Category Archives: Religion

Understanding Spiritual Warfare

Posted on 10/15/2022 | Comments Off on Understanding Spiritual Warfare

          Hearing the term spiritual warfare, we tend to think only about prayer. While prayer is certainly important, it is only one of many essential aspects of our supernatural battle.  

Spiritual warfare is not a conflict between men but warfare against a spirit realm that influences the thoughts and values of humanity. There are unseen spiritual beings and spiritual forces at work on the Earth to persuade men to think and believe anything other than the truth.

The warfare we see in the physical realm is a product of supernatural influence from the spirit realm. A significant part of our Christian experience is embracing a lifestyle of spiritual warfare against the powers of darkness. How we wage war now will have a tremendous impact on our eternal rewards and how we live out the rest of eternity.

God has given us the privilege of battling supernatural enemies to perfect our faith, and He has provided spiritual tools, disciplines, and weapons to fight this warfare. Like any advanced military organization, we should be skilled with our weapons and trained in using all the tools God has provided us.

Spiritual warfare is a partnership with God that initiates redemptive solutions to fallen humanity’s challenges. As we co-labor with God in this warfare, He leads us to a place of complete dependence upon Him to exercise His kingdom authority on Earth. It is a beautiful mystery.

As the enemy tries his hardest to break us, he runs the risk of becoming the instrument needed to perfect our faith, unwittingly becoming a catalyst for our sanctification. God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen to use men and women of faith to destroy the works of the enemy and expand the kingdom of God.

Satan has deceived the Church for far too long. I pray that by revealing his common deceptions, exposing his strategies, and bringing awareness of how to fight spiritual battles, many will become skilled spiritual warriors equipped to destroy the enemy’s works and expand God’s kingdom for His glory.

Partner with God and join me in the fight. It is a good one.

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Hearing God’s Voice

Posted on 09/08/2022 | Comments Off on Hearing God’s Voice

The best way to avoid having itchy ears is to zero in on the one thing that enables us to hear clearly from God.

The Lord asked me years ago, “How does faith come?” I immediately said, “Faith comes by hearing Lord.” (quoting Romans 10:17). The Lord then asked: “So then how does hearing come?”   

I did not have a quick answer for Him, but I remembered all the scriptures that state: “he who has ears to hear let him hear,” and passages that said, “they had ears but could not hear, and eyes but could not see.” I began to see why people who confess that Jesus is Lord and have the appearance of faith are struggling in their Christian walk and getting little results. They don’t have a hearing ear, so faith never comes.

The typical teaching is that faith comes from hearing, and hearing, etc. And there is truth to that line of thought. However, there are different ways to hear, and there is a difference between natural and spiritual hearing.

 Romans 10:17 (NKJV) So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Let me give you a more accurate translation of this verse to make it clear.

Romans 10:17 (my paraphrase) So faith comes from what you hear, and your spiritual hearing comes from the Word of God that you act on.

Just because we have ears does not mean we can hear the Word. Spiritual ears can only be opened by obedience to the Word of God. That word will come from the written and spoken Word, but only the word we act on will develop our spiritual ears. When we are obedient, it demonstrates faith, and we become receptive to more instruction.

Obedience is the action of faith; disobedience is the action of doubt. Faith without the work of obedience is a dead faith, and a dead faith has deaf spiritual ears.

Throughout the Bible, we see it was the disobedient and rebellious people who “had ears but could not hear.”

Deuteronomy 29:4 (NKJV) Yet the Lord has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day.

Jeremiah 5:21 (NKJV) Hear this now, O foolish people, without understanding, who have eyes and see not, and who have ears and hear not:

Ezekiel 12:2 (NKJV) “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, which has eyes to see but does not see, and ears to hear but does not hear; for they are a rebellious house.

Spiritual hearing is developed from the word of God that we act upon. If we cannot rightly discern God’s voice, we should humble ourselves before the Father and ask Him why. If we are rebellious or disobedient in any way, He will reveal it to us if we are sincere.

There are vast realms of understanding and revelation that we will never acquire if we are not doers of the word. The Bible says we deceive ourselves if we do not act on what we have heard. When we hear the word and do nothing about it, we become spiritually deaf. 

James 1:22 (NKJV) But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

Once we become doers of the word of God, an incredible creative cycle begins.

  • Obeying the word gives life to our faith and increases our ability to hear from the Lord.
  • As our spiritual ears open, opportunities to obey increase.
  • Obedience to God’s word gives life to our faith. 

And the cycle repeats indefinitely. It is the process of spiritual growth.

Quoted from the book, The Spiritual Warfare Manifesto

Thank you for visiting truthpressure.com. I hope this has been a blessing to you.

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Flesh is Your Enemy

Posted on 09/06/2022 | Comments Off on Flesh is Your Enemy

Romans 8:6-8 (NKJV) or to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

The word “enmity” in verse 7 means hostile opposition or hatred toward God. The carnal mind, our flesh, is God’s enemy; therefore, it should be our enemy. We must all come to the place where we see our carnal nature as our enemy. When we do, we will be less likely to have pet sins.

Many Christians have sins they keep as pets. Familiar habits or old crisis mechanisms that give relief, comfort, and satisfaction when their flesh screams at the top of its lungs to “FEED ME!” 

A pet sin is the one we run to when we are tired or feeling weak. The sin we defend, protect, and get angry over when confronted about it. A sin that torments us at our most vulnerable point and yet the one we can’t seem to get free from. A sin that we quickly yield to, even though we know we shouldn’t. A pet that we make provision for and feed in secret. We run to it for instant gratification and then feel guilty immediately after we yield to it. It is possibly the most dangerous of deceptions to our souls and one that can hinder our spiritual progress.

God has promised to deliver us from our enemies, not our pets!

Many don’t realize we are feeding our carnal, fleshly desires. We think that what we are doing is no big deal. It is a huge deal! Let me give you some examples:

If you have been delivered from drugs and you know that it has a strong pull on your flesh, anything that would stir up old memories and desires should be avoided. Movies with drug abuse, talking about your old lifestyle, or even driving through the part of town where you used to buy drugs can all be triggers that let “the cat” in the door.

If you struggle with overeating or binging junk food, it is much easier to win the battle if you stay out of the junk-food aisle in the grocery store. If it stimulates any of your five senses, it has the potential to pull on you. If the shortest route to your destination is through an area that stirs up memories of past sins, take another course! The long way is better than the wrong way.

What about being addicted to entertainment? Surfing the internet, social media, and video games? Wasting hours every day on mindless foolishness? Is that harmless? Or is it stealing the life right out of you, keeping you from things more important, and warring against your soul?

If you think it is no big deal, or if you think you are strong enough to handle it. You may wake up one day and realize that the little thing that is “no big deal” has now become your enormous pet and is demanding to be fed! If we provide food for our enemy, he gets stronger and has more power to harm us. If we feed our spirit, it will grow stronger and overcome the flesh.

What we feed grows. What we starve dies.

Quoted from the book, The Spiritual Warfare Manifesto

Thank you for visiting truthpressure.com. I hope this has been a blessing to you.

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Winning against Sinning

Posted on 09/04/2022 | Comments Off on Winning against Sinning

To truly live the abundant life in Christ, we must die to our fallen, carnal nature. For us to be successful at this, we will need intimacy with the Father and constant intake and exposure to His written word.  

Our intimacy with God is the key to dying to sin and self.

When we give ourselves to intimacy with God and reading and studying His Word, we lay on the great potter’s wheel, allowing Him to shape us into everything we were created to be.

If we don’t embrace the finished work of Christ and believe that sin has been dealt with, we give the enemy opportunity to deceive us. He primarily does this through the lies of guilt, condemnation, and shame.

Guilt = A subconscious belief that “I am not forgiven.”

Condemnation = A subconscious belief that “I am worthy of judgment.”

Shame = A subconscious belief that “I am still the old person I used to be before Christ.”

These lies are Satan’s counterfeit to the Holy Spirit’s conviction, godly sorrow, and a heavenly perspective on our identity in Christ.

Romans 14:22 (NKJV) Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.

For those that struggle with sin, it is a dead giveaway that they have yet to understand the gospel message and the completed work of Jesus Christ.

I struggled with it for decades until I began to see my deception. Even then, overcoming the strongholds of wrong believing took some time. The two things that helped me most were intimacy with the Father and the book of Romans.

Reading Romans repeatedly helped me gain the proper perspective on my redemption. It helped me move from trying so hard to be “sold out to God” to understanding that I have been bought out completely. Christ purchased me with His blood, knowing that I was a sinner, that I had a fallen nature, that I would make mistakes, and that I could not fix myself. Still, he bought me! Praise the Lord!

Once I realized I could do nothing about fixing my sin and understood that only He could, I just quit thinking about it. Now I wake up every day to pursue Him and trust that He is perfecting the work that He started. I believe God knows what He is doing, and I am convinced I do not.

As we seek God’s face, our old carnal man dies because no man can look into the face of God and live.

Exodus 33:20 (NKJV) But He said, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.” 

We can behold the Father’s face through the written word. It is our carnal man’s face-to-face encounter with God. As we behold Him and His holiness, those unholy and unworthy things die.

We must believe that we are dead to sin, not giving sin another thought, not giving it the time of day. If we keep it out of our thoughts and speech, all the time and energy we previously wasted trying to “do better” or “clean ourselves up” can be spent with Him.

The most important thing to remember about “reckoning ourselves dead to sin” is believing that we are alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:11 (NKJV) Likewise, you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Quoted from the book, The Spiritual Warfare Manifesto

Thank you for visiting truthpressure.com. I hope this has been a blessing to you.

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