I’ve been learning a lot, since June, about spiritual warfare. God told me to focus on learning about it and practicing it. The other day I wrote down a list of what I’ve learned to do when I recognize attacks. I thought it might help you out. Or you might help me out by adding to it or correcting anywhere I’ve overstepped.
Responses To & Wards Against Spiritual Attacks:
Prayer
Obviously there are so many kinds of prayer. First of all, I can simply ask God for what I want or need. Jesus truly says, “Ask and you shall receive.” I want to try to live that, to find out the fullness of what it means. Talking to God keeps me close to Him, keeps my perspective pointed His way. I pray Scripture sometimes, as God leads (Ephesians 6:10-20 if I can’t think of anything else). I call out for help from the God who is mighty enough to deliver me from my enemies. He is a shield, a help, a comfort, a refuge. And He can guide me to the purposes He has for me – the things His enemy is trying to distract me from. He can show me how to move past the ambush.
Thanks
So many of the spiritual attacks come in the form of doubting God’s word and character. Thanks remembers who God is and what He has done and what He has promised. It names them like a claiming for my collection.
Praise
Praise takes thanks a step further. It shouts to the world that my God is good. I feel like it’s less defensive and more offensive in this spiritual battle, a tactic that has the enemy of God wishing he could avoid bringing the subject up.
Rest
God created rest. It’s just a fact. He made us to need it. Rest is related so intimately with waiting and trust. It is an outward submission to the fact that while I do nothing, He is able to work. He doesn’t need me; I need Him. And so I still my body and even sleep sometimes, committing my concerns to my good Father.
Enjoying Good Gifts
If one of the lies is that God isn’t good, it gains power when I refuse to take the good that God gives. He uses these gifts to refresh us and to speak to us of His love. We have to be receiving from God. If we are dependent on Him, it doesn’t mean that we just let Him do everything. It doesn’t mean that we only take from Him the things we perceive as useful for the battle. We take everything He gives. In the midst of sorrow, if He gives laughter, we take that too. We remember that the battle isn’t a punishment; it’s a privilege. So I don’t act like a child pouting in time-out; I taste chocolate and dance in the yard and I thank God for His wisdom!
Encouragement
I’m so glad that God didn’t make us to fight these spiritual battles alone. I heard a preacher say once that God called the Church to spiritual warfare – more than He called individuals. I haven’t figured out what that means or if I agree entirely, but I do know that the members of the body of Christ have been given gifts to build each other up for the ministries God has prepared for us. I love it when my friends tell me they are in this with me, when they remind me of truth, when they admonish me to persevere. Sometimes I even beg them for it.
Prayer Together
This one has been coming up in my thoughts a lot lately, and I feel conviction that I’m not very good at making it happen. I believe that when we recognize spiritual warfare, we should come together to petition God together for strength, guidance, and victory. For whatever reason, I think we’re supposed to be doing this in groups and not just alone.
People
Sometimes I get to be around people who aren’t aware of the battle in my life, and even that can be a bulwark against spiritual attack. It is good to be around humans. We minister to each other. We are made in the image of God, objects of His love, and instruments of His righteousness. It is good to be reminded that God is at work in lives, in situations completely unrelated to my battles. He grows people. He answers prayers. He wins.
Speaking/Writing/Remembering Truth
When I’m in the midst of the weightiest attacks, sometimes the only things to cling to are prayer and truth. I can start small, naming the truth I see about me: “That is a window. Today is Thursday.” And then I can tell myself, journal, or tell others truths I know about God. I can remember things He did in the Bible. I can remember what He did for me yesterday, last month, last year, or when He saved me the day I turned six. One very important thing to remember is that God freely gave His Son to pay for my sins. Paul springboards from that truth to asking, “Will He not with Him also freely give us all things?” It doesn’t make sense for God to give us His most precious possession and then to hold little things back just to be mean! The final type of truth that I focus on is who I am in Christ: “I am chosen. I am sealed. I am empowered. I am loved.”
Fasting and Self-Denial
Mostly my experience with fasting is experimentation. I ask God whether to fast. I don’t understand all of how it works or why God made fasting to have power in spiritual warfare, but Jesus said it, so I believe it. Maybe it has something to do with recognizing my dependence on God for the sustaining of my life. I think there is something to be said for self-denial, for practicing being led by something other than the impulses of what my body or mind want. Plus, since the body is pretty good at sending those impulses, I can use them as a reminder to focus on God and to pray.
Obedience
The Bible warns me to take heed lest I am also tempted, when I’m pro-actively engaged in the spiritual battle. So I regularly evaluate whether I’m being obedient. How have I failed to do what I know God wants me to? I put on the breastplate of righteousness, believing that pursuing good works God has called me to puts me in the places where He can readily use me to intercede for others. When I am obedient, I am not so distracted with repenting – and I am not fighting to regain the foothold I had given over to the Devil. But I also remember that my God is merciful. When I fall, I cry out to Him and He forgives. His grace strengthens me for obedience; it isn’t something I do apart from Him and then bring myself before Him well-armored in my own good works and strength. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. I have to let it be Him working in me.
Reading and Hearing Truth
I want my mind to be saturated with truth so much that it can’t even hear the lies of the Devil. I want to be so confident in the truth that deceits are easily identified and turned back. So I read the Bible, read books about factual things, listen to Christian lectures or good Christian music.
Work
Rest is important, but so is staying busy. The last thing I need is down time when my prayers are exhausted and I’m bored and the temptation comes to chase after my own pleasure. Work is therapeutic. It is a taking-back from the chaos, a living out of the dominion God called the first Man and Woman to. In a way, that’s the same thing happening in spiritual warfare.
Calling On Jesus’ Name
This one is potent. If I feel strongly oppressed, I need to speak Jesus’ name aloud, to claim the authority of the King of Kings to fight this battle for me. It’s also pretty potent before God. If I’m confident enough that my prayer is for Jesus’ sake, for the bearing fruit in His kingdom, I present my supplications in Jesus’ name. And Jesus promised that whatever we ask the Father in His name, we can have confidence that we have from Him. This is another form of acknowledging the truth of God’s promises.
Rebuking Demons
Sometimes I need to take seriously that there are personal creatures scheming against me and that they do not have authority to oppose me, because I am a chosen ambassador of God in the world. I openly resist the Devil, and trust that the Bible is true when it says “He will flee from you.” I don’t know how long it lasts, or exactly how this works, but I try it because it is taught in Scripture.
Prayer For Others
The spiritual battle does not just affect individuals, so I pray for others potentially involved to be guarded against the schemes, temptations, and opposition of our spiritual enemy. I pray for them to put on and take up the armor of God, being strengthened with His might. I pray for them to be vigilant. I pray that God would hedge their families, their health, their jobs, their travel – and anything else that seems relevant or that God leads me to pray for them. I pray that they will be in right standing with God, repentant of sins and practicing righteousness. Intercession is one more thing that I think the spiritual warfare is opposing in the first place, so to go forward doing it seems to me a good idea in resisting the attacks.
Attention to God’s Works
Like remembering what God has done in the past, and being around people in whom God is active at present, I can look around me right now and observe the wise and powerful works of God. These things don’t have to be spiritual, though sometimes they are. I gain encouragement watching God change the seasons, open up wildflowers, bring a bee buzzing by. I watch Him move the hearts of “kings.” This isn’t quite the same as praise or thanks, because it precedes them. First I slow down and give heed to what God is doing – I set out looking for it.
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
Lisa of Longbourn 