Beloved, the thrust of our message today is that our weapons of warfare are not carnal, and fights with our adversaries are never in the physical but in a realm that is invisible to the naked eye. Therefore I implore you to open up your spirit as you read through this message. It should be known that the first qualification for anybody at all who wants to fight spiritual battles successfully is that he must be born again. Now we are talking of being genuinely born again, often times the thing people call new birth is actually not new birth, as contained in the scriptures. The stand of the Bible is very clear on this issue: “If any man be in Christ, he becomes a new creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17). And 2 Corinthians 2:17 says, “For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.”
So, the truly born again are people who have rejected their old forms of life, and have left the world of sin alone only to live in this world as sojourners, visitor, and strangers with the strong conviction that there is a better place already prepared for them by their Creator. These are people who love God more than any other thing. These are the qualifications as far as the Bible is concerned. Anybody who is not born again is not a Christian for all Christians are meant to be born again. Being born-again is not church membership, nor water baptism, nor the signing of baptismal card; neither is it bathing at the Bar beach or the hanging of a very big cross on your neck. New birth is a spiritual thing and those that are born again are the true children of God. They no longer have the urge for things of this world. Vices like drinking, smoking, telling lies, womanizing, anger and the likes are no longer part of their lives. These are the truly born again.
A long time ago I lived close to a place where people were being screened for admission into the police force. There, I saw a friend of mine who could not pass his first and second term examinations trying to enlist in the force. He did not also qualify because he did not meet the required criteria of good height and broad chest. So it is in the spiritual. You must be born again to qualify to use spiritual weapons. I tell you one secret; the reason the enemy is driving many people from pillar to post is because he can find something in their lives which he is using against them. God, too, allows the devil and his evil spirits to be pursuing them. That thing is acting as a magnet, drawing evil into such lives.
2 Corinthians 10:3 - 4 says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh.“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.” The Bible says our weapons are not physical but are spiritual. Some cigarette smokers give dubious reasons like nervousness as being responsible for their indulging in such dangerous act. This is a lie because it amounts to using physical means to solve a spiritual problem. It is not possible at all. For this same reason you cannot use candle and incense to drive away evil spirits. It is not possible! You cannot use a physical material to solve a spiritual problem. It is only a spiritual approach that will solve a spiritual problem.
I was told a story about two boys who went on a journey to a village. They bought certain things and on their way back home, some people met them on the way, beat them up and took away all they had. When they got home they reported to their father who promised to assist them to prevent a future occurrence. So, during their next trip to that village, their daddy gave them a small ring and instructed them to use it on anybody who harassed them. He assured them that the ring carried enough power that if they slap their victim with it, he will fall down and begin to urinate. During the journey, they had the ring on but on the way nobody harassed them. But they themselves now started to look for trouble. They deliberately provoked other people so that they could use the ring on them. They really trusted in the ring. They decided to fight one man but something happened; mistakenly the ring dropped on the floor and they could not pick it. Sensing danger, the man struggled with them and picked the ring, then trouble started.
When the boys had that ring they were confident. The same thing applies to Christians. The reason many Christians are so fearful today is because they do not have power. The spiritual weapons are lacking and many are even ignorant of their usage. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual and when as a Christian you know how to use them you will begin to experience certain miracles you have never experienced before and you will be confident at all times. If anyone says you should not go to certain places, you will ignore him and go. If they say someone is powerful, you will throw the statement back by saying that Jesus is more powerful. Then you will march forward and employ your weapons there and experience God’s miracle.
The Bible is very clear about confident actions based on the power of God. When you take such actions based on faith, God will just be looking at you because everything you need is already within you. One spiritually troublesome man went to a village, generally regarded as highly demonic, to hold a crusade. As he was preaching he discovered that his interpreter was becoming very afraid. When he said certain things, the man simply refused to interpret them. The man then assured the interpreter that he (the preacher) was the one talking; therefore he should not be afraid but should interpret whatever he said. As the man was preaching people were putting their hands into their pockets and bringing out their juju (charms). But the man began to pray and was not afraid and the result was that most of the young men in the village who were partaking in the worship of the village idols got converted. They started to go to his church in the evenings when he held revival services. Certain demonic villagers got angry at the success of this crusade and planned to attack the church with their juju (charms). On the first day, they gathered themselves at the back of the congregation and started to invoke the powers of their juju, but the Christians were unmoved. On the second day, when they came, the Christians were ready for them. As they started calling on their charms, the preacher ordered the Christians to "bring out their own charms too" and they acted as if they actually had something in their pockets. And as soon as they brought their hands out of their pockets and burst into praises, confusion immediately ensued. Some of the men carrying charms instantly got paralysed.
Beloved, these Christians did not ask for angelic assistance. They only used one of their weapons which is praises and pandemonium occurred.
When Christians become very bold as it used to be in the past, they will not fear all those things witch doctors are hanging on their necks. They will speak the word of God and command the fire of God to fall. But to do this, you need to know the weapons. When David was going to fight Goliath, he did something very simple. He did not pick just one stone, he picked five. Why did he pick five? Because he concluded that if the first one could not get Goliath down, he will use others. He needed just one and by the time he used the first one, Goliath was no more.
Let us clarify one point about this: You must know that we must put our weapons to use offensively. You must go out there to fight. You don’t sit in your house and say: “Well, God save me, protect me, don’t allow my children to die, make sure that your shadow is over my head.” If you only seek to protect yourself without carrying out any attack, you are looking for trouble. No army in this world can win any battle if it concentrates its weapons on defense only. If it does not fight back it can’t win. This is the reason many people are not winning. Some people are Psalms addict. They just recite the Psalms to protect themselves.
Christians are soldiers and the type of warfare that we are fighting is not like that of the army of certain African countries where the generals just relax in their offices everyday. We don’t fight our own that way, we don’t sleep for 24 hours. We should stop our attitude of sitting down and wondering where the devil is going to strike next. It should be the reverse, the devil should be anxiously wondering where we are going to strike. This is so because Colossians 2:15 says, “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”
Jesus spoiled principalities and powers. Not only that, he made a show of them in the open. He performed this feat not for Himself but for us. He defeated principalities and powers for you and I. Some people often times use the following phrases: “I don’t know," "perhaps," "may be," "it could be," or possibly.” You must stop speaking this way and start confessing what the Lord wants you to say. The Bible says we are more than conquerors. The conqueror will not only win the battle, he will take captives as well. The Lord has given us weapons and has not left us ignorant concerning their usage. Of course ignorance is no excuse.
Our first spiritual weapon is prayer. Ephesians 6:18 says, “Praying always with all prayer and supplications in the spirit and watching, there unto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.” If you begin to read from verse 6 you will discover issues of spiritual defense and many other things that are spiritual. But when it begins to talk about spiritual weapons, the first thing that it mentions is prayer. Beloved, prayer is the greatest of all the weapons and it is in this that many Christians are weak. The devil can perform many functions highlighted in the Bible but he cannot pray because there is nobody he can pray to. Apart from that the devil has fallen. Therefore, he does not fight a battle against a person that prays, because he knows that the advantage such a Christians has over him is that he can pray to God, but he ( the devil) cannot do that.
For this reason Luke 18:7 says, “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?” So prayerlessness is a serious disaster and unfortunately most Christians don’t pray. Every Christian must learn the principles of prayer. Some Christians complain that after praying for five minutes they don’t know what to pray about again, but we often counsel them that certain problems in their lives require more than five minutes prayer.
The weapon of persistent prayer produces outstanding results. Daniel prayed for 21 days on a particular issue: he refused to give up until he received the answer. He just kept praying until after 21 days when the angel of the Lord came to him and said: “Daniel, since the first day, the Lord answered but when I was bringing the reply, the prince of Persia met me and has been fighting with me.” If Daniel had stopped praying the angel would not have had enough power to come and give answers to him. The angel also told Daniel: “I am going back now, the devils are going to fight me again.” This event in the Bible shows that there are three heavens. There is the heaven which we call the sky or firmament, where we see the sun, the moon, etc. There is the second heaven, where evil spirits reside. Remember, the Bible talks about spiritual wickedness in high places. This is the headquarters of principalities and powers. Then there is the third heaven, the throne of God. Prayer becomes hard sometimes because it has to pass through the first and second heavens, before it gets to the third heaven; and evil forces try their best to prevent it from passing through to the third heaven. It must struggle to get there before the miracle will happen. If you have not been praying, it means you are not using your weapon. Then you have to start doing so now. Praying as a whole can be divided into two groups: There is what is called praying in the Spirit and there is praying with understanding.
1Corinthians 14:14 -15 says, “For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the understanding also.”
When you are praying with understanding, that is with your brain, your mind and your intelligence, you are limited by your vocabulary or your knowledge, because you can only pray to the extent to which you are knowledgeable. You can pray only to the extent of the vocabulary that you have. Once you run out of words, nothing happens again. But if you can pray in the spirit, you have the power to bring confusion to the camp of the devil. If you cannot pray in the spirit you need to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
The second weapon is praise. When Moses and the Israelites started praising the Lord in the wilderness, they experienced the manifestation of God’s power. Exodus 15:10 says, “Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty water.” So, when somebody begins to praise the Lord, he has a great weapon at his disposal. Psalms 22: 23 says, “Ye that fear the Lord praise him, all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.” And Psalm 149:5 says, “Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds.” When you do that, you are destabilising the devil. Praises can do wonders. In Acts of the Apostles, we read about Paul and Silas in a prison. When they began to praise God, their chain broke.
Another weapon for fighting the devil to a standstill is the blood of Jesus. Revelation.12:11 says, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
There is power in the blood of Jesus. When you plead the blood of Jesus before you sleep, you have protected yourself. No demon will be able to touch you because of the power in the blood of Jesus. And when we sing songs about the blood of Jesus we are singing powerful songs because the blood is responsible for our redemption, forgiveness, cleansing, justification and sanctification. One small girl of about two years did not know how to sing any other song in the church apart from “There is power, there is power, there is power in the blood of Jesus.” She sang this song both day and night. One day, something interesting happened. Her mother washed the girl's underwears and hung it outside to dry and the wind blew it into the house of a herbalist. Immediately, everything that the herbalist put on the wall fell off. He was scared, and began to chant incantations, thinking that something great had come to attack him. He tried to pick up the underwear several times but felt some shocking sensations so he stopped. He tried to use a stick but he still felt the sensations. He decided to pour oil on everything in his house to prevent the underwear from affecting them. He even cried because he had never seen such a thing in his life. He wondered aloud: “What sort of power is this, how can they attack people with an underwear.” As soon as the child’s mother discovered that the underwear was missing she started to inquire from neighbours if they saw it. The herbalist overheard her and then told her that it must be the one in his house. On getting there, the woman recognised the underwear as that of her child, but as she made to pick it up, the herbalist screamed warning her not to touch it. He told her that he had been fighting the mysterious object. As he argued with the woman, the little girl came in and simply picked up her underwear and went away. The herbalists stood dumbstruck.
This shows the power in the blood of Jesus. The little girl confessed the blood so much that it thoroughly soaked the underwear. When you know what you are doing, the devil will tremble. When you don’t know what you are doing, he knows. Evil powers can see. So, we need to equip ourselves with spiritual weapons. A sister who was kidnapped started praying and everything began to scatter in the place. Her kidnappers gave her a serious warning against praying but she persisted to pray silently. They sensed that she was still praying and ordered her to stop. They were almost going to finish her but she used her finger to write the "blood of Jesus" on the ground, then the whole place turned upside down because of the power in that blood. You must understand the weapons that you have and be able to use them. It is very important to know your weapons. Do not leave anyone behind.
Another spiritual weapon is the fire of God. Hebrews 12:29 says, “For our God is a consuming fire.” What will God consume? He will consume the works of the devil. He is not interested in consuming pieces of paper which cannot pose problem to anyone. He will simply ask them to disappear and become soil. Psalm 104:4 says, “Who maketh his angels spirits; His ministers a flaming fire.” God can turn you into a flaming fire so that when somebody touches you with the intention of doing you harm, the person will have a serious problem because he will be touching fire. If you get to an environment and begin to say fire of God come into this environment and somebody says, “No, I don’t want you to pray like that, pray in another way," such a person has a problem and should be suspected.
Some years ago when I was in London, a woman came to me and complained that her husband, children and house girl were demonic. I could discern that that was not her first husband. I asked her which of her husbands and she said her fourth husband. I counselled her to go home and pray that the fire of God should come upon her and also upon the walls of her house. She went home that night and prayed the prayer point. The next evening, she was with us again and said that none of her children slept well and that the force that was pressing her down on the bed continued. The next day she prayed the same prayer and the children refused to sleep. She brought the children and we began to pray for them, they were seriously demonic, including the baby among them. They were all from different fathers. Then I said, “When you get home put your hand on your head and command the fire of God to enter into your life.” I noticed that when she came to fellowship the next day her face was swollen. She seemed to have fallen down. I asked her what happened? She said, “Please, sir, give me another prayer point. I don’t want to pray this one again because when I prayed it, I fell down and hit my head on the chair. I said, “Ok, since you don’t want to pray it again we will pray it for you.” You see, when you challenge evil things with the fire of God, they just have to leave and if they do not want to leave, they will suffer. If you shout fire, they will try to endure it, pretending that they are not there, waiting for you to keep quiet but when you are the stubborn type and you refuse to keep quiet, they will be forced to jump out. You are going to use these weapons now and command fire into several areas of your life and I expect you to have results, in Jesus’ name.
PRAYER POINTS
1. I hold the blood of Jesus against every power of darkness working against my life, in the name of Jesus.
2. Father Lord, fill me afresh with your fire, in the name of Jesus.
3. I refuse to give up at the edge of my breakthrough, in the name of Jesus.
4. Let the fire of God consume every hindrance to my spiritual breakthrough, in the name of Jesus.
5. I loose myself from any bondage by the power in the blood of Jesus, in Jesus’ name.
6. Let the arrows of fire locate my oppressors and cut them into pieces, in Jesus’ name.
7. Let the stone of fire hit the forehead of my Goliath, in the name of Jesus.
8. I reject every spirit of fear, in the name of Jesus.
