For we do not wrestle against flesh and
blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly
places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to
withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand (Eph. 6:12-13).
Satan is a terrorist and does not
fight fairly. Most of us discover
firsthand that if you serve in Christian ministry you may be putting yourself
at risk. Unless you are called and anointed by God
to the area of service you serve in, and have counted the cost, you are
literally taking your life in your hands.
If you have ever had a leadership role in a church or ministry, you know
the difficulty that can arise from even Christ-loving people. When the people who claim loyalty to you
wrongfully use, betray, deceive, reject, abandon, and even subvert you and your
ministry, they simply help you qualify to participate in this end-time battle
to restore the ruins of people’s lives and release the inheritance of the Lord
in the earth.
Because Satan is a terrorist and
does not fight fairly, a new breed of disciple must arise to meet his challenge
with unconventional means and methods.
Such is the end-time generation of lovesick, worshipping warriors that
is arising in this day. They offer the
tender heart of a child to the Lord, but they also exhibit the tough, external
hide of a rhinoceros, formed through perseverance and endurance. Years of enduring tough times and
overwhelming pressure in their lives, families and ministries, formed them like
clay on a wheel. They have passed the
test of offense and now qualify to be used in these last days to make the enemy
a “footstool for His feet” (Psalm 110:1; Heb. 1:13). It’s time for these tenderhearted,
tough-hided disciples to become spiritual mothers and fathers to train a new
generation of spiritual warriors.
And the things
that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men
who will be able to teach others also. You therefore must endure hardship as a
good soldier of Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 2:2-3).
Paul’s second letter to Timothy
is an exhortation from a spiritual father to a young, pioneering son in the
faith. This battle-toughened,
experienced soldier for Christ gives both spiritual and practical advice in
facing the onslaught of warfare from the powers of darkness that Timothy is
experiencing. The frontlines excite
us…at least for a while. The enemy
relentlessly attacks those who pursue the Lord, His kingdom purposes, and who
desire to enter into the fullness of the inheritance of God. These attacks come on three specific fronts:
personally, in the family, and corporately in the local church. Satan is merciless in attempting to drive
back those saints who have a heart to open the gates of hell, let prisoners go
free, and recover that which has been killed, stolen and destroyed. Entering into this fray on the front lines
can make you and your ministry famous overnight, but it could also possibly
wound you and take you out for the rest of your life. This is why the Lord continually warned those
who followed Him to “count the cost.”
To stay in this battle when the
satanic onslaught comes, requires being firmly rooted in the love of God and an
ever-deepening faith and courage in the Lord.
Such was the situation of “Neo,” the central character of the movie, The
Matrix. After being rescued from a
deceptive “reality” which he desires to escape, and being told by his rescuers
that he has been chosen as “the one” who would bring ultimate freedom to his
people, and after doubting the truth of all he is being told, he
finally turns to face a seemingly undefeatable foe. When one of his compatriots asks the leader,
Morpheus, what Neo is doing, Morpheus replies, “He’s beginning to
believe.” God reveals to us who
He is and how He feels about us through the incarnation of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Through this same incarnation,
He reveals to us our identity (who we are), and our destiny (what we have been
chosen to do). We are His children, His
bride and His army. Called to possess
the fullness of the inheritance purchased for us through the death, burial and resurrection
of Christ, we rest in the power of the Holy Spirit, believe the promises of
God, subdue the enemies of God, and liberate all who will receive Him. We also bring healing and restoration to the
earth itself. (Gen. 1:28; 2 Chron. 7:14-15; Psalm 115:16.) The enemy is scared “spitless” of the idea
that the church will actually believe God is who He says He is and that the
church is who He says we are. Ephesians 3:16-17 says, …that He would grant
you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might
through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love…. Being rooted
and grounded in the love of God…His assessment of who we are, not what we
believe or the opinions of anyone else… is the foundation for entering into the
fullness of His life and purposes. When
the soul is awakened to the limitless love and grace of God, there comes a
fierce determination to obey the Lord.
The enemy sees this determination and sets out to try to destroy the
faith and confidence the soul has in God’s love, nature and power. It is here we can either succumb to the
deceptive, merciless attacks of the enemy, or begin to gain an understanding of
the enemy’s strategies that are set against us, and begin to use the enemy’s
strategies against himself. The spiritual
war raging around us, just like war in the natural realm, has great
victories. But there are also those who
get wounded, and there are also some who defect. The end-time battles we are facing
necessitates a type of believer who will be able to withstand the onslaught of
the enemy and challenge the gates of hell.
Those who remain faithful will have the first pick of the enemy’s
spoils.
The Primary Focus of the Enemy’s Attack
Therefore I
remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of
my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love
and of a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:6-7).
Timothy is filled with anxiety
over the warfare that is happening both within and outside the church. The attack against Timothy is primarily meant
to shut down his heart, his gifting and the anointing. In Timothy’s case, the attack came through
fear and anxiety. Today, many people
want nothing to do with “church” because they feel there is enough warfare they
have to deal with in the secular arena.
I have good news and bad news. First
the bad news: the charismatic party is over and we’re not in Kansas anymore! This is not a drill and we are not practicing
any longer…we have engaged the enemy. It
is not going to lessen but intensify in the coming years. Now the good news: God promises
to release a corresponding power and grace to overcome and gain victory over
every enemy and circumstance. In
Timothy’s day, people left the church and even betrayed the Lord and one
another because they lived under a death threat. At least they were not uncommitted people
using excuses disguised under a religious cloak to avoid responsibility. There are valid reasons for leaving a church:
doctrinal error, immoral practices, etc.
But Timothy is overwhelmed by the satanic attack against himself and his
church. What the battle has done, in
reality, is reveal the hearts and true colors of the members. Timothy needs practical answers, so a
seasoned spiritual warrior-father gives him instruction. The first thing Paul does is to get Timothy
to call to mind the mercy of God that he has received: Paul, an apostle of
Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in
Christ Jesus, to Timothy, a beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the
Father and Christ Jesus our Lord (2
Tim 1:1-2). To continue in this
fight, Timothy must understand and be confident that He is
greatly loved by the Father and the Father desires to impart comfort to him in
his deepest need.
The enemy’s principal attack
tries to get man to doubt the goodness of God and God’s opinion of man. When the Lord Jesus was tempted in the
wilderness, the attack was to try to get Him to doubt who He was: If
You are the Son of God… (Luke 4:3, 9).
In trying to get the Lord to doubt His identity in His relationship with
the Father, Satan moved Him to act independently of the Father. This is the essence of sin…acting
independently of the Father’s will. The
attack of the enemy will always begin with deceptive accusation. He constantly uses this attack against humans
(Rev. 12:9) – accusation.
Satan’s accusations come on three fronts: 1) he accuses God to man,
2) he accuses man to God, and then, 3) he accuses man to
man. The accusation against God
is always: “If God were good, this
would not be happening. If God were good, these children would never
have been abused,” etc. And so
the accusations go, until they penetrate and our hearts have the opportunity to
become bitter, resentful or offended.
God is not the author of evil in any form. He does not use evil, sickness or disaster to
“teach us a lesson,” although there are always lessons we can learn through any
circumstance, bad or good. God gave man
rulership over this earth, and man voluntarily gave it to the enemy. The enemy cannot operate in the earth unless
he has the agreement and cooperation of man.
The evil perpetrated in the earth is happening because man agrees with
it and allows it. Jesus is our perfect
example of the Father, and He attributed all sickness, death, and bondage (or
any other abnormal state), as directly coming from an army of darkness ruled
over by a specific, intelligent personality named Satan. (Acts 10:38.) One of Satan’s devices, which has worked for
millennia, is causing hurt, wounding, death or destruction and then accusing
God of causing it. This deception is so
ingrained in our thinking that even in our insurance policies, disasters are
labeled “acts of God.”
If the church will not answer the
call to intimacy/worship (agreeing with who He is) and intercession (agreeing
with His purposes), we have forsaken the very purpose for which we were
created…to be His eternal partner in intimacy and dominion. The will of God cannot be released in the
earth, because man was given dominion over this earth by Judicial decree, and
the Lord never changed this decree. (Psalm 115:16.) When man fell, he willingly gave his dominion
to Satan, became Satan’s slave, and the enemy, throughout history, has
exercised his will, plan and evil over man and the earth. This happened until One was born who came
from another realm, lived a perfect, holy life, paid the price for man’s AND
the earth’s redemption. (Rom.
8.) Jesus has completely destroyed ALL
the works and rights of the enemy. With all
the evil the enemy has instigated on earth, he never truly “murdered” until he
put to death the only innocent man whoever lived – the Lord Jesus. A slave owner killing one of his slaves is
not a capital offense in any past society who practiced slavery, because the
slaves were not considered “persons,” but property. The enemy sealed his own doom when he
unrighteously killed the Righteous One, thereby incurring the sentence of death
and destruction from the heavenly court. (John 16:11.)
The enemy is defeated but not
annihilated. He is still present and
evil is still operating, because God still has to find a man or a people who
will voluntarily love Him, submit to Him and cooperate with Him, as did the
Lord Jesus, in order to exercise His will and power in the earth.
God cannot be blamed for any evil
in the world. Theological thought that
goes all the way back to Augustine and Aquinas has taught for centuries that
the problem of evil was directly related to God’s providence and
purposes. The assumptions of this view are, 1) God is loving and good, and, 2)
God sovereignly holds meticulous micromanagement over the earth
and all men.[1] This view holds that although God is not the
direct agent of evil and bad things, He is indirectly involved because He has
some hidden purpose behind allowing this evil to happen.
In my opinion, a better, more
scripturally based view is that God is not in complete control of either
man or the earth ,by His own dispensational limitation, and He is allowing evil
forces to exercise themselves in direct opposition to His nature, desires, will
and purposes. God is not
exercising meticulous, exhaustive control over the world because when He gave
dominion to man, He never took it back, nor could He. If He had stepped in after pronouncing the
laws and rules governing the earth, its creatures, processes and purposes,
apart from man who was given dominion, God would have been found to be a
breaker of His own word and laws.
Apart from cooperating humans, God limits Himself from operating, and
will not intervene apart from His people who love, obey and willingly cooperate
with Him. This is the paradigm we see
acted out in the life of the Lord Jesus and the early church. (Luke 4:18-19;
Acts 10:38; 1 John 3:8; Eph. 6:12; 2 Cor. 10:2-6.) But, in even allowing the powers of darkness
a measure of freedom to operate through rebellion and deception, the Lord still
holds ultimate sovereign control and will cause all things, even
the evil perpetrated by men and demons, to work together to glorify Himself and
bring freedom and redemption to those who love Him. (Romans 8:28-39.) He will find a people, a bride, a body, who
will, like Job, not deny Him, willingly suffer if necessary, and enter into
such an agreement with Him and His purposes that the works they do will
overshadow even the works the Lord Jesus did. (John 14:12.) God will be vindicated and the enemy will be
vanquished and his works finally and ultimately destroyed. (Rev. 12:7-11.)
This forms one of the major
tenets in understanding the necessity of the church entering her eternal
partnering role with the Lord Jesus as His bride. It is the church who literally, by proxy,
holds the power of life and death over the souls of men and the state of the
earth. The Lord will release His authority
and power through this lovesick, worshipping, interceding generation to change
the course of individuals and nations as we answer this call to separate
ourselves to Him. This end-time
generation of worshipping warriors, captivated and fascinated by the beauty,
glory and passion of the Lord, will arise and enter into the fullness of the
spiritual and generational inheritance laid up throughout the ages. The remediating judgments and power of God
will be released to bring justice and restoration to the earth, preparing the
nations, and the earth itself, for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Questions for Reflection:
What lessons can we learn from Timothy in how the battle’s
won?
Who has dominion over the earth today?
[1] For an
in-depth look at these theological thoughts, I suggest reading God at War
by Gregory Boyd, published by Intervarsity Press.
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This article was adapted from a chapter in Mike McClung's book, "Restoring the Ruins." For more information on this and other Lionheart Restoration Ministries resources, click here.
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This article was adapted from a chapter in Mike McClung's book, "Restoring the Ruins." For more information on this and other Lionheart Restoration Ministries resources, click here.
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To find out more about Lionheart Restoration Ministries, visit us at:
To find out more about Lionheart Restoration Ministries, visit us at:
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