God’s Answer For Spiritual Warfare
OFFICIAL JOSEPH PRINCE SERMON NOTES
God’s Answer For Spiritual Warfare
Sunday, 18 October 2020
These are notes on the sermon, God’s Answer For Spiritual Warfare, preached by Pastor Joseph Prince on Sunday, 18 October 2020, at The Star Performing Arts Centre, Singapore. We hope these sermon notes will be an encouragement to you!
Overview
1. Introduction: The path of the righteous shines brighter and brighter!
2. Guard your mind with the helmet of the hope of salvation
3. Break free from the cycle of destructive thoughts by declaring the truth of God’s Word
4. Focusing on the obedience of Christ—not your own—sets your mind at peace
5. Feeding on the gospel of grace produces faith, love, and hope
6. Closing Prayer
Introduction: The path of the righteous shines brighter and brighter!
Child of God, your path is getting brighter and brighter!
As we approach the end of the year, we are stepping into a new dimension of God’s goodness and abundance. The Bible says the path of the righteous shines brighter and brighter (Prov. 4:18). Although the days are getting darker in the world, as children of God, we can expect our future to get brighter and brighter.
Recap of last week’s sermon:
“All your children shall be taught by the Lord,
And great shall be the peace of your children.
In righteousness you shall be established;
You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear;
And from terror, for it shall not come near you.”
— Isaiah 54:13–14 NKJV
“All your children shall be taught by the Lord” — Your children will be directly taught by the Lord Himself. This verse is not referring to you teaching them about the Lord, but it is referring to the Lord teaching them personally.
“great shall be the peace of your children” — Your children shall enjoy not just a tiny bit of shalom, but great will be their shalom, their well-being, their wholeness, and their peace.
These two blessings on your children are a result of you being established in righteousness.
We are sharing this series on the gospel of Jesus Christ because while many of us might know in our minds that we have been made righteous in Christ, we need to be established in it (be secure and have firm standing in it). If we are not established in this truth, the Bible says that the devil will blind our minds to it:
“But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”
— 2 Corinthians 4:3–4 NKJV
The “god of this age” here refers to the devil (he became the god of this age when the first man, Adam, sinned and handed over his authority). The devil blinds the minds of those who do not believe. This gospel that we are preaching is so glorious and radiant that the devil has to blind people’s minds to it.
In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith (Rom. 1:17).
This righteousness is a gift and when we receive it, we are transformed from the inside out. You cannot be holy unless you are first established in righteousness.
“But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:”
— 1 Corinthians 1:30 KJV
This is the order in which God works: Christ is first made unto us wisdom (understanding God’s plan and purpose of the cross), then righteousness, then sanctification. We can see a similar order in Romans 8:30 KJV, which says, “ . . . whom he justified, them he also glorified.”
This is the pattern: Righteousness first, then sanctification. Righteousness first, then glory.
God wants His glory to shine upon you:
“For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the Lord will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you.”
— Isaiah 60:2 NKJV
This verse is not for the millennium or when we see Jesus face to face in heaven. It’s referring to the times we’re living in right now. The world is getting darker and darker; the Bible has already prophesied that it would. But we do not need to fear because we have God’s light upon us.
One of the plagues in Egypt (a picture of the world) was a deep darkness that covered the land. But at the same time, the children of Israel had light in their dwellings (Exod. 10:23). The light that the Israelites had was supernatural, just like the darkness was supernatural. If the darkness had been natural, the Egyptians would have availed themselves to the same resources that Israel had. But the light in Israel was supernatural.
This is a picture of how God’s glory will be seen upon His people in these last days.
Light is never more visible than when it is shining in the darkness. In a dark room, even a flicker of light is visible. As the children of Israel had light in all their dwellings during the plague, so shall it be for us in these last days. It won’t just be for you but for your family as well.
Guard your mind with the helmet of the hope of salvation
The devil wants to blind people’s minds to the glory of the gospel of Christ, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine upon them. Notice that it is the mind that the devil wants to blind.
Today’s message is for people who have been experiencing all kinds of mind games, oppression, and sleepless nights from battling negative and destructive thoughts in their minds.
“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,”
— 2 Corinthians 10:4–5 NKJV
“mighty in God for pulling down strongholds” — God’s weapons are spiritual and mighty for pulling down strongholds. If we can locate these strongholds, we can bring them down using God’s weapons.
These strongholds are in our mind. The way that the enemy wages war against us is to attack our minds and erect strongholds there.
The good news is that God has given us the weapons to win this fight. They are not carnal; they are spiritual and mighty to pull down strongholds.
Maybe today, you have a stronghold of fear. There are preachers who, based on Job 3:25, share that whatever you fear will come upon you. This causes even greater fear in the hearts of many. The truth is that the more you try to rid yourself of that fear, the more it manifests itself. We don’t focus on fear to get rid of it. It is the perfect love of God that will cast out fear (1 John 4:18).
THE MORE WE DISCOVER THE PERFECT LOVE OF GOD, THE MORE FEAR IS ERADICATED FROM OUR LIVES.
It’s important that we know where spiritual warfare is happening. The arena of spiritual warfare is the mind.
The devil’s stronghold is a pattern of thinking that he puts in your mind and it becomes a stronghold after some time.
Oftentimes, a negative thought precedes a negative emotion. Your emotions are an indicator of what you’re thinking. Maybe you have been thinking in a negative way in a certain area or situation for so long that you don’t even realize it; it has become normal to you. But your emotions cannot hide it. If you’re constantly in a low or bad place emotionally, that tells you that you are struggling with a stronghold in your mind, in your thoughts, in your believing.
Right believing produces right living. Right believing also produces the right emotions.
While our spirits have been born again, our souls and our minds need to be restored.
What the devil does is plant negative and destructive thoughts in your mind. He builds up negative thoughts and arguments over the months and years in your life and they become strongholds.
When the devil plants thoughts in your mind, he uses the first person pronoun. He does not come to you and say, “You are an addict.” Instead, he comes to you and puts this thought in your mind: “I am an addict.” He uses the personal pronoun “I” to make you think that you are the one thinking these thoughts. He plants these thoughts in your mind as if they are your thoughts, but they are not.
There is a way to accept or reject these thoughts.
Jesus said:
“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?”
— Matthew 6:31 KJV
“take no thought, saying” — The way we accept and own any thought is to speak it out, to say it.
Know that the thoughts of helplessness, abandonment, and hopelessness are not thoughts that you have to own.
The devil will put arguments in your mind against God’s Word, and he’ll make you think you’re the one who is arguing. He may present his arguments with logic and natural facts and make them sound intelligent.
But we need to know that we live in the light of God’s truth. Truth (God’s Word and promises) always outlasts facts (what we see in the natural, the current situation). Facts can change but truth does not. We see in the Word and in the testimonies we receive every week that there are many who were sick (fact) but are now healed (truth).
The devil puts in your mind:
Arguments against God’s truth based on “facts” you can see now
Negative thoughts in the first person
The devil wants you to think and accept these thoughts as your own…
“I always make mistakes.”
“I am hopeless.”
“I will never measure up.”
“I will never be good enough.”
“I’m just a very unlucky person.”
“I am an addict.”
“I am a pervert.”
“I am depressed.”
Sometimes, the devil can also give you thoughts when you are on a high-rise building to jump down.
Pastor Prince shares his personal story of battling with blasphemous thoughts against the Lord when he was a youth, and how the revelation of being the righteousness of God in Christ caused him to realize that those thoughts were not his own and set him free. It was a process.
You can’t stop bad thoughts from entering your mind, but you can stop them from taking root.
The devil wants to point you to your own actions and efforts to be justified/righteous when God has given you righteousness as a gift. You only need to receive it.
It is a continual process of being established in His gift of righteousness. We know we have been made righteous by the blood of Christ Jesus but we have to be established in this truth and identity.
As we’ve read earlier in Isaiah 54, when we are established in righteousness, our children will be beneficiaries of it. When it comes to parenting, many people focus on parenting methods like discipline and don’t realize that the most important thing about parenting is the parents themselves. This is an aspect of parenting that isn’t talked much about. Children observe and learn from their parents even when their parents are not consciously teaching them anything. You are parenting even without words.
That is why it’s so important that as parents, we take care to establish ourselves in God’s righteousness first and foremost. When our children see the peace, security, and confidence we have as a result of being established in righteousness, they learn from that.
When we exhibit fear in our speech all the time, our children are listening to what we are saying and they model after us as well. If we are constantly talking about the negative reports in the world, we are instilling in them fears about the future and the world. Then when they are full of fears, we try to deal with that but we are not dealing with the root of the problem.
As you focus on being established in righteousness, great will be the peace of your children (Isa. 54:13-14).
https://www.josephprince.com/sermon-notes/gods-answer-for-spiritual-warfare
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