Each one of us must be prepared for conflict
No Christian can hope to enter the warfare of the ages without learning first to rest in Christ and in what he has done, and then, through the strength of he holy spirit within to follow him in a practical holy life here on earth. If he is deficient in either of these he will find that all the talk about spiritual warfare remains only talk; he will never know its reality. Satan can afford to ignore him because he does not count for anything.
- there are many direct attacks of Satan upon Gods children. Of course we must not attribute to the devil those troubles that are the result of our own breach of divine laws. we should by now know how to put those right.
The word 'stand' with its preposition 'against' really means 'hold your ground'.
This is not a command to invade foreign territory.
We are not told to 'march' but to 'stand', the ground we're on is really God's.
Overcomers are those who rest in the victory already given them.
Only those who sit can stand. Our power for standing, as for walking, lies in our having first been made to sit together with Christ.
... If a Christian is not sitting before God he cannot hope to stand before the enemy.
In our warfare the name of Jesus is powerful against satanic powers to bind and bring them into subjection.
The name of Jesus is where we get our authority from.
Divine work can only be done with divine power and that power is to be found in the lord Jesus alone.
The name: mission trip to a Chinese island one new year during the national holiday. They preached the gospel with no effect and asked the people 'why do u not respond?' to which they replied 'we already have a God Ta-Wang. He has never failed us he is an effective god.'
'how do you know you can trust him?'
'every year we have a festival, the date is revealed by divination and for the past 286 years it has been a perfect day without rain or cloud.'
'when is the date this year?'
'11th January at 8am the festival will be.'
'there will be rain on that day!'
People were outraged and soon the word spread among the twenty thousand villagers that the Christian God is going to bring rain on Ta-wangs parade. On the morning of the 11th they missionaries woke to a cloudless sunny day. They sat down for breakfast, said grace and then asked for rain. The God of Elijah showed up and sent a torrent of rain and floods through the village. When the devotees of Ta-Wang tried to carry his statue round in the rain they slipped and he fell off his sedan chair and cracked. They put him on and slipped again, eventually they had to abandon the parade. For the rest of the day it was cloudless and sunny. The priests of Ta-wan said that they got the wrong date and set another (14th at 6pm). Again a cloudless sunny day arrived and again and 6pm not a minute later the heavens opened and the parade abandoned. The name of Jesus is mighty.
We begin our spiritual life by resting in the finished work of the lord Jesus, that rest is the source of our strength for a consistent and unflattering walk in the world. And at the end of a gruelling warfare with the hosts of darkness we are found standing with him at last in triumphant possession of the field. Unto him... Be the glory... Forever.
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