4Dealing with Practicalities
5 We come to the final teaching on spiritual warfare, and in this chapter I want to deal with some more of the practical issues. We have dealt with a lot of theory and a lot of principles up until now, but now I want to deal with some practicalities. Deliverance ministry has become a big thing these days.
6 It is a keynote ministry in many quarters, and often you will ask somebody, "What kind of ministry has God given you?" and they will say, "Well, I have a deliverance ministry."
7 So what is a deliverance ministry, and what makes it so special? What makes it different to any other? The minute I hear somebody say something like, "I have a deliverance ministry," I know straight away what is in their mind. They are into casting out demons. They are into the demon thang! I know it will be a matter of moments and they will start talking about the devil and demons. They will start talking about spiritual bondage.
8Deliverance Ministry
9 Everyone wants to cast demons out of people. It gives you a feeling of importance, you know. It makes you feel superior when you can argue with a demon and tell him what to
do, and he has to listen to you because you have authority. It makes you look very spiritual and very righteous.
10 "After all, if I have authority over demons there is no sin in my life. There cannot be."
11 But, is deliverance ministry really Scriptural? We have touched on it a bit already, but I want to speak about it more here.
12 Another ministry that has proved very popular these days is the ministry of intercession. You ask people what their ministry is and they will say, "Well, I'm an intercessor." Usually when a person says that, most of the time what they are saying is, "We have a church prayer meeting and I take part in it."
13 "Well, we have a group of ladies who get together once a week and we pray, so that makes me an intercessor."
14Intercession Ministry in Warfare
15 I am not going to share on intercession too much here, except so far as the warfare aspect is concerned, because we have dealt with that in the chapter on intercession in Book 1 of this series. But most people do not know what true intercession is. And many, when they move into it, they try and get in over their heads. They do not have the faith to pray for the curing of the common cold, but they want to change world events! They want to pray for the President. They want to pray for the people in China. They want to change the world, and they cannot even change their own lives.
16 There is a lot of confusion on how to handle demon powers in prayer. And when people start moving into the ministry of intercession, it does not take long before they fall flat on their face and do not know what has hit them, because they started getting involved in things that they knew nothing about.
17 So I want to look at warfare in the correct context here, and I want to begin by looking at personal warfare. We are just going to start off on that and then go into the main thrust of what I want to deal with, which is warfare on behalf of others. Up until now we have been dealing in quite a lot of detail on how Satan works, on what we are in Christ, and on how we are to handle his attacks in the Lord.
18Know Your Enemy
19 We saw that you need to know your enemy if you are to overcome him, just like in a game in sports you need to know your opponent, and you need to be aware of his strengths and his weaknesses. You need to know your position in Christ. You need to be aware of what you are capable of, otherwise you are like one of those arrogant little guys who wants to go and take on the bully. You know, you are deceived into thinking that you are strong enough to fight this big guy, and all you can do is reach up to his knees.
20 We saw that we have people like that spiritually. You need to know how to overcome the attacks of Satan. We have dealt with that in a lot of detail insofar as it relates to us individually, with personal attacks in our spiritual lives and how to overcome them. A lot of the time people can handle that fairly well. They can overcome personal attack against themselves. They can believe God for solutions in their own lives. But when it comes to now getting into warfare on behalf of somebody else; when it comes to overcoming Satan and his demons in the lives of other people, it is a whole new ballpark.
21Helping Others Get Victory
22 I want to deal with a few of these. I want to look at the various aspects of how we can become involved in helping other people to break through to victory. And the first way we are going to do that is in praying and counseling with individuals. Here again, the first mistake that people make is they do not understand how demons work.
23Stupid Stories
24 We have all heard the stories. We have the story of The Exorcist. We have all the little comics and tracts that have been put out through the years about a person who was demon possessed and they had to fast and pray for weeks before they could come and deal with the demon. Finally they came against it. There was a big struggle and they cast the demon out! Then the demon went straight into somebody else who was standing by.
25 "Ooooh, I don't want to be in one of those meetings where they cast demons out. I am beginning to wonder whether the demon is headed for me. Who is he aiming for? When the demon comes out where is it going? Is it going to come into me when I'm not looking?"
26 It would be funny if it was not so pathetically true that people believe this. There is fear, fear and more fear created when deliverance ministry is spoken about. I loathe that term. You will not find it in the New Testament. Our whole ministry is a deliverance ministry! That is what we are called to do. Paul said the gospel is, "... the power of God unto salvation."
27 What is salvation? The Greek word sozo stands for everything, including deliverance. Deliverance is not a unique, special ministry. It is part and parcel of what we should be doing. It includes healing the sick. It includes casting out demons. It includes overcoming every work of darkness. It is not a unique specialized ministry that gives you the ability to cast demons out of people.
28Satan Enters Through Sin Only
29 You need to understand how a demon comes in if he is there. He can only come in one way, and that is through...
