Saturday, November 11, 2017

Religious Warfare VS Spiritual Warfare





Good morning. This is not
our normal venue, but when you follow Jesus Christ then you follow
Him where He takes you like the psalmist said:"Even though I go
through the valley of death, Thou art with me." Dear friends, I
am glad to be back to be able to share again this morning what the
Lord is laid on my heart. I want to talk about what Jesus gave me to
talk about this morning, and what is about Spiritual Warfare versus
Religious Warfare. They are two different things.
The true followers of
Jesus Christ are involved in spiritual warfare like the Apostle Paul
said:"for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but
against the rulers, against the powers, against the world force's of
this darkness, against spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly
places." Ephesians 6:2. So the true fight is a spiritual one,
but most believers are not busy with a spiritual fight, they are busy
with a religious fight. If we follow Jesus Christ we will be in this
spiritual fight for the kingdom of God, but religious people involve
themselves in a different struggle. Religious people are into
religious warfare, they fight each other, they fight other believers.
They are always fighting. They are fighting to prove their own
salvation, they are in debates and arguments. They are not in the
Spirit. They are in the flesh and they fight from their carnal minds,
they are not being led by the Spirit of God. They are talking about
earthly things, earthly matters, not about that of the Spirit,
because they are not spiritual. They are carnal people. Religious
people are about their church, and about building their church,
preserving their own doctrines, proving their own theories, from the
Bible. They are in the defensive, they always are defending
themselves trying to justify themselves. Religious people are
building their church stealing sheep from one another. They go over
land and sea to make proselytes, to build their little religious
kingdoms, and then they start religious wars wherever they go. They
steal each other's sheep. On top of that, religious people are
sinners. They are not saints, they are not followers of Jesus Christ.
They are defending their faith, and that is why you cannot talk to
these people about Jesus. If you do not belong to a church or to a
denomination, and if they do not know how to tackle you from which
angle to tackle you then they do not know how to handle you and they
reject you, they hate you if you are a disciple of Jesus Christ.
A disciple of Jesus Christ
is in a different struggle. Our struggle is against evil forces,
principalities; our struggle is against sin, against the wiles of the
devil. Our struggle is with our own flesh, and we have to overcome by
submitting ourselves to the Holy Spirit. The weapons of our warfare
are not carnal. It is not about the intellectual, about trying to
fight the devil with Bible verses. No, we fight and overcome the
devil because we are led by the Spirit of God. Our weapons of warfare
are from within, the Spirit that dwells in us, and therefore we can
overcome, because we are not driven by our own mind and by passions
and by our own beliefs. We're led by the Spirit of God and we're
building the kingdom of God. We have nothing to defend. We are here
to witness for Jesus. We are here to sow seed, we are here to make
disciples, to bring people to Jesus, so that they can follow Him and
know Him. Religious people do not understand that, because they are
busy with religion. They're busy with religious warfare. We should
not involve ourselves with religious warfare. We must follow Jesus
Christ and be led by the Spirit of God, overcome sin, overcome the
flesh, overcome the world, because we're not seeking to do our own
will, but to do the will of God. We are seeking to please Jesus
Christ. The only way that we can overcome is if we submit to Jesus,
and if we do His will. The only way that we can bear fruit is if we
are grafted into the vine and we receive our inspiration, our
guidance from the Holy Spirit, because then we are fighting in the
Spirit and not on our own flesh. We are not fighting from our own
mind but we are following the Master and He leads us to victory,
wherever we go. Even though the world might think that we are losers,
if we follow Jesus we can never go wrong, because He will not let our
feet slip. He will keep us, He will guide us. He will teach us His
ways. We have to stay in the race. We have to follow Jesus Christ,
stay close to Him and then we will overcome. The only way to
overcome the spiritual warfare is through our submission to Jesus
Christ, our close relationship with Him and our obedience to Him,
because without Jesus we can do nothing.
May Jesus bless you.

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