Sam.

So what's going on, everybody?

How's it going, everybody?

Welcome to another great episode of the Truth Response.

Yep.

I don't know why I felt like doing it that way, but it was fun.

Yeah.

You were doing it in a whisper earlier.

Yeah, yeah.

Before I hit record.

You never know what's gonna happen, especially when I'm trying out the mics.

Yeah.

So.

So I'm Derek.

And I'm Matt.

And today we kick off a whole series.

A giant series.

We planned a series.

A series.

It's a series of a series.

We're serious about the series.

I'm sort of serious.

About the series.

About the series.

And we're gonna be talking about Spiritual Warfare.

Yeah.

It's been something that's been hitting us a lot lately.

It's been something that's been hitting a lot of people lately.

Everybody's getting hit.

They don't know it sometimes.

Right, right.

Very true.

And so we're gonna.

We're doing something we haven't done.

That's.

We've got an outline.

Yeah.

I have papers in front of me now.

And it doesn't mean we're gonna always stick to them the best, but I'm.

Gonna try not to.

And I'm going to hurt him if he tries not to.

But we're going to hopefully do a little bit of the structure for it.

I'm a little uncomfortable already with structure.

It's like putting on new pants that aren't broken in yet.

Well, you know, it's funny.

That's the whole story of, like, David and Goliath.

Right.

Like, why he didn't use armor.

Didn't fit.

Didn't fit.

Cause he hadn't.

He hadn't battle tested them, man.

He hadn't been putting it on daily.

And they weren't made for him.

And they just.

It just wasn't.

It wasn't right.

No, it wasn't right.

And so.

But we're gonna try this on anyway.

Yeah, we are gonna try this on.

Right.

And we're gonna talk about.

Try to break it in.

Why We've got some holes in the knees put on our armor.

Right.

Yeah.

What that is.

We're actually gonna break it down a lot better than we've ever done on this podcast, that's for sure.

Maybe.

Well, I mean, the closest we've gotten maybe will be when I kind of run us through Revelation fairly quickly.

Yeah, I think that's probably the most concise.

We've done it.

Yeah, I mean, we've.

We've definitely done it.

I Think we've done an episode on the armor, but it was kind of like a.

I think it was a Spiritual warfare brief thing episode.

And we touched everything in one go, and it was just brief overview.

I wanted to.

We're gonna really hit it.

Yeah, we're gonna.

We're gonna try something.

This is his baby.

And if.

If this doesn't.

We're birth to it.

If y' all don't like it after the series is over, we can change it back.

If Matt doesn't like it, we'll change it back.

If you guys love it, we'll probably change it back.

You know, laziness sets in.

Well, no, we're gonna see how this goes.

We'll see how it goes.

We'll see how it goes after this series is over.

We'll try for the series and we'll try.

And if it works out, great, great.

But most importantly, you're gonna have to give us some feedback.

What's working, what's not.

Leave it in the comments.

Hit us up.

We need to know.

We need to know.

What did you like?

I just gotta know what's working.

We wanna work for you the right way.

Yep.

So, yeah.

So today it's gonna be a day that will bring it all back to you.

All right.

Sorry, you took me off track.

Today we're gonna talk about, you know, spiritual warfare.

We're gonna kick it off.

We're.

Introduction.

Introduction.

Today is called Introduction to Spiritual Warfare.

Episode one of the Spiritual Warfare series.

Sorry.

We should have done Episode four first.

Like Star Wars.

Episode four first, kid.

Well, we're gonna name this Episode four and screw everybody up.

No, you're right.

We're not terrible.

That's gonna be episode 207, actually.

It's clearly gonna mess people up.

That's right, it is.

Anyways, let's.

Let's pray.

We need to pray to start this thing off.

So are we gonna pray and not go into the break?

Should we.

Should we break first?

Maybe I'll just do it first.

Yeah.

Just pray.

Wait, no.

Yeah.

No.

Are you sure?

What.

You know what you're doing?

I don't know what I'm doing.

You know what?

I'm just gonna hit the music first, and then we're just gonna roll in.

This is what's gonna happen.

You guys are getting a new experience today, and I don't know if it'll be the next time, but today.

So we're gonna pray now then.

We're gonna pray now then.

So you're gonna start with the music.

Yeah, music's coming first, then we're just gonna jump right in.

Already happened.

It's already happening.

That was then, this is now.

We'll pray.

Yeah.

Anybody listening knows that this music is already.

We're having a redundant conversation.

It's already happening.

It's wonderful.

It's wonderful.

This is why you guys hate us.

So I'm not sure why you guys love us, although we've been getting some cool comments, so.

There are reasons we love comments.

Love them.

Thank you so much.

Keep them coming.

All right.

Yeah, I'll pray.

I'll pray first.

All right, well, then I must take off my hat.

It is off now.

Oh, look at that.

You got a new haircut.

I got a new haircut.

This is also called new haircut.

Check this out.

Look at that.

He went short.

That's the shortest he's been in three years, people.

Three and a half.

Three and a half years, people.

Yep.

I hadn't had a haircut in three and a half years.

Doesn't he look styling?

And it already feels way better, so.

Yeah.

And it's mostly because my hair is healthy now.

Yeah.

Whereas before it was not, because I hadn't had it touched in so long, so.

All right, here we go.

Although I did feel the Lord's strength.

Leave me.

No, just kidding.

Okay, Samson.

Hey, you can call me that from now on.

Lord, thank you for another day.

Thank you for going before us.

In.

The valley of the shadow of death.

God, thank you for preparing that table and using the rod and staff to both protect us and to correct us.

God, I pray that this series on spiritual warfare just allows us all to grow closer to you, but also gives us some practical ways to combat our enemy.

Thank you for your guidance in this and going before us in this.

And it's in your precious and holy name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, let's get into it, shall we?

Oh, I can wear my hat backwards.

You can, you can, you can.

He can.

He's got.

He's so versatile now.

Everything's changing.

Yeah, everything's changing in his life.

My life is changing.

All right, ready to go?

We're gonna get on this pony.

Let's go.

All right.

So when did you first become aware of the concept of spiritual warfare?

Well, I think there is the.

There was kind of two times I was made aware of it.

One was very childlike, and the other one was more serious.

The first one, I was very young.

I want to say somewhere around kindergarten age.

I'm not sure I remember listening in Sunday school to Them, teach about Satan, teach about the devil.

And I remember as a kid, like as they're going through it, it became very clear to me this is good versus evil.

It was also the same time where.

I was like, I felt the first.

Time in my life a calling to do something for good.

Like I wanted to be on the side of good.

And so I was choosing I'm going to be on God's side back then.

But that was the first time I realized there was something good versus evil in the world for sure.

Like, I mean, outside of like a story, like you hear stories of bad guys and good guys.

This is like, oh, this is a reality.

This is something that's real in the world.

So that was the first time.

And then I fully realized it.

I would call it more proper when I was about 20 years old, when I.

It was after a period where I kind of fell away a bit and then came back to Christ and started to take a look around and saw good versus bad entities and all the different spiritual stuff at play in a real sense.

And then I was like solidified that for me that this.

Yeah, we're back in that battle that.

I saw as a kid.

But now this is, this is the real deal.

Yeah, I.

Mine started really young too.

So one thing I've learned is that regardless of what you, you believe about, like things like spiritual gifts, like the healing and all of those sorts of things, and the, the actual interaction with supernatural, regardless of your feelings about it, One of the things I've learned is that someone's personal experiences are something you can't really refute always unless you were there.

Right.

So you have to take it with a little bit of a grain of salt.

So I preface what I'm going to say with that.

So when I was a child, I would see things that were evil, demonic in essence, like as a small child to the point where it kind of freaked my parents out a little bit.

So I was kind of.

I've kind of always been aware of that just as even a young, young kid.

I mean like four, three or four years old.

So it's, it's always kind of been there, but I didn't understand it.

You know what I mean?

Like, that was my first like real like experience with it.

But understanding the concept probably came a little bit later.

Not, not a whole lot later, but probably mid elementary days.

Just the idea of, you know, memorizing scripture because I was in like Awana.

And so I did a lot of that.

And just the fact that the more that I would lean into church, the more things would, would happen, frustrations would come about and you know, the scripture memorization would come in handy.

Not to too much sneak peek our, our, you know, series, but, but yeah, so that, that was probably my first.

And that's, I mean also to preface it with the fact that.

Or it's not a preface if it's after.

But to say like, I have kind of just been in church my whole life and have been on the bandwagon.

So for me it's just kind of always been a thing in my life.

You know, like I've wrestled with it and kind of grown in my understanding of it, but it's always kind of been there and a concept I've wrestled with.

Yeah, I think I had an awareness of spiritual things more than I had spiritual warfare until the warfare part became more clear to me.

So what I mean, like I had similar things where I could feel oftentimes when I was young, God kind of there from time to time and guiding me.

And then even at points in my life when I was able to look back, sometimes it's easiest to see what God's done versus what he's doing in the rear view mirror.

Sometimes we see how faith actually worked.

But there was times where I was able to look back and see, even during the time I was falling away, where God was constantly there trying to get my attention at times, trying to help guide me at times.

Even though I didn't fully understand everything that was happening.

It's really interesting to see how I was always aware there was something always at play around me.

But the warfare part came really more, like I said, when I was about 20 years old and somebody described the differences in approach.

So difference on how the God would speak to us versus how our enemy would speak to us.

And when they started to get into that, I was like, oh my goodness, I understand this.

This is very practical.

I've experienced this, I know this.

And, and so yeah, that was really eye opening for me.

So what is spiritual warfare?

Spiritual warfare, I mean, in its most basic form, there is a God in this world?

Well, no, beyond the world, there's a God that created everything and he has entities working for him.

We call them angels who are out for our protection benefit, give us messages, stuff like that.

You can see that throughout the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, I think, I.

Think before you move on with that, it's important to know that they are more out for God's will.

Yeah, God's will, of course.

I mean, his God will is for.

What they do is according to what.

God has them will, whether it's good or quote unquote, good or bad for us.

Right.

Like whether we consider it good or bad.

So go ahead.

And then there's.

We have an enemy, you know, we would say led by our ultimate enemy, which we would label as the devil or Satan, Lucifer, whatever, which name you want to go with.

And he has.

When he fell, he took a third of the angels with him.

So he's got people working with him.

There are demons, there's demonic forces in this world that are evil and they are against God's creation.

And they are not out for our good.

They are out for our destruction.

And they influence us.

These both sides influence us and are at us all the time.

We see places in the Bible where they do meet and battle.

Like for instance, I brought up before we even got started.

We'll have to talk about Daniel, because in Daniel 10 we see the angel saying, yeah, I was held up by a force and I needed help, so I can come to you.

And so, I mean, we can see in the Bible where this has been playing out forever.

And it's not stopped.

It's still going on.

I mean, there are dark forces trying to influence dark things in this world, things that are evil, that are not of God's plan.

And then there is what.

What God has put in place to help battle that and keep his kingdom going.

And part of that is also us.

We are now carriers of light that get to help in this battle.

But sometimes we go under attack ourselves.

Yeah, for sure.

So with this series, one of the things that we look to do is to distinguish between myth, superstition and biblical truth.

And so I want to read three sets of scripture real quick that are going to be key Scripture probably throughout all of.

All of the.

The series.

So if you're jotting it down, if you take notes or whatever, sweet.

If not, it'll be in probably all of the episodes.

But before you get into that real quick.

Yeah, you know this.

I want we should disclaim this a bit.

This is heavy material.

This is.

And this can be scary.

And some of the things we're going to talk about are a little unnerving because there is a reality of this around us.

I would just hope to give you this.

Throughout this conversation, know that we still, no matter what we're going to talk about and the realities of us, the world around us.

And we have a God that is for us and loves us and has an ultimate plan for us that is beyond all of this.

The battles that we live in in this day and age are just of this day and age.

They are not forever.

So don't lose your hope and sight of the Lord throughout all this.

It's so important.

Like I said, this is heavy material and it can be scary.

But know that God is still for you.

He's not against you.

And if he is for you, then no evil force can destroy you.

So that and I do want to say that today's episode is really an overview glimpse introduction.

We're probably not going to get too crazy heavy.

It's going to be touching on a lot of the things we're going to be talking about throughout the series, probably.

So there is that.

But it's a necessary episode, if that makes sense for the whole thing.

So the first and main scripture that we're going to be talking about is going to be Ephesians 6, 10, 18.

It's a little bit longer, but I'm going to read it real quick.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the day, in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm, stand.

Therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace in all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one.

And take the helm of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.

To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

Now that's going to be our key.

One of our main things we're going to be speaking about.

And then we got 2nd Corinthians 10:3,5.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

I can do the next one.

Okay.

First Peter Five, eight.

First Peter five, eight.

And actually, I want to do nine, too.

Okay, go for it.

First Peter five, eight, nine.

Be sober minded and alert your adversary.

The devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour.

Resist him firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.

Solid.

All right, so those are going to be the kind of the overarching scriptures that we are going to be in throughout this series.

So what stands out to you most when reading these verses?

What stands out, I'll tell you what.

Stands out to me is the fact that every single verse not only talks.

About the reality of this battle, but.

That there's a plan for you to get through it.

There is help to get through it.

Absolutely.

Full armor of God, you know, the faith keeping strong.

There's a way.

We are not hopeless or lost in this.

There's a plan.

There's a way out, way through.

And that's a very loving God right there.

Well, in 1 Corinthians 10:13, that is the summation of what you're talking about stands out to you.

And that's.

There's no temptation that's overtaking you, except for that which is common to man.

And God is faithful and just and will give you a way out.

So, like, that's.

Yeah, absolutely.

He's already got you.

He knows that you're going to be struggling and going through these things, and so he has prepared a way in which you can be not just, like, able to survive it, but to thrive in the midst of spiritual warfare.

Learn how to dance in the rain.

Yeah.

Or in the fire.

Either way, may the fourth be with you.

Right.

May the fourth be with you.

The one from Daniel, by the way.

And also with you.

Okay.

So.

Yeah, no, that's exactly it.

That.

That is what jumps out at me, too, is that we're not alone in this battle.

And it's also not each other that we're fighting.

And we have to keep that in mind, that when spiritual warfare happens, sometimes it looks like another person, but it's not the other person that we're fighting.

Right.

It's the spiritual forces that are trying to manipulate us and get us off track from God's will.

Yeah, that's a really hard part.

And I know we're going to spend a lot of time with that at one point or another, but sometimes it's easy to label the easy thing and not realize that it's not that thing.

It's something Else.

Yeah, just something harder for sure.

So let's talk a little bit about biblical foundation in historical context.

This is like.

I know this is one of your favorite kind of things.

You like that history ish stuff in the midst of it, and you're really good at that.

My brain doesn't quite work that way, but I like talking about it.

Well, specifically what it is.

What you're mentioning is that.

I like.

To bring it out and then bring it back in.

So, you know, when I'm looking at anything in the Bible, I love to go and then look at the entire Bible as one single, single work.

And then I see how everything plays out, and then I go back into that and see how it works within the greater story as well as in its original context.

I mean, it makes me a good.

It helps me study the Bible, but it does help me when it comes to teaching the Bible and such like that.

So.

Yes.

So one of the things I talked about, right.

Was Daniel 10.

Yeah, you mentioned Daniel 10.

Yeah, yeah.

And so that one's.

I think it's really a great kind of like, look behind the curtain, so to speak, of spiritual warfare, because you have Daniel, who's been praying for 21 days at the beginning of chapter 10, and an angel finally gets there.

It's not given who's the name, but.

There'S a lot with it.

I recently preached about this, and there's a couple things you notice right off the bat.

Number one is that the angel is like, hey, since the time you started praying, I was on my way, but I was held up battling this prince.

And when we see that, we got to understand that's not a physical prince as we see it.

It's not like an angel was battling some human.

This prince would be.

And we can get into.

There's a lot of different thoughts.

There's a lot of people that think this might be a representation of perhaps Satan himself, because he'd be the prince of this world.

But he's been held up battling this prince for 21 days.

For as long as he was praying, he's been held up.

And then the Archangel Michael had to.

Come and help him so that he.

Can come and give the message given.

We also see that when this force comes to talk to Daniel, when this entity comes, Daniel is overwhelmed by this.

It brings him to his knees, quite literally, actually makes him pass out onto his face.

It says that he falls down on his face in like a sleep state.

Basically, he passes out.

He feels weakened.

This is a full spiritual force.

That's in front of him, someone with power that's been empowered by God.

And then this entity has the ability to strengthen him back up.

It helps him get back to his.

Feet, strengthens him by touching him.

And so we can tell you a.

Couple things from that.

Number one is that yeah, these battles are happening and we don't even know.

Sometimes we're praying for something and help.

Is already on the way.

But it might be getting held up.

You never know how some of these.

Things, like we see things through our focus, not knowing what's going on.

And in this case, we get to see that.

We get to see, hey, no, I.

Was sent to you, but I've been held up.

Which is interesting to think about.

That's a battle.

And it would make sense considering that Daniel is a.

He's about to receive something amazing.

And why wouldn't the devil want to not stop that?

Right?

You know, that would make a really good rabbit hole conversation.

Oh yeah, that would make a really great rabbit.

We're gonna have to remember that one of these days.

I gotta get on there.

But yeah, so you get that.

And then also the idea that these entities can strengthen us would also.

But I can also weaken us.

And so I made a point when I preached on this.

We got to be careful the kind of places we put ourselves.

There's places that we can be more prone to being strengthened by good forces.

And then on the other side of that, we can put ourselves in places where we can be weakened, where we can become more under attack.

More.

And just because we're under attack, we also know doesn't necessarily mean that we.

Haven'T done anything wrong.

And sometimes it could mean that we've actually done something right and we're trying to be slowed down or discouraged.

But.

And we'll get into more of that, I'm sure.

But in this case, yeah, you get.

A large behind the scenes context of this.

And it's pretty fascinating that we actually get that in, in, in part of the Bible.

So that's our, that's our Old Testament, Old Testament, like glimpse.

What about Jesus?

What is, what is his.

What, what did he do with spiritual warfare?

How did he, Jesus, how did he interact with him?

I guess it's interesting that we see in the New Testament when Jesus approaches someone with like an evil spirit, for instance, they recognize him right away, unlike humans, which is.

I want to point that out.

The spiritual forces of this world recognize who Jesus is at all times.

There is no confusion of who Jesus was.

Anytime he approached one of these Forces or entities.

They knew exactly who he was and.

What he was there for.

They were actually afraid.

And they would sometimes ask him for mercy.

What do you want with me?

Kind of things like, they recognized him and his authority.

Oh, absolutely.

They didn't just recognize who he was, but that his authority, he actually had control.

Absolutely.

And so that's a big thing, is.

That this is seen again and again.

Jesus would cast them out of these places.

So his power over the spiritual, even in human form, was astounding.

But he is both human and God, so that is.

I mean, it does make sense.

But you see him casting out temptations.

You see him also during his temptation, you see him battling in a similar way, as he tells, we're told, to battle in Ephesians.

He uses scripture for most.

When he's battling the devil, he uses scripture.

Then the devil tries to use scripture against him.

Still being used today, by the way, that tactic.

And then he's corrected.

He takes on the author himself and gets put in his place.

Which is interesting.

That's my favorite scene in.

In the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is that representation where Aslan and the witch are there.

And she's like, well, you owe me a sacrifice.

And he shuts her down with the statement of, you know, don't cite the old magic to me, which I was there when it was written.

Like, that's so good.

That's an awesome representation of that.

I know it's two different things, but that is literally that interaction, though, where it's like, the devil is like, ah, you owe me, you know, kind of a thing.

And Jesus is like, yeah, but I was there when it was written.

I know what you're doing, and I know how to talk back.

So, yeah, it's very interesting.

So, yeah, so there's a commanding.

And while he was here, he was able to see.

I mean, he had the ability to see the spiritual things around him at all times.

And he, you know, he interacted with.

Them in surprising ways.

You had, like I said, you had them recognizing him.

You had them.

Him talking to them, which was interesting, you know, and they answered.

If he asked a question, they answered, which was, you know, which is.

There wasn't any.

With the exception of Satan, who was trying to tempt him.

These demons weren't really.

They weren't up to the challenge.

They didn't take him on well.

And even to the point of, like, Jesus even had mercy on them.

Yes, he did.

Which is crazy to think.

Yeah, like, it's crazy to think about.

But at the same time they were one of his creations, you know, like.

Yeah, but I mean, there were people that.

And this is something that a lot of people still talk about today.

It's like, do people still get possessed by demons?

Is there still that kind of thing?

There's a lot of talk about are some of the things that we're labeling as some kind of disease or dysfunction.

That we're giving medication for, putting people.

Away for, is that something on the spiritual side of things instead of something that needs to be done pharmaceutically?

And I think there's a lot of really great points for spiritual stuff still out there that people are dealing with.

I think it could be.

Yes.

And yes, I think it could be.

You know, so I think there's some things.

But anyway, so, yeah, that's the New Testament wise.

When it comes to Jesus, you see a lot of interaction with that.

It's not necessarily a pulling behind the curtain as it was in Daniel, but.

It'S definitely just confronting it.

It's there, There's a reality of it.

Yeah, yeah.

So what about the 12?

I mean, Jesus ascended into heaven, gave us the Holy spirit, but the 12 in the early church, like, how, what did they do?

How did they deal with some spiritual warfare?

Any examples?

We have some casting outs that happened.

From the apostles and the disciples before.

And there was even a time where they were not evil.

Like when he came down from the transfiguration, they weren't able to cast out.

A certain entity and Jesus was.

But throughout the church, there's a lot of spiritual things at play, but you see some positive things.

For instance, when Peter's broken out of jail.

You see.

People that are obviously being driven for the wrong purposes.

Which is interesting.

Even some of that.

Like Paul talks about, like, yeah, yo, even if they're doing, you know, this preaching of Jesus for their own selfishness, right?

Like in their own vein, like, Jesus is still being preached.

Isn't that wonderful?

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, I love, I love that bit.

Yeah, that would be in, in Philippians.

Philippians, he talks about that when he was in jail, you know, he's not.

Mad that people are like, oh, cool, Paul's out of the way, I can go preach now.

It's like, good.

Yeah, go preach.

People talking about Jesus, he's like, they're talking about why I'm in here.

Which means they're talking about Jesus.

Like, it's an amazing perspective, for sure.

Paul talks about a thorn in his side.

Paul struggles with some things he wished he couldn't Do That's.

I mean, things don't leave.

There are.

There's the persecution of the church and the fact that there's an anger.

Like the fact when you can see just an anger towards things that have.

Anything to do with Jesus, you know.

People trying to stop it.

It's all around.

And there's people that.

You see start to open up to.

The light, to the truth, and in Acts, and then you see people that are just don't want anything to do with it.

So it's kind of.

It's got a whole lot of different experiences.

In fact, I would say if you wanted to look at the book of Acts a little differently, instead of thinking of the Acts of the apostles, you could kind of label it more the.

Acts of the Holy Spirit and how.

The Holy Spirit moves the apostles and the early church forward and gives them power and helps them to know what to do.

I mean, Paul, in his letters, he talks about different things.

I will say that there is a kind of acknowledgment of evil forces throughout, not only the letters, but just the Old Testament.

I mean, the New Testament, where you have talking about demons, like James talks about demons, even the demons, even they believe.

But it's not about just believing something.

It's about having faith in it.

You have.

Man, there's just a lot.

It's hard to.

I'm trying to think of too much at one time.

I need to slow my brain down.

A little bit while you're thinking.

One thing that I think is kind of an interesting.

Also in that category, interesting thing is even in First Corinthians, when Paul's addressing the fact that they've all got this gift of speaking in tongues.

Right?

Yeah.

And it's mass chaos.

Right.

There's order that Paul brings to it so that it's effective.

Right.

And that's obviously, the Spirit is moving him to call that into action.

But even a gift that was given to them from the Holy Spirit, that spiritual warfare piece, is the evil side of things that are just.

Everybody do what it wants.

It's great.

It's wonderful.

You all have this gift all of you use causes this chaos, and people were turning away.

And it.

It's interesting that even in those things, the devil and his guys are like.

They'll try to manipulate anything, twist things, just little bits.

Right.

And so even in that.

I thought that was.

I think that still happens today, 100%, without getting too much into it.

Yeah.

But there's acknowledgement of just these forces.

There's.

I mean, they Talk about it.

You have John talk about the Antichrist, but then the Antichrist, anyone who is against the Lord and doesn't want to believe that or doesn't proclaim that he is who he is.

And then ultimately, you have the different demonic forces showing up in Revelation.

But if I can go back, actually, we can talk about the fact that even before Christ's crucifixion, you know, it said that Satan entered into Judas.

I mean, like, there's a lot of it at play.

Throughout the New Testament and even into the apostolic age, the early church age, there are.

Some people want us to think that it's gone away.

And I think that's a.

I think the devil wants you to think it's gone away.

That reminds me of another good example with Jesus is whenever Peter, Right.

He tells Peter, get thee behind me, Satan.

And that's that acknowledgement of.

It's not the person, it's that evil force that is whispering into that person's ear, just playing off of their desires, whether good or bad.

So it's so rampant throughout the Bible.

To study this in great detail would take a long time, but.

Yeah, well, we're taking a couple months.

We're going to take a little while.

We're going to take a little while to do this, but I think it'll be good.

I think it'll be good.

All right.

And then, like.

So we're going to be talking about the armor of God.

Yep.

And we're probably going to be doing an episode for each piece.

Yeah.

Which I.

There's truly.

There's plenty of things to talk about within each piece, which is exciting, but never really pulled that apart before, which is going to be cool.

But it draws from Roman military imagery.

Yeah.

What do you know about that, Mr.

History Guy?

Well, I mean, it depends on how you want to end, how it draws from Roman imagery.

I mean, when you think about a Roman soldier, how that.

With the things they would put on.

It's their uniform.

Yeah, I know.

And it shows a certain.

Well, not just propriety, but like a certain authority.

You know, you put on the helmet, you put on the belt, you put on the sandals.

Every.

Everything's got its place.

It's all part of that uniform.

And it's intentional to work together.

It's all intentional to work together.

It's meant to hit the good.

All the right places give you the right kind of shielding.

Yet still, their uniforms are not only designed to protect them, but also design so that they can strike and move forward as well.

We are Given the ultimate weapon.

You know, there's a lot of the armor.

So you go through it, and we're going to go through it all.

But that is designed for protection.

Most of it.

Right?

Yeah.

But the sword, which is the word of God, that's our weapon.

Yeah.

Our ultimate weapon.

Anything which, as you mentioned, Jesus and the devil when he's being tempted.

Yeah.

And that's why it's so important.

And we're gonna flesh that out.

Yeah.

To make sure you're using it properly.

Yeah.

So.

Okay.

So why is spiritual warfare relevant today?

What are some, like, modern expressions of spiritual opposition?

Modern expressions of spiritual opposition.

Interesting way of wording that.

Well, I mean, I think you see many things at play.

I mean, you see what some would label as the decay of societal things.

For instance, like our constant.

There's groups in society that are constantly, like, degrading how we view each other.

There's.

There's people wanting people to hate each other, to divide each other.

You have the loss of compassion for your fellow people where people are told, hey, if it doesn't have anything to do, then who cares?

And that goes as far as who cares if they die?

Who cares if they never had a chance?

We can look at abortion and see that many people have gotten to the point where they've accepted that they don't need to care about it at all.

Yeah.

You know, and that's.

That's an amazing thing, is that he.

That's how crafty our enemy is, that he can slowly, over time, start to make us unsensitive to things that we should be sensitive to.

And so we see a lot of that in this world.

I would say personal struggles.

You see a lot of people in ministry would be good people to talk to, especially anyone that's been in it for any period of time.

Pretty long.

It's wild.

You know, my wife and I, we experienced back many, many, many, many years ago, before I entered into ministry.

I felt the need to be rebaptized.

I was christened as a baby, but I felt the need to do it again because it wasn't my choice the first time.

And that's nothing against my parents or anyone who had any.

That is nothing against them.

I think they did the right thing.

I think they were trying to follow God the best they could.

And I don't say anything against that at all.

But this was my time to say, I'm fully in.

Like, I've already accepted Jesus in my heart, my faith, which is the first and foremost the most important thing But I was getting moved in a very emotional way when I'd see somebody get baptized and I could feel God pulling at my heartstrings.

You need to go back in.

You need to do this.

You need to do this.

And, you know, Sadie and I did it together.

I got baptized, then I helped baptize her.

Amazing moment of time.

But after that, things got hard for a while.

It was weird.

We had this, like, dark cloud over us.

All kinds of things were happening.

And it was when we took a step back and thought about the perspective, like, yeah, okay, we chose a side.

And, you know, we're getting some feedback on that.

Negative feedback from the person that doesn't like to lose.

He has no choice, but, you know.

Right.

But, yeah, so it's wild to experience it on that.

But I've experienced it after good things have happened where it's just.

It's wild how suddenly what seems like bad things just start happening.

And I've felt that before something happens where it's almost as if I'm trying to be distracted, deterred from the thing that I need to do.

It's amazing.

And things that you shouldn't.

Like, for instance, the first time I preached here, right?

I preached for a year, every day.

Well, not every day, every Sunday.

I was an every Sunday preacher, and I come here, and I hadn't preached here before.

And I think I was under attack because the enemy was trying to use my insecurities.

Some of the things I've been through and really make me nervous about it.

The things I was focusing on was like, okay, well, I've never preached here, so are they going to respond to me as if I was trying to be tricked into saying, nobody wants to hear what you have to say.

The other thing is that I had gone through some spiritual hurt, and so there was just doubts in myself.

I'm like, I know I can do this.

And it's weird when I just kept pushing forward and pushing forward.

And then the day I went to preach, I remember it was like I just left it behind.

Yeah, I just walked away from it and onto that platform and just started preaching.

And then it was like it wasn't there at all.

You know, not really.

It was a whole different level.

And I feel like every time I go up there, I get a little better at it, where I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna listen to that.

I can do this.

I think sometimes he tries to stop us from doing something that's gonna be good and impactful.

And I think sometimes he Gets mad after we've done something like that.

And so you got to protect yourselves at all times.

That's definitely, I would say in this day and age, I definitely have experienced a lot of that personally.

But I think that there's just a lot.

I mean, we go back to society, we can tell.

Sometimes you can look around.

It doesn't take much to notice that some stuff's not right in this world.

No matter where you are on political issues, the world's a messed up place.

And you start to ask yourself, why are certain people like this?

Some things we just know are inherently, we know are evil.

And you ask yourself why?

What kind of person?

And sometimes it's not about what kind of person is, what is pushing these kind of people to do these kind of things.

And because there's a story behind it all.

Sure.

One thing I do want to caution some, some issues, dangers you can get into when looking into studying spiritual warfare is obsessing over the demonic.

That's one, one of the two big ones.

One of the, one of the things that I equate this to is the, that conversation with the, the, the guy from the FBI who, you know, does deals with forgeries.

Right.

And money.

Yeah.

And they asked, you know, do you study all these other bills?

And he said, no.

The key is knowing the real one.

Right.

And so like the, the key to it is knowing Jesus.

Not necessarily knowing and understanding all the things about the demons.

Right.

But rather, rather knowing Jesus and knowing the truth for who he is.

So don't get too crazed and too obsessed with that rabbit hole of learning about demonic spirits.

But also don't go the opposite direction and just completely ignore the spiritual reality of the spiritual world altogether.

Because I think we do a really good job of going through life in this country just ignoring the spiritual world.

Ignorance sometimes can be bliss, but in this case it's dangerous.

It's dangerous.

And the thing is that, because if we continue, if we ignore it altogether and we become kind of numb to it, like we don't really pay attention to what's going on at all.

We don't know then where we're being led.

You know, you can be easily find yourself getting mad and frustrated and have no idea how you got there.

You know, someone's like, why are you so mad?

And you don't know.

You don't know why you're so mad.

Yeah.

Why is this affecting you like this?

I don't know.

I don't know why this is affecting me like this.

You can try to think of, well, I think it's this.

But then when you think about that thing that you just said, it's like, that really shouldn't even have gotten me there.

But then our pride jumps in and goes, well, I'm going to stick to it.

No, no, you don't.

We are being influenced all the time.

And the way that, like, I think you're right.

The focus is Jesus.

The focus is Jesus.

Stay focused on him.

Learn more of him, his word, his truth.

And it'll be easier to decipher what isn't true.

It's easier to find the lies of the devil when you know that they're lies and not the truth that you've been studying.

So, yeah, absolutely.

When I went through.

I went through a period of counseling and one of the.

One of the exercises that my counselor gave me one time was, okay, I want you to write down all the things that.

All the thoughts that you have, all the negative thoughts that you've been having about da, da, da, da, da, what happened.

You know, these are the things that makes you think.

This is the things that makes you worry about.

Write it all down.

And so I did.

And then he's like, now let's go through it and let's talk about the truth.

Every single one versus, you know, that's how.

That's a lie.

And what's the real truth?

And it's amazing when you can do that and actually just dispute it all, like, oh, well, I'm not good enough.

God's already put you in this.

God says you are.

You know, oh, well, it's this.

Well, this is what God says.

This is what Jesus says.

This is the real truth, you know, and that goes good with identity, purpose, failure, defeat, all that stuff, you know, all of it.

Dude, I know you haven't looked at this, the series, like, outline yet because, you know, I just send it over.

But, like, you're hitting it right on the freaking head.

But I mean, that's what I'm saying, though, is like, I'm excited because it ties so well into this next couple of weeks.

So.

Okay, so I wanna.

I wanna jump to this whole common misconceptions.

Like, a lot of people think every single thing that's bad that happens to me is spiritual warfare.

And I don't think that that's the truth.

I think sometimes you play stupid games and win stupid prizes.

Sure, no, there is that, but then there's also just things that happen that negatively affect us.

Like a volcano erupting is not necessarily spiritual warfare.

I'm not saying it can't be, but I'm saying like, you know what I mean?

Like a wildfire happening.

Like it's not always spiritual warfare.

There are natural challenges that we have to go through in life.

Right.

Sometimes though.

So my wife was, been great since she and I got together.

She's been wonderful at helping me when I start to allow circumstances to mess me up so much.

Yeah, What'd she say?

What's that thing she does?

She has like the.

So for instance, like if I get held up or if I'm in traffic one time my tire went flat and she's like, well, you don't know what God could have been allowed.

He might have allowed this happen.

Because if you would have been on the road right now, you could have been in an accident or something.

Or sometimes he needs to be held up because you're getting ready to have a conversation that you need to be there for.

Ironically, at the end of last summer, Sadie and I, we flew up back up north and then while we were up there, we were trying to make our way back to the airport and we had borrowed my mother in law's car and her one tire kept going flat.

It was like we, it was flat and we put air in it and then we took it to get plugged and they plugged it.

I was like, alright, we're good to go.

And yet it was still losing air.

So I was like, alright, let's try a can of the fix a flat.

Right, let's try that.

And I thought it worked for a while and then it went down again and we were struggling with this thing all the way to the airport and we lost so much time that we were, you know, of the day.

Like I don't even know if I think there was other stuff we were gonna hope to do.

But because of all this, our day changed and we ended up getting to the airport a different time.

We wanted to and we were trying to take it in stride but it was frustrating.

That being said, we get to an air, we get to the airport and then we haven't eaten.

So it's like, well, let's eat at a restaurant here at the airport up in Baltimore, Washington Airport, bwi.

And she's like, I've eaten here before, let's go in here, okay.

And it's like she hadn't thought about it, she just happened to see it and then was like, oh, we should go there, okay.

And we sat down disable and didn't think much of it.

And then next thing you know, this Young girl sits and her person she was with, I can't remember, his boyfriend, husband, I don't know, sat down at the next table over.

And the girl, I see her looking over and I notice that she's talking about with her person, this nun that is on the other end of the restaurant.

And she's just kind of talking about it.

And somehow it sparked a conversation where we're talking about like some big deal God things.

Cool.

And the girl started crying and I wasn't sure at first how to take it.

And she's like, I needed this so bad.

I've been trying to talk to him about this.

You know, I know I haven't been going to church like I should, and I've been stressing about it.

And for her, us being there at that exact time was a God ordained moment.

And perhaps that was, you know, all those.

I looked at it when Sadie and I left the restaurant to go to our plane.

You know, we were like, you know, maybe that's why all this happened today.

Maybe it was all so that we could talk to that young lady.

And I can't even remember the conversation, honestly, much of it.

But I know it was impactful for her in a way that she was outwardly expressing and thankful for.

And I just thought, wow, I couldn't have orchestrated that, but maybe God did.

And the thing about it is, is that when I looked at it further, I'm like, you know, I planned this trip this long ago.

God's been planning for it this whole time.

But it went even further than that because the reason that we went to that restaurant is because of a business trip that Sadie had gone on when we still lived up that way and they ate there.

And that was even like a year prior to that.

I'm like, how long have you been planning this conversation, Lord, where all these pieces are going to go in place?

And by the way, the business trip is not something that Sadie normally did.

It was kind of weird that they asked her to go, but she went anyway.

That's so wild.

God is always at work.

So when we talk about spiritual warfare, God has always got his hand in play.

Right.

Sometimes we see these things happening and we start questioning.

We ask them, are these bad things?

Sometimes they're not bad things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sometimes they're inconvenient.

Yes.

Sometimes they're frustrating, but sometimes the purpose behind them is so beautiful if we're willing to see it.

So true.

Yeah, so true.

All right.

Another one is misuse of spiritual warfare language, blaming the devil for everything.

Versus taking responsibility for some things, right?

Yeah, yeah.

The old childhood.

The devil made me do it.

The devil made me do it.

It was all the devil's fault.

It's funny because what's it James.

James talks about, you know, it is by your own evil desires that you are led away and enticed.

It gives way to sin and death.

It is from a person's heart of what comes out of them.

Jesus talked about that.

There is such a reality of that sometimes we are the ones that made the compromises.

We made the choice.

Were we tempted?

Maybe.

In some cases, probably.

But we still made the choice.

And now we have to live with these choices.

The responsibility is to recognize the choices that we've made, the places we've put ourselves, and to, you know, learn from it, make amends where we need to make amends and move forward.

You know, there's a lot of the culture we live in, especially with these young kids.

I don't know how it happened, but, like, everything is not their fault.

I've heard from the youth today, and this is a student ministry pastor.

When you ask something or you question something about these kids, they're never at fault.

They're willing to blame anything, anything on anyone else.

It's so funny how quick they are to do it.

It's actually amazing when one of these children takes responsibility and goes, oh, no, that was me.

I respect that so much in them.

But it's amazing how quick they will just be like, oh, well, it's because of this and.

Or it's because of that, or, you didn't explain it right.

Or they're trying to just anything to take responsibility.

And it's funny because it also leads to labeling.

Well, you know, that's this, because this is this, this, and you're this kind of person.

And, you know, anything that they don't like, they take as an attack.

And anything that they.

It's wild, man, the stuff that's going on.

And I'm like, where did you get this?

I mean, some people want to say social media, I think, probably had a large part to do of it.

But, like, social media didn't start with them.

It started with somebody else.

By the way, millennials, you have a large part in this.

But they're not the only ones either.

Everybody's had a part in allowing the culture that we live in to be so toxic, where it's avoidant and just blaming and labeling and, oh, my goodness, 100%.

The last one that I want to briefly mention is, is the concept of you know, we know that spiritual warfare can be dramatic, but it's not always dramatic.

It's very often very subtle.

Most of the time, I would say the majority.

Most of the time, yeah.

It sometimes result, the results of it can end up being dramatic, but the warfare that gets us to that battle end is very subtle along the way.

A lot of times.

I think the vast, vast majority of it is not only subtle, but it snowballs to where it starts lightly, where we start to entertain these things whether we know we're doing it or not.

And we allow it to kind of build on us.

It's kind of one of those things, like if you've ever found yourself just a little irritated, but instead of recognizing it and dealing with that, you just allow it to linger.

And then you hear those little voices go, isn't that irritating too?

Isn't that irritating too?

And then, you know, you, it just starts to snowball and you get into a really bad place.

There's so many ways that we could have gone.

I could go about that.

There's so many ways of it, but it's.

Yeah, it's oftentimes it's such little things that we don't even realize that we've kind of let ourselves go to.

CS Lewis has procured or had procured.

Procured.

How does that word go?

Anyways, had gotten his hands on these letters between two demons, right?

And a lot of people are like, ah, he just wrote this thing.

And I like to choose the more fantastical idea that he actually did find them, right?

It's called the screwtape letters.

And one of the things that just always stood out to me about it was something so simple where it's basically this elder demon, this higher ranking demon talking to a lower ranking demon, which we don't, I mean, we don't understand all that necessarily, but the concept still rings true.

He's teaching this demon, this younger demon, how to, or lesser demon, how to like, how to really be in spiritual warfare against us.

And he's, he basically tells him it's the more subtle approach.

You don't need to like get him into an argument over his beliefs in God.

You just gotta remind him that he's hungry sometimes and tell him, ah, you can talk about that later, you know, remind him, we'll get back to it, let's go get some food, you know, and it's sometimes it's just that subtle, like little thing.

And so I think throughout the series we will, we will start learning how to take our thoughts captive and to Be practicing the things that will keep us on guard to all the little things.

And I don't know, it's.

It's pretty, it's pretty crazy, the matching up of the.

What you were talking about a lot and, and the things that I see us doing.

Oh yeah.

And I will say this though, that you also gotta be careful because there's people that start to believe other lies which are interesting in itself.

They become kind of extremists and they seem like they're good extremists, but they become extreme.

They put burdens on people.

Okay.

What I mean is that like I call them New Testament legalists, but they will go in when it comes to spiritual warfares.

They treat people like if you.

You're not saved, you might be going to hell if you haven't taken capture all your thoughts.

They put such a burden on people about this stuff.

You know, the funny thing is that sometimes you go into spiritual attacks because you are doing what God wants you to do, do.

And they forget these things sometimes.

You know, we're trying.

It's just wild.

I've heard them say things along the lines of, well, if you, this is.

As a believer, you got to have everything done.

You gotta, you gotta keep your thoughts captive.

You.

You've got to be able to control your options, have self control and control what you're doing and all this stuff.

And you know, if you were, you know, if you were really in Jesus, these things wouldn't be happening because you would have been.

You must.

And it's very Job's Friends.

I was going to say exactly what I was going to say.

It's very Joe's Friends.

Well then you.

It's must because you did something wrong.

It reminds me also of John 9 when they're like, hey, this guy was born blind.

He's like, well, who sins is he blind for?

And he's like, nobody sins.

Like this is so the glory of God can be shown and then he heals them.

Like it's, it's amazing sometimes that people take this and then you have.

I.

Sometimes I think it's demonic forces going, okay, yeah, that's the law.

You're not going to do it.

You're not.

That was legalism even of the Old Testament, man.

There was no reason they had so many crazy amounts of laws was because it's like we're going to build walls so that we cannot sin.

And yet that.

Yeah.

When you hear people talking like that, should we be trying to get better?

Absolutely.

Every day.

Is that going to Be a longer process for some people.

Yes, but God, let him keep working on your life, man.

That's something we will talk about at some point in the series too, is that idea of the perfect, trying to be perfect versus relying on God.

Couple things as we wrap up here.

There is an important balance that we have to remember to maintain and that is vigilance and peace in Christ.

So we are going to be talking about that a little bit.

We're going to be talking about the armor of God this series.

We are going to next episode next week is going to be meeting the enemy, right?

We're going to figure out some of this and learn a little bit about who our enemy actually is and remember to meditate on Ephesians 6, 10, 18 during this series.

That's going to be the key set of scriptures that we're going to be learning through.

There's a bunch of scripture throughout that we have lined up, but that's going to be the key one that we're going to be hitting on.

So final thoughts.

Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?

Final thoughts whether you're going to ride through this series with us or not, Stay prayed up.

Number one way you can battle spiritual warfare as we go through this, but also just in your daily life is be proactive with your prayer.

Stay prayed up.

Just if you put God first, it puts you in much better place all the time.

Stay prayed up.

Allow him to lead you through not just your day but everything that you're looking to do.

And that includes coming through this series with us and I hope you do.

So reflection.

Question for you guys is how might a greater awareness of spiritual warfare change how you approach your daily life?

I want you guys to think about that.

We invite questions at the end of the series.

We're going to take a bunch of the questions that you guys ask and we're going to do like a series finale wrap up where we do some Q and A from questions that you guys give us.

So questions are important all throughout.

So please like subscribe, send questions, send testimonies.

We'll read your testimony out if you want us to, on on here of situations that you've done.

Whatever, whatever.

Send it to us and definitely join us for episode two.

Who is our enemy?

All right, who?

So thank you guys for joining us.

Yeah, can't wait to hear what your guys's thoughts are, what your questions are, hearing testimonies.

It's been great to hear some of you guys sending in comments and thoughts on the episodes.

I really Appreciate reading all of those.

It blesses me to hear things that people that agree with me, people that disagree with me, people that agree with Matt when he doesn't agree with me.

It's been great.

No, I love it.

I love hearing what you guys have to say.

Also.

I really love.

I love seeing the heart, too.

Some of you are really putting your heart in your comments and some of the ways you're reaching out to us, and we see that and we really appreciate that.

We love that you've entered into a relationship with us through this show, and we want to honor that and say that we love you and we are so glad that you are loving us back.

Yeah.

And for those of you who are sending in your comments, like through Way of Friends and all of that sort of thing, that's awesome.

You can keep doing that if you are willing.

Write the same things on YouTube.

Other people are thinking the same things you are.

Don't feel like you're alone in some of that stuff.

So they want to see and hear and know what you guys are thinking and asking and saying as well.

Perfect for this series.

Perfect for this series.

If you're finding yourself afraid to put it up there, why?

Oh, yeah.

Making you afraid.

Yeah.

Maybe it's glorifying God that somebody's trying to stop you from doing.

Think about that.

Yeah.

Because we are here to help each other.

Right.

And that's.

That's how we grow.

It's gonna be one of the things we talk about, especially during our shield.

Right.

When we're talking about the shield and being able to.

To lock shields with one another.

That is very much the start of that and getting out there.

So I love that.

I love that.

Thanks for joining us.

Hopefully you guys are excited about this series like I am, and God bless.

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