifted by angelic intervention, into one another just perfectly. It is absolutely wonderful. The whole thing is a bed of roses, wafted along in glory as the Lord builds it all.
My dear friend, it is not so. The way many Christians read the New Testament is with rose-coloured spectacles. They do not see Ananias and Sapphira. They do not see Jezebel teaching the deep things of Satan. They do not see the Nicolaitans busy at work everywhere amongst them. They do not see immorality, hypocrisy, and misuse. All these things are in the early church—every one of them.
I have already explained about Corinth: drunkenness at the Lord’s table, gross immorality, believers taking one another to law, and a thousand other things. This is the New Testament church that everybody glorifies. Everybody is leaving this for that, if you know what I mean.
Then when they get there, they expect it all to be perfect. They say, “Oh, dear, dear, dear. Look at so-and-so; what a mess. Look at that family. Oh, what a mess. Look at those children, how terribly undisciplined. Look at that. There is immorality. Oh dear, immorality. Over here some believer nearly wants to kill another believer. Well, we are the church. We have a New Testament. We are the house of the Lord. This is disgraceful.”
The church down here is a builder’s yard. There are bits and pieces all over the place. There is sand here and lime there, stones over here, and chip, chip, chip going on here. This is being chucked out and that is being brought in, and the whole thing is a mess.
There are pools of water you have to step over, and you nearly knock yourself out because someone has left a beam in the wrong place. This is the house of the Lord: it is a builder’s yard. What did everybody expect? What does everybody expect? They expect the Lord is going to wave a wand over us all, and suddenly there it is.
It does not happen that way. Is it not strange? Here is an imagination that needs to be cast down with weapons mighty through God. We have this imagination, and the enemy plays on it: “It has got to be perfect.”
I have always said to people, “Listen, when you join it, it will not be perfect.” There are people searching all over the world for the perfect church, and they spend their whole life leaving one thing and going to another.
I understand it when we are leaving a division to move into something open to all believers. I understand it when we are leaving an inadequate foundation for the foundation which is the Lord Jesus. But once we have come to that foundation, we must be prepared for messes—every kind of mess.
What we have got to do is know how to come through, and that requires good soldiers of Jesus Christ. We have to know how to deal with these situations spiritually: how not to judge them, leave them, freeze inside over them, or be inhibited by them; but how, in the name of the Lord, to deal with these things.
The revelation of the house of God has to be prayed through. There are many people who have not got the faintest idea what the house of the Lord really is. They think it is somewhere where you meet other believers, or somewhere you can leave your umbrella or your purse. For them, that is the house of the Lord.
We need to pray revelation into people. It is a battle. I tell you, the enemy would stop anybody from seeing what the house of the Lord is. But when we see what the house of the Lord is, the second thing is to get people built, related.
How does that happen? I tell you how it happens: in a mess. That is how it happens. If you thought it was all going to be wonderful, that you would fall in love with your brothers and sisters, embrace them, and stay for fifty years in a loving embrace, my dear friends, you have got another thing coming.
I have been all over the world, and in the first year or two of any work I see everybody in everybody else’s embrace. Before long, there are very few embraces—only for new ones in the fellowship. When the new ones get embraced, everybody says, “Oh, so-and-so. I know what he is going to say the moment he stands up on his hind legs. I know that man. I know that sister. Oh dear, I wish the Lord would hammer her.”
This is where we find building. This is where we find relationships: when we get to know one another. Then we have to determine not to know anything but Jesus Christ in that one and in those believers, and Him crucified.
Right the way through all the mess, we have to find the Lord inside and find there our building material: that by which we are related—the Lord in you and the Lord in me. This is a battle.
What about the growth of the people of God, the multiplication? What about the unity of the Lord’s people? Do we think we should just stay one? Do we think the enemy is simply going to allow us to remain in the unity of the Spirit? No, not at all.
When we know one another, we know the faults, temperaments, weaknesses, and even besetting sins of one another. Then, if we stay together in the unity of the Spirit, that means much more to the Lord than those early, glorious days when we did not know one another and thought it was all so wonderful.
Actually, the Lord was in the midst saying, “They do not understand each other yet.” We have the idea that the Lord was so thrilled in those early days, when we were all full of love for one another and all moved together. My dear friends, the Lord knew exactly what was in everybody in those first years.
He was just saying, “Wait. This does not mean too much, all this euphoria. Just wait. Four years. Six years. Ten years. Then it will mean something to Me: when they stay together, when they really love each other, when they come through together, when they allow Me to do the work in them through the incompatibilities they find with one another. Then there will be some glory.”
Strangely enough, that is when we do not sense the glory. Yet the Lord says, “Glory,” because something is happening in this mess, whereas we say, “Oh, where is the blessedness that once we knew when first we were together?”
Look at the church scene. You will see, all over the United States, companies that got together in an absolute glory, went on for about five years—some a few years longer—and then fell apart in an enormous spiritual nuclear explosion, leaving nothing but disillusioned people and debris all over the place.
Is that not true? We are not realists; we are all idealists. Thank God, the one realist is the Lord Jesus. He knew, when He brought us together, exactly what was in us. He knew what we were capable of. He knew the depravity of our hearts and the weaknesses we did not even know ourselves.
As I have often said, we are the ones who get shocked by the revelation of ourselves, not the Lord. We find something about ourselves and are so shocked. “Now the Lord will not hear me any more. It is no good me praying, because the Lord is now so ashamed of me. He says, ‘Phew! I would never have saved so-and-so if I had known they were like that.’”
But actually, when the Lord saved you, He knew all about you from the beginning. You understand?
There is another area that we need to understand as a goal in our prayer warfare, and that is the maturity of the saints. Galatians 4:19 opens a little window for us into a whole new area of prayer: agonising prayer, costly intercession, prayer warfare, true warfare of the Spirit.
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
The word means fully formed in you. Did you notice the little word “again”? “My little children, of whom I am again in travail.” This beloved apostle had once been in travail for them that they could be born of God, that they might come into the salvation of God.
He had travailed over them at their birth, and now he was back in an agony of childbirth all over again, that Christ might be fully formed in them. Here is a missing link.
Why is it that in so many companies we grow in knowledge but not in experience? How is it that we can have Bible studies and everybody gets to know their Bible, but their experience lags far, far behind? Why are we not growing? Why are we not maturing? Why are we not good soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Why can we be so easily knocked out like little babes years after we have been converted and saved? I say there are a lot of people behind the scenes who can pray that kind of maturity into being.
The enemy is not going to allow anyone who has been born of God to mature or grow. It was a big enough battle for him to stop them being saved, but now that they are saved, his whole aim is to keep them as babes: keep them on milk, keep them as little kindergarten spiritual babes.
We need people who can cast down strongholds, cast down imaginations, cast down high things exalted against the knowledge of God, and bring thoughts into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
In one place, the Apostle Paul speaks of Epaphras and says that he strives for you in his prayers, that you may be full-grown. In another place, in Colossians, he says, “I strive that I may present every man full-grown in Christ.”
My dear friends, this is costly. We do not expect everybody in a company to be involved in this kind of prayer, but unless there are those who can pray in this vein, in whom the Holy Spirit can conceive burdens for the maturing and growing up of the saints, much will be lacking.
Everything depends in a company of God’s people on their growth in the Lord: their understanding, their ability to stay together, their understanding of the ways of the Lord, and their understanding of how to face problems. Everything is dependent upon whether we grow and how we grow up.
When I was a baby, I did not understand anything. My parents understood things; others understood things. I did not understand anything. I remember, as a little boy in the Blitz of London, being ushered with my sister into some great kind of iron shelter. We thought it was a great game. We had no idea that we might have died that night, but my mother had a clear understanding of what was happening.
We were not able to understand. We just thought it was a great game. If we felt like it, we tried to get out, because we heard these bangs and bombs. But as children, it did not really bother us that much. We thought there were fireworks outside, something going on. We had no idea.
I remember seeing the whole of Richmond on fire from one end to the other: one great sheet of fire, flames a hundred feet into the air. I remember my mother saying, “Well, that is the end of Richmond. You will never see it again.” Of course, it was not as bad as it looked, but to us children it was awesome.
I remember walking around and seeing buildings with the whole fronts blown out, beds hanging out. People had died in there that night, but it did not mean anything to me. I was a child. I found it fascinating: “Look, those beds are hanging out over the side. All kinds of people’s goods are hanging out of the buildings.”
To a little child, it was amazing. It was no good saying, “How disgraceful. He should have been much more sensitive and responsible.” I was only a little child.
So it is with us. How can we expect believers to understand these things when they are little children, when they have never grown, when they have remained babes years after their salvation? How can we expect them to understand things to do with the purpose of God, the challenge of the purpose of God, the need to be good soldiers of the Lord Jesus, the need to take responsibility for other lives, and the need to lay down their lives? How can they understand those things when they are only babes?
We need people who can pray these things through.
Another goal in the spiritual warfare of the servants of God is God’s work. Paul says, when he speaks about praying for all the saints, “And on my behalf.” “I am an ambassador in chains,” he says. “Pray that in preaching the gospel I may be able to fulfil my ministry.”
We have a tremendous responsibility to pray for servants of God all over the world, especially those on the front line of God’s battle and especially those who are suffering for His name’s sake. We have such a call to cover them in the name of the Lord, to stand for the full purpose of God, that they may not be waylaid, deceived, or hindered in any other way.
One other matter is very important as a goal in spiritual warfare: praying for the gospel of the kingdom to be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations. We are to pray, because the harvest is great, that the Lord of the harvest would thrust forth labourers into the harvest.
Do you think that this work of the gospel is just going to go on by itself? Why is it that so often we who see the deeper things, especially through the house of the Lord, have an inner resistance to gospel work, as if it is somehow superficial by its nature, as if it is not important?
My dear friends, this work of the gospel of the kingdom is vitally important, and even more so in the last phase of world history. We need to be clear as to what we need to pray for in spiritual warfare.
I would now like to say something about the character of spiritual warfare. What is the real principle of corporate prayer? It is the same whether we are in spiritual warfare, intercession, or an ordinary prayer meeting. The principle is togetherness.
It is as simple as that. We do not pray as if there is nobody else present. I go into prayer meetings where someone stands up and prays, and we might as well not be there. It is all, “I, I, I, I. I pray, Lord, that You will do so-and-so.” I think, “Why do they not go home and pray at home? What am I doing here?”
I am right next to them, and they are saying, “I, I, I, I.” There is nothing wrong with saying “I,” but why do they not lead me anywhere? We are the Body of the Lord Jesus. They should be voicing what is supposed to be in our hearts, communicating the burden that is in the Body.
Sometimes you need to use “I.” Do not stand up and say, “Lord, we all are dead,” because maybe we are not all dead. Maybe you are dead. Then you need to say, “Lord, I feel dead.” That is correct. Do not put it on us if it is not us.
But when you are praying for needs, why do you say “I”? Did our Lord teach us to pray, “My Father, Who is in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give me my daily bread. Forgive me. Lead me not into temptation”? No. He said, “Our Father.” He taught us to pray “our,” “we,” because we have to take a step of faith when we are leading the saints in prayer.
The principle is togetherness. If we are together, we have to be observant of one or two things.
Do not be long. Some people pray round the whole world, and it kills anything. Someone gets up and prays for ten minutes. I do not care whether they are Daniel; we begin to go to sleep. You cannot help it. After a day’s work, there is this person droning on. I do not care whether it is Samuel, Daniel, or whoever it is—you cannot keep awake.
Togetherness is the principle. Think of your brothers and sisters. One of our problems in long prayers is that we are always adding too much. We have not got the courage to open our mouths, and then, when we do, we think, “Now I have got my mouth open, I might as well get in everything that I can to the Lord.”
So we do not pray just about the burden that we had. We add this and that, and you can hear a prayer dying. Do you know the kind of thing? All the power goes out of it, like a puncture. By the time it has ended, a great death has come upon the whole meeting.
We have these world-tour prayers. They start in Richmond, Virginia; then they are off to the Caribbean, down to South America, back to Central America, across to Nigeria, then to China, Japan, Russia, Eastern Europe, London, and back to Richmond, Virginia. They have gone on this world tour and they are nearly dead.
Then someone else stands up and prays for seven different things all in one prayer. They pray for Brother Kong and his ministry, something else, some group somewhere, Ernie, Lance, Paul, and tonight’s meeting. Then they sit down. What kind of prayer meeting is it? We do not know where we are. We were here, then over there, then up there. We have been around the world and then we are back.
Then someone else starts in the opposite direction. They have gone to the Pacific and back from Hawaii. Then somebody prays for seven sick people: someone with a migraine, a person dying with terminal cancer, and somebody with gangrene in the toes. Altogether, the whole thing just goes out to sea. We do not know where we are. This is our prayer meeting. It is destructive.
As Golda Meir once said, “When you have friends like ours, you do not need enemies.” I often feel the Lord says, “Oh, My dear friend, I do not need Satan. I have got My friends. Just leave it to them. They will destroy any prayer meeting.”
What is wrong with us? We cannot understand the simple principle of togetherness.
This matter of togetherness is found in Matthew 18:19-20. Let us read it so that we do not get it wrong.
Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father Who is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
Please notice that this agreement is not that you and I agree to agree. The Lord in our midst harmonises us, or, in the Greek, symphonises us. He actually brings us together.
It is a most amazing and wonderful thing when we are together in the presence of the Lord and this symphony begins, where we somehow flow together in prayer. A matter begins to be prayed for; one person prays for it briefly, another person prays for it, and another adds another dimension to it. Then someone takes that dimension a step further.
It is like peeling an onion. You really feel as if you are beginning to get to the heart of the thing. Sometimes these people do not even know the person they are praying for, yet by the Spirit of the Lord they are getting right to the heart of that situation.
That is real prayer. I want to tell you, there is nothing more exciting than real prayer. Most prayer meetings are so boring that I understand why most people stay away. They are the most boring meeting in the routine life of any fellowship, and the reason is that we have made them so.
People will go to the Bible study, worship meeting, and ministry meeting, but prayer meeting? They would rather be dead than seen there. Young people are seldom in the prayer meeting because it is so unexciting. They think, “All those old folks droning on. What has this got to do with you?” Nothing.
But when the Holy Spirit is in charge of a prayer meeting, I have seen young people pack into those prayer meetings. They say, “I will cut everything else out, but I am going to be at that prayer meeting.” Why? Because in the prayer meeting they see things happen that are illustrations of biblical truths. They see people praying for things led by the Spirit of God, and then they see the answers.
Then the prayer meeting becomes the most exciting place in the life of God’s people. This principle of togetherness is so important. I only want to underline it.
The second thing about the character of spiritual warfare is the absolute leadership of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord Jesus is at the right hand of God. It is the Holy Spirit Who makes Him a living reality to us.
The Holy Spirit takes the burden that is in the heart of the Lord Jesus, brings it into our spirit, and it comes out by the power of the Holy Spirit through the mouths of different believers as we are together. Then it goes back to the Father. Is that not an amazing thing? It is all fellowship.
It is the Lord Jesus and His Body in fellowship under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Do not ask me why we need to pray in this way. I only know that the Lord does not do things unless we do. But if we learn how to pray in this way, it is marvellous.
The Lord Jesus put it very simply in Matthew 16:18:
Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
When we look at church history, it seems to us that the gates of hell have prevailed against it again and again. Some people say, “Ah, well, the Lord is building it in the invisible. Apparently it does not matter what happens down here; it is all being done somewhere we cannot see.” But that is nonsense.
The Lord went on to say, “Unto thee have I given the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Gates have locks. If we do not learn how to use keys, it is almost as if the Lord says, “My building work will be frustrated.”
We can lock up the gates of hell and stop the devices and strategies of the powers of darkness from being fulfilled. We can unlock the gates of hell and let out the captives. We have to learn this. This is spiritual warfare.
But we can only do it under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. I must tell you that there are a thousand and one things done under the name of the Holy Spirit that the dear Holy Spirit knows nothing about whatsoever.
People are always saying the Spirit led them to do this, the Spirit led them to do that, the Spirit told them this, and the Spirit told them that. So we have another problem. Here we come back to togetherness.
The principle is togetherness. It is not that the Holy Spirit just told you something and you are going to force through what you think the Holy Spirit told you. It has to be in fellowship. It has to be moderated in fellowship.
Do not be afraid of your brothers and sisters, even if they have many weaknesses and failings. If you will trust the Lord in them, the best will come out of them.
It is amazing when you share something with a brother whom you feel may not be quite free, but you trust the Lord in him. I know it myself. Sometimes people have come to me and asked me something, and ideally I wanted to tell them what I thought they should do. But the very fact that they come brings an inhibition. I cannot tell them what I think the Lord wants them to do.
It is amazing when we trust the Lord in one another. We put each other on our mettle. Even the poorest people suddenly begin to reveal the Lord.
This togetherness and leadership are very important. We must know the will of God in spiritual warfare. This is not hit-and-miss. You do not just fire your weapons anywhere you think. If you fire long enough and in a wide enough range, you are bound to hit something, but you cannot do that.
All you will do is invite enemy attention. When we begin to shoot our ammunition all over the place, all we do is reveal where we are. The enemy says, “Silence that. They must be silenced. We know where they are now and what they are up to. Even though they are making a mess of it now, they might suddenly learn how to do it. So we will wipe them out.”
We have to know what is the will of the Lord.
In our prayer times, very often our own ideas, concepts, and opinions hold sway. You have people who come into a prayer meeting with a burden for Nepal. It does not matter what the rest of the company is burdened about; they have a burden for Nepal, and Nepal is going to get mentioned in this prayer meeting.
I think that is very sad, because the Holy Spirit is leading a whole company of people in another direction. Why force your burden on them? Why not leave that burden and trust the Lord that, as you move with the people of God in the way the Holy Spirit is leading, your burden will get answered?
Is it not interesting, this word “supplication”? In 1 Timothy 2, the Apostle Paul says, “With supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings.” He puts supplications first.
In Ephesians 6:18, the Apostle Paul says:
With all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.
This word “supplication” comes from a Greek word meaning a beseeching appeal. It is an appeal that you make to a potentate, a king, a lord, a duke, or an emperor. It is not a small appeal; it is a fervent, earnest, beseeching appeal.
I love the word inquiry. This is where we fail so often. Instead of stopping for a while and inquiring of the Lord, “Lord, how do we pray about this situation?”, we rush ahead. The Lord can lead us. He can actually reveal to us what His strategy is.
Once we have that strategy of the Lord, the whole thing begins to take shape. I could give you many examples of times when I have been involved in different problems—corporate and sometimes even national—where we had to seek the Lord, really seek Him. Then the Lord gave us the answer, and as we prayed that through, we saw the most amazing things happen.
Supplication is the gateway. You cannot know anything of real intercession without supplication, and you certainly cannot be involved in spiritual warfare unless first you know what it is to supplicate the Lord, or inquire of the Lord.
Do you remember how King David, again and again, even before he was king, would inquire: “Shall I go up against them, or shall I stay here? Shall I go this way, or shall I go that way?” He was told, “Go this way,” “Go that way,” or, “Stand still.”
We inquire of the Lord. We find out, “What is the directive, Lord? What is Your mind concerning this situation?”
Then we must have the Word of God in our hand by the Holy Spirit. It is the sword of the Spirit. I said something about that last night, so I will not say much more, other than that the way we know the will of the Lord is that He not only reveals to us the key to the situation, but He gives us His Word.
Once we have that Word in our hand—that sword of the Spirit in our hand—the Holy Spirit has given and applied that Word to the situation. Now we have the weapon. Now what do we do with it? It is truth. Now we make a declaration.
Please understand what I am saying. A declaration is not a prayer. It is not a request. It is not “maybe,” “if,” or “possibly.” A declaration is a step of faith in which we declare what the Lord has shown us over the situation.
There may be a situation in which the enemy seems all-powerful, but the Lord has given us some word that He is in charge of it, that He is King over it, and Lord over it. Together we stand up and say, “The Lord is King over this situation. This situation is under the feet of our Lord Jesus.”
We are not saying, “Lord, we want this situation to be under Your feet,” or, “Lord, please get the victory in this situation.” That has come earlier. Now we have come to a point where we can take action, and we make a declaration.
Sometimes it has to be followed by action—concrete action. We fail very often because we do not always take the declaration into some concrete action. We do not always have to, but very often we do. I hope this makes sense to you. It is very, very important.
Here are two last points which I believe are very important in this matter of spiritual warfare. We must hide ourselves in the Lord Jesus. Warfare is warfare. Never run into it helter-skelter.
Always stop for one moment, especially the leadership, and say, “Let us hide ourselves in the Lord, everybody.” This is putting on the whole armour of God.
Why does it say “the whole armour” twice in Ephesians 6? It is not good enough to have half the armour on. That means you are vulnerable in one single area. The enemy can wipe you out even though you have two-thirds of the armour on.
If you have the armour on right up to here—the shield and the sword—but not the helmet, your head is vulnerable. If you have not got the breastplate on, your head may be covered, your feet may be shod, and your loins may be girded, but your heart can be got.
If you have not got the shield of faith, a fiery dart can get in between the armour, where there are joints, and get right in with poison in it. Then you are paralysed; you are knocked out. That is why we need every bit of this armour.
Some people get neurotic about this. They spend the whole time thinking, “Have I got something on my feet? Have I got my helmet, my shoes, my sword?” Then the enemy says, “Something is missing. Something is missing.” They say, “Yes, something is missing. Let us look again.”
I heard one brother say that people should stand in front of a mirror and put on the armour. I think that is a neurosis. That is terrible. My dear friends, this armour is the Lord Jesus. All you have to do is hide yourself in Him. That is where you are. You abide in Him.
Remember that all these parts of the armour are named so that we know there are areas in which we can be caught out.
An unforgiving spirit is one of them. Your feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. When we are out of peace with one another, our feet cannot walk together. We cannot move together. Then there is trouble.
An unforgiving spirit is the best way to be vulnerable to the enemy. If we have bitterness in our hearts—between husband and wife, parents and children, children and parents, brother and brother, or brother and sister in the fellowship—then we have not got the whole armour on.
Then there is dishonesty. The breastplate of righteousness is, of course, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus, but you cannot hide behind His justifying work and be dishonest. If you are, then somehow you are vulnerable in this battle.
Take also the matter of unbelief. We can have an evil heart of unbelief. You cannot take the shield of faith and say, “I do not believe. I think this is a fairy story. I do not believe the Lord breaks into situations. I do not believe He can heal people. I do not believe there are such things as demons.” What is the point? Unbelief—an evil heart of unbelief.
Put it into the positive: we need love, we need holiness, and we need faith.
One other point about spiritual warfare: wrestling is not a polite sport. What I mean is this:
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Wrestling means, first, you have got to get a grip. There are times when your opponent may be sitting on top of you and has got a grip on you. It does not mean you will not win.
Wrestling is a contact sport. It is not a nice, pleasant kind of thing like tennis. Tennis may make you perspire, especially in the humidity here, but it is a very polite sport. Wrestling is vulgar. You have almost naked flesh sitting on almost naked flesh, dripping with perspiration. It is a horribly physical sport.
Is it not interesting that the Apostle Paul did not say we are involved in a lawn-tennis championship, not with flesh and blood but with principalities, powers, world-rulers, and hosts of wicked spirits? He said, “We wrestle.”
There is perseverance needed in prayer. If we think spiritual warfare means we can identify the enemy in a moment and immediately down him, we have another thing coming. We have to be under the direction of our Head.
Sometimes it will take days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, and sometimes a lifetime. We have to learn through faith and patience—through endurance—to inherit the promises of God.
It is exciting when something happens at once. You go into a prayer meeting, pray for something, and immediately it is answered. What a thrill it is for everybody. The Lord does that sometimes just to encourage us. We all say, “Is that not amazing? We prayed for something, and the whole thing changed instantly.”
I gave you one or two examples last night of things that changed almost immediately when people prayed. But do not let us think that happens every single time. It does not.
Wrestling is wrestling. There are times when the enemy sits on us, when there is such heaviness because we have got all those two hundred and fifty pounds sitting right on top of us, and we are pinned underneath with hardly any breath left in us. This is warfare.
There are so many other things one could say about this matter, but I think we have to finish. There is a limit to what we can take in.
When we look at all these matters that we have been talking about, I believe that we can together move like an army under the direction of the Lord of the army. I think that is a marvellous thing.
We have a challenge here: a challenge to be involved. Our Lord Jesus said again and again concerning the last days of world history, “Watch and pray.”
Why did He say “watch”? Did He mean merely, “Do not go to sleep”? It does mean keep awake, but did He mean more than just keep awake?
Watch. See what the Lord is doing, and see what the enemy is doing. Have an understanding of the time. As you watch, you will be able to pray. If you do not watch, you will not be able to pray effectively. But if you watch the Lord and what He is doing, and come under His direction, you will be able to pray effectively.
Watch and pray. It is a challenge to be involved in this kind of prayer.
The second part of the challenge is to grow in the Lord. Some of you are young in the Lord, and as you have listened to me you may wonder, “Well, I do not think I could be involved in it.” Oh yes, you can.
You have no idea what the Lord could do with you, however young you are in physical years. Once you commit yourself to the Lord, He will start your education and training. You will be surprised how He begins to lead you with others into this whole matter of real prayer warfare.
Thirdly, the challenge is to suffer hardship.
What does the Apostle mean by “suffer hardship”? He means, really, suffer discipline. The training of a soldier is not a bed of roses. There are all kinds of things involved in training to harden a person, harden their muscles, develop their muscles, and develop their responses and reactions.
It is no easy job, and no one can be a soldier unless he is prepared to suffer hard discipline and hardship. That is why the Apostle Paul says, “Suffer hardship.”
In the affluent society in which we live, a kind of effeminate, spineless, anaemic Christianity has swept through the whole of evangelical and even charismatic Christianity. It is all a question of what I get, how I can be satisfied, how I can be fulfilled, and all the rest of it. We do not want anything to do with hardship or discipline.
But there is no way to become a soldier of the Lord Jesus except by being prepared to suffer hardship, to be disciplined, and to be trained. Here is the challenge. Are you ready for that?
The last challenge is to be in fellowship with one another. “Suffer hardship with me.”
Sometimes it is easier to suffer hardship on one’s own, but we have to be related. Here was this Apostle, from whom all the churches had turned away.
Sometimes we think, of course, Paul had to be in the right and they had to be in the wrong. I do not have much doubt that if we knew the real situation, we would listen to the churches’ complaints and the brothers’ stories. They would talk about Paul’s weaknesses, failings, how sometimes he was quick and a bit impetuous, and the way he wrote that letter.
“First he says, ‘I am sorry I wrote the letter,’ and now he says, ‘I see that it was absolutely right that I wrote it.’ How can you trust the man?” There were reasons why those churches turned away. I have got to meet Paul one day, so I do not want to justify them against him, but what I am saying is that it is never all one-sided.
I remember asking Elizabeth Fischbacher, when I was young in the Lord, “Did Brother Nee have any faults?” I remember her turning around with those big eyes, looking at me, and saying, “Faults? Brother Nee had faults? Brother Nee was a great man with great faults.”
I have never forgotten it. It was such a shock to me. I thought, “Well, of course, you cannot have a single fault.” But I can tell you from my experience of dear Brother Nee: he was a great man with great faults.
I have no doubt there are many people who could say of me, “He is not so great, but he has great faults.” We have all got faults. The older we get to know one another, the more we see them.
Here is this beloved Apostle Paul, with all his problems, temperament, weaknesses, and failings. He is near the end, and he says to his beloved Timothy, “Suffer hardship with me. Stay with me. Let us go through together.”
Let us not just fall out, but let us move together in the Lord, knowing full well what we are in ourselves. Let us find the Lord in one another, and let the Lord discipline, qualify, and educate us so that we learn the lessons we need to learn.
May the Lord bless every one of us, and may He use these words that we have given on this whole matter of spiritual warfare to challenge and re-energise us, redefine things, clarify things, encourage what needs to be encouraged, and correct what needs to be corrected.
May we all be good soldiers of the Lord Jesus. Shall we pray?
Lord, we want to be good soldiers of Yours. Forgive us, Lord, that so often we draw back from the hardship, discipline, and training. But Lord, hear our cry and reach our hearts this morning.
Lord, challenge us on the deepest levels of our being to be all that You want us to be, not only individually but together. Lord, will You teach us how to war this warfare of the Spirit? Will You teach us how to fight this good fight of faith and lay hold on the life eternal to which we are called?
Teach us, Lord, how to cast down strongholds, casting down imaginations and high things exalted against the knowledge of God, bringing thoughts into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Lord, teach us. You only can teach us.
Teach us how to stand against the coming strategies and devices of the devil. Teach us how to withstand and, having done all, stand in Your will and Your purpose with Your Word, so that we shall see victory after victory registered on this earth—in lives, human situations, relationships, marriages, families, businesses, our life together as Your people, and in the work of the gospel.
Lord, hear us as we commit ourselves to You. We are unworthy servants of Yours, Lord. We have to say that, and unprofitable. But You have saved us, called us, and said that You will never leave us nor forsake us.
Dear Lord, fulfil Your purpose in our lives, each one, and in our life together as Your people. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.