Winning the Spiritual War Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Winning the Spiritual War Part 2. He will be reading out of 2nd Corintians 10:1-6.

The key to winning the war is not being passive, but to be proactive. It is to take the initiative to live in obedience for Christ. Remember the Bible tells us to take off the old man and to put on the new man.

Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders from The Open Door Church. I’m the host for Hope Worth Having radio broadcasts, and we’re delighted that you can join us today. Thank you for tuning in. We’re going to continue our study in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, and we’re learning about winning the spiritual war.

This is Winning the Spiritual War part two. So I want you to grab your Bible, get a pencil, piece of paper, and let’s start studying together. Make sure you’re taking notes so that we can continue to grow in our faith together.

And there are times that you and I have to be courageous, that we have to speak up, that we have to stand up, that we have to be willing to step up for what is right, what is honorable, what is godly, what is truthful.

There are times in our life that we must remember that God is calling us to be bold. He is calling us to be fearless. The apostle is simply communicating here that he is more than capable to be bold and fearless, and that he is not afraid to confront.

You remember in the New Testament that the apostle Peter, even himself, being a man like you and I, that he found himself off track, off mission. You remember in the book of Galatians where he was showing favoritism to those Jews that were believing in Christ but yet looking down upon the Gentiles who believed in Christ?

Do you remember that the Apostle confronted Peter? That he addressed that problem with him? And that it was something that required him to be courageous? And so it is that the Apostle is begging. He is begging the congregation.

He is begging those false teachers, those critics, that they would not put him in a position because he is more than ready if so. If it is necessary for him to be bold, he is ready. He is willing. He is willing to display the boldness of confronting them and to warn if necessary.

Now what if our armed forces went into each battle afraid? Undedicated. Undedicated to the country. Undedicated to the task. There is no doubt that we would lose the war. Our military is taught complete commitment and courage.

And if they were not, they could never succeed. In the same way, every Christian must learn that they must be courageous. They must be committed. Remember, we are here for a reason. God has raised you up.

He has placed you where you’re at for a purpose. And there are moments and times that God is saying, this is your moment to step up and speak up. It’s important that we are courageous and that we are ready to face the moment that is before us.

There is no doubt, church, that our nation is in a spiritual warfare. And I really have no other explanation for all that is happening except that we are in a spiritual battle. It is unbelievable that we live in a culture that depicts evil as good, that it depicts wrong as right, that has confusion about people’s gender identity, that presents truth as wrong and intolerance as tolerant, hate as love.

We live in a culture that glorifies death and abortions. It goes deeper, church, than just what we see. It is a spiritual warfare. And the Bible tells us that we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities.

There is no doubt that the demonic forces are at work trying to bring down our culture, trying to bring down our values, trying to attack. what is most meaningful and important to us. And we must be courageous as the people of God.

And we do not believe that the answer is found in the White House or the Congress, but the answer is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ. And let’s not be afraid to share that message to the people that God puts in our circle of influence.

The third thing I want you to learn this morning about winning the spiritual battle is not only that we should be compassionate and courageous, but we should be competent. We should be competent. Look at verse three, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. There is an intense battle for our mind.

The devil understands this. He understands how this works. That’s why he uses all these different platforms to capture the minds of individuals. We are in a battle for the mind, and it’s raging 24 hours a day.

Every battle starts in the mind. The Bible says, as a man thinks, so is he. My actions are rooted in my attitude, and my conduct is connected to my core beliefs. And so as I think about my life, I want to always make sure that I’m thinking on the right thing.

The Bible says, think on these things, things that are just, honest and honorable, things that are praiseworthy. If you focus your heart and your mind constantly on the negative, on the what if, on the critical, it is no wonder that you become a negative person.

It’s no wonder that you see everything from such a negative and critical perspective. God is calling us to make sure that we feed our mind with his truth and the things that are right and honorable. It’s important for every mom and dad to recognize in raising their children that we cannot isolate our children from all the evil, all the wrongs, all the difficulties of this world, but what we can do is insulate them by feeding their mind by making sure that their minds are receiving what is truthful,

praiseworthy, and honorable, and just before God. The key in helping your children to grow up in a way that is healthy and honorable to God is to feed their minds. As a man thinks, so is he, the devil’s in fifth gear trying to capture the minds of our young people.

And so we must stay at it in this battle and being competent and strategic in how we do that in feeding their minds. The weapons of the Christian soldier are not worldly weapons. Our battle is spiritual, therefore we must fight…

with spiritual weapons. We depend upon divine resources rather than human methods. So the apostle gives us three particular areas that we have to address with the divine weapons of God. You’ll notice first he uses the word stronghold.

This is a metaphor describing ancient cities, describing the fortresses that they would build around their cities so that they could take refuge. This is a reminder to all of us that there are strongholds that are spiritual and that these strongholds capture the mind and that they must be demolished by the spiritual weapons wielded by godly believers.

Only the spiritual weapons will work. If we are to defeat the satanic falsehoods that infiltrate our minds, it must be done through the spiritual weapons. The second area that he talks about is imaginations.

Again, look at the text here in verse five. He tells us we’re casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. What is he teaching us? He’s talking about the arguments, the imaginations, if you will, which has to do with the philosophies of the world, the false religions of the world, the humanism that is in the world, the secularism.

We are seeing time and time again that people are embracing a secular viewpoint. The problem is that secularism leads us to depend upon mankind, to depend upon ourselves. And the truth is, left to ourselves, we will destroy ourselves.

The only way the heart can have true purpose in life is to understand that there is something bigger in this world. There is something better in this world than what the world can produce. And that person is God Almighty.

It is Jesus Christ. We are to be equipped and understand that through the power of His truth, we can overcome the arguments of the world. Through the power of His truth, we can cast down every false philosophy that captures the mind.

And we do this by making sure that our own hearts and our own minds are aligning in obedience to Christ. That as we learn the truth, God helps us to discern the falsehoods. Many years ago as a young preacher I heard another pastor speaking and he shared with his time of working in the bank and how they could discern between a real dollar bill and a fake dollar bill.

They didn’t spend all their time teaching their workers what a false dollar bill feels like, but focusing on what a real dollar bill feels like, what it looks like, what are the distinctions about it, and that was to give them the skill sets to be able to distinguish what is right and what is wrong.

Too many times we spend all our time telling everybody what we are against and what we need to really focus on is telling everybody what we’re for. And as we focus on what is right, what is honorable, it’s not that we stick our head in the sands to the things that are bad and evil, but we help them to see what is right and honorable.

And in so doing that is that as they learn the truth there is a promise that we are given as we understand truth, that it sanctifies us. The Bible tells us that Jesus prayed that his disciples would be sanctified by the truth.

Jesus said the truth will set you what? Free. It is the truth that sets us free from the philosophies and religions of the world. It is the truth of the gospel, the truth of his word, the truth of the Bible that helps us to be able to discern.

This is what many Christians lack, many followers of God lack, is they lack that discernment. They lack discernment in their life. They’re gullible. They’re naive. They’re easily drawn in. And as a result, misled.

Now he not only talks about strongholds and arguments, but he talks about our thoughts. So again, we look at verse 5 and he says to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Now Satan’s chief activity and goal in our life is to cause us to think differently from the Bible.

It is to cause us to think disobediently to the will of God. We see this in the book of Genesis. We see that as the serpent deceived Eve, that the serpent kept causing Eve to doubt. By using different strategies of questioning who God is.

And what he has actually said, Eve began to doubt, mixing a little truth with a little falsehood so that you can’t see the falsehood. This is how the devil works. He begins to work on our thoughts, our mind.

Don’t misunderstand me church. I know that we have doubts and certainly in the journey of faith there’s going to be doubt. Do not forget that even Jesus on the cross said, my God, my God, why? Why has thou forsaken me?

The sin is not that you have a doubt. The sin is not that you have a question. The sin is not that you can’t see clearly the truth. It is where those questions take you. It is the conclusions that you arrive at that can mess your faith up, that can mislead your heart.

So many times people will say to me, I’m just going to follow my heart. Or I’ve heard people tell other people, follow your heart. And I tell people, don’t do that because the Bible says the heart is deceitful.

Who can know it? The heart is deceitful. Who can know it? What I need to follow is not my heart or my feelings or my emotions. I need to follow the word and will of God. Sometimes my thoughts are contradicting what I know to be true.

Sometimes I wrestle because my emotions are in conflict what I know to be true. Always act upon what you know to be true even though you may not feel it or even think it. The key He is for the believer to submit all their thoughts to Christ.

If I have a thought, if I have a doubt, if I have a question, if I have something that I’m wrestling with in my heart, I want to submit it to the Word and the will of God. I want to make sure that it’s vetted through the truth, that it is filtrated into the mix of what God’s Word says.

In my life, there will be many questions that I can’t even answer. The Bible tells us that the secret things belong to the Lord. I don’t have an answer for every suffering in this world. I don’t have an answer for every question that exists.

And neither do I even pretend to, because I recognize that there are certain things that are just in the sovereign care of God and we won’t know till we get to heaven. But there are questions that can be answered.

There are seemingly contradictions in our minds and God’s truth that sometimes can be reconciled very easily if we will study and we will submit to the will and word of God. So we need to be careful that we are not falling into the trap of allowing our minds to run in such a way that we are believing things that are destructive to our spiritual life.

So each of us knows that the devil wants to change the way I think, the way I think about myself, the way I think about God, and the way that I think about others. So how do I reconcile that? I reconcile it with God’s word.

Now not to be overly simplistic, but a regular reading and studying of the Bible will help you to correct your thoughts. A regular diet of intake of the truth of God into your life is going to help you to have a healthy mind, a healthy heart.

Sometimes our battles are internal. Our battles are within our own mind. Our battles are dealing with our own emotion. Many believers deal with depression. Many believers struggle with what we call oppression.

And sometimes people say to me, Pastor, is it possible for a believer to wrestle with these kind of things? And I say, absolutely, cannot explain why some believers deal with it more than others. But I can only say to you that to make sure that you are competent in your strategy of dealing with this internal battle, that you cannot do it alone, that you cannot fight this battle of the mind by yourself,

that it is critical that you surround yourself with good and godly people who are constantly not only holding you accountable, but helping you in dealing with the things that you are thinking and that you are feeling so that they can help you filter and process it in such a way that it is not destructive to your own health, that it is not destructive to your own well -being.

You need to make sure that you take… that extra effort to be under the teaching of God’s word. For some of you, you do very well. Being faithful here once a week, listening, being in Bible studies, or being in a Bible class, coming to hear the pastor teach, you seem to do very well.

I’m certain that your own personal time with the Lord is flourishing, but others need more. They need to be more engaged, more active in having God’s word fed to them, having God’s word taught to them.

In these times that we live in, these are not the moments that we say we need less of the Bible, less of God’s teaching, less of engaging with God’s people. I am convinced that even as we see the day approaching, that we wanna do it more.

We wanna find ways to be more under his truth. You are blessed. You live in a amazing generation where you have technology all around you. You can get as much as you want of God’s teaching. You can get it on television, radio, internet.

You can get it through podcasts and blogs. There’s so many different angles that you can take to make sure that your soul is being nourished and that you are flourishing for the cause of Christ. Do not be ashamed if you find yourself mentally struggling.

Do not be ashamed if you find yourself dealing with thoughts and questions that are paralyzing. You are no different than if a person is dealing with a physical ailment. Neither one is less or more than the other.

They are… particular needs. Sometimes people have physical ailments that they have to deal with and they have to focus on those particular physical ailments to supplement their capacity and ability to accomplish what they are called to do.

And so is that true in my mental health. Maybe you need a little bit more intake. Be competent about that. Be strategic about that. Making sure that you’re getting what you need so that you can continue to blossom for the Lord.

We as believers should never look down upon others who are struggling with mental health. We should never think any less of them or that somehow that they are worse than us. But we should be a part of that God -given plan to supplement their life.

and to encourage them and to keep them accountable and to keep them focus on the mission that God has called us to. We have to be competent. We have to be competent for the Lord. Now my final point and just very quickly is we must be calculating.

We must be calculating. Look at verse 6, being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. Now the apostle recognizes that within the body of this local congregation to the original hearers of this letter that disobedience to the will of God and the Word of God had unfortunately become rampant and the remedy is simply this and that is obedient.

It is obedient. It is obedient. We’re to take up the spiritual weapons of prayer and God’s Word. We are to put on the spiritual armor of God to lead us into a path of obedience to God. The Bible says in Ephesians 16 and 17, take the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching or being alert thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.

You see church, the key to winning the war is not being passive but to be proactive. It is to take the initiative to live in obedience for Christ. Remember the Bible tells us to take off the old man and to put on the new man.

take off the old man and they forget to put on the new man, take the initiative and to be proactive to put on the new man and they find their heart going back to the old man. If you do not replace the old with new, you will revert back to the old.

For people who struggle with addictions, the key is not just getting rid of the old, but it is replacing it with the new. So if I wanna get rid of old habits, I put new habits in there. I am calculating, I am understanding that I can’t just say no, there has to be more.

There has to be action steps that I take so that I can prosper for God. Too many Christians have been defensive for too long and God calls us to go on the offense. for our faith. He calls us to put on the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit.

He calls on us to put on the breastplate of righteousness. He calls on us to put on the armor of God, and you will note something unique about the armor of God. It is all for the front of the believer, not the back, because we do not retreat, but we are always marching forward.

We’re always marching forward for God. We are always on the offensive. Now in this journey, hear me, in this journey, there are gonna be times we fail. You know why? Because you’re human and I’m human.

But the Bible says a righteous man falls seven times, but he gets back up. When my children played sports, if they fell down, I said, get up. And you say, Mike, that’s so mean. Why didn’t you run out there on the court or the field and hug them and just feel pity for them?

No, get up, get up. Because here’s the way life is. We’re gonna fail. We’re gonna falter. We’re gonna fumble. What are you gonna do? You gonna have a pity party? Are you gonna quit? Are you gonna curl up and give up?

No, get up. Get up for God. There is grace for the believer. And as I said at the outset of this sermon, as I bring it to a close, that there is grace to conquer. There’s grace to overcome the stronghold and the philosophy and the thoughts and the habit that are so easily besetting us and slowing us down.

Get on the offensive. Use his weapons to attack. Be a proactive witness for Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that the night is far spent and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light.

That’s exactly. what the Apostle is trying to teach us. Put on the armor of light. Be ready for the spiritual battle that is before us. So I hope that what you are learning is equipping you and preparing you as each and every day you are ready for the spiritual battle that is upon you and that you can live faithfully and victoriously for the Lord Jesus Christ.

I want to remind you about our website Hopeworthhaving .com. On this website there’s a lot of good resources. We hope that you’ll take advantage of it and check us out on the website and if you’d like to sign up for our newsletter you can do that and we will reach out to you and continue to share the good things that the Lord is doing through the Hopeworthhaving ministry.

Thank you to all those who support us praying for us and making it a reality for us to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope. worth having.