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We have been talking about the reality of spiritual warfare, and how the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world are in conflict with each other. We learned that when we do things to build God's kingdom (like healing the sick), those same actions tear down the devil's kingdom. In other words, the devil feels attacked by our kingdom activity, so he is likely to fight back by counter-attacking us. God knows those battles will come and He doesn't want us to be taken out by the enemy's attacks. So He has given us spiritual weapons that we can use to defend ourselves. That includes the spiritual armor of Ephesians 6. It also includes things we can do to prepare ourselves for battle, so that we will prevail when the enemy attacks us.
Lesson 10 shares nine things we can do to prepare ourselves. They are:
We already looked at the first one in the previous lesson. So lets pick up from where we left off...
BE SPIRIT-LED IN YOUR ACTIVITIES
Be careful to be led of the Lord rather than manipulated by the needs of others. We need to strive to be doing what He is doing and to avoid doing things that He is not doing.
Never forget that the Holy Spirit is the One who empowers you to do the mighty works that Jesus did; He is also the One Who releases the authority to defeat the devil when he attacks. Remember what Jesus said in Acts 1:8, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."
The power that He gave us did not come until Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. But when the Holy Spirit came, so did the power (including healing the sick). Since the indwelling Holy Spirit releases' God's power and God's authority our life, doesn't it make sense that we should use what He gives us under His leading and direction? In short, we need to be Spirit-led when we use God's power and authority.
In fact, Jesus Himself was led and empowered by the Holy Spirit when He ministered on this earth. Acts 10:38 says, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, Who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him."
The Holy Spirit led Jesus in His personal life and in His ministry, and He wants to do the same for you--because you belong to Jesus and are called by His name. He is faithful to lead and guide; and we need to be faithful to follow Him, no matter where He leads us.
There will be times when the Holy Spirit leads us into warfare or into some type of direct confrontation with the devil. But when He does that, it is not to destroy us or to abandon us, but to help us win a victory. The Holy Spirit did that with Jesus (led Jesus into spiritual warfare) when He was preparing for His public ministry. Look at Luke 4:1-2a, "Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil."
Since the Holy Spirit led Jesus into warfare, we shouldn't be surprised if He leads us there as well.
I want to clear something up so that there won't be any confusion. I am not suggesting that we should only be Spirit-led when we do power stuff (though we do need to be Spirit-led for that). I am suggesting that we should be Spirit-led all of the time. We need to submit every aspect of our routine day-to-day lives to Him; we must allow the Holy Spirit to break into our day whenever He desires and allow Him to change our plans. We should do whatever He directs and we should be "on call" and at His disposal 24 hours a day.
God expects us to be Spirit-led; He expects us to submit to Him in every aspect of our life. And as we do this, He gives us all sorts of amazing benefits. Let me share a few of them with you.
One of those benefits is freedom from condemnation. That freedom is a very powerful thing, because condemnation is a biggie in a lot of people's lives. In fact, condemnation is one of the most powerful tools that the devil uses against us to take us out. He accuses us when we fail or fall short, and his accusations feel so real. They make us want to give up hope and even to pull away from God. But the truth is that the power of condemnation was broken when Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead.
That truth doesn't just apply to our eternal disposition--it also applies to our day-to-day lives. Look at Romans 8:1. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."
This is how it works: when we are Spirit-led in our day-to-day lives, He leads us into the light of God's truth, and that light dispels the darkness of the devil's lies against us. The devil's accusations and condemnations feel so "real" when the devil whispers them to us; but when we come to God's light, they become exposed for what they are: lies and falsehoods.
Jesus called the Holy Spirit the "Spirit of truth" in John 14:16. He also called Him our Helper (in the same verse). The fact is that the Holy Spirit helps us live in the truth of God's love and acceptance, so that we don't have to live under the enemy's lies of condemnation. But we need to yield to the Spirit, listen to Him and be led by Him in order to fully receive this benefit from Him.
Here are a few more benefits of being Spirit-led: freedom from fear, assuredness of God's great love for you, and access to the care and provision of a loving heavenly Father who takes good care of His children. Romans 8:14-16 promises us all of these things. It says: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit Of Adoption by Whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God."
God expects us to be Spirit-led and He gives us some great benefits when we are. But at the same time, God values free will, so He won't force us to be led by His Spirit--He gives us a choice of whether nor not we will submit to Him and follow the Holy Spirit's leading. When we choose to do that, it pleases Him. But when we resist and chose to disobey Him, that choice grieves Him. Ephesians 4:30 tells us: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." In other words, if we want to be successful in our Christian walk, we need to choose to submit to Him and be led by His Spirit.
Not Always What We Expect
We should also note that at times God's leading will be different than we expect, especially when we are moving with Him in His power and anointing. The goal is to find out what His agenda is and then do that. At times His agenda may surprise us. Let me illustrate that from the life of Jesus.
Jesus was known for healing the sick. It seemed like anytime He went anywhere, sick people would come to Him. He would be moved with compassion and He would heal them. Matthew 14:14 sums it up this way: "And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick." That type of thing seemed to happen a lot, so it is easy for us to expect that when He got around sick people, He would always be moved with compassion and heal them all.
But in John chapter 5, we have an incident at the pool of Bethesda. There were all kinds of sick people there because that was a spot where God released physical healing by sending an angel to stir the water. The first person in after the angel stirred it was miraculously healed of whatever problem they had. So there were a lot of sick people there and all of them were hoping for a supernatural healing In short, Jesus came to a healing spot where there were all sorts of people with both the faith and a strong desire to be healed--a perfect environment for healing ministry.
Given what we know about Jesus, we would expect Him to heal everyone there. But He did not do that. He only healed one person.
Why? Because God was only leading Him to heal that one man. You see, Jesus' agenda was not to heal the sick (thought He loved to heal people). His agenda was to do what the Father was doing. And in this case, the Father was just ministering to one single man. The Holy Spirit led Him to do what the Father was doing and that was all He did. He did not cave in to the expectations or desires of the people around Him. He was not led by His motivation (e.g., compassion for the sick). He was led by the Spirit. And in this case, the Spirit led Him differently than we would have expected.
God's agenda is not always what we thing it is. If we want to be Spirit-led, then we have to do His agenda instead of what we think that His agenda ought to be. And the only way we can tell what is His agenda is to let the Holy Spirit communicate it to us.
Sometimes our expectations and assumptions of what God wants to do are wrong. For example: many of us have been taught that it is always God's will to heal anyone who is sick, but that is not really the case.
Let me give you an example from the life of one of my personal heroes of the faith--Aimee Semple McPherson. Aimee was a woman who God used very powerfully in physical healing and evangelism, but she had a hard time getting started in this ministry. She and her first husband were missionaries to China and they had a baby girl on the mission field. Then Aimee's husband died and she was forced to return to the states. She remarried a Christian businessman and settled into her new life.
Aimee began to feel the call of God on her life into ministry, but her second husband was strongly opposed to having his wife in public ministry. He felt that her place was to stay home and take care of him and their children. So, Aimee ignored God's call on her life to honor her husband's wishes. Besides, she had a very real concern that if she did not honor his wishes, he might divorce her and then she and her daughter from the first marriage would have no where to stay and no one to take care of them.
But God had plans for Aimee, and He began to increase the pressure to call her more strongly into ministry. She resisted/refused until God finally caused her to get deathly sick in His efforts to persuade her. Her health deteriorated and she was sick for months. God spoke to her from time to time but she still resisted, until she finally lay dying alone in a hospice room in a hospital. She was on what they called "final watch" where she was expected to die any minute. But God spoke to her one last time as she lay on her deathbed. He told her that this was her last chance...would she obey Him and go preach the gospel, or would He be forced to take her home?
At that point, Aimee made the decision to obey God and preach the gospel. As soon as she choose to obey God, her health returned almost instantly. She sat up in her hospital bed, which shocked/scared the hospice nurse. She was back to perfect health in a matter of days. Then she kept her promise to God and a very powerful healing and evangelism ministry was launched. She saw countless thousands of people miraculously healed and saved, and she founded the Foursquare denomination.
Aimee had a very glorious destiny and ministry calling, but she was slow to get started in it. There was a contest of wills, and God used sickness and the threat of death to convince her to stop rebelling and embrace His calling on her life. He does things like that sometimes.
Now imagine this scenario. Imagine that you move in healing and you happened to met Aimee while she was sick and was still struggling to embrace God's call and destiny on her life. Your heart might be moved by compassion at her plight (terminal sickness), and you might want to heal her. But if you tried to pray for healing for her, you would have actually found yourself working against what God was doing in her life.
We can't be lead by or assumptions or by our opinions. We have to be led by His Spirit and we need to move at His direction.