Spiritual Warfare

Joyce Meyer: I want to talk to you this weekend about spiritual warfare. It’s a subject that we need to talk about.  I’ve called this series “armed and dangerous” because I think if we really know who we are in Christ and if we really understand the armor of God and the weapons that have been given to us, both offensive and defensive, and if we will begin to act like a soldier in the army of God, we are going to have so much more victory in our life. One of the biggest problems I think that we face today is a little thing, or a big thing really, called passivity. To be honest, a lot of the problems even that we have in our nation today are due to people being passive and not maintaining what somebody else gained for them years ago. A lot of men and women paid a tremendous price for us to have the freedoms that we have today but we’re losing many of those because of passivity. We sit around and say, “somebody should do something,” without ever asking if that someone ought to be us. We say “they” should do something without realizing we are “they.”

We wish for things and we’d like to see things happen but we’re often not willing to do our part. You have to be very careful about a lazy, passive spirit because one of the main things the devil wants is for us to just sit around and want something but not be willing to do what we need to do to have it. You have authority over the devil. It’s just that simple. He’s under your feet because Jesus is the head and he said, “I have all authority over him. All authority in heaven and on the earth has been given to me.” we’re his body and so if Satan’s under the feet of Jesus, then it’s our feet that he’s under. But it doesn’t work to just jump up and down and sing a few warfare songs in church or yell at the devil once in a while when your circumstances get really bad.  We have to stop all that what I call “yo-yo Christianity.”

I don’t think that we should just go around occasionally trying to take authority; I think we need to walk in our authority. We need to just know who we are. I always say I don’t go in my office and say, “alright, I’m here now and I’m taking authority.”  when I come in, everybody knows that. We were created to have dominion. If you would go all the way back to genesis 1, you’d see that God gave man dominion over all the other works of his hands.  So hopefully I want to give you a new view of yourself that you’re the head and not the tail, above and not beneath, that everything you lay your hand to is supposed to prosper. You’re more than a conqueror. The greater one lives in you. God is your strength; by him you can run through a troop and leap over a wall. Now that’s a whole different picture than all this, “well, I’m just hoping to make it until Jesus comes back to get me.” amen? (amen.)

Joyce Meyer: the only thing that matters is what God thinks. If i do what he tells me to do, none of them can stop his plans and purposes in my life.