Spiritual Warfare (7 page)

In 1 Thessalonians 5:8, the apostle Paul says,
“But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.”
So what is “hope”? In the Bible, hope is a positive or confident expectation of good. Today, we use the word hope too glibly. People use the word all the time, saying, “I really hope that I don’t get retrenched” or “I really hope that I score top marks in my test.” Often, we say in general conversation, “I hope not” or “I hope so”. This kind of hope means that you are not at all sure about something. But the biblical meaning of hope is a positive or confident expectation of good. So when God says, “Have hope”, He wants you to have a confident expectation that good things will happen.

Do you know what is going to happen in your life this week? You probably don’t know. But God wants you to put on the helmet of salvation by having a confident expectation that good will happen this week. Know in your heart and declare with your mouth that it is going to be a good week, during which you will see God’s preservation, wholeness, health and prosperity. When you have that kind of attitude, you are actually putting on your
“helmet the hope of salvation”
.

When people ask me, “Pastor Prince, what’s this week going to be like for you?” my answer is, “Well, it’s going to be great!” Am I a prophet? No, I’m not a prophet. But I know that it is going to be a great week in Jesus’ name! How do I know? Because Jesus did not say, “According to God’s will be it unto you!” He said,
“According to your faith let it be to you.”
(Matthew 9:29) He said, “According to your expectation be it unto you.”

Those of you who say, “Pastor Prince, this is going to be a lousy week, I just know it!” You are right. And those of you who say, “It’s going to be a blessed week!” You are also right. Each of you will have the kind of week you expect. Now, I am not saying that life every day will be a bed of roses if you expect good. I am just telling you that even if there is a storm, Jesus can give you the calm that you need. He can give you the peace that you need. He said,
“In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
(John 16:33) So expect a blessed week!

Remember, Bible hope is not saying, “Well, I don’t know whether I will get it, but I hope so! I am keeping my fingers crossed!” No, that is the world’s kind of hope. Bible hope is this: A confident expectation of good!

Because you are in Christ, God sees you in all the beauties, all the glories, all the moral grandeurs and all the excellences of His Son.

The Bible says that you are to wear a helmet to protect your mind and guard your thoughts. If you are in trouble right now, whatever the trouble may be, you can put on the helmet of the hope of salvation. Remember, salvation is more than just being saved from hell. Salvation includes healing, prosperity and well-being. And you have a confident expectation that good is coming your way, that God will see you through this trial you are experiencing. It is only temporary, that is why you can have a confident expectation of good.

You may argue, “But Pastor Prince, isn’t that faith?” No, faith speaks of now. Faith is believing that right now, you have the answer to your need in Christ even though you do not see it yet. Hope speaks of the future. Hope is a confident expectation of good to come. That is why the Bible calls the glorious appearing of Jesus
“the blessed hope”.
(Titus 2:13) We have a certainty that it will happen, but it is in the future. Faith is in the now.

Be Assured Of Your Salvation

You must be sure of your salvation. There are a lot of misconceptions about salvation. So let me tell you some truths about salvation. Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, Jesus came to make dead people live. We were all dead in our sins, but God loved us so much that He didn’t want to deal with us as ourselves. So He sent His Son to die on the cross. He took you with all your sins and He placed you in Christ. So now, when God looks at you, He sees you in all the beauties, all the glories, all the moral grandeurs and all the excellences of our Lord Jesus Christ!

1 John 4:17 says that
“as He is [present tense], so are we in this world.”
This is how we can have boldness in the day of judgment. From now on, we must always see ourselves in Christ. We have found a new centre. We are no longer in and of ourselves. We are not limited to our own resources. We are in Christ. And in Christ, we have a new identity.

Now, I want you to understand this: When Jesus died on the cross, He didn’t just die for our sins, He died as us! When He was buried, He was buried for us and as us. When God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, never to die again, Jesus was also raised as us. Not just for us, but as us. This is our new identity. Just as we were once identified with the old Adam, now we are identified with the last Adam, the second Man.

The Father raised Jesus far above Satan, far above all principalities, far above all power, might and dominion, far above every name that is named in this world and in the world to come. He is above everyone else. And when the Father made Him sit down at His right hand, the centre of the whole universe, where do we fit in? Well, we are actually seated with Him! With Him, we are crowned with glory and honour, far above Satan and every name that is named!

And that is what the devil doesn’t want you to find out about your salvation. He wants you to think of yourself as separate from Christ. He wants you to think that you are on your own. He wants you to think that when you do good, then you are with Christ, but when you do bad, you are separate from Christ. My friend, the truth is that you are in Christ forever! Knowing that gives you the power to do good.

The good news is that once you are in Christ, nothing can separate you from Him and His love. Romans 8:35 says,
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
We are in Christ forever!

Always Expect The Best

Now, Paul says, “Take the helmet of salvation.” He wants us to take the helmet and wear it. Some people foolishly go to war without their helmets on. They don’t understand how important it is. They think that the helmet gets in the way. When I was young, I didn’t understand why soldiers had to wear helmets. Helmets seemed like an unnecessary burden. But now that I am older, I understand how a helmet can protect your head and save your life!

Expect bad things and bad things will happen. Expect good things and good things will happen.

It is just as important in spiritual warfare. When Irene saw her two friends talking, she thought that they were conspiring against her. Well, Irene didn’t have her helmet on. The moment she saw her friends talking, she expected the worst. If she had been wearing her helmet, she would have had a confident expectation of good. That is what the helmet is designed to do for us — to enable us to expect the best, to expect good things to happen. And you can only do that if you are spending time in the Word of God. You can only have a constant expectation of good if you are more conscious of God’s Word than anything else.

Have you discovered that when you expect bad things, bad things will happen? The opposite is also true: Expect good things and good things will happen. Unfortunately, it is human nature to gravitate towards bad news. This means that lots of people’s heads are naked and exposed. They don’t have the sense to put on their helmets. When the phone rings at an odd time, if people are honest, they will tell you that their first reaction is to think to themselves, “Oh dear, someone is calling me with bad news!” But if you have the helmet of the hope of salvation on all the time, when the phone rings at an odd time, you will say, “I wonder who has good news for me at this time of the night!”

Some of you may disagree with me and say, “Pastor Prince, you never know what to expect.” Well, instead of expecting bad things to happen to you, you can expect good things to happen to you. After all, you are a child of the living God! God loves you! There is a Saviour watching over you! Angels have gone before you! There are more angels working for you than there are demons working against you. Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4) You have every reason to win! You have every reason to expect good things to happen to you!

chapter
8

The Sword Of The Spirit

chapter 8

The Sword Of The Spirit

“And take… the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Ephesians 6:17

God’s Word Is Sharper Than Any Two-Edged Sword

T
he sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. Do you know that it is one of the two weapons in God’s armour that is offensive? (The other one is praying in the Spirit.) The belt holds everything together. Your breastplate protects your heart. Your shoes protect your feet. Your helmet protects your head. Your shield protects your whole being. But your sword is for attacking. That is why it is so important.

If you have served in the army, you would know how important your rifle is. I have spent some time in the army. One of the first things they teach you in the army, men, is that your weapon — for me it was the M16 — is like your wife! They show you your M16 and they say, “As long as you are in the army, this is your wife!” I tell you, I never had to clean and oil a “wife” that much! I thank God that my wife Wendy doesn’t need that much maintenance!

But if you are a soldier stuck behind enemy lines, and you have lost your boots, helmet and even your uniform, if you still have your M16, you can survive. With your M16, you can still shoot the enemy. Even if you are scantily clad, you can still fight! The enemy will die laughing at you!

God’s Word is precise and extremely powerful. It can cut the devil to pieces!

So the sword of the Spirit is our offensive weapon. The writer of this passage on the armour of God, the apostle Paul, displays many modern insights. One of them is in Hebrews 4:12 (I believe Hebrews was written by Paul). He says,
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Christians often say that the Word of God is a two-edged sword. In fact, the Bible says that it is
sharper
than any two-edged sword.

Now, what can a two-edged sword do? Well, it can cut both ways because the blade has two sharp sides. But back in Paul’s day, nothing existed in the physical realm that was sharper than any two-edged sword. However, today, there is something that is sharper than any two-edged sword. It is called a laser. A laser cuts every way and from any direction.

In the spiritual realm, the Bible — God’s Word — is sharper than any two-edged sword. The Bible is to the spiritual world what the laser is to the physical world. It is a precise and extremely powerful tool. The sword of the Word of God can cut the devil to pieces!

Jesus Used The Written Word

To learn how to use this weapon practically, let’s look at the master swordsman, Jesus. When did Jesus use the sword? He used it when He was attacked by the devil in the desert. How did He use it? He used it by saying to the devil, “It is written… it is written… it is written…” You see, Jesus knew what the scriptures taught. He had memorised the scriptures. And when the devil came against Him, He could say, “It is written…”

Now, if the sword is the Word of God and God’s Word sometimes comes to us directly today through the Holy Spirit, then we could suppose that we use the sword against the devil by saying, “Devil, God just told me this morning that…”

Charismatics are famous for saying things like, “You know, this morning, God said to me…” and “Just now, God told me…” But Jesus didn’t talk like that. When He faced the devil in the desert, He didn’t say to him, “Just now, My Father said to Me…” He had good reason to tell the devil what His Father had just told Him after He was baptised in the Jordan river: “You are My beloved Son.” (Matthew 3:17) But Jesus didn’t resort to that. He didn’t resort to the
spoken
Word of God. Instead, He resorted to the
written
Word of God. Three times He said, “It is written”, not “It is spoken”. He said what the scriptures said. He quoted directly from what had already been written in the scriptures.

Now, if the Son of God had to say, “It is written…” to overcome the devil, how much more you and I should quote from the written Word of God! And how much more you and I should memorise scriptures in preparation for battle in the spiritual realm!

You may still ask, “But how do we apply the scriptures, Pastor Prince?” Well, I am going to teach you how because this is the most important part of the use of the sword. This is the part the devil wants you to miss.