Engage in the Fight of your Life
YOU WERE BORN FOR WAR
It’s hard to explain the power of the Gospel. Just the name “Jesus Christ of Nazareth” makes demons tremble. What was done on the Cross is still not fully understood, especially by Christians. I’m no different, but I’ve had a glimpse. The moment Jesus’ Spirit was ripped from the depths of hell (his time there described in dual fashion in Psalm 16) and catapulted back into his redeemed body, the entire cosmology of the universe was flipped. “Up” became “down.” “Down” became “up.” Derek Prince said it best, “the way up is down.” What was exalted came crashing down like lightning. What was humble and lowly in heart was flung to the high heavens.
Imagine the power of a nuclear bomb. The power released when Jesus was risen from the dead was easily infinitely greater. When all things went under Jesus’ feet, the spiritual realm was shaken to the core of its foundations. Devils/demons and cosmic darkness as well as Lucifer himself who had reigned on Earth unopposed since Adam and Eve had given them power were suddenly and radically demoted. Imagine the CEO of the business becoming an entry-level associate, while entry-level associates suddenly ALL became the CEO. The flip that happened was at a magnitude barely grasped by human minds. Have you grasped it, fellow believer?
Have you realized that you’re the CEO now?
Do you even have an inkling of an understanding about the power bursting within you because of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ?
And I pray that he would unveil within you the unlimited riches of his glory and favor until supernatural strength floods your innermost being with his divine might and explosive power.
—Ephesians 3:16 TPT
Can you witness to the authority given to you by Jesus and how you are now “seated in heavenly places” with Him? Do you understand that he has seated you on a throne with him?
He raised us up with Christ the exalted One, and we ascended with him into the glorious perfection and authority of the heavenly realm, for we are now co-seated as one with Christ!
—Ephesians 2:6 TPT
And to the one who conquers I will give the privilege of sitting with me on my throne, just as I conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.
—Revelation 3:21 TPT
Demonic powers shouldn’t be able to get within an inch of your pinky finger before fleeing in terror from “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27), and yet…they do. They somehow creep into the life of a Christian, often manifesting as demonic cycles of disappointment and chronic sin patterns. If you’ve been a Christian for some time and have found yourself constantly subject to cyclical character failings, you are living an unnatural life. You are no longer a slave to sin but a child of God (Gal 4:7). Yet if “child of God-ness” is missing from your life at key moments, you may want to consider that demonic forces are enforcing curses in your life. You may not “have” a demon, but you do have a “devil problem.” A demon doesn’t have to be inside you to talk to you.
In fact, demons talking to you, speaking lies to you, is the main way demonic powers work among Christians. Demons whisper their lies into your mind at all hours (often when you are sleeping since the unconscious mind is more susceptible) and can enforce lies in your mind that cripple your walk with Jesus. They may or may not be inside you, but they are definitely around you, constantly bullying you, and because you haven’t been taught, you think your “crazy” thoughts are your flesh when it is often constant demonic suggestions being bombarded into your mind at all hours. You are being harassed. You have a devil problem. The seed of the serpent has put your mind under siege, and you think that it’s you.
This exemplar is found in the Bible in a curious circumstance. The disciple Peter states to Jesus “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God,” and Jesus approves him saying that he has surely heard from Father God. Then shortly afterwards, Jesus says plainly to his disciples that he will suffer by the hands of the priests and die to be raised on the third day, the same disciple, Peter, attempts to reprimand Jesus saying that this won’t happen. Jesus rebukes him instead saying “Get thee behind me, Satan” and that he didn’t have the things of God in mind but the things of man (Matthew 16:15-23). In other words, one day Father God was speaking through Peter, and shortly afterwards, Satan himself was speaking through Peter. Peter is a “pre-Cross” Christian, and somehow Satan himself spoke through him, right next to Jesus as well.
What Jesus did was repudiate the words spoken by Peter which were sired in his own mind by demonic powers. Peter was always around Jesus, yet he struggled to control first his thoughts and then his utterances. He was unable to discern that some of his thoughts were not “pure” but birthed from the mouth of Satan, inserted into his thoughts, and once Peter heard them, he agreed with them and then voiced that agreement by faith to Jesus.
This is the main way that Christians become “oppressed” by devils/demons/evil spirits/familiar spirits. They whisper something into your mind, a normal thought, perhaps a familiar thought from a familiar spirit, one that has perhaps followed you and your family line for generations. A familiar voice. A voice that you think is your own from your own mind, and through your agreement with that voice—by first agreeing with it in your mind but even worse so, speaking the thought afterwards—you give those demonic entities power over you and your life; thus, you have made the work of the Cross ineffective in your own life by failing to repudiate these demonic thought patterns. The tongue is a rudder according to James 3, so when you speak out demonic thoughts, you begin to walk in the direction of those thoughts leading to your own destruction.
4 Look at the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder wherever the inclination of the pilot desires. 5 So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things.
See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our [a]life, and is set on fire by [b]hell. 7 For every [c]species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human [d]race. 8 But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; 10 from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.
—James 3:4-10 NASB1995
Is your mouth in a state where both blessing and cursing are pouring forth? Have you also confessed submission to Jesus Christ of Nazareth while also having demonically fueled thoughts, speech, and actions? The question is not whether or not this is happening to you. It certainly is. The question is what makes this kind of demonic attack so difficult to overcome.
I have already said it, and I will say it again. It is because these voices are familiar to you. You are used to the “chaos” of your own mind since childhood, so you think nothing of it. You even consider it to be “of the flesh” instead of demonic. You have failed to discern that 80% of your “Christian” thoughts, in my estimation, are coming from demonic powers operating in your life since childhood. You simply think that “this is just the way that I think” and “my thoughts have always been like this.” In fact, when your thoughts go off of a cliff, you will often blame yourself thinking that you can control the demonic chatter as one disciplines the flesh. The flesh must be disciplined, but demonic forces cannot be. They must be shut down and cast out by the continual confession of the Truth of the Word of God.
I have suffered from this trap for many long years, and I tired of it. I had often been told by Christians that demons can speak to you and to not agree with every thought because of several verses that I will quote below and summarize here. It says in the NT that we should take every thought captive to the Word of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), that we ought to think on good things (Philippians 4:8), and that we should test the spirits to see if they are true (1 John 4:1).
However, if I suffer under a burden of guilt and shame because of my thought life—thinking that I am the cause of the chaos that I’ve become so familiar with in my mind—then instead of thinking that the torrent of perverse thoughts came from evil spirits, I just assumed that they came from the flesh. I never thought to say to them “Get thee behind me Satan” because the devils surrounding me, speaking to me, and harassing me from the invisible realm constantly since early youth couldn’t be the problem.
Instead, the problem was me not being able to control my thoughts. I thought that I was failing. I had a legalistic standard on what my “thought life” should look like, and that legalism, sometimes called “religous thinking,” kept me from seeing that I was not someone with a perverse mind. Instead, I was someone with a pure mind and heart, the mind of Christ according to the Bible, that was under constant assault by demonic lies, temptations, and perversions. Because I thought that my flesh was conjuring up vain imaginations and perversions and lies, I could never stop the flow of them. Telling myself to stop didn’t help because I was not the root cause. The root cause was demonic. Demons can’t be encourage or negotiated with, they must be shut down by a firm rebuke.
Since understanding this concept, I have probably reduced demonic chatter in my mind from 80% of my “thoughts” down to 20% of my thoughts. Because every time they try to get chatty, it’s “get thee behind me Satan”(Matthew 16:23). Or equivalent phrases. Once Father God told me, in response to a question that I asked Him, “I’m not thinking about that right now.” What I didn’t understand was that anything that Father God had ever spoken to me out of His Word or directly in conversation with Him is imbued with power. So, when I asked Holy Spirit how to address my devil chatter problem, He first told me to say “I’m not thinking about that right now.” Whenever a stray, random, demonic in origin (based on my discernment) thought pops up in my head, I often say either outwardly or inwardly that “I’m not thinking about that right now” and the same power to shut down devils from saying “Get thee behind me Satan” reverberates through me, and they receive the spiritual beating from the Resurrection Power flowing within me that they deserve.
Regardless of whether you can hear from God directly (this is really an issue of attention mostly—cut out demonic chatter from media and hearing from God will become much easier), you can always use the biblical phrase “Get thee behind me, Satan!” to shut down demonic powers speaking to you.
This is a small part of the war that I am alluding to in the title. Often believers in Christ struggle due to a lack of understanding of why God brought their being into existence. All humans were born to overcome the devils and darkness in Jesus’ name (either before or after the Christ since he was “slain before the foundations of the world”—Revelation 13:8). It was announced in Genesis chapter 3. As the seed of a woman, you were born for the war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman mentioned in Genesis 3:15.
14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this, you are cursed
more than all animals, domestic and wild.
You will crawl on your belly,
groveling in the dust as long as you live.
15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Why avoid the battle even unintentionally? You were born into a war zone between the Overwhelming Power of the Almighty God and the powers of the air, the powers under the earth (hell and darkness), and the powers on the earth (serpents and scorpions).
2 You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world.[a] He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.—Ephesians 2:2 NLT
2 in which you formerly walked according to the [a]course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.—Ephesians 2:2 NASB1995
16 for through him God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him.
And then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. They sang: “Blessing and honor and glory and power belong to the one sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.”
13 You will trample upon lions and cobras;
you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet!
19 Look, I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you.
The entire Earth is a war zone between the spiritual powers of hell and darkness and the powers of light and life continually warring against each other. You are are of the side of the Most High God, Elohim, Jehovah, Yahweh and His Son, the only begotten of the father, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, Yeshua (Jesus) and His Spirit, the Holy Spirit and Angelic hosts that serve the King. You are on the winning side of the battle, but you are living in the time before the end.
ENGAGE IN THE FIGHT OF YOUR LIFE.
This is the fight you were born and created for. Father views you in accordance with Psalm 127, you are one of His beloved children, you are an arrow in the quiver of our Lord and Father, and He created you to hit a particular target in the camp of the enemy. You are not random regardless of how you were sired or brought into this world. Your spirit was breathed into you by God. You were born a warrior to take back this territory for Jesus using His name, the authority that He bequeathed to you as one of His laborers. YOU WERE BORN TO CONFRONT THE ACCUSER AT THE CITY GATES!
3 Children are a gift from the Lord;
they are a reward from him.
4 Children born to a young man
are like arrows in a warrior’s hands.
5 How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them!
He will not be put to shame when he confronts his accusers at the city gates.
Spiritual warfare is NOT optional. It’s simply the state of reality on this rock (the earth). So be like King David. Find 5 sharp rocks and just start chucking them at the devil. If the battle finds you regardless of whether or not you want to participate, then your only option is to fight back. You would never allow a human being to speak to you like you allow the devils to speak to you in your mind. What would you say to a human?
“You are out of line for saying that!”
Try saying that to a demon. It works just as good as it would with a human being. Say “I am a child of God, and how dare you speak to me, devil!” the next time you’re tempted to sin and keep saying it. You aren’t trying to convince yourself, even Jesus had to speak to devils more than once to get some them to come out of an individual.
So they arrived at the other side of the lake, in the region of the Gerasenes.[a] 2 When Jesus climbed out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil[b] spirit came out from the tombs to meet him. 3 This man lived in the burial caves and could no longer be restrained, even with a chain. 4 Whenever he was put into chains and shackles—as he often was—he snapped the chains from his wrists and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Day and night he wandered among the burial caves and in the hills, howling and cutting himself with sharp stones.
6 When Jesus was still some distance away, the man saw him, ran to meet him, and bowed low before him. 7 With a shriek, he screamed, “Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In the name of God, I beg you, don’t torture me!” 8 For Jesus had already said to the spirit, “Come out of the man, you evil spirit.”
9 Then Jesus demanded, “What is your name?”
And he replied, “My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man.” 10 Then the evil spirits begged him again and again not to send them to some distant place.
11 There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside nearby. 12 “Send us into those pigs,” the spirits begged. “Let us enter them.”
13 So Jesus gave them permission. The evil spirits came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the entire herd of about 2,000 pigs plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned in the water.
If Jesus had to say something more than once, then you are probably going to have to say the same thing to ones harassing you at least 10, 100, maybe even 1000 times before they leave you alone. Who cares how many times it takes? If you can’t escape harassment by demonic powers while you are on the Earth, then why not harass them back just as hard. Their day of judgment has not arrived, and until then, they will walk the earth. They hate humanity because we have a chance for redemption, and they do not. They will not stop harassing you until you start harassing them back. Why not make the existence of the devils who have been harassing you since childhood worse than hell?
In fact, if you keep things in your life such that you are always so on fire for God that it’s hotter in the Spirit than Hell, the Lake of Fire, around you, they will probably leave you alone and look for an easier target. Make the devils feel like they are experiencing eternal damnation now before the time of their judgment (as we know its not time yet), and they will probably take the hint and be driven off. Make it so devils are so afraid to talk to you because of the backlash that you bring against them due to the fire of the Spirit of God within you.
To be frank, demons should be afraid to talk to a believer already, but because the standards in the Faith across the board in every denomination, branch, sect, and even among the renegade protestants (fellow charismatics and pentecostals) have fallen so low in standards of character and in the upholding of love as the greatest (before faith and hope), the ability to drive out devils from our lives has been muted.
Christian believers are slaves to the flesh and to demonic passions, and this causes a kind of weakness when we assert to demonic powers the position and relationship between us and our Heavenly Father. This means that the power of the Cross that was so powerful that it flipped the heavens upside-down is actually muted in the life of the believer. Your lack of engagement with the war is what is causing the lack of power when you say “Get thee behind me Satan” to the devil. They don’t leave because you are compromised. They don’t leave because you have mixture in your life. Your idols are preventing the true power of the things spoken by God in the Bible or to you directly from His Spirit from overthrowing demonic influence in your life. It’s not just you, it’s me, and it’s all of us. We have all been dampened by this falling of standards. It’s time to turn the heat up.
And it starts in your thoughts, really in your mind, will, and emotions, your soul.
I have realized way to late that I was a person run by my mind, will, and emotions. In my case, my emotions are always undergirded by human reason (analysis, rationality, and logic). Regardless, I was being run by my emotions even if I feigned that I was being run by “reason.” I find that people submit to reason are often the most emotional, but I don’t have time to go down that tangent. When you are run by emotion or what I call “disguised reason” even as a Christian who believes in the power of the Spirit and miracles, you never feel settled. Every season of your life is a tornado of feelings and thoughts, and you always feel out-of-place in your own life. You end up resonating with your vile passions always backed by your emotional (disguised reasoning) basis, and you have no steady foundation.
Recolonize your own mind.
Drive out the devil that stir up lies, perversions, false insight/perception, and more through the constant attack on your thought life, and you will find that calm you seek.
Let’s remember that this is all about the battle. You were BORN FOR WAR, so go to war with the devil and win as you are destined to win every battle that Lord has anointed for you to face.
So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
—James 4:7 NLT
You are DESTINED to win. So FIGHT and WIN! The only way a Christian loses is by choosing to disengage. If you fight and continue fighting, if you stand and continue standing, you will receive a victory and untold honors in the heavenly realms, but if you fail to engage, you never even have a chance to win. Pray out Ephesians 6:13-18 every. single. day.
13 Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. 14 Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. 15 For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared.[e] 16 In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil.[f] 17 Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
18 Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.[g]
I was not even choosing to engage with the battle in my mind. I had failed so many times to control the random, perverse, lying, and comically absurd thoughts that popped in my head at all hours. I was constantly living in that continual demonic swirl from season to season, never breaking free.
But then Jesus blessed me with this revelation that you are reading now, that I didn’t need to accept the low quality of thought life that I had been subject to my whole life by familiar spirits. He made me believe in faith that I could overcome the demonic swirl and break through the clouds of their lies. This is, by far, the hardest battle that I have ever faced.
3 years of the most severe demonic attack that I have ever experienced in my entire life. Nonstop. All hours. I couldn’t sleep the summer of 2024 without being assaulted by demonic entities. One night, I desperately cried out to God for relief so that I could just get some sleep that night because I was so tired of constantly fighting these entities, so he gave me a prayer. I spoke it and the entity fled, and I had the best night of sleep that I had that whole summer. In the NT, Jesus sometimes cast out spirits with just a word. It was very close to that but with a phrase and concept that I had never considered.
Still, it came back the next night and the same phrase did not work (perhaps a post on that in the future). However, Jesus never abandoned me; instead, he used the hardness of the warfare to mold me into the warrior that I am today. I got beat up so bad that summer that I just got tired and decided that if I wasn’t going to sleep then the devils weren’t either. So, I would play the audio Bible all night, and I could feel the affect. The devils would back off and cringe from hearing the book of Romans or Ezekiel or whatever playing all night. I would play powerful worship music, and I would constantly listen to my favorite teachings and sermons. Demons hate being reminded of their soon to come eternal damnation in the fires of hell because of the power of the Cross and the Blood of Jesus defeating them.
Remind them of it all hours. Take every thought captive to the Word of Christ.
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but [b]divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, 6 and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.
If I am going to be tormented, then so are the familiar spirits/devils/demons/evil spirits around me. That’s my attitude toward the devil these days.
“You want to torment me, devil? Okay…you’re about to get what you’ve given me twice as hard!”
My attitude is like King David’s now. I was destined to take this land, the land being the domain of my own life and the sphere of influence God has given me to steward over. If that sphere of influence is under attack by demons, I’m not running from the battle. I’m running toward the battle with the Power of the Spirit behind my back. I’m not afraid of “backlash” from the spiritual realm.
I AM THE BACKLASH THE DEVIL IS GOING FEEL IF HE LAYS ONE HAND ON WHAT I’M STEWARDING.
I AM THE WEAPON THAT GOD FORMED IN THE WOMB TO TAKE ON THE CHALLENGES IN MY LIFE.
I AM THE CHOSEN WARRIOR THAT GOD HAS ANOINTED TO OVERCOME THE DEVIL IN MY SPHERE OF INFLUENCE, MY DOMAIN.
AND YOU ARE TOO.
Fundamentally, this “engage in the fight of your life” concept goes back to identity. Do you really believe what Romans 8 says about you? What about what Ephesians says about you? Do you truly believe it when the Word says “Christ in you the hope of glory”?
To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
If you struggle to believe these things, then you will feel weak when facing spiritual warfare. Knowing who you are is more than quoting and repeating these Bible verses. It is about realizing that every thought in your head that challenges these revelations is coming directly from the mouth of the devil, and you challenge that directly by a simple phrase: “Get thee behind me, Satan!”
A Holy Lineage is about you understanding who you are in Christ. You are not the off-scouring of the earth though the world treats you this way (1 Corinthians 4:13), you are a co-heir, some versions say “fellow heir,” with Christ (Romans 8:17). You are part of a Holy nation, a CHOSEN race, and a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9). You are a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). You are seated with Jesus Christ of Nazareth in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). These are your HEIRLOOM PROMISES passed from generation to generation from the earliest of Christians to you, a Christian in the last generations before His 2nd Coming.
EMBRACE THEM.
MEDITATE ON THEM.
RECEIVE THEM.
BELIEVE THEM.
Heirloom Promises is the continuation of A Holy Lineage. It’s bigger than your spiritual lineage; it’s about the promise from Christ therein passed from Christian to Christian, across the generations, across time just to reach you. It is the promise of your identity in Him and the promise of your place among His people.
You are not treated how you ought to be treated in this fallen world. You are not your struggles with sin. You are not what the familiar spirits whisper or scream that you are. You are chosen by the Lord Jesus Christ from birth, formed in your mother’s womb, for a particular purpose. It’s time to become the CEO of your own life.
ENGAGE IN THE FIGHT OF YOUR LIFE.
If you don’t get to skip the battle, then your only choice is to grab whatever is in your hand and throw it down and see what the Father does. When you’ve done all to stand, stand therefore.
2 Then the Lord asked him, “What is that in your hand?”
“A shepherd’s staff,” Moses replied.
3 “Throw it down on the ground,” the Lord told him. So Moses threw down the staff, and it turned into a snake! Moses jumped back.
4 Then the Lord told him, “Reach out and grab its tail.” So Moses reached out and grabbed it, and it turned back into a shepherd’s staff in his hand.
5 “Perform this sign,” the Lord told him. “Then they will believe that the Lord, the God of their ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—really has appeared to you.”