For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-7

This passage is familiar to most of us. However, I find that the most familiar passages are the ones that we begin to take for granted and stop looking more deeply into the passage because we feel like we know it so well. The truth is that the Holy Spirit offers multiple layers of meaning so that each time we go back and mine the passage for more, we discover that there are still nuggets and veins of gold each time we dig a little deeper. I thought I would take another look at this familiar passage to see what else the Lord might highlight.

To begin with, Paul is writing to a church that has an elitist and disobedient faction within it. They have created division and hurt in the church through their own spiritual arrogance and tolerance for sin. They have brought worldly attitudes, values, philosophy, and rationalizations into the church and Paul is confronting them. In fact, he is threatening to make a personal appearance to deal with them if they do not repent soon.

Paul begins by saying that we, meaning the spiritually mature, do not fight with the weapons of the world but we have, at our disposal, weapons that are empowered by God. Those who want to oppose God are always in the position of bringing a knife to a gunfight. They will always be out-matched. The problem is that when we are attacked with the weapons of the world, we too often respond with the same weapons. When anger comes against us, we respond with anger. When we are criticized, we criticize in return. When we are slandered we get busy defaming our attackers. When someone pulls a power play at work, we try to respond with a greater manipulation of power.

When we fight as the world fights, we come into agreement with Satan. When we agree, we empower him instead of overpowering him. That is why Paul clearly told us, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom.12:21).   To be overcome by evil simply means that we have surrendered to the impulses of the flesh and have responded as the devil would respond, rather than as Christ would respond. We overcome evil in our own hearts first by doing good and then overcome evil in the world by the good we do to others. Our first step toward defeat is giving in to evil thoughts. Evil thoughts are simply ways of thinking that agree with Satan’s perspective rather than the mind of Christ.

An essential truth of spiritual warfare is that Satan gains access to us in the arena of our thought life. As Joyce Meyers put it, the battlefield is the mind. Paul’s statement to the church at Corinth was that these divine weapons would, first and foremost, tear down or demolish strongholds. The word that is translated as stronghold can also mean fortress. I think immediately of the fortresses in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. A fortress or stronghold is a strong place of protection where armies reside except when they go out to raid or do battle, then they once again withdraw to their stronghold. Sometimes, it is even a hidden place that the opposition cannot find such as David found with his men when evading King Saul.

Paul’s point is that wherever our thinking is not aligned with Christ, we give the enemy a place in our thought life to hide and to fight against us at opportune moments. A stronghold is not a random thought but is a pattern of thought that opposes the truth of God. It may be a pattern of thought that opposes the truth about Jesus but for believers, more often, it is a pattern of thought that opposes God’s truth about who we are in Christ, about forgiveness, about godly principles for living, or about God’s immense love for us and our security in him. Those thought patterns have been with us so long that we often are not even aware of how pervasive they are and how they color our thinking. When we minister deliverance to people, these belief patterns that have not been identified and repented of give the enemy a place to hide and the right to remain there.

When the moment comes, these thought patterns that are reinforced and amplified by the devil rise up as arguments against the truth of God’s word. Jesus declared that we would know the truth and the truth would set us free. God’s word is truth. When we insist on his word as the standard of truth rather than the wisdom of the world or our own past experiences, we are wielding a powerful and divine weapon.

However, when we say, “Yes, but…” to God’s word, we are inadvertently revealing our agreement with Satan and a stronghold inevitably exists. When we begin by saying “but…” we are almost always beginning to offer an argument as to why God’s word is not true in our case. We are the exception. To do so, aligns us with Satan rather than Jesus and automatically gives him authority in our life. It is important to identify these strongholds, renounce them, and repent of them. Then it is important to declare the word of God over any situation or feeling as the standard of truth upon which we will act and upon which we will stand.

The goal is to make every thought captive to Jesus Christ. The word for captive here is the word for prisoner of war. It is a military term that means not only to defeat an enemy who may run off and then engage us in battle again but to defeat and imprison that enemy so that he can no longer attack us. We do so by imposing the will and truth of God on patterns of thought that are in opposition to the word of God. Confessing the word of God over and over in opposition to patterns of thought I have identified in myself is a powerful strategy. We must only say about ourselves what God says about us. We must only say about a circumstance, what God says about that circumstance. We must not subject ourselves to sources of unbelief such as unbelieving friends or family members who constantly undermine our own faith. We must not subject ourselves to movies or songs that undermine our faith in God’s truth (the Da Vinci Code, etc.). We must not allow anger and unforgiveness to give Satan a place in our hearts. We must not allow lust to have its way with our thoughts.

When thought patterns and rationalizations that oppose God’s truth and standards become apparent, we must deal with them quickly and take them captive. The word arguments comes from the Greek word logismos. We immediately see the root of logic or human reason there. Human reason and worldly wisdom always rise up against God’s truth. All the foolishness about same-sex marriage and identifying as male or female based on your feelings is worldly wisdom that has already crept into the church because it sounds scientific, tolerant and non-judgmental. But it “sets itself up against the knowledge of God.” If you read the early chapters of 1 Corinthians you will see how the church had been impressed with worldly knowledge, eloquence, and education and had begun to give those things greater standing than the word of God. Paul declares that those strongholds must be torn down and taken captive.

Interestingly, strongholds in the days of Paul were actually fortifications within the walls of a city. If the walls were breached, then the army retreated to the stronghold or citadel which was an inner fortress that could be defended by fewer soldiers. Once the stronghold was taken, the battle was over. Too often we stop short in the battle. We push back against the devil, get a little relief as he retreats from his outer defenses, and then stop our pursuit. We fail to persist in getting God’s truth in our hearts or going deeper to find other thought strongholds that are still out of alignment with the Father. We breach the wall but don’t stay after it until the stronghold is demolished. We often speak about “removing another layer of the onion” in spiritual warfare. This reality of strongholds behind walls may reflect that truth.

The word pretensions alludes to high places or towers on a wall. These are places of pride and arrogance that do not want to surrender to God or to acknowledge being wrong or the need to repent. When these attitudes are not rooted out as well, the enemy comes back and we wonder why. These high places seem to allude to the Tower of Babel in Hebrew thought. That was a project based on man’s pride, his arrogance, and his desire to be independent from God. In essence it was the first expression humanism.

In spiritual warfare we have to identify and uproot the lies of the enemy and keep taking and retaking ground in our thought life. We have to identify pockets of pride and places within our hearts that we do not want to submit to Jesus. That is the process of renewing our minds. It is a joint effort between us and the Holy Spirit that, in most cases, will take a lifetime.

Our thought life is the primary place where spiritual warfare occurs. We must be active in the battle rather than passive. We need to find the hiding places and tear down strongholds without mercy. We need friends to point out those strongholds because they will often recognize them before we do. The Holy Spirit will reveal those strongholds if we sincerely ask and will provide the power to dismantle them. Paul tells us that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Freedom is God’s will for each of us and he is ready for us to go to war with Jesus at our side.

Most of us have been in a huge mall that we are unfamiliar with and have looked at a site map to see where we were in relation to a store or restaurant we were wanting to find. That little red dot with the balloon over it saying, “You are here,” became your reference point. Your next step, your plan for navigating the mall, the time you allotted to finding your favorite store, or whether you even had time to attempt to visit that store all depended on your reference point. Your reference point determines your belief about where you are, where you are going, and if your goal is even possible.  Your next steps were organized around that perspective.

But what if the reference point was inaccurate or out of date or what if you read the map incorrectly? What if some joker had changed the reference point on the map so that you were not at all where you thought you were? When your reference point is wrong, life become a mess and you keep ending up in unintended and undesirable places.

Jesus taught us that the kingdom of God is a reference point for the Christian life. It is a reference point for living and it makes all the difference. A clear example of that difference in found in a familiar story in John 6. Jesus was teaching along the shores of the Sea of Galilee where huge crowds were following him. In this account, Jesus asked Philip where they might buy bread to feed the crowds because they had not eaten all day. Philip immediately began a strategic analysis. First of all, there were about 5000 men plus women and children in the crowd. That translated to least twenty or twenty five thousand people in the crowd. Secondly, they were isolated and miles from any place that sold bread and it was highly improbable that anyone would have that much on hand even if a place were available. The final straw was cost. Philip quickly estimated that it would cost eight months wages to buy enough bread to feed the crowd anyway. If we assume that a month’s wages was equivalent to $4000 today, then we are talking about $32,000 to feed that mob one meal. The little band of disciples had nothing like that in their budget. Philip then deduced that the number might be reduced if there was already food in the crowd so a quick inventory was taken. The only inventory they could find was five small barley loaves and a couple of sardines. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that these people were not going to be fed. Perhaps, they should simply be sent away to find food for themselves.

The reference point for the apostles was the natural realm in which food and money are finite and numbers determine “real world” outcomes. However, Jesus lived from a different reference point. The apostles saw themselves rooted firmly in the natural realm while Jesus saw himself firmly rooted in heaven. There are no resource problems in heaven – no food shortages, no lack of money. Jesus simply determined by faith to draw on the resources of his Father’s kingdom. He blessed the barley loaves and sardines and then began to break them into pieces and place them in baskets to be distributed.  When the entire crowd had their fill, the apostles took up twelve baskets still full of food. Each apostle had his own basket to consider.

Our tendency is to assign the miracle to Jesus as something only he could do. That would miss the point. The point is that we ourselves are currently children of the King, citizens of heaven, and representatives of Christ on the earth. By faith, we have as much access to the resources of heaven as Jesus did. He came to show us what was possible in the kingdom of God for every believer not what was impossible.

If our reference point for living is the natural realm, then we will always be faced with impossible circumstances – not enough money, not enough time, incurable diseases, the fear of terrorism, etc. If our reference point is the kingdom of heaven, then there is a solution to every one of those needs. We may not know what the solution is or how it will come, but by faith we can know there is a solution available.

We should be clear that heaven does not promise that we will never find ourselves in a storm. In fact, Jesus said that is this world we will have troubles. He himself seemed to move form one “storm” to another. But as we find ourselves in a storm, we can know that heaven has a solution. That reference point allowed Jesus to sleep in a boat that was being tossed around in a violent squall while the apostles were gripped with fear and the anticipation of doom. Our anxiety levels in life are directly proportional to our reference point for living. If our reference point is our own resources or our own abilities, then we have every right to be filled with anxiety. If, however, our reference point is the resources and capacities of our Father in heaven and his willingness to share those with us, then why should we worry at all?

Think about it. What is your reference point for living? What are God’s promises concerning his care, protection, and provision for your life in this world? By faith, we have free access to heaven’s resources. If our faith is small, we can ask for more. God is pleased to give.

The elections are over but the fighting seems to have just begun. Whether you voted for Trump or not, he is now the president and our responsibility is now to pray for him. Millions of Christians prayed for God’s hand to be on this election, and now it is a matter of faith as to whether we believe God answered those prayers.

There are a number of “prophecies” floating around the internet that declare that God will use Trump for the benefit of God’s people as he used Cyrus, the King of Persia, in the days of Jewish exile. Some prophecies declare that Trump will be anointed by the Spirit of God and that he will enter the office whispering the name of Jesus but leave proclaiming it. All that remains to be seen.

Undoubtedly, the Never Trumpers will be cynical about these prophecies. Prophecies certainly need to be tested but Paul tells us not to despise prophecies (1 Thess. 5:20), so, perhaps, we should be hopeful. Certainly, God has historically acted in unlikely ways and worked through unlikely people. Having grown up in the sixties and seventies with the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, and Watergate I also tend to have a cynical streak that immerges from time to time along with a bent toward conspiracy theories.   However, I once received a prophetic word in which the Lord told me that I was a man of faith but my cynicism often worked against my faith. He encouraged me to jettison that mindset. It is a mindset that assumes the worst rather than the best and God is always about producing the best. Cynicism is the enemy of hope and God is all about hope.

So if we prayed sincerely for God to author the outcomes of this election, we should have hope that he will use Donald Trump to further the kingdom of God in America and the world. In that hope we should thank him for the outcomes and then begin to pray for his Spirit to move on this man and on his cabinet like never before.

The very fact that those who actively oppose Israel, promote abortion, and presume to redefine marriage and gender hate Trump with such venom may suggest that he is God’s man. Why else would the dark side of the spiritual realm be so filled with hatred for him? Regardless, our part should be to speak life and faith over this administration and to believe that God is up to something positive because he hears the prayers of his people. Our words have power. The tongue has the power of life or death. If we want America to prosper and be unified, we must speak blessings rather than curses over the nation and the new administration.

Throughout the history of Israel, most of her kings were evil and there seemed to be an irreversible decline in the culture. But every once in a while, God would raise up an unlikely man who turned things around…at least for a generation or two. True worship would be restored. Justice would be re-established. Integrity would be returned to government. Peace and prosperity would then mark a generation in Israel. We have four years to pray and believe God for good things in America before any progress we have made will be on the line again. We need to make the most of this window of opportunity that seems to be opening. President Trump is not the poster child for Christianity. He is not a spiritual leader. But he may well be the man God uses to reverse the decline of godly values in America by giving the church a voice again in American culture.

The truth is that for the tide to turn and continue to move in godly directions, these four years must be overwhelmingly positive in the outcomes for this nation. I hope we will each pray and speak into the success of this president for a great deal is at stake. As we begin to actively support Israel again, allow military chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus once more, and perhaps, return prayer to public schools, I expect blessings to come to America – a better economy, fewer natural disasters, the demise of political correctness, peace, and even racial reconciliation. I am hopeful, not because of Trump but because of a God who answers his people’s prayers.

But God works through his people and often waits for us to ask before he moves. The Holy Spirit puts things on our hearts that God wants to accomplish that even angels are unaware of. As we begin to pray and then to declare the word of God over situations, angels them receive their assignments and the spiritual realm begins to move. We cannot be cynical and silent or even content and silent for God will make of this presidency what we, as his representatives on earth, pray and declare over this nation. The world is an unstable place. Presidential bravado will not solve those problems but only the wisdom that comes from above along with the blessings and favor of God. I hope you will consistently pray for our leaders to receive both from the Father. Here’s hoping for a blessed four years and beyond.

There are several books that I like to read annually or, at least, review on a yearly basis because they have had such an impact on my thinking and, I hope, on my doing. One of those is Dutch Sheets’ classic book, Intercessory Prayer. I was scanning it again this evening, when a section once again caught my eye. I want to quote from his writing and then make a few of my own comments. It’s a little section on the difference between information and revelation and is worth thinking about.

“We need to understand – and I’m afraid most of us do not – the difference between information and revelation. Information is of the mind; biblical revelation, however, involves and affects the mind, but originates from the heart. Spiritual power is only released through revelation knowledge. The written word (graphe) must become the living word (logos). This is why even we believers must not just read but also abide or meditate in the Word, praying as the psalmist: “Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from Thy law” (Ps.119:18). The word “open,” galah, also means “unveil or uncover” – revelation. Information can come immediately but revelation is normally a process.

As the parable of the sower demonstrates, all biblical truth comes in seed form. Early in my walk with the Lord, I was frustrated because the wonderful truths I had heard from some outstanding teachers were not working for me. When I heard the teachings, they had seemed powerful to me. I left the meeting saying, “I will never be the same!” But a few weeks and months later, I was the same. As I complained to God and questioned the truth of what I had heard, the Lord spoke words to me that have radically changed my life: Son, all truth comes to you in seed form. It may be fruit in the person sharing it, but it is seed to you. Whether or not it bears fruit depends on what you do with it. “ (Dutch Sheets, Intercessory prayer, p.173).

The process of changing seed into fruit is all about cultivation and exercise. Many of us are full of biblical information. We quote what others have told us and, in a sense, live our Christian lives vicariously through them. When they talk about hearing from God, we feel as if we have heard from God through their experience although we have yet to hear from God personally. When they talk of supernatural moments, we revel in what God is doing out there somewhere, but we have never personally laid hands on a stranger we just met on the street and asked God to heal him. We rejoice in stories of what God is doing on the mission field, but we have yet to go there ourselves.

Information is rather one dimensional like ink on a page. However, it begins to take on additional dimensions when we begin to chew on it, ask questions about it, pray over it, fuss with God about it, imagine it happening in our own lives, and most importantly when we begin to actually act on it. As we do that, the Holy Spirit begins to reveal its reality to us and adds layers of meaning that we could never know apart from actually attempting what scripture calls us to do.

In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey summarizes the wilderness temptation of Jesus as a moment when Satan tempted Jesus with a shortcut. Satan told Jesus that he would give him all the kingdoms of the earth if he would only worship Satan. Jesus came to be king, and he could be a king without suffering on the cross if would only worship the devil. In effect, Satan offered Jesus a crown without the cross. But in the kingdom, we must all experience the cross before we get a crown. Revelation is the crown that comes after some hard work, long prayers, lots of questions, some frustration, and a bit of risky behavior. Too many believers live their Christian lives in the same way as a man might read a book on fly fishing, then start lecturing others on its merits and techniques without ever actually having put a line in the water. You really don’t know fly fishing or understand why you do certain things and avoid others until you have tangled your line in the bushes, lost a record rainbow because you tied a knot carelessly, or tried to cast a four ounce line into a 30 mph wind. The experience turns information into revelation.

The sacrificial and supernatural life of a believer was never meant to be lived vicariously through others. We are all meant to plunge into deep water, live with spiritual successes and failures, be content to live without all the answers, cry out to God when we get egg on our face, and become more determined to go deeper because we prayed for someone without effect and commanded a spirit that never budged.

As we stumble through the process, God’s seeds of truth become fruit that has substance, understanding, and deeper insights about God and life in Jesus. Importantly, that revelation has now come from our own hearts, rather than the heart of another. Jesus put it this way – we are to be doers of the word and not just hearers only. Hearers get information, doers get revelation. Jesus also said that if we keep his commandments (doing) he will come and show himself to us (revelation). So…when the revelation seems to dry up, we probably need to start living it out again (or for the first time) rather than living through others. Now quick, go do something spiritually risky! Blessings today in Him.

This is one of those “food for thought” blogs….something for you to consider. I was listening to a Bill Johnson sermon on YouTube a week or so ago, and he said something that resonated with me and that I have been mulling over since then. He said that whenever there is a prevailing spirit (demonic) over a people group, a city, or a nation, the church is either in active opposition to that spirit or is being influenced by that spirit. There is no middle ground.

I believe that is a true statement and, if it is true, there are a number of implications. First of all, there are certainly spirits assigned to nations, cultures, people groups, and individuals to promote evil there and oppose the works of God. In the Book of Daniel, we see demonic spirits referred to as the prince of Persia (Dan.10:13) and the prince of Greece (Dan.10:20). These were spirits of significant authority that were warring against Michael, the archangel, in order to hinder the work of God and to further the purposes of Satan in those nations. In the Book of Revelation, John wrote to the church at Pergamum and spoke of the city as a place where Satan had his throne (Rev.2:13), which speaks of a city over which Satan had great influence and spiritual authority.

In our own times, we clearly sense the influence of prevailing spirits in the Middle East that oppose Christ, his people, Israel, and life in genral. The unrelenting hatred and extremism of some groups there can only be understood by the influence of demonic spirits. When you look at Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and other places where millions died in concentration camps and mass graves, only a powerful demonic influence can account for such atrocities. We see the same level of influence now in Isis.

Even in America there are the prevailing spirits of Anti-Christ, anti-Semitism, sexual immorality, perversion, violence, and abortion that are having their way in our culture. The rapid acceleration of cultural decline in a once Christian nation is a clear indicator of demonic influence. For the past 50 years, most of the American church has been in passive opposition to these prevailing spirits rather than in active opposition. We have moaned about the decline of the church and our culture but have done so quietly over coffee or while cocooned in Sunday School classes. By and large, the result is that the church has been influenced by these spirits rather than these spirits being pushed back by the church.

How can any Christian church approve of abortion, active homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and the idea that Jesus is a Savior but not the only Savior? And yet many churches in America and many individual’s who identify themselves as Christians hold those cultural views. We have become toxically politically correct which is another way of saying that we don’t want to offend anyone by suggesting that they may be wrong or that their actions might be unacceptable. In that environment there can be no call to repentance. This political spirit is also a prevailing and highly manipulative spirit. Try running a household full of kids that way and see how well it goes. Running a nation that way has even greater repercussions. In recent decades, we have not shaped the culture but the culture has been busy shaping us. I believe it is because we have not actively opposed the prevailing spirits that have been and continue to influence America.

Lets transfer the principle from a national grid to a personal grid. Whatever prevailing spirits in our culture are doing to influence us individually, if we are not actively opposing them, then they are likely influencing us. Most believers are passive in much of their own spiritual lives. We hear cultural input day after day justifying and rationalizing unbiblical and ungodly values and lifestyles. We are likely to absorb the value only minutely day after day, but the accumulation effect impacts us as the months and years pass. Television and movies normalize sinful and perverse lifestyles so that we are no longer shocked or offended when we encounter those things. We hear proponents of abortion and same sex marriage offer their arguments day after day on talk shows and never hear a sermon or a teaching at church that pushes back against those arguments. Our kids hear those values promoted at school and see those who oppose them demonized. Unless we recognize the devil’s agenda and actively oppose those values in our minds, our prayers, and our actions, we will slowly be coopted into a mindset of excusing those behaviors or assigning them to moral gray areas.

We have often heard the maxim that if we are not growing spiritually we are actually loosing ground in the same way that if we stop exercising we don’t stay at the same level of fitness but rather lose strength and endurance. I know that to be true by personal experience. You probably do as well. In reflection, it might be a very good thing to begin to identify the prevailing spirits in our culture, our community, or our families and encourage our churches to actively oppose those spirits while we do the same in our personal lives.

I’m not speaking primarily of picketing, demonstrating, or writing blazing op-eds, although there may be times for that. But where there is a prevailing spirit of divorce in a family or community, the church should be actively providing ministries that strengthen marriages and families. Where teen suicide is on the rise, the church should be finding ways to connect with teens at risk and infusing hope into that segment of the community. If a spirit of poverty seems to prevail in a community or over a people group, the church might be working to provide pathways out of poverty for that group. Where abortion thrives, funding abortion alternatives, volunteering at Life Centers, and promoting adoption would be an active way to oppose those spirits. For every strategy of Satan, God has a powerful and creative answer. Doing similar things in our own lives would be helpful. Although spiritual warfare begins with massive amounts of prayer, spiritual warfare can have a very practical side that goes beyond prayer and deliverance and that takes territory back in whole communities.

Let me encourage you to consider what prevailing spirits might be having the most influence in your community, your church, or your life. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you discernment to identify those spirits, and then pray for creative ways to actively oppose those spirits in your own life and your community.   To take a passive approach might mean you are actually losing ground. Just….food for thought. Blessings today in Him.

There is a principle in spiritual warfare that we need to be reminded of from time to time. The principle states that whatever we come into agreement with, we empower. If we come into agreement with an idea, we empower it. For instance, suppose I wake up one morning with a few aching muscles, mention those aches to someone, and they say, “You must be coming down with the flu.” At that moment, I can think that aching muscles can come from many sources and the flu is highly unlikely or, at that moment, I can think that person could be right. After all, it is flu season. Some people at work have had the flu and now maybe I have it now. For the rest of the day, I will search my body for every symptom of the flu and obsess on every small indicator – imagined or real. I will feel fatigue just because I have been worrying all day and I will turn down offers to go out to eat with friends because I might be coming down with something. I have given the idea power over my life.

If I come into agreement with a spirit, I also give it authority in my life. Adam and Eve came into agreement with Satan and ended up forfeiting their rule over the earth. If a spirit comes along and whispers that my spouse is such a horrible person that I should get a divorce and go find someone who will give me the happiness I deserve, and I entertain that thought long enough, I will come into agreement with it. That will become my prevailing thought about my marriage. When that happens I give the enemy authority to establish a foothold in my life. The prophet Amos declared, “How can two walk together unless they are agreed?” The corollary is that when we agree, we walk together. We have formed some sort of alliance.

When our thinking and our words stand in opposition to the Word of the Lord, then what we are thinking or saying is a lie and that persistent lie invites the Father of Lies (Satan) into our life. Every demonic oppression begins in our flesh with our own choices about what to believe and speak when those things are opposed to God’s truth. If we persist, then we open up a door and the enemy can move in. Rotten thinking invites demons in the spiritual realm like rotten food invited flies. The enemy then amplifies the lie and distorts our perceptions so that those lies seem even more true.

Fairly often, we minister to people who have made a number of bad choices in their past. Maybe they were involved in drugs, stole things, had multiple sexual partners, were prostitutes, had abortions, and so forth. These men and women are often demonized and when we begin to minister deliverance we hit a roadblock. The roadblock is often their agreement with demons that they are beyond forgiveness. The inability to “forgive ourselves” is primarily unbelief in the encompassing grace of God. The unbelief empowers the enemy and gives a spirit the right to remain. When the spirit is not cast out, then the person is all the more convinced that he or she is beyond God’s love and forgiveness.

The most necessary conviction in spiritual warfare is that God’s word is true and every thing that disagrees with that word is a lie – regardless of how we feel. Lies are really the only weapon Satan has to use against us. It was true in the Garden. It is still true. When he whispers his lies, our first test should be the Word of God rather than whether or not that thought feels right. Any agreement with Satan constitutes unbelief at some level. That unbelief gets in the way of both deliverance and healing.

Too often, I find myself chasing spirits of rejection, condemnation, shame, self-loathing, etc. which all need to be expelled, but I sometimes forget to find out what the person truly believes about God’s love, grace, and forgiveness for him or her. If a spirit of unbelief or a lying spirit is operating, the person’s continued agreement with the enemy makes it very difficult to dislodge those spirits. Leading a person to repent of unbelief in the complete forgiveness they have in Christ and to renounce that unbelief is a simple thing but can be overlooked in ministering to people.

It might be worth asking some basic questions to begin, such as, “On a scale of 1-10, how much do you believe that every sin in your life is totally forgiven and forgotten?” “On a scale of 1-10, how much do you believe that God totally loves and accepts you?” “On a scale of one 1-10, how much do you truly believe that you are a beloved son or daughter of the King?”

Satan always wants to hide our identity from us and distort it so that we forget who we are in Christ. He wants us to believe that we are weak and sinful people despised by God rather than who we truly are in Christ. When we come into agreement with that distortion, we empower him and give him a place in our lives from which he can grow in influence. His power is taken away when we align ourselves with the Word of God because when we agree with God’s word, we empower it in our lives. Too many of us pay no attention to out thought life which is the in indicator of what we truly believe. We talk about what we think we should believe, while being ignorant of what we truly do believe. Since the Holy Spirit leads us into truth, a good exercise might be to ask Him to show us what we really believe about things so that we can maintain our alignment with the Father through frequent course corrections in our thought life. Whatever we agree with, we empower so lets be careful to agree with God.

I apologize for not getting any blogs out last week. My goal is to write two each week, but last week was consumed with the death of my wife’s mother. Her mother Rose was a great woman of God who touched her children and her grandchildren more deeply than any other woman I have known. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s several years ago and finally succumbed to its unrelenting attack on the mind and body. She died New Year’s Day in a nursing home in the Texas panhandle. The family was gathered in her room when she took her last breath.

I have been present at the moment of death on several occasions. Those moments are sobering moments that put life’s real issues into perspective. Maintaining perspective is the key to living life well. First of all, those moments confirm that the only truly essential thing in life is a real relationship with Jesus. We will all die this side of His second coming. Medicine and science keep teasing the world with notions of living forever with replacement parts, gene therapies, and cryogenics. It won’t happen. Death is part of the universal curse brought on by sin. It is as much spiritual as physical. Science can postpone but not beat the results of sin, only Jesus can.

When a person lies helplessly as death approaches, only two things bring comfort. The first is faith in Jesus and knowledge that when the heart stops life does not cease with it for those in Christ. Death can only end our existence in this form but eternal life in the presence of God goes on. We began our eternal life the moment we said yes to Jesus but it becomes most obvious after slipping out of this body that is not suited for heavenly environments. Paul said that to be absent from this body is to be with the Lord. We get glimpses of heaven in scripture but ultimately it will be more that we can ask or imagine on this side. As Rose slipped away, her family felt the loss but also rejoiced that she had been set free from the prison of a broken body and was experiencing life and joy to the full in his presence. They also knew they would see her again because they too are in Christ. There is great comfort in that knowledge. I have officiated funerals where that knowledge did not exist in some family members. For them, there was nothing to say but goodbye. Their only comfort could be found in their mistaken belief that nothing exists beyond the grave. To think anything else would be terrifying. But those who love Jesus are not terrified. They are expectant and long to be in the joyful presence of the King.

The second thing that truly matters at the moment of death is the legacy one leaves behind. The greatest legacy is love. Real love teaches others how to love. We can only give what we have first received. Jesus loved us and gave his life for us, not just to save us but to teach us how to love others as he did. In John 13, Jesus said, “A new commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you.” According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, no matter what we do in this life, if it is not motivated and supported by love it has no lasting value. At the end of that chapter, Paul simply tells us that the greatest thing in the kingdom of God is love. “Faith, hope and love remain. But the greatest of these is love.”

Love heals. Love unites. Love forgives. Love reconciles. Love puts others and the needs of others first. Love always acts in the best interest of others. Love affirms. It builds up. Love believes for the best in others to immerge. Satan hates love. It is the opposite of everything he stands for. Satan comes to kill, steal and destroy. Love gives life; gives rather than steals; and builds up rather than tearing down. When you stand in a room with a dying person, you tend to know whether he or she has sown love in their lives because of the response of those standing there. Those who love are loved by others because we reap what we sow and it is evident as a person prepares to exit this world.

No one says in their last moments that they wish they had worked more, accumulated more, been mentioned in one more article, manipulated one ore person for their personal gain, or set one more record. Those things seem important in life but not in death. In death, only faith and love expressed through compassion and service to others bring comfort because those are the things that connect us to Jesus.

The point is this. We should live with an eye toward death – not in a morbid sense but simply knowing that we will all be in that moment someday unless Jesus returns first. Knowing what is important at the moment of death tells us what should be important as we live out each day. As we minister to people for healing and deliverance we often talk about what increases our authority in heaven so that we can be more effective in our ministry. Jesus said that if we want to be great in the kingdom of heaven then we must be the servant of all. Service is an expression of love. Faith is certainly huge in the kingdom but Paul said that even if we have the faith to move mountains but don’t have love, that faith means nothing. I have come to believe that loving others with the heart of Jesus and serving others out of love is what gives a person real standing in the kingdom. That standing carries authority as well because the person who loves can be trusted with the things of the kingdom. Francis MacNutt, in his book Deliverance from Evil Spirits, talks about how much Satan hates love and that in deliverance sessions, a touch of true love, compassion, and concern for the person can sometimes dislodge a spirit when commands have not been effective.

As we move into 2017, I want more faith but I also want more love. Both are fruits of the Spirit that he must bear in us. I want a greater certainty in my life about every promise in the kingdom but I also want to grow in love. I don’t want to do good things or even right things simply out of duty but because I love those to whom I minister. That will be my consistent prayer this year. Standing at the foot of the bed as Rose took her last breath and exited for glory reminded me of those priorities and challenges me to make some adjustments. You may want to examine your priorities as well. Blessings in Him today!