Next January I’ll be co-leading a mission trip to the Philippines for my church; I’m pretty excited! We’ve started meeting with our team on a monthly basis to cover the basics for a mission trip: fund raising, culture and sensitivity, spiritual warfare, health and hygiene, etc. This past week we covered the Biblical response to spiritual warfare. The whole time I kept thinking of how often I endure spiritual warfare: hardly ever. But I realized that just because I don’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Just because I don’t struggle with it, doesn’t mean others’ don’t struggle with it. And just because I ignore it, it doesn’t mean it’ll go away.
Here are some verses I came up with before our training discussion…
1 Peter 5:8-9
“Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith because you know that your brothers around the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”
1 John 5:4-5
“Everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world – even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”
Ephesians 6:10 – 12
“Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavely realm.”
On a daily basis my heart aches for those who are persecuted, I cannot fathom what it’s like to live under such oppression and hostility. Never knowing if I’ll live one day to the next and always in fear for my family and friends. The verse in Ephesians reminds me I have to constantly armor and RE-ARMOR myself with the word of God. If I were ever caught in a situation where my life depended on my faith in God, I NEED to have the armor of God fastened and secured. I continually pray that believers around the world get spiritually fed by the word of God… If you feel compeled, you can spend just $4 to send a Bible to a persecuted believer.
I mean, let’s face it, in the face of persecution — God is the only thing they have to hold onto…
Click HERE to send a Bible.
Feel free to leave a comment or Bible verse that you’ve found useful when dealing with spiritual warfare! I would greatly appreciate it!
Taylor
I believe that we in the West ARE under spiritual attack, and we suffer from the spiritual warfare! It just isn’t like the out and out attacks that so many of our other brothers and sisters in Christ are suffering. Laziness, apathy, blindness, lack of concern and love for our brothers and sisters that suffer for the Testimony of Jesus Christ, worldliness and conforming to the world in all areas of our lives instead of living and being a Pecular People for Christ…all these things are what we live under and IS a spiritual warfare!!! The enemy will destroy God’s people, whether is is directly or subversively!!! Wake up God’s People, Wake up Christians, followers of Jesus Christ…Pick up your Cross daily and die to the desires of the mind and flesh, and FOLLOW JESUS! Be a LIGHT to a dying world. Be LOVE to those that are unlovable!!! CARE! Care that the world is dying without Christ, and know that when you don’t do anything it is the same as denying HIM!
You and all those that “GO” and serve the Body through Christ, will be prayed for by those that are AWAKE! Praise His glorious Name!