Weapons!

The children of God are given many weapons, however we don’t utilize them all. The word of God say no weapon formed against me shall prosper (Isaiah 54: 17), why is this? Well, God gave us defenses.

Our greatest weapon is the Word of God, the Bible.  The Word of God is so powerful that when Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, the devil came to tempt Him (St Luke 4:1- 14, St Matthew 4:1-11) he told Jesus to turn a stone into bread and Jesus said, “It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word of God (Deuteronomy 8:3)”.  The devil told Jesus if he would worship him all should be His, but Jesus rebuked the devil by saying” Get thee behind me Satan, for it is written, Thou shall worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve (Deuteronomy 6:13-15)”.  The devil took Jesus to an exceedingly high mountain and said to Jesus that if He be the Son of God then to cast himself down and angels would bear Him up in their hands before He dashed his foot against a stone and Jesus said “ Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God (Deuteronomy 6:16)”. Then the devil left him and angels came to minister to Jesus (Matthew 4:11) Whenever Jesus spoke to the enemy, He used the word of God, why?  When we encounter the enemy, we must put on the whole amour of God and use the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17).  When we think about a sword, we think of a long thin sharp piece of metal used for cutting and thrusting. A sword is used to wound and hurt, so Jesus used the word of God to wound Satan, the only alternative Satan had was to flee.

Notice after Satan left, the angels came to minister to Jesus.  Psalms 91:11-12 say that God gave his angels charge over us to keep us in all of our ways, they bear us up in their hands before we dash our foot against a stone.  This was another weapon against Satan.  Most of the time we only think angels are suppose to just protect us, but as seen in Matthew 4:11, they can do more than just protect us; they can minister to us as well.  Angels are also messengers from the Lord, Judges 13:3- 25 says an angel appeared to the barren wife of Man-no-ah, the angel told the wife she would bare a child and it came to pass that the woman conceived a child and named him Samson. Angels also fight on our behalf, there is a spiritual war going on and the enemy tries to stop our blessings, these angels are on the battlefield fighting evil spirits and powers that is beyond our level of understanding. Acts 13:6- 12 says an angel appeared before Peter while he was in prison and told Peter to get up (Peters chains fell off his hands), to put on his shoes and clothes and follow him, Peter was in such amazement, he thought he was dreaming.  He couldn't believe he was free. Daniel 6:22 says God sent angels in the lions den to shout the lions mouth so they would not harm Daniel.  The angels are available to us at anytime we need them; we just have to “employ them”.

While, Jesus was in the wilderness, he was fasting, which is another weapon we use against the devil.  Matthew 17: 14- 21 says a man came to Jesus with a child that was a lunatic and his disciples could not cast out the devil, when Jesus cast out the devil, the disciples wanted to know why they could not cast out the evil spirit and Jesus said” Because of your unbelief, for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith of as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, "Remove hence to yonder place " and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossible unto you, Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting (Mark 9:17 – 29, says the child was dumb and Jesus cast out the devil, and when the disciples asked Jesus when they couldn’t cast out the evil spirit, Jesus answered “This kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fasting”). This one scripture puts three weapons into action, faith, prayer and fasting. To be more precise, the word howbeit means although or nevertheless. So Jesus was actually saying, you have to have faith, just a little faith (Ephesians 6:16, Above all take the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked) can move mountain, nevertheless you have to be prayed and fasted up to defeat the devil. Let’s examine each weapon, faith, prayer and fasting.

So you may ask, what is faith, well, faith is things hoped for but not seen, Hebrew 11:1-40 speaks of many people who had faith, because of Abel’s faith, he offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Enoch’s faith caused him not to see death nor be found. We have to understand that without faith, it is impossible to please God, we have to believe in Him and His promise to us. Noah was warned by God, Abraham was led by God to a strange country, Sarah received the ability to conceive, Abraham also offered up his son to God, these are just a few people in Hebrew 11 that had faith, not only did these people of the word die with faith and received the promise, they saw it from afar, were persuaded, embraced the promise, and confessed the promises to strangers.  This is what we have to do.  We have to allow ourselves to believe God’s promise to us.  We have to hold on to the promise and tell others what God will do for us with our mouth because when  we confess anything with our mouth we speak those things into existence. Proverbs 18: 21 says death and life are in the power of the tongue. This is what faith is all about, believing, embracing, and confessing.  Faith is our first line of defend, Ephesians 6: 16 says above all , take the shield of faith, where with ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.  When we think about a shield, we think about it's function. The function of a shield is to block , it is generally followed by a counter attack such as thrusting with a sword. We must have faith to block the attacks of the enemy.

We all know how significant prayer is, we all need prayer.  Prayer is the way we talk to our Savior. It's so important until God gave us a prayer language for the times when we are in war with the enemy and we can’t even express what we want to say in our native tongue, the Holy Spirit has the ability to speak for us. Rom 8:26-27 says the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. God is so good, whatever we need all we have to do is ask, the word of God says you have not because you ask not (James 4: 2). So, if you need strength, joy, peace, healing, protection, blessing, ask for it.  God is our father and He takes care of His children, God is obligated to take care of His children.  I Thessalonians 5: 17 says to pray without ceasing, I Thessalonians 5: 10 says night and day praying exceedingly that we might see Your face and make perfect that which is lacking in Your faith.

We must fast, even Jesus fasted to show us an example, when we fast we take our eyes off the things of the world and we focus on God.  The word of God says when we fast we must anoint our head and wash our face so we appear not to be fasting to man but appear only to our father in secret, He will see us in secret and reward us openly (Matthew 6:16 –17).  II Chronicles 7:14, says, if my people which are called by my name would humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face (fast) and turn from their wicked ways, then I will heal their land. So God wants us to fast, when we fast we must focus on Him and not tell anyone that doesn’t need to know. Fasting is a spiritual connection to God.  If we would just humble ourselves, fast and pray He will heal the land, this is God’s promise to us. 

Have you heard the song, my praise is my weapon? Well, it is!  The enemy doesn’t want us to praise God and lift up His Holy Name, he doesn’t want us to praise God through our circumstance.  He wants us to feel defeated and as if we have lost, when we praise God, something spiritual occurs, we enable God to do His will,  II Chronicles 20:22 says as they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.  We allow God to turn back our enemies and perish in our presence ( Psalm 9:1-3).  We acknowledge the fact that God is King of Kings and Lord of Lord (Revelations 19: 16) and He is worthy to be praised.  II Samuel 22:4 says I will call on the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies, God is so powerful that all we must do is give Him the highest praise and He will save us from our enemies, sickness, heartache, pain, suffering and what ever else we ask for in the name of Jesus  (Ask for anything in Jesus name and He will do it John 14:13). Have you noticed that the moment you begin to praise God, that you get a little stronger and you feel better and your problems don’t seem to matter?  Praise is apart of laying your problems down and giving it over to the Lord, besides, there is nothing you can do about it anyways.  Why worry? Give it to God, praise and thank Him in advance.