The WAR

We are at war from the beginning of our conception, we are just not necessarily aware of it. In actuality we are Satan’s captive until conversion. At conversion the power of sin is broken. Sin is the hold that Satan has on us. Once sin has been washed away by the shed blood of Yeshua then Satan has no legal ground to hold and torment us. However, he is not about to tell us that, in fact he makes every attempt to keep us captive using lie piled upon lie. He speaks his lies through people; parents, clergy, teachers, friends etc. They often too have been deceived and are held captive.

The Truth, Yeshua, has to be revealed to us. This is the job of the Holy Spirit, to reveal the Truth. When we are born again we are sealed by the Holy Spirit, marked if you will to indicate ownership. However, it is not until we are baptized in the Holy Spirit that we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and He begins His work in us. His purpose is to form in us the Son, Yeshua. This can only happen if we, the old nature, are removed. This is what it means to be crucified with Christ, that is, the old sinful nature is put to death so that His transformed nature can shine through us. This is of course the last thing that Satan wants to happen. So he opposes this at every turn with statements like; we are good people, we’ll become a holy roller, so heavenly minded that your no earthly good, its impossible, we’ll lose our identity, we’ll just become God’s puppet, etc. We chose what (or who) to believe. If we accept Satan’s lies then we remain captive in that area. If we accept the Holy Spirits revelations then the Truth will set us free in that area. There is not one great event in which we are totally set free but instead a series of smaller events that typically last a lifetime that set us free one area of our life at a time. Often there is great freedom at conversion followed by ongoing smaller works as we mature.

The Pond:

An illustration off this may be useful. If we look at our life as a pond with an inlet and an outlet, then before we are born again our pond has been polluted by toxic water coming in the inlet and by trash thrown into it by Satan acting through deceived people. The trash attracts all kinds of frogs, salamanders, muskrats, snakes, alligators, etc. to our pond, who all take up residence. Our pond is a muddy, polluted mess. We are conscience of the surface of our pond but not the depth of it, nor what lies beneath the surface. At the bottom of the pond is an image stamped in the mud, its pride, the image of self. Now this self has a life of its own and it will do everything in its power to protect itself. What is stamped underneath that on the very foundation of our pond is the image of Satan. He is the origin of pride and self consciousness. This image is death, an odd kind of living death that brings destruction to everything it touches.

The assorted varmints living in our pond often stir up trouble for us, messing with our neighbors ponds, and dragging more trash into our pond etc. Every now and then we start a pond clean up campaign. We pick up the trash around the pond and pick up as much trash that we can see in our water. Some of the logs we spot are too big to lift out and some of them duck under the water when we get close. There are some people that have spent much time cleaning and have a pretty clean pond on the surface, however, pride and Satan are still at the bottom. No matter what amount of effort they put in they are still captive to sin and Satan because it is not possible for fallen man to remove pride from the mud, nor the image of Satan from the foundations.

Every now and then we run into someone who has a pond with clear water and we find them oddly refreshing. We occasionally get a glimpse into their pond and get a sense of something shining at the bottom of the pond. The water coming out of their pond is clean and sweet, unlike ours. If we pursue a relationship with them we discover their secret, Yeshua.

When we decide to get what they’ve got, we invite Yeshua to be our Savior. The first thing that He does is remove the image of Satan from our foundation and stamp the image of Yeshua there instead. This image is actually living and shining forth Light. Yes there is still mud and varmints but somewhere down there, there is Life. Yeshua then leads us to be baptized in water. This act signs the self’s death warrant and self does not intend to die quietly. In fact self does not want to die at all. Thus the war between self and Life begins. Satan jumps in on self’s side, promoting I. Even though our sins are forgiven self is alive and well. The next thing that Yeshua leads you to do is be baptized in the Holy Spirit. This opens the door for the Holy Spirit of God to dive into the pond. Now the clean up begins in earnest. The Holy Spirit works beneath the surface doing the purification job. His job is to cleanse the temple, the ultimate Mr. Clean. His ultimate purpose is to bring the pond to such a state of cleanliness that the image of Yeshua can easily be seen from above. This means that He cleans up the incoming water to the pond by opening up a spring of living water in the center of the pond which flows from the Heart of Yeshua. He also starts bringing the trash to the surface of the pond for removal. Of course the first response of self is to push the trash back down because it proves that the pond is not nearly as clean as self would like to think. The Holy Spirit wants self to recognize the truth and acknowledge its role in allowing the trash in the beginning and not removing it later. Once self has yielded its will to the Holy Spirit then the trash will be removed and a little more living water is allowed to flow. The alligators, snakes etc. are removed by snake handlers at the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Well you’ve got the picture. The war involves our whole being and the main enemy is our self, followed by sin and Satan. Our mind and emotions are the primary weapons that our self uses to fight against the work of the Spirit in our lives. Self is overcome by being crucified daily by choosing the leading of the Holy Spirit, sin is overcome by the shed blood of Yeshua, and Satan and his minions are overcome by binding and casting them out.

Satan operates by the Law since he is under the Law. This is his method for attacking humans, by getting them to violate the Law and thus incur Yahweh’s wrath. Those who are not born again are under the Law either directly like Israel or indirectly because the Laws of God are written on the hearts of men. According to the Law, any violation of the Law is breaking the entire Law. The punishment for breaking the Law is death. So there really is not anyone who is truly innocent, all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God. The person who told a lie is just as guilty, as far as the law is concerned, as the one who murdered his father and raped his mother. There is only ONE punishment for breaking the Law…death.

Adam was not under the Law save for one law; do not eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The foundation of the Law is; Obey Yahweh your Creator. Disobedience is sin and sin leads to death. Satan used this to deceive and destroy Adam and as a result Adam`s seed, us. The result is that all of us are born into sin and under the Law. The instant we violate the Law, we are under the sentence of death. Fortunately, Yahweh holds life and death in His hands; not Satan, otherwise we’d all die at birth. It’s the mercy of Yahweh that keeps us alive so that we have a chance to hear the Gospel and choose Yeshua. Satan’s response to Yahweh’s mercy is to stand before the Lord and accuse us of our sins demanding justice. Yahweh has chosen to withhold judgment until His Son returns to Earth. Yeshua came to Earth on a seek and save mission. His desire is that all men be saved. He took upon Himself all of the justice required by the Law for all men for all time, so that any man can call upon Him to become their Savior and their Lord. Father then transferred all judgment to Yeshua, since He surely knows who are His and who are not. He has reserved that Judgment until His return to Earth on the Day of the Lord, when He personally will separate the sheep from the goats and to call His own to be with Him and leave the others with Satan and Satan’s fate.

The conditions of this salvation is that the sinner call upon the Name of Yeshua to be saved. This includes the recognition that all men have sinned and Yeshua is the only begotten Son of Yahweh, that He is righteous and never sinned, and that He voluntarily offered Him self as a perfect sacrifice for all of the sins of men and their consequences (the wrath of God) for all of mankind so that mankind can come back into relationship with their Creator, Yahweh. This is all about relationship not about theology.

Satan does everything in his power to hide and distort this Truth, a propaganda campaign. The attack comes in the form of: Yeshua was not God but just man, Yeshua was not perfect, Yeshua did not carry ALL of the sins of men and their consequences and Yeshua is not the ONLY way to the Father, Yahweh. Satan offers anyone or anything instead of Yeshua as the solution for sin and salvation. Another method that he uses is that sin, Satan and hell do not exist. Evolution has been a powerful tool to this end since it says that man is just material and not spiritual and eternal. He usually focuses on what we do and/or what we believe (not Who we believe), neither of which will save us. It is the restoration of our relationship with our Father to the status that Adam had where we talk with and listen to our Creator. This is the beginning of salvation.

Once we have accepted Yeshua’s sacrifice we are born again of the Spirit and water. We are buried with Him in water baptism. He have then died to sin and resurrected into righteousness, Yeshua’s righteousness. A dead man is no longer under the Law. We now operate under Yeshua’s righteousness. Father see’s His Son and His righteousness when He looks at us. Our very nature has been transformed from sin inclined to righteousness inclined, from living under the Law to living outside of the Law (diplomatic immunity if you will). Before we answered to the Law of Sin and Death, and Satan, now we answer to the Law of the Spirit of Life, and Yeshua, our Savior. We are His sheep and His sheep hear His voice. Ours is now to obey His voice though the Holy Spirit, that is all. We do not concern ourselves about obeying the Law or rules, or some man’s instructions. We simply follow the lead of the Holy Spirit daily. We do not have daily devotions we are a day of devotion, day after day. We do not go to church on Sunday, we are the Church everyday. We do not pray to Him once a day, we walk with Him every moment of everyday. Yeshua personally leads us by the words He speaks to us daily. He wants to leads us in every aspect of our daily lives. He sees our true condition, He sees what is ahead of us, He sees Satan’s traps and tricks against us, and as we follow His lead we will overcome everything that tries to trip us up.

As we mature the war moves from an internal war between our flesh and His Spirit to an external war between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this World. The prize of this war is mankind`s eternal souls. Father is a family man. He goes for the family of the new born believer, offering them another opportunity to accept Yeshua’s salvation. There are those in the family who will not accept, and will actually oppose the Spirits work. This is what Yeshua meant when He said that He did not bring peace but a sword, turning husband against wife, mother against son, etc. War comes to the family. The power to win this war is LOVE (agape). This requires some explanation. Love is selfless by nature. It has nothing to do with ourselves or what is in it for self. It is all about the other person’s relationship with their Creator. True love will sacrifice what ever is necessary to give a person another opportunity to accept Yeshua. The purpose of the Father is to have the new believer pour out His love to those in his/hers immediate family so that they can experience the unconditional Love of God, sometimes for the first time. Any other type of love is not really Love but human emotion or friendship. In the fallen world love is an equation; I (self) will love you if you love me. This is of course a quandary. Who is going to start this flow of love, me, not if I have not received your love first? You, not if you’ve have not received my love, first. So you are left in a stalemate, neither person willing to love the other. We cannot truly Love until we have received Love from our Father, Yahweh. We Love because He first loved us. This is why a father plays such a pivotal role in the family. He is the main channel of Love to his wife first, then to their children. If he is not Loving them then they will be looking somewhere else for Love. He is the primary example of Father’s love to his family. He is the example of Father God.

True love is expressed to the degree that self is dead in the believer, the more self has been brought death, the more Love can flow from the believer to those around them. It is the Love of God that leads to repentance. Love will soften the hardest heart. Love covers a multitude of sins. True Love disarms every opponent. It may not convert them but it will bring them to a place of reconsidering Yeshua and being restored to Father.

This brings us to the most second powerful weapon in our arsenal, FORGIVENESS. Lucifer has neither Love nor Forgiveness in his nature, so neither does the world. Sin is the issue, one who has sinned and is aware of their sins considers himself unlovely and unforgiven. Our sins have separated us from the Love of God. We cannot approach Him because of our sins for fear of His righteousness striking us down, rightfully so. It’s like a laser hitting a painted surface, the paint will vaporize. However, if you shoot a laser at a mirror the light will just reflect away. This is how it is with Yeshua in us, we become His righteousness and His reflection.

This put us in another quandary, since only Yeshua has the power forgive sins. We must accept His sacrifice for our sins to be forgiven but we cannot get near Him because of our sin. This is where the believers come in. We are His body on the Earth and we can forgive sin as His priests by the leading of the Spirit. The forgiveness of sins sets those who have sinned against us free and plays a vital role in our receiving forgiveness, we are forgiven as we forgive. Then as priests we forgive the sins of others to open a way for them to receive Yeshua. This is why He has made us a nation of priests to go before the Lord for the sake of our unsaved neighbors making a way for them to come to Yeshua.

Several years ago a the Lord has His eye on a niece of mine. He was ready to bring her into His Kingdom. He had me act as a priest for her. I would pray for her from time to time as He lead and we talked together when the opportunities arose. Then one day He was ready to make the move. He spoke to me one morning and said that He wanted to give her a gift. I responded with, what is the gift? He said that He wanted to pour our His presence upon her. So a few weeks later we were at her home sitting around a campfire. I had been waiting all that day for the opportunity to open up and it was time. He prompted me to tell her that He had a gift for her if she wanted it. She asked the same question what is it? I told her it was Father’s presence. She thought about it for a moment and said sure. So as she sat there I asked Father to let His presence fall upon her. He did and she could feel His tangible presence. She felt His warmth, Love and peace. She gave herself to Yeshua shortly afterwards. She is now born again, baptized in water and the Holy Spirit and sharing His Love with anyone that will listen. We have seen this happen to many over the years. Love and Forgiveness makes a way for the Lord to touch the sinner and bring them into relationship with their Creator.

Many times we must engage the powers of darkness, Satan, his fallen angels and demons. We need the power of the Holy Spirit for this to be effective. We need the full armor of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit to win these battles. Love and Forgiveness are not sufficient for someone held captive. They must be set free from their captor. This is where our role as soldier comes into play. We must be equipped with the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the shoes of the eagerness to spread the Gospel and armed with the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Words of God, that Yeshua speaks to us.

This armor is not just figurative but spiritual, real. The salvation is what changes our mind from worldly thinking to the Mind of Yeshua. We have to have a change of perspective form human to divine, from earthly to heavenly, from self-centered to Yeshua centered. This is the purpose of the helmet of salvation. It also protects the mind from the onslaught of Satan’s thoughts that constantly bombard unredeemed men. The breastplate of righteousness protects our heart where our faith resides from the attack of doubts and unbelief. If we are battling doubts and unbelief we will not be effective in setting the captive free. The belt of Truth protects our loins. The belt referred to here is more of a skirt or a kilt. It covers the individual from the waist to mid thigh. Yeshua is Truth, it is His kingdom not ours. The belt of Truth protects our reproductive organs so that we are not tempted to reproduce ourselves, nor take the credit for ourselves but give it to the true Savior. The shoes of the eagerness to spread the Gospel, protect our feet from the rocks, thrones, scorpions and serpents of the world. They help keep the dust and dirt of the world from us. We always pickup some dust and dirt that is why washing each others feet is part of our walk as believers together. These parts of the armor are defensive. The Sword of the Spirit is the offensive weapon that we carry. This is not the Scriptures as some would have us believe but is the rhema word of God, that is the words that Yeshua speaks to us in the midst of the battle. The words are living and active and expose that which is soulish, that is human, and that which is divine, from the Spirit.

Many years ago when we first go involved in setting the captives free we were working with a white witch who had converted. Over a period of 18 months we casted many, many of demons out with many 4 or 5 hour long battles. One particular demon, called the captain, would not come out. We tried every thing that we knew how to do to get rid of that thing. It just mocked and taunted us. Finally I turned to Yeshua and said that we were unable to dislodge this one and asked Him what was His solution? He spoke to me that He would handle it Himself. His words to me was; be still and know that I am God. I did not say anything out loud to the girl nor my wife. I saw Him climb upon His white horse and draw His sword and begin to descend to attack the captain. When He was about half way down the captain began to get agitated and started to yell through the girl’s voice (only deeper), here He comes on that damned white horse. Oh no He has that @!*& sword. As I watched I saw Yeshua raise His sword to strike as He came close to the captain. The captain started to scream. As He struck the captain the screaming abruptly stopped and the girl, who was sitting on a couch fell over onto her side. After a minute or so she sat up and excitedly said did you see that, did you see Yeshua hit the captain with His sword?

We asked her where the captain was, and she replied that he was long gone. We did not hear from the captain again.

The words that Yeshua spoke to me that day were the Words (rhema) of the Word of God (logos), the sword of the Spirit, powerful, to bring down the enemies and strongholds in a single blow. These are those two and three word sentences that Yeshua would use in the Gospels, such as Lazarus come forth, or be healed, or come out. One anointed word from Yeshua is worth a thousand human words or scripture quotes. Believe me, quoting scripture at demons does not work, been there, done that, unless He specifically tells you to do it.

The gifts of the Spirit are the tools need to work in the spiritual realm, to communicate with Yeshua and to perceive what is taking place. They are presented in the section entitled the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

At this point another story might be helpful in understanding the transformation from unredeemed to warrior. When we first decide to become a believer, it is somewhat like deciding to join the Army. We are a citizen that responds to the recruiter and signs up to be a soldier. We are given a date and location to be sworn in. When we show up to the base we go through a ceremony to leave the civilian life and enter the Army life. After the ceremony ware marched to a barracks where we are stripped of our civilian clothes and issued fatigues. Of course at this stage we are no more a soldier than we were 10 minutes before we were sworn in, but we are called a soldier. We now answer to the base commander. We are no longer free to do whatever we wish but must follow orders. When we accept Yeshua’s salvation we leave the world and come into the Kingdom of God. We become a slave to Yeshua who redeemed us because of Love. We then are baptized which is a ceremony representing our death to the old live and the birth in to a new life. Again we are no more a believer than we were 10 minutes before our baptism, but we are considered a believer.

The next step is to be armed. We go through basic training which physically conditions us and retrains our thinking to Army thinking. We also are issued a weapon, an M16. Civilians are not allowed to have these kinds of weapons. This is equivalent to being baptized in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit begins to change our thinking and equips us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit for overcoming sin and Satan, our enemy. We are trained to use our M16, how to strip it and clean it and how to load and shoot it accurately. Of course in basic we shoot targets for practice. In the Kingdom of God we are already at war so there is very little practice but we engage quickly. The Holy Spirit gives us small battles to learn to fight, a work study type of training. There are older soldiers that can help us learn as well. The Holy Spirit teaches us to rely upon Yeshua for our direction and strength. Sometimes we fight alone other times we fight with other soldiers. In either case the Holy Spirit is directing the fight, and teaching us tactics. In the Kingdom of God we are in occupied territory behind enemy lines fighting a guerilla war and we never retire until we die, but the death benefits are out of this world.

We were not placed on this Earth to succeed as the world succeeds, but to be fruitful and multiply to fill the Earth and to take dominion over the Earth. This is the command that Yahweh gave Adam and his wife right after they were “married”. In fact this is the purpose of getting married. Ours is to bring down the kingdom of darkness and see the Kingdom of Heaven come to Earth and the Kings will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven.