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Overview
Trusted pastor and bestselling author Dr. David Jeremiah brings clarity to the complex topic of spiritual warfare. From his years of teaching on this subject, Pastor Jeremiah has selected answers to your pertinent questions concerning victory in the spiritual realm.
The Bible says God will ultimately be victorious and win the spiritual war. But it also says He has given every Christian promises and power to win our daily spiritual battles. The book includes 86 questions with answers such as: How does Satan imitate God? Are demons real? What protection does the shield of faith provide? How can I defend myself against a hostile world? How do I “put on” Christ?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780718091460 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nelson, Thomas, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 06/14/2016 |
| Series: | Answer Book Series |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Sales rank: | 133,578 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.50(w) x 6.60(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Dr. Jeremiah serves as the senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California. He and his wife, Donna, have four grown children and twelve grandchildren.
Read an Excerpt
The Spiritual Warfare Answer Book
By David Jeremiah
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2016 Dr. David JeremiahAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-9146-0
CHAPTER 1
Terms of Engagement
* * *
Fight the good fight of faith. 1 Timothy 6:12
Why study spiritual warfare?
Biblically and practically speaking, we are in a spiritual war. The Christian's spiritual enemy is not in uniform, and he doesn't meet us on an identifiable battlefield. He uses ruthless and unconventional tactics such as deceit, deflection, and disguise.
A large number of pastors and teachers, however, ignore or downplay spiritual warfare to the point that many professing Christians don't even know they're in a war. This lack of awareness puts Christians in serious danger. The church of Jesus Christ needs to know its enemy and his strategies. Above all, Christians need to know how to gain victory over this enemy.
Two things are happening today that I never thought I would live to see. First, spiritual warfare is getting much more intense as Satan's attacks become bolder. Second, as mentioned above, too many Christians are not taking spiritual warfare seriously or even believing such a war is going on. Taken together, these two factors mean we have a crisis on our hands. When the danger increases and our awareness decreases, someone needs to sound an alarm to prevent disaster.
We are in a Spiritual war.
Are we really in a war?
Be assured, spiritual warfare is a reality in the life of every believer. When you open the pages of the New Testament, there is no shortage of passages that characterize the Christian as a warrior and the Christian life as a battle. We are called to a grim struggle with unseen forces, and the fight is real.
This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare. (1 Timothy 1:18)
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life. (1 Timothy 6:12)
You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. (2 Timothy 2:3)
No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. (2 Timothy 2:4)
Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. (1 Corinthians 16:13)
Commenting on these passages, pastor and writer J. C. Ryle said this: "Words such as these appear to me clear, plain, and unmistakable. They all teach one and the same great lesson, if we are willing to receive it. That lesson is, that true Christianity is a struggle, a fight, and a warfare."
Don't Believe in a Devil
Men don't believe in a devil now,
As their fathers used to do;
They've forced the door of the broadest creed
To let his majesty through;
There isn't a print of his cloven foot,
Or a fiery dart from his bow,
To be found in earth or air to-day,
For the world has voted so.
But who is mixing the fatal draft
That palsies heart and brain,
And loads the earth of each passing year
With ten hundred thousand slain?
Who blights the bloom of the land to-day
With the fiery breath of hell,
If the devil isn't and never was?
Won't somebody rise and tell?
Alfred J. Hough
Know it or not, like it or not, you and I are in a war! And we need to begin living as if we were in a battle for our lives. Because, in fact, we are. Stu Weber
Against whom are we fighting?
Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 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.
Ephesians 6:10–12
Every time Paul mentions another class of spiritual beings in his teachings, he reaffirms that we wrestle against them. The word against appears six times in the three verses above. Think of an oarsman rowing his boat against the current. He is trying to make progress in one direction while the current seeks to take him the opposite way. Similarly, we are trying to make progress toward the kingdom of God, and Satan turns the current of the world in the opposite direction, creating resistance with every stroke of the oar.
Satan's war against us is organized and strategic. The word principalities (Ephesians 6:12) refers to his head officers, while the word wiles (v. 11) refers to his clever plans, crafty deceptions, and cunning methods. Like a military general, Satan plans his attacks and directs his demonic forces.
Note carefully how Paul describes this one against whom we are fighting: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood." In other words, our enemies are not people. You may think they are, but they are not. Author John Phillips put it this way:
We must see beyond people. Satan may use people to persecute us, lie to us, cheat us, hurt us, or even kill us. But our real enemy lurks in the shadows of the unseen world, moving people as pawns on the chessboard of time. As long as we see people as enemies and wrestle against them, we will spend our strength in vain.
Satan is the great destroyer. He wants to destroy your life through adversity and by blocking the work God wants to see manifested in your life. Satan does that by discouraging you, by dissipating your time and energy, and by making a frontal assault on your weak areas that lead you to sin. Satan wants to disrupt your walk with God, ruin your testimony, and destroy your life.
Paul gives the following instruction in Ephesians 6: "My brethren, be strong" (v. 10). Why? So we can enter this battle and fight against the enemy who is against us. This is not a fight only for the apostles. This is not a fight only for pastors. This is not a fight only for deacons or other church leaders. This is a fight for the brethren, for all of us together — the brothers and the sisters in Christ's family. The lines have been drawn. Our enemy, with whom we are involved in mortal combat, is none other than Satan himself. The Lord and the brethren, His people, are battling against Satan and his demons.
How can I be certain I've been called to battle?
You may be wondering, Maybe I haven't been called to this fight. You know, I'm really not the warrior type. Well, you may not be acting like a warrior, but if you're a Christian, you're in the army. All believers have been drafted, and either you're going to help fight, or you're going to stand in the background and be miserable.
Again, we hear from J. C. Ryle:
The true Christian is called to be a soldier and must behave as such from the day of his conversion to the day of his death. He is not meant to live a life of religious ease, indolence, and security. He must never imagine for a moment that he can sleep and doze along the way to heaven.
It seems that much of the theology we're exposed to today is about how we can make things better for ourselves: how we can get more money, how we can have more joy, how we can accumulate bigger and better things. Too often, the church's message has become about us. But when we study the Bible, we realize that Christianity isn't about making our lives trouble-free. It's about becoming worthy soldiers for Jesus Christ. And that's the spirit of godly soldiers: not looking for the easiest way, but asking for God's help to be prepared for what's ahead.
In order to stand strong against our enemy, we must understand how Satan goes about accomplishing his purposes. I paged through the Bible and wrote down the verbs describing his activity: Satan beguiles, seduces, opposes, resists, deceives, sows terror, hinders, buffets, tempts, persecutes, blasphemes — and more. There are no edifying verbs associated with Satan. His goal is to diminish and deface the glory of God. And in pursuit of that goal, Satan is utterly deceitful, divisive, and destructive.
How can I be a courageous warrior for God when I feel powerless?
Once we understand the fact that we're in a spiritual battle, one of the first thoughts that tends to come to mind is I am not capable of fighting in this war. The reality is, this is a tough war. Letting fear or your own inadequacies keep you from the battle is not an option. Every Christian, regardless of age or maturity, is called by God to be fearless. And we do not have to fear, because we are never going to be asked to fight this war in our own strength. God promises to strengthen us with His might.
In the book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul provides a word of encouragement: "Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might" (Ephesians 6:10). And 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power." These passages remind us that the strength and power for the battle are gifts from the Lord. Isn't that a great encouragement? God Almighty has promised us, His soldiers, that He will protect us and keep us strong. We can therefore go boldly to the front lines, knowing that the Christian is not commanded to be courageous in his own strength but instead to be emboldened by the power of Another — and that Other is Jesus Christ.
More than a century ago, J. C. Ryle wrote:
The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a scanty round of formal religious services once or twice every week. But the great spiritual warfare — its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests — of all this they appear to know nothing at all.
The Christian is not commanded to be courageous in his own strength but to be emboldened by the power of Another — and that Other is Jesus Christ.
CHAPTER 2Behind Enemy Lines
* * *
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 1 Peter 5:8
Why is it important to understand the enemy?
Before you fight a war, it's always a good thing to know something about your enemy. Nowhere is this statement truer than in the spiritual realm.
Many Christians do not take the enemy seriously because they don't know enough about him to take him seriously. In fact, Satan's cleverest strategy is to make us believe that he does not exist or that he's not a real threat. Some Christians do not even believe in a literal devil. Instead, they believe he is a biblical symbol for evil. But that is not the position of the Bible. The devil is every bit as real as God is. It's hard for a symbol to do the things attributed to Satan in Scripture: deceiving, murdering, tempting, destroying, lying, accusing, and controlling.
In the famous exchange between God and Satan in Job 1, God asked Satan from where he had come. The devil answered, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it" (Job 1:7). Satan is active on the earth today, involved in human affairs. In fact, the whole world is under his control (1 John 5:19). God has given Satan authority on the earth for a while, and God will one day take back that control. In the meantime, anyone living on planet Earth is subject to the devil's actions. And we must keep our guard up against him.
In the book The Art of War, written twenty-six hundred years ago, author Sun Tzu observed:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Is it possible for Christians to become preoccupied with the study of Satan and his demons?
There are two extremes we should avoid. If you hold the position that you don't want to know anything about this subject of the enemy and his forces and you aren't going to study it, then you give Satan an advantage through your ignorance of him. On the other hand, if you think you need to know all there is to know about Satan and you read just about every word in print about him, then you will fail to focus on other important truths in Scripture that God wants you to study. Know your enemy, but don't become preoccupied with Satan and his demons.
What do we know about Satan's origin?
Satan's original name was Lucifer, which means "shining one," "morning star," or "son of the morning." And strange as it may sound, he came from heaven. Lucifer was the chief of the cherubim — the highest order of angels. And before the fall, he was in Eden, the garden of God, and he had access to the throne of God (Ezekiel 28:13–14).
We also know that Lucifer was "full of wisdom and perfect in beauty" (Ezekiel 28:12). In fact, Ezekiel 28:13 describes the beauty of Lucifer with gems that reflected the glory of God: "sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold." No creature had been so fully prepared to reflect the glory of God.
This same passage in Ezekiel also gives us a musical description: "The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created" (v. 13). God had given Satan the very special commission to minister unto Him and cover His glory with music through worship and praise. Of Lucifer's musical abilities, Terry Law has written: "Pipes apparently were built into his very body. ... He was a master musician." He was a walking orchestra. And that was the distinctive purpose that God gave him: Lucifer was one of God's best works, created to praise God in heaven.
From the pomp and beauty of heaven, this glorious creation will be "brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit" (Isaiah 14:15). All his beauty will be gone. In the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton, we see this illustrated. There is a battle in heaven as Satan and his followers fight against God for supremacy. After being defeated and chained in a lake of fire, Satan is still not willing to accept defeat. Satan would rather be a king in hell than a servant in heaven. In fact, so great is Satan's arrogance that, even after being cast out of heaven, he has continued to work to subvert the plans of God by corrupting His most prized creation: mankind. Satan also attempts to make evil seem good as he enchants human beings with false gods. From the glories of heaven where he was created, Satan has fallen, and his ultimate destination for all eternity will be a pit.
Satan would rather BE A KING in hell than a servant in heaven.
What caused Lucifer to fall from heaven?
Lucifer was perfect "till iniquity was found in [him]" (Ezekiel 28:15). Isaiah 14:13-14 tells us what happened in Lucifer's heart when he rebelled against God:
You have said in your heart: "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High."
Lucifer's heart was captivated by pride. He decided it was no longer good enough to be an angel created in the beauty of God. Lucifer wanted to be like "the Most High." He desired God's place in heaven — God's position, His power, His perfection, His privilege. And when Lucifer (day star) became Satan (adversary) due to this sin in his heart, he was banished from heaven (Ezekiel 28:16). His proud heart was the reason for his fall, and the Bible tells us he did indeed fall. Here are Jesus' own words: "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18).
It was no longer good enough TO BE AN ANGEL created in the beauty of God. Lucifer wanted to be like "the Most High."
The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. ... It was through Pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind.
C. S. Lewis
How could a perfect, holy being fall?
Satan wasn't created as the devil. God created Lucifer. Lucifer forfeited that name and became Satan (meaning "adversary" or "enemy") of his own will. But how? Lucifer had no sinful world to lure him, no tempter to push him, and no innate sinful nature to overpower him. How could the first unholy affection arise in an angelic being? The answer lies in the fact that — like you and me — Lucifer was created with freedom to choose.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Spiritual Warfare Answer Book by David Jeremiah. Copyright © 2016 Dr. David Jeremiah. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction, xi,Terms of Engagement,
Behind Enemy Lines,
God's Armory,
The Warfare of Prayer,
Conclusion,
The Warrior's Prayer, 186,
Spiritual Warfare Reference Guide, 188,
Prayer Reference Guide, 199,
Additional Resources from Dr. David Jeremiah, 204,
About Dr. David Jeremiah, 206,
Notes, 208,
Topical Index, 210,
