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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781477285404 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 11/30/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 44 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Spiritual Warfare Basic Training
By Michael Mudge
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Michael MudgeAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-8539-8
Chapter One
Satan and his Army
The first thing that we are going to discuss is the enemy. We need to know what their leader is all about, what kind of troops are under his command and what are the weapons of their warfare. How do they use these weapons against us and what can we do to protect ourselves from them when they are used against us? Let's start our examination by concentrating on the enemies' commander.
The bible tells us that the devil was created by God. On the day that he was created he had no sin in him. God gave him wisdom and the ability to play many instruments. He clothed him in diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and gold. God made the devil perfect.
Look at all of this ... smart, beautiful, talented and sinless; what more could an angel want? Lots! The devil wanted a lot more. The devil was so full of pride because of all that God had given him that he allowed sin to enter him. The devil wasn't content with being all that he could be. He wasn't happy praising God. The devil wanted that praise for himself and decided that he should have God's throne. He lied to the other angels and one third of them believed him and decided to go under his leadership and make war against God. The heavens must have been filled with explosive power. Satan and his army of angels fighting against God and his warriors. What a battle that must have been! The devil and his army lost the war and God cast them all out of heaven. God cast the devil to earth with all of the angels that followed him.
The earth was the devils. The bible tells us that the earth was dark and empty during this time. Later on, God decided to change things. He created light on the earth with sky and clouds. He made land appear with great seas. God made trees and grass with seeds and fruits. He put all kinds of animals on the earth and then he created man and woman to govern the earth.
God cast Satan out of heaven to the earth and now God was making the earth beautiful and giving it to man. This really angered Satan, and he decided to make war against man. He would do whatever he could to pull man away from God. The devil knows that he is going to go to hell and he doesn't want to go alone. Let's find out more about this enemy so we can defeat him when he tries to make war against us.
The bible tells us that our enemy, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. It sounds like we better really try to avoid this "cat". The bible also tells us that Satan is the deceiver of the whole world. In fact, the bible teaches us that the devil is the father of lies. You have probably heard a few of these lines before: "You know there is no God"; "Jesus was just a man"; or "Man came from a monkey". The devil doesn't want you to know the truth and if he can get you to believe that you came from an ape, well, all the better for him. The devil goes by many names. The Great Dragon, Beelzebub, The Destroyer, The Deceiver and Satan are just a few of his names. Through this book I will be adding a few more names so that you can see what I think about him.
The devil likes to wear different kinds of camouflage. He needs to hide his true identity from people to get them to follow him. The bible says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. This could be a Jehovah's Witness, a Mormon or maybe even a Pastor in a Christian church. This is Satan's trick to draw you away from the real God, and this real God is the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. It is hard for people to understand the trinity so I will try to explain this so we can all understand who God is a little later in this book. We know that the devil is a liar, that he hates God, and that he hates you and me. It will be a whole lot easier for us to defend ourselves and fight against Satan and his army if we know a little about his troops and the weapons that these evil soldiers use. His troops are called unclean spirits and demons. They do a whole lot of Satan's dirty work for him.
Satan also uses our own weakness of the flesh to destroy us. Pride, drunkenness, murder, theft, sex, gossip, anger, and many, many other fleshly desires. Satan wants to destroy everyone and everything that God has made. Even people who have fallen into his trap and serve him are on his hit list. Satan doesn't just want you dead, he wants to cripple you and torture you. He wants to hear you cry out in unbearable pain. Satan is a no mercy, heartless enemy. He knows your weaknesses and he will put temptations in front of you to destroy you.
The bible says "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood (meaning humans), but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places." That sounds like a powerful army. Believe me, without God as our commander we would be helpless. The good news is that we do have God as our commander, and He gives us everything we need to protect us and to make war against the enemy.
The bible says "Behold I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means harm you." We get our power from God. We will talk about our weapons later. Right now, let's take a look at some of the unclean spirits whose job it is to torment us.
Chapter Two
Our Flesh
We need to spy out all of Satan's tactics. In the war against him we need to know that the enemy has a giant arsenal of weapons at his disposal. We are going to examine these weapons one by one. We need to know how Satan employs them, what effect they have on us, and what we can do to protect ourselves against them. Satan loves to use our own weaknesses to destroy us. The first group of Satan's tactics we are going to look at is "How Satan uses our own flesh as a weapon".
There are a lot of battlegrounds when it comes to our own flesh. Drunkenness, gossip, hatred, envy, and theft are just a few. We are going to examine these and more. The bible tells us not to be ignorant of Satan's devices, so let's take a look at some of these devises now.
We will begin with drunkenness. What's so bad about a little drink of alcohol? All my friends say that it is cool! They tell me that one drink won't hurt me. My buddies drink and they have a lot of fun. So tell me, what's wrong with a drink? You have got to take the first drink before you take the second. Let's look at an example of your first battle with alcohol.
You and a few of your friends are looking to have some fun and one person in your group has a bottle of booze. All your friends start passing the bottle and laughing. They start teasing you, "Come on, and have a little drink. What's the matter, are you chicken"? That's it! You ain't no chicken! You take a drink, it's a bad taste but you can handle it. You and your buds finish the bottle, you laugh and tell each other how great the feeling is and you start planning another little party. You go home, hiding the fact that you disobeyed your parents. You hide in your room thinking that was cool, I can't wait to do it again. This was your first little battle with alcohol, it didn't seem like much, and in fact it didn't feel like a battle at all. Now the guys get together again, this time there is more alcohol and a few girls come to party. You don't want to act like a child in front of the chicks so you join in the party, laughing, drinking, and feeling good. A while later you are getting dizzy, then a real queasy feeling, then you are pouring your guts out. You sneak home after you sober up, and you tell yourself that you won't do that again but after a while you forget how sick you were. You just remember how much fun you had before you got drunk. You tell yourself "I can still have fun and drink; I just won't drink as much".
Satan has you right where he wants you. Everybody starts out drinking and thinking that they have control. Now let me tell you how Satan deceived you. Satan didn't show you the whole picture. Satan just showed you the fun stuff, he isn't stupid. He didn't show you the child killed by a drunk driver. How his parents ached to hold him again. Satan didn't show you the driver of the car, setting in prison for murder. Satan didn't show you the pain the driver was going through knowing he killed some innocent person. Satan even hid from you the amount of abuse and suicides connected to alcohol. Satan painted a beautiful picture of just having a great time partying with your friends. He never showed you that you might be the child hit by the drunk driver. Satan never showed you that you might be the drunk that murdered another person and I know that he never showed you that it was your parents crying for their child.
Look at some of the tragedies of that one little drink, death, murder, suicide, liver damage. Have you ever seen a person die from liver damage caused by drinking? Their eyes and their skin turn yellow and they have no control over their own body, then they die. Does that drink still sound good? The creep (Satan) lied to you and that was the WAR you were in. There is no such thing as a little battle. Satan knew that drinking would separate you from God and the creep lied to you. Satan knew that the bible said that drunkards shall not go to heaven, which only leaves hell.
Let's obey God and defeat the enemy. The bible also says "be sober, be alert, because your enemy the devil, as a roaring lion, walks around seeking who he may devour". Don't let him devour you. Think about this, if you were in trouble, would you trust a drunk to help you? If you were drunk, could you help others if they were in trouble?
This next weakness that we need to examine is something that almost all of us are guilty of. Let's see if you guess this one. If your favorite songs are "Have it your way" and "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun" you might be a _______?
If your hand is caught in a trap and the only way that you can get free is by chewing off your own arm and you consider this one of the basic food groups, you might be a _______.
If you are accepting a proposal to marriage just for the chance to catch some rice, you might be a _______.
If you guessed glutton you're right, you would definitely be a glutton.
These would definitely be extremes of gluttony but don't fool yourself. Just because you don't look like a set of twins doesn't mean that you don't have a problem with gluttony. The truth is that you can be thin and still be a glutton. I have watched thin people eat like machines and heavy people diet continually. I've watched thin people heap their plates like this was their last meal before the electric chair and eat enough to keep them from getting hungry in the afterlife. You would think that they were storing up for heaven.
The bible tells us that gluttons will eat their way into the poor house along with drunkards. Can you imagine not being able to concentrate on anything but food? That is what a food addiction will do to you. You will eat when you are bored, eat when you are upset, and even eat to relax. While you are eating breakfast you will worry "What's for supper"? Food will become an idol to you. A glutton is never satisfied, spending more time at the house of burgers than the house of God. This isn't the way that God intended for us to act. The bible tells us that if we have enough food and clothing to be content. The problem is that many of us do not understand the bible, nor even taken time to read it.
Gluttony is also a form of greed and selfishness. You're so afraid that someone might get the last of the food that you grab it for yourself first. The glutton needs to be first to eat, and he will eat until he is stuffed. We need to destroy food as our idol and put God in foods place. The bible says that we cannot live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. The bible also says that gluttons will not enter the kingdom of heaven. That would be terrible not to be in heaven because of our greed. So let's not be a glutton for punishment.
Our flesh can be really filthy and disgusting. Satan can use our natural affections towards the opposite sex to tempt us to sin. Satan knows that God made woman for the man, and man for the woman. God made both sexes, male and female to be attractive to each other. God's plan is for one man to fall in love with one woman; this pair will then marry and have children. This union is called a family. This family was formed to bring honor and glory to God. This family will produce more families, and all these families are to worship God. This is why Satan wars so hard to destroy God's plan for families.
Satan starts tempting people when they are very young, and he increases the temptation as they grow. He starts out by using our own natural curiosity with the opposite sex. There are natural and unnatural feelings that you should have for a member of the opposite sex and Satan knows how to tempt you into desiring the unnatural. Satan will use all kinds of weapons in this battle over sexual morality (sex that is just and right in the sight of God) in Satan's arsenal of weapons are dirty magazines, P.G, R and X rated movies, music, billboards and misguided friends. Just about everywhere you look there is one of his weapons aimed and ready to be fired at you. Satan will increase his attack on you as you mature, and as your own desires for the opposite sex increase. At a very young age boys and girls notice that they are not the same. They think differently, act differently, and they look differently. These differences are meant to attract us to each other. Satan uses these differences to get us to sin. When we are children, Satan will try to get us to look at a child of the opposite sex just to see what they look like naked. This will definitely excite or shame a young child. Both children will have fallen into Satan's trap. The child that was excited will want to be excited again. His or her desire then becomes lust, and lust is sin.
The bible says to look at a woman to lust after her; you commit adultery in your heart already. The bible also says that no adulterers shall enter the kingdom of heaven.
Just as the child felt ashamed when the other child saw them naked, the same guilty feeling will come when you look at pornography (nasty pictures and magazines). But Satan knows that if you keep on lusting after these things that the guilt will disappear. Now Satan has you in his clutches, he can now lead you down the path of sexual immorality. Now it will be time for Satan to turn up the heat. Sex can and will become an addiction. Just as food is an addiction for the glutton, sex is an addiction to the sexually immoral. This addiction won't stop at destroying you; it will tear apart your family.
Also, remember the terrible diseases that are connected to this sin. There are all types of these diseases, aids being the most common and deadly. Other tragedies connected to sexual immorality are rape, homosexuality, divorce, and worst of all, separation from God.
The bible says that God cannot look upon sin. Do you have this sin in your life? Do you feel guilty? We don't need to. Jesus died for this sin and any other you might be caught up in. Ask God for forgiveness. The bible tells us that once you ask for forgiveness, God wipes away the sin completely. Now ask Jesus into your heart and confess that Jesus is Lord. Now that you did that, pray for strength. Satan is still going to try and tempt you; he knows your flesh is weak. Don't be discouraged, remember, with God all things are possible. Let God be your strength.
Theft is another weakness of our flesh. Theft is the extreme case of covetness and greed. A thief is selfish, inconsiderate of others, lustful, deceitful and untrustworthy. He will come up with all kinds of stupid excuses why his stealing is justified. Things like I need the money more than they do or they will never miss it, it won't hurt them and of course, their insurance will cover it. The thief also thinks that he is never going to get caught and that if he does, "Oh well! They won't do anything to me. I will lie my way out of it".
Do you ever wonder how we learn to steal? Sometimes it's because we hang with the wrong crowd but a lot of the time it's our parents and family that teach us to steal. Let's take a look at some of these examples:
It's safe to fish here without a license, son. It's cable, it's supposed to be free. Isn't that Grandma's handicap parking sign? Yes, you can even steal a parking space! Look at all of these apples; it won't hurt to take a few. How about the big one "The IRS will never know"! How about the library book you never returned or The tool you borrowed and never gave back?
All of these are types of theft and all of them hurt others.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Spiritual Warfare Basic Training by Michael Mudge Copyright © 2012 by Michael Mudge. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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