Reading: Video Transcript: Going on Offense: Entering the Fray

🎯 Session 29 of Spiritual Warfare

We’ve been looking at being on the offensive in this process.

• We saw how Jesus engaged in the battle.

• We’ve seen the disciples and how they fought the battle.

• We’ve explored how Paul and Barnabas engaged in spiritual warfare.

🔥 Now, we’re going to take a turn:
We’ll talk about entering the fray ourselves—how we are called to be part of the battle.

📜 Let’s set the stage for the next several sessions:

1️⃣ Levels of the Battle
There are various levels in which you can engage in spiritual warfare.
👉 By the time we’re done, you’ll be prepared to engage at all these levels.

🔑 First Level: Personal

• I feel the opposition.

• I feel the oppression of the enemy.

• It’s affecting me.

• I need to know what to do.

• I need to know when I’ve crossed the line—maybe I’ve joined Satan’s world, the “father of lies” as Jesus calls him.

• And then, how to get back to spiritual wholeness.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Second Level: Individual

• This is where you’re ministering to someone else.

• Remember, you’re here at Christian Leaders Institute because you’re a leader.

• You’re doing something in ministry.

• You’re going to deal with people facing spiritual warfare—even if they don’t recognize it or know it.

🛡 We're going to look at the signs of that, etc., etc., but you can engage!
You’re going to have the tools:
✨ The sword of the Spirit – the Word of God, the Rhema of God.
✨ The presence, power, and authority of Jesus Christ going with you—so you can command.
✨ Fasting—to prepare your spirit and soul.

📖 All of that can be put into place as you’re dealing with people in your ministry.

👑 Then there are the princes:

• Remember what the angel said to Daniel?

• “The prince of Persia stopped me, and the prince of Greece is coming…”

• There’s a level of warfare where Satan has control over an area.

• And we can be part of the battle to set them free.

⚔️ Then there are the leaders:

• Scripture doesn’t say a great deal, but there’s insight we can gain on how to battle Satan himself and those deploying the princes, etc.

🚀 It’s going to be quite an adventure, so I invite you along!

🔎 Now let’s shift gears—not to the levels of the battle, but the levels of how the enemy influences and attacks people.

💡 I’m deeply indebted to Michael Pocock from Dallas Seminary who described it this way:

👹 Here’s how it happens if the enemy gets a foothold:
1️⃣ The devil (and demons) are always in opposition to us, seeking to keep us from deeper faith, to draw us back into Satan’s realm, to keep people enslaved.
2️⃣ But when they get a foothold, they gain influence—they grab something in our lives pulling us more toward Satan than God.
3️⃣ Then comes oppression—a heaviness, where we want to stop but can’t.
4️⃣ Next is obsession—like addiction, where thoughts consume us: that drink, that temptation, that sin.
5️⃣ Then they control our actions and activities.
6️⃣ Finally, it can lead to possession, where a demon can completely control a person.

⚠️ Look at that list for a moment.

• Think about people you know—or maybe your own life.

• Opposition? Certainly.

• Influence? Yes, probably all of us have felt that.

• Oppression? Maybe not.

• Obsession? Some have felt it.

• Control? Possession?

💬 Can that happen today? Yes, it can.

🔍 The big question: Can a Christian be possessed by a demon?

• There’s no definitive statement that says Christians can’t or can.

• It’s my personal belief that a genuine Christian, who has received Jesus Christ and has the Holy Spirit dwelling within, cannot be possessed by a demon.

• A genuine Christian is already possessed by the Holy Spirit! 🙌

• And yet, Scripture shows that Satan has the power to engage people even in the church.

👹 Here’s Judas.

• He’s been with Jesus for three years as a disciple, participated in everything the ministry had—the 72 were included.

• Now Judas was part of that.

• “As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.”

• So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.”

⚠️ Then there’s Peter.

• Peter said, “No, no, you’re not going to be killed! You’re not going to be arrested! I’ll never let that happen to you.”

• And Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get behind Me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me. You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

• Satan didn’t control Peter at that moment, but certainly used him.

🔮 And there’s Simon the sorcerer.

• We read about this just a couple of sessions ago.

• Look at verse 13:
  “Simon himself believed and was baptized, and he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw. When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the Word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, ‘Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’”

• And Peter replied:
  “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

• Then Simon answered:
  “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

🔎 We looked at this passage earlier about discernment.
💭 But what I want you to see now is that Satan is active in people who are in the church.
They’re part of the in-group!

🎭 There’s an old joke about a guy getting ready for a Halloween party.

• He rented a Satan costume—full regalia:

  • Red face 😈

  • Horns 🔱

  • Pointed beard

  • Devil suit

  • Tail 🐉

  • Trident ⚔️

• He looked just like we imagine Satan would.

🌧️ As he drove to a country house for the party, a storm started—raindrops on the windshield.
🚗 Just then, his car quit running.

• He tried to figure out what to do.

• He looked around and saw one light through the trees...

💡 So he thought,

• “Okay, hopefully I can get somebody there to help me get my car fixed.”

• As he comes out into a clearing, he sees that the light comes from a church, a little, tiny country church that was having a Reformation Day service ⛪.

🤔 So he’s sitting there thinking, what do I do?

• He looked at himself in the costume and thought…

• Then he decided: he crept up to the dual wooden doors 🚪.

• He peeked in through the crack to see how many people were there.

• There weren’t that many cars outside, so he thought maybe the service wasn’t very full.

⚡ Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning behind him 🌩️.

• He jumped forward with a scream and fell into the church!

• And now there’s Satan, standing in the church 😈, with smoke from the lightning strike behind him 🔥.

😳 The church was completely silent.

• Then people began clearing out.

• There wasn’t a back door, so they started opening windows and climbing out.

• Except for one woman 👵.

🚪 According to the story, she couldn’t get out over the window sill.

• So she stood and faced Satan.

• In her mind, he (the man in the costume) came forward trying to encourage her that, you know, “It’s just a costume, etc.”

• But she said, “No.”

🗣 She said,
“I want you to know. I want you to know I've been on your side all along, all along.”

• Now, that's a joke, a story, but if you're working in ministry, you’ve got to know that there is going to be manifestation of the work of the enemy in people in your church 🏰.

💡 Now, that's in some ways an aside, but it's an important one for what you are going to experience in ministry.

❓ So, how does the enemy get into people's lives?

• We've seen bitterness, right?

• If we let the sun go down on our anger, it’ll create a foothold for the enemy 🦶.

• That’s one way that Satan gets in.

👥 Sometimes it’s generational sins.

• As I've said before, somebody who's abused will likely become an abuser.

• And those things can go on for generations, or, in my case, it was anger that could go on, could go on.

• And in fact, you know, abuse was part of my background.

👶 I remember the time when my baby was crying, and I started shaking this child.

• I went in the other room and realized what I was becoming, and I was becoming my father.

• And so I began to deal with that in the name of Jesus, and thankfully, was freed of that 🙏.

🔒 But generational sins, according to those who look at this and study these things and observe and have observed them a great deal, require forgiveness on our part in order to push the enemy back.

• The sword of the Spirit 🗡️ certainly, but forgiveness.

📚 I mentioned this before, I mentioned Lewis Smedes before. I'm going to just summarize it again.

• Lewis Smedes was one of my heroes.

• He's now with the Lord 👑.

• I love that statement: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”

• It's a wonderful statement.

🩹 But he says forgiveness is always three-pronged:
1️⃣ There’s suffering. You’ve got to acknowledge that this hurt. That what this person did to me – this betrayal, this abandonment, this abuse, this whatever it was – it hurts 😔.
2️⃣ Then we do spiritual surgery ✂️. We cut that person away from the sin, and we try to see them as flawed human beings and not as somebody that we hate, and we ask for the power of God to be able to see them that way.

• For me, with my father, it involved looking at him and seeing the reason. He was in physical pain almost all of his life. And yeah, there were reasons.

• I'm not excusing him. Forgiveness is not excusing.

• But it made me see him as a human being, and then allowed me to start over and wish good for him 🕊️.

🌿 And so forgiveness is vitally important. It's one of the ways – lack of forgiveness – that Satan will use.

• So generational sins – if you're dealing with them, deal with them. Be free.

⚠️ Okay, here are some others – sexual sins.

• Those who observe this say this is one of the ways Satan gets in because it's not just the sexual sin that happens so much as the lying and the cover-up and the deception that happens as a result 🕵️.

• And so those who are engaging in sexual sin, in particular, any sin, opens a door 🚪 for the enemy to come in.

😞 Guilt and shame.

💬 I remember dealing with one young woman—a delightful young woman, but she had had an alcoholic father and a very, very cold, cold mother.

• As a result, she dealt with not just guilt—guilt means I did something and it was wrong, and now I feel guilty—but shame is much deeper than that.

📚 And again, Lewis Smedes wrote a book on guilt and shame.

• But he says, shame is like this pool, this cesspool of acid that's deep down within us 🧫.

• And every once in a while, something will come down and will pierce that, and all of a sudden, this bad will spring up in us.

🌸 Well, this woman, because of her upbringing, just dealt with a sense of shame all the time.

• Felt like she was never good enough.

• You know, she was incredibly talented.

• She was never good enough.

• She was always putting herself down.

😞 Guilt and shame, particularly if you've grown up in that kind of atmosphere that has produced that, is one of those atmospheres that creates an opening for the enemy to come in.

🚪 Rejection.

• People rejecting you often creates enough trauma.

💥 Trauma.

• You know, all of these involve trauma, right?

• Rejection can create a trauma.

• And some say that adoption will open that door, just because adopted children, many of them, most of them, can deal with attachment disorder.

• They say how important it is to be cuddled and loved and fed during those first days, weeks, and months 🍼.

• And when you don't have that, it creates something broken within you that can create an avenue for the enemy to come in.

💔 Other rejection can do the same.

• You’re engaged to be married, and your fiancé decides not to at the last minute or leaves you at the altar 👰🤵.

• The bitterness that comes from that can create an avenue for the enemy to come in.

🛡️ Abuse.

• If you’re abused, you’re damaged.

• If you were abused as a child or as an adult, you’re damaged.

• And it can create a little door, a little opening, for the enemy to come in.

😔 Certainly, that makes us think of church leaders, right?

• You know, the Roman Catholic Church around the world has been just reeling over revelations of abuse, sexual abuse, that was inflicted on so many young men and women 💔.

• And they’re telling their stories now and how that’s impacted their life.

• That can create an open door—particularly, it’ll deal with an open door against God, because these things were done by people who represented Jesus Christ on this earth.

🙏 And so if that's you, you've got to know you've got a space there that you've got to deal with, to deal with the enemy getting in.

🕵️ And if you’re involved in ministry, these are ways that, if you're doing an interview with someone, to be asking questions about occult involvement 🔮.

🔮 You know, if you've been involved in things of the occult, you've got to know that that opens a door to the enemy.

• It opens a door for demon activity in your life.

• It gives that foothold from which there can be a springing into further and deeper engagement with you.

💻 There's pornography.

• If you're somebody who regularly accesses that, you're going to find it.

• You're kind of going to find it shrinking, shrinking your ability to react normally with the people around you in the area of your sexuality.

🔮 Now, witchcraft is the same.
📖 Want to get a book here. I was reading this book, which is The Invisible War by Chip Ingram, and we'll be hearing more from him later.

• He talks about a Vogue article, which is the magazine for young women in particular.

• A recent article in Teen Vogue reveals the growing interest in witchcraft and its appeal to a large number of young girls.

• In these all-female communities, girls are finding acceptance and like the development of a belief system unique to the solitary practitioner.

🌿 In other words, believe whatever you want to believe.
📖 In the article, teen and 20-something girls share their personal experience with witchcraft, as well as their desire to breathe new life into the archetype of the witch and curb the misconceptions surrounding modern-day witches.

• One of the girls being interviewed expressed her frustration with being stereotyped as someone who believes in Satan and sacrifices things, and that the goal is to forge your own path to the divine.

• All you need is the desire to do so, candles and incense, a beautiful surrounding sure help, but magic comes from within, and these girls say they have experienced this as a harmless foray into the spiritual world, but it creates an opening.

🚪 An opening, a foothold that can spring the enemy into greater engagement in your life.

📚 Now all these again, are for you to consider for your own life.

• And if you see these things, you’re going to need the help of other people.
  👥 You may need the help of good counselors.
  💊 You may need the help of good medication.

• I think people who deal with depression certainly experience the presence of the enemy, and God has provided tools for that, as well as the ones we're talking about.

⚔️ When you're in ministry and you're dealing with people and you see some of these things that are going on, realize that one of the things you're going to have to do is give commands to the forces that the enemy has deployed, that they might go away, leave a person free.

🙏 Join me in prayer.

💬 Lord God, wow, these various avenues in are scary. We pray for help, to identify, to recognize, to go to battle and to win in the name of Jesus.

🔥 And so we come now in the powerful name of Jesus, asking you to inhabit us through your Spirit. You said in Ephesians that we are to be filled with the Spirit.
💖 Lord, let that be true. Fill us now so there's no room for any engage, for any involvement of the enemy in our lives.

🙏 We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
🌟 May that be true for you.