Ephesians 6:10-13 says, "A final word, be strong with the Lord's mighty power, put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all the strategies and the tricks of the devil, for we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against evil rulers and against authorities of an unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realm."  Use every piece of God's armor to resist the enemy in the time of evil so that after the battle you will still be standing firm.  Stand your ground putting on the sturdy belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness and for your shoes put on the peace that comes from the Good News so you will be fully prepared."  In my footnotes it says this concerning that verse, "For your shoes put on the readiness to share the Good News from which you have received peace.  The Good News is peace and your feet are shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace."  Going on with the verse, "In every battle you will need faith as your shield to stop the fiery arrows aimed at you by Satan, the evil one.  Finally, put on salvation as your helmet, (that is your head, that's where the fiery darts are aimed, it's your thought processes that are the target) and take as your weapon the Word of God."

"Put on salvation as your helmet and take your weapon which is the Word of God, pray all the time and stay alert."  What we often hear about spiritual warfare is the picture of a very fierce, huge, dominating, evil force that moves to captivate and moves in to destroy with his wicked and evil intent and we hear he has hoards of demons at his beck and call that move throughout the earth.  You become afraid because he is going to sneak up on you and lay you out cold, any time he pleases.  Pictured as an evil one lurking in the shadows, hanging out in dark corners and evil places and in wicked activities ready to pounce on you at any moment.

I want to be an instrument in God's hand today as God's voice to examine exactly what the Bible says about spiritual warfare and how we prepare ourselves to be able to stand up and stand tall even in the thick and heat of the battle.  I want to project three principles about spiritual warfare as it affects our lives on an every day basis.  I want you to be ready for this, so I would ask you to do a silent little prayer in your own spirit right now that says, "Father I want to get this and make sure I have it in no uncertain terms.  I want to hear everything that he has to say with the ears of my spirit and not the ears on my head."

Before I actually begin with 1,2 and 3, let me expand on something I have already read for you from Ephesians, chapter six.  Notice what it says in verse 13, "Use every piece of God's armor to be able to resist the enemy."  Listen to this armor.  You know what armor is.  The soldier is clad with armor.  He has protection so that whatever the weapon is, it cannot penetrate the protection.  It is like a bulletproof vest that has saved many an officer's life.

Verse 14 says, "Put on truth."  What kind of piece of armor is truth?  If you live your life on a platform based on truth, when the enemy comes at you with a lie, you recognize it right away because it doesn't gel with the truth and, therefore, you reject it.  The first piece mentioned is truth and then He says, "Be covered by God's righteousness."  What is God's righteousness?  It is your right standing with God.  Make sure you are in right relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  Your armor is truth and remembering your relationship with God at all times.  The devil wants you to think you haven't got one.  That is a lie and has nothing to do with the truth on which you are firmly planted.  You can get a bit of news today and it is nothing but a lie, it is false, but if you are not careful, in your humanity, you accept it and entertain it.  He whispers to you, "You are weak, you are frail, you have no power or personality."  He lies, and lies and lies to you.  So, make sure you are established in the truth as a piece of your armor and you understand that you are in a relationship with God and not in a relationship with the devil.  Satan is no longer pulling the strings in your life.  God is working in us, the will and the to do of HIS good pleasure, not the devil.  You have been translated out of the devil's territory and placed in the Kingdom of God's dear Son.  Sin hath no more dominion over you.  You don't have to sin, but you can choose to sin, for there is one thing God never does, that is, He never takes away your awesome right of choice.

The second piece of armor that He mentions in verse 15 is this, your feet are shod with peace.  As much as is humanly possible, the Bible says, live at peace with people.  Travel the peace route.  Stay away from agitation, aggravation and conflict.  Stay away from that as much as is humanly possible because your feet are shod with the Gospel of peace.  Blessed are the peacemakers.

Third, verse 16, "In every battle you will need to have faith."  Think about this for a minute.  He says the armor that you are covered with, truth, peace, faith, remembering your relationship with God and on top of everything else, in verse 17, the helmet which is protecting your head is salvation and your weapon is the Word of God.  What does God's word say about this?  When I am beginning to feel like I am weak, I need to remember what the Bible says.  Search in the index of your Bible and run your finger down the page to "W" and find the references and scriptures associated with that word that says you are not weak, but strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.  The only weapon in this armor is the Word of God.  You cannot outwit the enemy or outsmart him or outmaneuver him, but your weapon against him is what God has said.

PRINCIPLE #1: Be strong in the Lord's might and power.
Be strong with the Lord's might and power, YOU HAVE NONE OF YOUR OWN!  Your power of persuasion wouldn't blow the fuzz off a peach.  We have no power.  "I am weak, but Thou art strong," the song says.  It isn't YOUR strength.  The literal translation of the phrase "be strong" is "receive strength" because you have none of your own.  You may not have any of your own, but it is available and waiting for you.  It is there in abundance for you to move into, so receive it so you will be able to stand.  It is the strength God has put in your life since you have come to know Him through saving grace.

Here is a key.  It is found in James 4, "Submit yourselves to God, resist the devil."  Make sure you get them in order.  Submit yourselves to God, resist the devil.  You can't resist the devil if you do not submit yourself to God.  If you don't submit yourself to one authority you are submitting yourself to another.  This is the chronological order of scripture – submit yourself to God, resist the devil, he will flee from you.  Submit first, resist follows.  It works that way and no other way.  When we find ourselves in trouble the first thing we do is not to point our fingers outwardly, but inwardly, and say, "Oops! I guess I should have submitted myself to God here and I wouldn't be in trouble, but because I didn't, I had no power to resist."

The enemy is not afraid of you.  The enemy does not shake and quake at the mention of your name.  There is nothing about you that causes the enemy to shake in his boots.  You need to understand that.  You need to get that in your spiritual makeup.  There is nothing in my makeup that causes the enemy to be afraid of me, however, there is One living in me Who causes him to tremble.  At the very mention of His name the enemy begins to retreat.  He begins to lose the power to grasp or to control.  That is being strong in the power of the Lord and His might.  I can scream my name at the enemy all I want to and he will not back up one inch, but I can whisper another name and he begins to retreat like a whipped puppy.

In Ephesians 3:20 it says, "Now to Him Who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think according to the power that worketh in us."  What is the power that worketh in us?  The power of the resurrected Christ in my life, either in word or in actual presence, either through the power of His Word or the very presence of Jesus Christ in my life.  When I turn to and rely on that strength and God-given ability, he will turn tail and run.  In a verse ahead of this it says, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."  It is that power I am talking about.  In James 4:8 it says, "Draw nigh unto God and He will draw nigh unto you."  In the Living Bible it says, "You draw close to God and God will then draw close to you."  The enemy doesn't want that to happen.  He loses all power and influence over your life when you draw close to God and God moves closer to you.

Resistance is no longer measured by our strength.  We don't have any.  The strength is God, the power is God, the ability to say no is God, the ability to say yes is God.  It is not you and it is not me.  There is a time when I must say no.  When I say no, it reverberates all over the chambers of Heaven and every angel and every help and assistance available to us hears that word "no" bouncing around the chambers of Heaven and they see to it that my "no" is honored.  If the need is to say yes, it cuts through all the nonsense and rattles the gates of Heaven when I say yes.  He finishes in James by saying this, "A double minded man will receive nothing from the Lord."  What do you mean by a double minded man?  That is the person who has a divided heart.  He has a heart that clamors after the things of the world and then when he realizes he shouldn't do that, he now has a heart that seeks after God.  He has interests over here in the world, but remember, "You are in this world, but not of this world."  You cannot serve this world and serve Jesus Christ at the same time.   You cannot be party to the world and the world system and be part of God's world and God's system at the same time.  No man can serve two masters.

We need to come to the place where we define something and that is, if I am double minded, if I have interests on God's side and interests on the world's side, interests in what I can enjoy on God's side and interests on what I can enjoy on the world's side, until at any time the bouncing rubber ball never knows exactly which way it is going to bounce.  That person, according to James, has divided interests, sometimes living for Jesus, sometimes living for himself and his own interests.  A divided heart will never experience the power of God.  Why should God energize you if you are going to put your interests over here where He just saved you from?  Why would God energize you and give you strength and power for you to do something entirely for your interests, and what you want?  That divided heart will never experience the power of God until it learns, first we submit ourselves to God, then we can resist the devil.  We submit, then we resist.  If we don't submit, we can't resist.  Your strength and mine will be okay as long as the opposition is weak and the temptation is an itty bitty one, but it will never do for the trials and tests that lie ahead.

PRINCIPLE #2: How does Satan use his power?
Before we can actually understand how Satan uses his power we must first look at Satan's limitations.  You can have a Mercedes, beautiful leather and glass roof, all the bells and all the whistles and put in it a four cylinder engine.  That means, you cannot drive down the highway and have your air conditioning on at the same time; they won't both work.  You can have this beautiful thing that looks gorgeous and has all the bells and whistles, but it has nothing in it.  No power to do anything.  I am afraid that much of Christianity is right there today.  Beautiful looking, but with a little washing machine engine in there that is not going to get it down the road, doing the thing that God wants done, until something happens and a conversion, or change, takes place.

So how does Satan use his power?  You must first look at and understand and accept what the Word of God says about his limitations.  Far too many believers see him as an opposite of God.  They see Satan as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.  He is not.  They see him as powerful as God, only over here in the Kingdom of Darkness, whereas God is in the Kingdom of Light.  He is not.  When Lucifer came on the scene, how did he come?  He was created, so he cannot be equal with the Creator.  He is not anywhere close to being on a par with God.  He was a created being that had a particular function given to him in the presence of Almighty God and he blew it.  Because he blew it he was fired, but before he got his severance pay he led a coup in heaven and a bunch of other angels went with him.

Remember, you must understand that Satan is merely an angel that has fallen from grace, and he is angry.  The Bible says, "Thine is the honor and the glory and the power."  Guess where that goes?  Thine is the power.  The only power the fallen angel has is the power we give him by listening to what he has to say and buying into his lies.  Then we enable him.  Power belongs to God.  When Satan rebelled and lost his God-given place, there is no logical reason to believe that God would allow him to keep any degree of power he had to fulfill the plans and purposes of God, once he had been rejected.  To say that the enemy has all that power, though he has been ejected from his position and from the Heavenly realm and has been cast out, is ridiculous.  There is no reason to believe that he was allowed to keep that power that was given him to fulfill God's will and purpose.  He was created for a particular function.

You and I have been born again by the power of God and the power of the Gospel and we have been given power.  "You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit comes into your life and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth."  That power will be there as long as your purpose is to do what God wants you to do.  The power isn't going to be there for you to spend it on yourself.  Remember, there was a man in the Bible who followed after the disciples wanting to buy the power he saw the disciples using, for his own gain.  You can't buy or bargain with God for power to be used for your own purposes.  We are given a glimpse of Satan's power in Rev. 20:1-2, "After that great tribulation, an angel was given a chain and was sent to bind Satan and cast him into a pit for a thousand years."  Think about that.  Not an army, not a troop of angels, but AN angel with ONE chain to bind up this fallen angel by the name of Satan and throw him in a pit.  This is a totally unknown, unrecognized and unspecified angel.  It doesn't say he sent Gabriel, or Michael the archangel.   It says he sent an angel to bind up Satan and throw him in a pit.

Another misconception about fallen angels is that they are demons running all over the world wreaking havoc everywhere they go.  According to the Bible, all angels must obey God regardless of their stature.  Any angel who will not obey God receives a just and certain judgement.  We read this in II Peter 2:4, "He cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains."  How can they be foot loose and fancy free, running all over the place?  He cast them down to hell in chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgement.  They are not loose running around doing their own thing.  All of this is past tense.  They disobeyed, they were cast out, they are already bound waiting for final judgement.  When it speaks of the war in Heaven, it simply means there was a roundup of the rebellious ones along with Satan and they were cast out of Heaven and limited now to earth, awaiting final judgement.

Satan is never referred to in the scripture as having power.  He is never referred to as having power beyond the ability to deceive those who are willing to listen to his lies and believe them.  Anything special that he wants to do he must ask permission or God's approval first.  We are told to put on God's armor and stand in God's strength against the wiles or the fiery darts.  Wiles means deceit or trickery.  Deceit, seduction and lies are the power that Satan has, no more, no less!   Satan has no power to physically harm you.  Satan is a wicked spirit.  He, as a spirit, has no ability to inflict physical damage or harm or injury to a physical body.  A spirit can't do that.  "Who did sin that this man was born blind, he or his parents?  Neither one, but that the Glory of God might be revealed."  Oh, but wait a minute!  When Jesus dealt with demons he took those people and cast them into the fire. That's right, they were demon controlled or possessed, but they were not believers.  They were not believers.  Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.  It is not cohabited by Satan or any of the demons.  That is a lie right out of Hell.  The only power he has over you is the power of suggestion.  If you buy into his suggestions, then he reaches out with a clothes pin and gets hold of your nose and starts to drag you around because you bought into his deceit or his seduction, or wicked intent.   You bought it.

It is important to remember that deceit, seduction and lies are the power of Satan, no more and no less.   Neither does he have any power or sway over you.  Here is where spiritual warfare comes in.  I love my brother and care about him very much, but no matter how much I care about him, I cannot get under his skin and make the choices and decisions for him.  He must do that himself.  I cannot walk where he walks, I cannot be with him every hour of the day, sitting along side him and say, don't do that.  I can pray and encourage him, but he has to come to the place where he knows what God's Word says about this subject and he chooses what God's Word says about this subject over what Satan is trying to pull over on him.  I cannot make that decision for him.  He is still a free moral agent with the capacity and the ability to know, understand and function in the decision making process and no one can make them for him.  This whole business of "The devil made me do it" is a lie.  The devil dangles something in front of your nose and you bite on it and you have made the choice.  He says, "You would be much better off if you did this", so you say, "Okay, I'll do that."  Satan didn't do it, he just dangled some flirtation out in front of you to lure you away from what God wants you to do right now and so you said okay.

Proverbs 16:7 says, "When a man's way pleases the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him."  Enoch went for a walk one day and all of a sudden God said to him, paraphrasing, "You're much closer to my home than yours, why not just come up here, and Enoch was not, for God took him, because his life pleased God."  One of these days the same thing is going to happen to everyone sitting in this room and everyone listening to this tape or reading it in print, only instead of God whispering, He is going to send a trumpet sound and suddenly we will be absent here and present there.  Why?  Because your life pleases God.

"When a man's ways please the Lord, He causes even his enemies to be at peace with him."  Then the thing that needs to happen in this whole area of spiritual warfare is for us to ask ourselves, on a repeated basis, "Is that pleasing to the Lord?  Is what I'm doing pleasing to the Lord?  Is how I'm handling this pleasing to the Lord?  Is what is going on in my life right now pleasing to the Lord?  If it is, people around me are going to be at peace with me; if not, there is going to be agitation and aggravation and conflict because I'm out of step."  When you are out of step and not living how you ought to live, then your enemies are not going to be at peace with you.  People get discouraged and down on themselves when they have lived in a way that they know full well does not please the Lord.  It didn't even take the devil to show you that.  It comes rushing back to your own sanctified conscience and you will say to yourself, "Oops! That was not good."  It doesn't require that anyone point a finger of blame at you.  That all happens from the inside out.  It isn't so much Satanic or demonic; it is simply because there is a tug of war going on between your spirit man and your natural man.  Sometimes you give in to your natural man and sometimes you give in to the spirit man and then back to your natural man and back again to the spirit man and this tug of war goes on all the time.

Satan cannot oppress you.  He has no way of oppressing you now that you belong to Jesus.  The word oppress means to discourage or defeat you in your spirit.  Spiritually speaking, if you are in Christ, you have been set free and you are no longer under Satan's influence.  The Bible says, "Jesus went about healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him."  Those people were not believers, at least until after they were set free of their oppression.  Satan cannot oppress you, but you can do it to yourself by simply not living on the level that God expects you to live.  You have the power to live as a child of God; you also have the power to choose to submit to sin.  Usually when we are feeling down and oppressed, it is because we want to live for Jesus and do what is right and we just have not made, at this moment, a clean cut away from the world and as a result, double mindedness again comes into play.  The one who controls your desires, controls you.  You submit to one or you submit to other.

PRINCIPLE #3: How do we resist?
God has not brought you into a relationship with Him or into some kind of a religion that is called "Pick and choose what you like."  However, He does say to you, "You can have a lifestyle according to My plans and purposes or according to your own.  Now, if your lifestyle is according to your own, we are going to have problems, because when I want to bless you and do something in your life, you have bounced in the wrong direction today and you are living over there someplace."  This is spiritual warfare – to keep yourself in the place where God wants you; so put on TRUTH, it is the foundation that everything else is built on.  If you don't know what the truth is, the Bible says, you have to find out from the Bible what is the truth.  Jesus said, "Thy Word is Truth."  If you do not know what truth is, you are wide open to deception.  Be covered by the breastplate of RIGHTEOUSNESS.  It guards your heart, which is a very vital organ for you to protect at all times.  Guard your heart, for out of it flow the entire issues of your life.  It protects your heart, or spirit, from attack.  Sin will shake your very foundation because it is that which opposes the plans and purposes of God in your life.  Travel in PEACE.  Wherever you go and whatever you do, let peace be the hallmark.  Not anger, resentment or bitterness or demanding your rights, but go in peace.  As much as possible, live that way.  Above all, have with you the shield of FAITH and you will be able to deflect the fiery darts of the wicked one.  Make sure your helmet of SALVATION is in place.  All the religion in the world will not benefit you if you neglect God's salvation.  Salvation is not just doing nice things for nice people.  It is not just going to church on Sunday.  It is receiving God's free gift of saving grace and confessing Him as your Savior and your Lord.  Don't be ashamed of Him here or He'll be ashamed of you there.

Submit yourself to God, every day, day in and day out.  Then you will be able to resist the devil and he will flee from you.  "God, I give myself to you, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to You.  I want my life to please You.  I want my attitudes to please You.  I want my conversation to please You.  I want where I travel to please You.  The things that I do, I want to please You more than anything else."

This, my friends, is what the Bible outlines as spiritual warfare.  Please notice what I did not say.   Spiritual warfare does not involve supernatural gifts.  It does not involve the laying on of hands.  It does not involve deliverance from certain powers.  It does not involve or invoke unknown tongues or languages.  It says nothing in the Bible about armor that pertains to the Holy Ghost.  It says nothing about unusual, emotional upheaval.  It simply says, "Put on truth, put on peace for your feet and keep your shield of faith high; make sure that your relationship with God is intact, and that your helmet of salvation is in place."  We don't look to outside sources to do what needs to be done in our own choices and decisions.