Paul says this is a terrible predicament. He struggled, just like us.

DO I BELIEVE IN GOD AND STOP SINNING? OR SIN WITH DISBELIEF?

Some Christians believe spiritual warfare as battling demons- fighting invisible demons, wielding imaginary weapons against the opponents out to destroy us. The enemy is there, but we cant physically stomp on him. The enemy doesn’t stand in front of you throwing punches. He works on your mind, trying to convince you to sin, disbelieve in God’s love for you, confuse you, destroy you with fear and doubt. He works on us constantly with mind games.

WHERE DOES BELIEVEING BEGIN? In your mind. Your heart and flesh doesn’t “think”. it’s the mind that holds all that is real on the battlefield. Its where the enemy works hardest to get to you.

Two things are probably happening when you feel afraid for no apparent reason-

1. Your mind is overactive

2. A little spirit of fear is working on you…playing you like a puppet

What are the greatest battles we face every day? Battles with the flesh, with the sin of life. Just what Paul was talking about…we fight temptation in all forms small and large. Every foul spirit of the enemy is unrelenting, unceasing in their activity to try and gain influence over our minds. Plant a seed of doubt about god, even with our imaginations.

That battle was fought in your mind. The Spirit of God influenced you to rebuke the unpleasant thoughts …just as lust was trying to get you to sin. Your spirit and flesh were at war. The mind must be renewed by the word of God. The flesh is not renewed, it dies and rots away.

There are 2 forces within you, the spiritual and the carnal (flesh) battling for control of your mind. They each have an agenda-- one good, one evil.

Our minds are battlefields. When we are saved we repent our sins. We also become more aware of sin, sometimes it seems like we are worse off because we are always repenting. We are more aware that we may not be living as we could or should.

Its unending. The only time we seem to get a break is when we are sleeping, and even then some of us don’t get one.

God says in His word that He will bring everything into the light, and the closer you come to Him the more exposed the darkness in you becomes. Its not that you are becoming a worse person, you are becoming SIN CONSCIOUS. We become more aware of how often we fall and that is something we should be grateful for not ashamed of. The holy Spirit is cleansing us everyday with the blood of Jesus and this cleansing process makes us more aware of sin.

GALATIONS 7:17 tells us there are 2 forces constantly fighting within us. The enemy’s purpose is to destroy your relationship with God.

We must be watchful of these attacks. We cant necessarily see them but they bombard our minds with wrongful thoughts- lust, anger, murder, theft etc. We have to resist them and remember that we are not alone in the fight.

I find it amazing that God tells us that we have enough power to just resist the devil and he will flee. To have that power you have to draw closer to God…. Not carry bitterness or unforgiveness or unconfused sin in our hearts. Then we can freely draw close to God and rebuke the enemy’s temptations. God didn’t leave us to fight on our own. He gave us a supernatural helper, the Holy Spirit to live within us. We are warriors for God, but we must accept the truth of our power.

From this scripture you see that God put his own spirit within us to give us all the power we need to fight our enemies. Not only do we get strength, but we have an unreserved amount of it, we get more and more as we need it. The Holy Spirit watches over us with tender jealousy. In the natural world jealous people are over protective, but the Holy Spirit isn’t in the natural, he fiercely protects those of us who belong to the Father. Think about that for a minute. Who lives within us? God does. We get so busy fighting the enemy we don’t take the time to acknowledge the awesome things God has done for each of us. The enemy doesn’t want us thinking about those things, he is terrified of us figuring out the truth! We are spirit first, flesh second. The spirit is eternal, the flesh is perishable.

What can we do to move toward the supernatural that lives within us? Believe God and what He says about us, believe what Jesus did for us and what Jesus gave us through salvation.

Search your bibles…. It says “through Him” “with Him” “in him”

Salvation was just the beginning.

Greater is He that is within me than He that is within the world.

We need to accept and understand that He leads us to triumph in every battle (even when it seems we’ve lost the battle) He uses defeat to train us for future victory, training us for Hid glorious purposes.

In Mark 16:17 it says those who believe shall use my authority meaning “acting in me and for me”. Remember Jesus never said “in my name get out” You ARE in His name and His name is IN you. When you command, He commands. We have to understand and accept the truth of what God has done for us, because HE wanted to, not because any one of us deserve it. He wanted to equip His children with every gift and power for His will.

Its sometimes difficult to grasp the love God has for us. He considers us the same as Jesus, His child. When God created sound in man and gave him words, He knew the power of words because he formed the heavens from just the word of His mouth. We must choose our words carefully and use them for His work.

Paul says in

Knowing who we are and whose name we are in gives us power. Paul understood that it isn’t “I” who live but Christ who lives in me.

The enemy will do and is doing all he can to prevent us from knowing this truth, because this truth, that the Holy Spirit lives within us will set us free from fear. The enemy keeps us so sin conscious that we may believe we are unworthy, too sinful to have the Spirit in us.

Philippians 2:7 says knowing who He was…He humbles himself

Jesus didn’t go around saying hey look at me I am the Son of God, look at me, I am special I have power. He KNEW who He was and was humbled himself. That’s what we are supposed to do.

In Ephesians 1:6 it says God chose us to be His through what Christ would do for us and we are holy in His eyes, without fault, covered with his love. That’s how God sees us, but how do we see ourselves, and each other?

The bible never changes. The enemy points out our flaws but God says we have none. Who do you believe? On whose word do you stand?

God loves us unconditionally, he forgives our sins and sees the spirit of His son within us. He looks at us spiritually. We need to spend less time on flesh thoughts- our weaknesses, and more time on what Jesus did for us, studying god’s word….then we will become more heavenly minded and not sin minded.

Our purpose is to praise God, give Him glory. We are gifts to Him that He delights in.

God knew our flesh would sin, but Jesus has paid for those sins, not some of them, but ALL OF THEM.

When we are dealing with the enemy sometimes we hesitate. Hesitation is a form of disbelief. We must be convinced of who we are in Him. CONVINCED WITHOUT HESITATION.

When we sin, or get tempted to sin, we repent because the spirit convicts us and the sin is washed away. Scripture tells us who we are and in what standing we are in before God.

Spiritual Warfare is battling to break free from the enemy’s lies.

Union means joined

Enveloped means covered over with something

Through the studying of spiritual warfare and reading more than usual I am reminded of a song that was sang in my church when I was younger, I didn’t understand the significance until now…