Session 7 — Spiritual Warfare: What the Enemy Does

Opening

Bruce:
Last time we began this idea of spiritual warfare and we looked at who the enemy is. In this session, we’re going to take that one step further and look at what the enemy does, just because you’re aware. Now, we’re not going to look at all the Scripture passages that call us to be watchful today, but that’s part of our command, especially as church leaders—to be watchful. And when we watch, the image is of that guy up on the wall, and he’s looking out to see if the enemy is approaching, so that he can give a call, a shout-out, an alarm. Well, you’ve got to be aware of what Satan might be doing in your church and your community. How do you spot the enemy at work, right? And if you can spot him, well, then you can go to battle and gather other people to go to battle. And so this is important stuff, and we’re glad that you’re here to see it.

Bruce:
Now, this is Paul—he’s writing to Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 2:11—and he had a rough relationship with the Corinthian church. When you read the letters, 1, 2 Corinthians—rough relationship. And so he writes them: “And what I have forgiven—if there’s anything to forgive—I have forgiven it in the sight of Christ, for your sake. Why? In order that Satan might not outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes.” Now, when I’m reading through my Bible—every few years, I get a new Bible because I’m relying and that sort of thing, and, you know, I like to come at it fresh—but this is one that always just stops me short, because I tend to be largely unaware of his schemes, and I find that people in the church are largely unaware of his schemes. And so we’re going to look at what the Scripture says about his schemes.

Extent of His Power

Bruce:
Okay, first of all: the extent of his power. Satan can cause pain and suffering. Acts 10 talks about that—Jesus went around healing all who are under the power of the devil. And then Luke 13 is one of my favorite stories: this woman who is—she’s bent over. (My father had severe disabilities in that regard.) But Jesus says he was going to deliver this woman, bound by Satan for 18 years.

Abigail:
Lifetime—18 years.

Bruce:
Bent over; she operates in pain, and he identifies it as Satan—that is, human… or the power of Satan. Now that, to me, is—now, it doesn’t mean that all pain and suffering are caused by the… (important distinction, right?). And that doesn’t mean—there are some parts of the church that would say, “Well, you never go to a doctor; it’s all the enemy.” I don’t believe that at all. We know that there are illnesses that are caused by viruses and that sort of thing, but some might be caused by the enemy. And in my years of active ministry—and pastoral care, in particular—I tried the sensitive listening. And I don’t have discernment gifts, but I know people who do. Sometimes I would take people along with me—“the enemy at work here?”—but to know that this might be one of the strategies of Satan, especially if you’re working in the deacon world of being a servant, being the extenders of mercy: that, okay, what’s happening in the lives of people, and particularly if it’s happening at a time with some significant change or spiritual growth period, or that sort of thing.

Abigail:
Yeah. And as we continue to talk about these, I think it’s something that, being here at COI [sic], we see that again and again—someone will start courses with us, and what—some of these schemes take place pretty, you know, aggressively and hard in their life. And you see that a lot.

Bruce:
Right. They get sick. Okay—so pain and suffering could be the enemy.

Bruce:
The power of death. Hebrews 2:14—that Jesus came that he might break the power of him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil. Now, there’s a question in the interpretation of that verse: does the devil have power to kill people? And, you know, most commentators don’t think that’s true. What they think is: it’s the fear of death.

Abigail:
The fear of death—cripples. Powerful.

Bruce:
That is. And I have found in years of ministry that often when someone is dying, the enemy comes in. And my own mother—I was living in California, she’s in Michigan—and got the call that she was… she had chosen not to proceed for the treatment for kidney failure, and so she was going to die. And so I got back then, walked to the airport, walked on a plane, and flew home, and sat with her that night. She was just in the hospital and restless, and she woke up once, crying because she had this horrible dream of how—she said, “I was going into heaven, and I was this woolly, ugly lamb, and Jesus took a look at me and said ‘No,’” and—whoa. Turns out, I didn’t find out till years later—and I found this as a pattern of people—that people who have what they sense as great sin in their past, when it comes to dying, the enemy will come and try to throw that in their face. And in my mother’s day, she was pregnant before she was married, back in the 1930s, and this was something she bore. She never told us kids; she told one daughter-in-law. So we didn’t know it till years after that. But, you know, later, I found a guy who was an alcoholic—I get a call, “He’s dying; would you come? He feels like he’s not going to go to heaven.” And so—whoa—you talk about grace again. I talk about God’s love first. But anyway, the power—I think that’s what it means: the power of death that can paralyze people.

Bruce:
A snare is… traps. A deacons have a good—must have a good reputation with outside. And why? So they would not fall into the devil’s trap.

Abigail:
And then again, as we’re in this Deacon course, you see how important this verse is—saying the deacons need to have this good representation, you know, and not fall into the devil’s trap, right?

Bruce:
Okay, what was Paul referring to here? We don’t know exactly. But know that there are going to be traps. Now—that’s an issue for me. I’m sorry, I forgot to silence my phone before I came in here. Let me get that silenced. I tried trapping at one point in my youth, and so what you do is you put out this trap—you set it so it’s going to go crash onto rabbits, or whatever you try to catch—and you try to hide it. Then, right? So that the animal’s coming along, and all of a sudden—snap—it closes. And then, you know, you come along later. And, yeah.

Abigail:
Yeah—when I think of some of the traps, it’s like that idea of, like, envy, jealousy. You know—those are traps that they maybe don’t appear to be so obviously maybe the devil’s trap, but we just walk right into it and—

Bruce:
Right. And so this—when you’re watching, and as a leader in the church, you’re going to be hearing about more people than you ever did before you become a deacon, and you’re going to be involved with various kinds of people—watch out for people who might be falling into a trap of some sort.

Abigail:
We know we’ve got—there’s so many traps of the devil. Again, the devil is the father of lies. So anyway, he can trap someone into telling a lie for maybe even—it looks like a good reason. Like, “I was telling that lie because I wanted to do X, Y, or Z to help somebody else.” And it’s like—

Bruce:
Pornography. Friends—friends. You know, I’ve gotten old enough—my grandchildren are going to college, and so a lot of things I pray for them is for good friends—

Abigail:
Who you surround yourself—so important. So—

Bruce:
Anyway, so that’s another tactic that the enemy can use to set traps for people. And, you know, in my own experience, I know devil knows too much about me—

Abigail:
Knows too much about us all.

Bruce:
He knows where my weaknesses are, and so where I need a particular strength, and where I need to be accountable to people. So I make sure I build those things into my life as I’m trying to work through, and I don’t want to step into a trap and get caught. And now—here I am. Been there, done that. Don’t want to ever do it again.

Bruce:
All right, this is an interesting one to me. John 13—the devil had already prompted Judas to betray him. Acts 5:3—Ananias and Sapphira have sold a piece of property, and they come, and they’re trying to look good, right? So they present the money to the apostles—to Peter in particular—and said it’s the whole amount, because Barnabas had gotten a lot of kudos for the fact that he had sold a piece of property and brought the money to the church to help pay for their expanding ministry, and so now they’re doing the same. And his response is, “How has Satan filled your heart with wicked purposes?” Now—are many people that you run into in your ministry… There’s an old story—and I’ll tell it real fast—about a guy who’s on a way to a Halloween party, and he’s dressed up like the devil, and the full thing, you know, with the trident—fork—and the tail, and the red, and he’s got the makeup and all this good stuff. And he’s out in the country heading toward a cabin where this—where this party is going to be, and it starts to rain. And then all of a sudden, this car conks out. So he looks around—the only thing he sees is a light through the woods—and he goes there. It’s a little church, and the church is having a Reformation Day service. So he’s wondering—he looks at himself—like, “This is the only place I can get to help.” So he creeps up to the door, peeks in—there’s the people, they’re singing—and all of a sudden lightning crashes behind him, and with a yell he jumps forward into this church. And the people look around, and all of a sudden they’re panicked, and they scramble out—they’re heading out the windows, anywhere they can get out of there, because they’re just seeing an apparition—except for one woman who was of such physical nature that she couldn’t climb over the windowsill. And so she’s trying—she’s trying, trying. This guy’s trying to comfort her, so he’s walking to her—closer and closer to her—and she turns around and says, “I really want you to know I was on your side the whole time.” Yeah—it’s a story I don’t tell very often, but I often wondered about some—

Abigail:
People like, “Oh—”

Bruce:
Is there—Is there something prompted by the enemy here? And especially when I experienced personal attack. And, you know, the Bible is very clear about attack on leaders—not that we don’t need it, but we do need accountability on the part of the elders, the church, etc. (You can check our course on elders to learn more about that.) But anyway—so he can inject wicked purposes into people. So when you’re watching, to pray for sensitivity, to have people of discernment around and can say… And he can enter and control [a] person. Now, as soon as Judas took the bread—you remember, this is the Last Supper—Satan entered him.

Abigail:
Heavy, heavy thing to know is true, but as a deacon, you need to be a question now.

Bruce:
And again, to find those people—gifts—spiritual gifts of discernment. I’ve been asked to be part of that at various times, praying for somebody that people thought was demon-controlled. So I called somebody I knew who had discernment just to come with me, and at the end of the night he said, “No, this wasn’t Satan. This was just him trying to get attention.” But I don’t know the difference—people with discernment do. But the reality is, you know, there are people out there and there are—there is—evil in the world. You know, it’s true—Satan is controlling a lot of people. And so how do we do that? Well, we come to spiritual warfare prayer, and I’m going to talk about that in just a moment.

Bruce:
So, he can torment God’s servants. Jesus is talking to Peter here—“Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.” Now that’s not a pretty process, right? Throw the wheat in, you bounce it up and down until the chaff has broken off and blows away in the wind. But he’s saying that to Peter, and it happened to be in Peter’s failure of denying Jesus that he was sifted like wheat. But the next part is really interesting and encouraging to me, because Jesus says, “And when you turn back…” In other words, you’re going to go through the sifting process; you’re going to realize things about yourself you never wanted to realize. “When you turn back,” he says, “strengthen your brothers.” And Peter still gets ministry after this.

Bruce:
He can hinder God’s servants. This is Paul writing to the church in Thessalonians: “We wanted to come to you, but Satan blocked our way.” Doesn’t say how that happened, but how—they weren’t allowed to go.

Abigail:
I always find that so—fast—read through; there’s a few times where it’s that said, where it’s like, oh, we wanted to go that way, but—yeah.

Bruce:
Couldn’t. They get tickets? Who knows what happened here? We don’t know. But somehow they felt that not only weren’t they able to go—I’ve had that happen before—that it was God blocking—

Abigail:
Verses on that too—“but God directed us here instead.”

Bruce:
Right. But this one says, “Satan blocked us.” Wow. So, as you are a leader in the church, and you’re a deacon, and maybe your church—considering ministry that’s going to reach out with mercy to the people who need it in your community—but there’s this one roadblock after another, after another, after another… Who is it that’s doing that? What—that’s doing—that’s a tough discernment thing. Such a tough discernment. Yeah—when we’re in California, we’re talking about this—reload—before we talk about relocation (we had eventually relocated the church), but we were on a piece of property at 4.3 acres, and we’re trying to build a church that was through to 2,000 people on Sunday, and we kept running into the city’s requirements. And a guy, a friend of mine, was in the Nazarene church near us, and I know they had a vastly successful childcare center, and so they were expanding that. And I knew that they had spent a night in prayer and trying to break the blockade because they weren’t getting permits. And I ran into him in the hospital—we’re both visiting people in the hospital—[I] says, “You had a night—what did God say to you?” And he said, “Well, God said to us it wasn’t him—said it was the city of Chino giving our permits.” But I go one step further and say, no—look behind that: the enemy. So he can hinder God’s service—blocked the way.

Bruce:
And then finally, prison. “The devil will put some of you in prison to test you.” This is from Revelation 2—the church of Smyrna being addressed. And I wonder about that. I look around the world right now at the persecution of Christians, and I know that it’s happening. And powerful testimony comes out of that sometimes. One of my favorites—years ago, there was a guy in China, church planter who was there—Communist China. He was put into a correctional camp to correct his views. And he shared—this is at Lausanne II in Manila (I had the privilege of being one of the U.S. representatives there)—and anyway, he shared that, you know, in camp, you were assigned a job. And one of the jobs he was assigned was in the latrine system—[he] says, because they would empty the latrines into a pool, which they would let dry, and then they’d use that as fertilizer. Now imagine being the person shoveling stuff into a bucket to get… He said he volunteered for that job—said because no guards came there, and he couldn’t ever talk about Jesus, he said. But he kept singing—he was speaking—and he started singing, “I Come to the Garden Alone.” Oh God, give me that kind of faith. It started, I think, with the enemy who’s putting him there to say, “We’re going to stop you. We’re going to stop you.”

Abigail:
Such an important lesson—that, you know, when the enemy is maybe tormenting you or putting… How do you respond? You know, that important response of prayer, of worship, of, you know, making the best of the situation that the devil’s trying to—right—that—

Bruce:
We continue to be a testimony.

Strategies Within the Church

Bruce:
Okay, so that’s the list of the extent of his power—these are the things that the enemy can do. And so, as you’re watching, wow—you know, where in your church, in your ministry, in your community are you [going] to battle against him? Next thing I want to look at is his strategy—tends to be within the church. One is subtlety. Genesis 3:1 says the serpent was more subtle than all the other animals.

Abigail:
You hear that description—we gotta really take note of that as Christians. Yeah.

Bruce:
And then Ephesians 6—one is just—they talk about the fiery darts. In other words, it’s something that comes out to surprise; you don’t expect it—guerrilla attacks. You know, 1 Timothy 3:7—you’ve got to be aware of the devil’s trap. That’s one of them. Devil can be very subtle—getting into—

Abigail:
It looks—it looks good, a lot of times.

Bruce:
Division. The city—church in Corinth was starting to divide along spiritual gift. So the people who had the gift of—whatever—discernment, the gift of speaking, the gift of healing, gift of tongues—whichever it was—were separating into their gifted areas and didn’t realize they needed each other. Right?

Abigail:
Again, the body is building each other up. It’s not meant to be divided like—

Bruce:
That. Right. And this is an area where I think we’ve got to think long and hard now. You know, we’re in the United States—church of the United States right now is in deep trouble.

Abigail:
Got a lot of division,

Bruce:
Political division. It’s over issues within the church and issues of Bible interpretation and issues—and, you know, Jesus’ prayer that we would be one, even as he and the Father are one—I think, wow, where is it happening? So this is just a warning, as you start thinking about this: this is one of his strategies. He’s going to come subtly, and he’s going to try to divide your—

Abigail:
Subtle division happens again and again. I mean, so many people are—“Well, we’re standing firm on X, Y, and Z,” but there’s so much division and tension coming in. It’s like your intention may be to be strong on the Word of God, but division is not what God has commanded us to do, right?

Bruce:
And so many times I go back to John 13—“By this all people know you are my disciples, that you have love for one another.” I see some churches—and I’ve been called in to consult with some churches—and what happened to the love in this place? The Spirit-inspired Jesus-loving—

Abigail:
And it’s like those strategies and themes of the devil—it sucks the love, right?

Bruce:
Another strategy is siege. In other words, he’ll—are—the “day of evil.” When Paul introduces the armor of God, he talks about when the day of evil comes. In other words, there are some times or periods where things are just really oppressive. And then the surprise of the fiery arrows that show up. And fiery arrows—real fiery darts, sometimes referred to in translation—are things that people would shoot from behind the battle lines. All of a sudden these things would show up, and they would start fires and cause destruction. These are the kinds of things that—this is what the enemy is doing.

Bruce:
Now, our point is: be aware. Be aware. Now, what do you do when you see the enemy at work? You do spiritual warfare prayer, and it’s different than, “Oh dear Jesus, please deliver us.” That’s a good prayer, but when Paul or Jesus addressed the enemy, he did it with command. “So I command you, in the name of Jesus, to let go and to leave.” And it’s been my practice, after I’d studied this, to make the command such that I would say, “I command you to break any chains you’ve been building in this person’s life, and I command you to go to Jesus, that he might dispense with you however he sees fit,” and—amazing results. Especially with new Christians. I remember one time—new Christian—and they’d been trying to sell their house because of financial troubles, and it’s not selling, it’s not selling, and the market was hot, and we prayed that prayer, and the next day he called me and said, “I know!” (We’ve) got it—done that with people who were dealing with sickness, particularly with new Christians, because Satan wants them—

Abigail:
Back—right. Not happy about their big changes, but—

Bruce:
—to say, over and over again… not over and over again, but to say, “I command you, in the name of Jesus, to break any chains you’ve been building in this person’s life, and go to Jesus, that he might dispense with you as he sees fit.” Be aware. Go to battle, because we don’t have to fear, right? He who is in us is greater than he who’s in the world. Those are humbling—humbling—sessions, last two sessions, but it’s part of your leadership within the church—

Abigail:
Right there—you will see this. And as we look to that very first verse, we are to be aware, you know. And that’s what Paul is saying there. It’s like—we’re aware of the schemes of the devil, you know. And that’s important as you’re being a leader and you’re being a person of prayer and influence. So now—you know—

Bruce:
Go forth, and rejoice, and do battle successfully in the powerful name of Jesus.