BASIC INSTRUCTIONS IN SPIRITUAL WARFARE Part 1
How The Devil Operates (Part 1)
No matter how long you live on the face of the earth you will constantly be in the midst of
warfare. The word warfare means there is battle between two opposing forces, this is not a
physical warfare but a spiritual one meaning that one of the attributes of the battle that every
person here is engaged in is that this battle is invisible. This means that you cannot see into
the invisible realm some of the things that are happening around you.
Spiritual warfare that we are engaged in as God’s children is essentially between the spiritual
forces of evil and the spiritual forces of good. These are two different kingdoms, under the
spiritual forces of evil you have Satan at the helm of affairs, demonic spirits, and every man
and woman on the face of the earth that is living a life that is in opposition to God’s word
whether directly or indirectly. Then on the other side we have God at the helm of affairs, Jesus
Christ, the Holy Spirit, angels, and the saints.
God created Satan with a built in instrument of music, after some time sin was found in him by
the merchandise of his thoughts. Where the problem of the devil came from was from
unguarded thoughts, he began to say in himself “I will ascend above the throne of God, I will
become like the most high”, in his thoughts be began to covet and pursue things that were
rightfully God’s, he wanted to be more than what he was. Satan is not just a dark force but an
intelligent being, he has emotions, he has a will and he has a mission. There are many of God’s
children who are without a mission but the devil has a written life mission, he comes to steal,
kill and destroy [John 10: 10]. The devil is going to be treated as a morally responsible
individual at the end of time, God is going to judge the devil as a creature of choice. God is not
going to judge the devil as if the devil the devil had no choice because he made a choice in
heaven that sealed his fate, today he now has no choice.
The real name of Satan when he was in heaven is Lucifer and it means light bearer, it is
instructive for us to know that it is possible for you to be a light bearer and afterwards you
throw the light away. Lucifer is called Satan (adversary), devil (slanderer), Beelzebub, Belial,
the evil one, tempter, etc.
1Peter 5: 8
This is exactly the same description that is used for God, the bible says the eyes of the Lord go
to and fro the earth, but when the devil was asked in the book of Job he said “I am coming
from to and fro the earth.” If a person’s eyes is going to and fro it means the person is static
and he is looking at everywhere at the same time, that means that his eyes can cover where
he is looking at, but when you say a person is going to and fro it means his entire body is
moving. This is the scripture that shows that the devil is not omniscient or omnipresent, he has
to go to and fro but the eyes of the Lord go to and fro, Go sees the entire earth at the same
time but the devil does not.
The following points are therefore noteworthy:
1.
Satan is not omniscient, he doesn’t know all things
2.
Satan is not omnipotent, he is not all powerful.
3.
Satan is not omnipresent, he is not present everywhere.
In the bible Satan is compared to a snake, when you look at serpents that are poisonous
naturally the poison of serpent are divided into three categories according to the goal of the
poison. There are three targets of the enemy when a serpent bites you, there are serpents that
when they bite their poison goes to the heart, the function of that poison is to stop the heart.
There are snakes that when they bite the poison goes straight to the nerves to attack it and
freeze so that blood cannot get there, and there are poisons that they go straight to the blood.
These are three categories in the natural where the poison goes to, it is exactly the way the
devil works. When the devil comes to attack the child of God there are three things he is trying
to do:
1)
He is trying to poison your heart because he knows the heart is the fountain of all
operations, he wants to make the heart hard so he attacks the heart in any way he can attack
the heart. In the parable of the sower, a seed fell amongst thorns and the thorns choked it up.
This is a type of a heart that is filled with the cares of life and all of a sudden the word of God
could not live in that heart. Another seed fell on a soil but it did not have root in itself thought
it bore fruit upwards and when the sun came, it died. It is the heart that when it was
challenged on the strength of the word of God that he had embraced, it backslided. So the
devil will attack your hear, demonic spirit will attack your heart, they will choke your faith and
make you doubt the love of God and the word of God. One of the was the devil works on
believers is that he makes them to misjudge God, some of them take God for granted and
misinterpret the longsuffering of God towards them, others get angry with God and
misinterpret the discipline of God towards them.
2)
He seeks to attack your nerve, your nerve means your courage, your boldness.
3)
He seeks to attack the blood, he wants to put you in a place where the blood of Jesus
will not be effective for you, where you as a child of God will not be able to receive healing and
deliverance from God. The things that are your birthright as a child of God you will not be able
to receive them, this is a satanic attack, he wants to put you in a position where that poison
will put you away from the active operations of the blood and there is nothing in the Christian
faith without the blood of Jesus. The Holy Spirit power is manifested the most through the
blood and without the blood the Holy Spirit has no agent of movement.
There are four ways snakes protect themselves;
1.
They disguise; this is where most of us do not understand and why there is so much
severe judgment from God on hypocrisy. When you see a Christian living a life of duplicity,
when you see a pastor living a life of duplicity, he is a pastor and he is now living a life of sin
and he has lived in that sin to the extent that he is now enjoying it. Don’t let your conscience
become hard before you repent or where you are comfortable in sin and it is not making you
to cry anymore. The African biter snake freezes itself and sticks to the neck of a tree.
2.
Imitation.
3.
It increases in size e.g. the puff adder
4.
Frightening sounds
There are snakes that when they want to kill a man they will rope themselves around that
man, the boa will roll itself round that man and tighten the man and will not leave the man
until it has broken every single bone and joint and demobilize that man. When it has
demobilize that man it will start swallowing the man, it will start the swallowing from the
head. When the devil wants to destroy you he takes away your head away first, this means he
attacks your reasoning and your coordination, the way you interpret the word of God begins
to become the problem. You don’t reason straight, you take the word of God from the point of
logic.