Christians Engage in Spiritual Warfare

WHEN YOU are asked to pray for yourselves and to intercede for your pastors, do not joke with it; pray for them! Pray to prevent temptations. As a Christian, you will engage in a series of warfare. It is a spiritual battle between forces of darkness and forces of light.

One night in the month of March, 2016, I had a vision in which I found myself on a battlefield, watching how satanic forces and the army of God dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns and other weapons were engaged in a fierce fight. It was scary as I saw many people being killed and others being saved.

I had the vision at a time when I was personally engaged in a spiritual warfare over a strange deadly disease that had attacked me. On the battlefield, a soldier on the Lord’s side who spotted me asked me to leave the place where I was standing and go home. I also saw a woman who was being freed and asked to go home.

In fact, walking with God involves engaging in all kinds of warfare. Satan attacks anyone who loves God; he attacks God’s children with poverty, disease, sickness, setback, barrenness, hardship and stagnation. He afflicts them with the main aim of conquering their faith and destroying the relationship they have with God.

The battle started in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had been blessed by God. Satan was envious of their blessings and succeeded in destroying their relationship with God.

Moreover, Satan through Pharaoh oppressed the people of Israel as slaves in Egypt for years. And when God sent Moses to rescue them after they had cried unto Him, evil spirits possessed Pharaoh to oppose him.

Thus, Pharaoh resisted Moses for several months until eventually God intervened and conquered him and his men by His mighty power (Read Exodus Chapter 7 through to Chapter 14).

Also, Jezebel, wife of Ahab, king of Israel, also operating under the spirit of witchcraft attacked Elijah who had killed the prophets of Baal.

“Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow. Then he (Elijah) was AFRAID, AND HE AROSE AND RAN FOR HIS LIFE and came to Beersheba…,” (1 Kings 19:1-3).

You can see that men of God may be knowledgeable about the devices, wiles, schemes, traps, tricks or cunning ways of the devil, but it does not make them untouchable by the devil. (2 Corinthians 2:11).

A respected man of God, who passed on to be with the Lord decades ago, the late D. L. Moody once said, “I believe Satan to exist for two reasons:  first, the Bible says so; and second, I’ve done business with him.”

No true man of God goes about performing his ministerial responsibilities without battling Satan and his minions. Paul, the Gentile-sent apostle, was not spared. He suffered a lot of attacks launched by the powers of darkness. In one of his letters, the apostle explained how Satan stopped him from travelling.

“But, brothers, when we were torn away from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. For we wanted to you – certainly I, PAUL, DID AGAIN AND AGAIN – BUT SATAN STOPPED US,” (1 Thessalonians 2: 18, NIV).

Do you remember how Satan attacked Job, killing his children, destroying his businesses and inflicting painful sores all over his body? Do you also remember how the evil one destroyed the life of Judas Iscariot and demanded to have Peter sifted like wheat?

You and I must arm ourselves with the truth that as long as we live in this world, Satan and his cohorts will fight against pastors and entire Christians. Some of Satan’s attacks can be poverty, diseases, sicknesses, false accusations, beatings, killings, rejection, hatred and any troubling situation that happens in our lives. And we can only pray in the name of Jesus Christ to deal with them.

By James Quansah