What Are Our Spiritual Weapons

But there's a crucial distinction to be made! Worship isn't only about singing. Playing your favorite worship CD isn't worship.

Worship is a state of being in the heart. It is the deliberate and intentional exaltation of God above all else.

We can worship God by singing songs of praise written by others, but we can also worship God by spontaneously singing words of adoration and exaltation to God that we have written ourselves.

The Name of Jesus

“Therefore, to the glory of God the Father, God has elevated Him and given Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” 2:9-11 Philippians 2:9-11 Philippians 2:9-11 Philippians 2

Have you figured out what this passage is saying? Every other name pales in comparison to the name of Jesus.

Have you ever observed that while using the names God or Lord is acceptable in many circles, using the name Jesus will elicit a reaction?

Every religion affirms the existence of a god, who is commonly referred to as “god.” The term “lord” is still used in a variety of settings today.

But what about Jesus? There is only one Jesus, and the name of Jesus is only used in one context.

This is why it is so offensive to use the name of Jesus Christ in vain. Many Christians who often violate the third commandment by using God's name in vain will not do so with Jesus Christ's name.

This isn't to say that God's name doesn't have power, but Paul was explicit when he declared that God gave Jesus the name above all names.

Fasting

“Isn't this the fast I've chosen: to break every yoke, to loose the ties of wickedness, to untie the heavy weights, to set the oppressed free?” Isaiah 58:6 Isaiah 58:6 Isaiah 58:6

What is the weapon of God?

“Put on all of God's armor so that when the day of evil arrives, you will be able to stand your ground and, after you have done everything, to stand.” (6:13) (Ephesians 6:13)

The sword of the spirit, which represents God's Word, is the sixth piece of armor Paul mentions in Ephesians 6. The sword was used as an offensive weapon by Roman soldiers against their foes. The sword could pierce through almost anything when sharpened, making it a tremendously dangerous weapon.

To comprehend the relationship between the sword and God's Word, one must first comprehend the power of God's Word. According to Hebrews 4:12, “Because God's word is alive and active. It cuts deeper than any double-edged sword, separating soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the heart's thoughts and attitudes.”

We can tell right from wrong by looking at God's Word. As a result, we can aim to live lives that are sin-free. His Word is the ultimate truth, and we can rest assured that it is our most powerful weapon.

We will struggle to resist the enemy if we do not have a thorough understanding of God's Word. Those who seek God's Word and obey it, on the other hand, will be blessed. According to John 5:24, “I tell you truthfully, whomever hears my word and believes the one who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has passed from death to life.”

Furthermore, the sword of the spirit is one of a kind in that it may be used both defensively and offensively. While God's Word can protect us from the enemy's lies, it may also defend us. In Matthew 4, for example, when Satan tried to test Jesus in the desert, Jesus employed God's Word as an offensive weapon.

So, how might we employ the spirit's sword in our daily lives? The information we learn from God's Word is not supposed to be kept to ourselves. We can utilize God's Word to point back to Him when we are pressed to explain our beliefs.

Taking up our swords and fighting the adversary can be difficult at times. We are not, however, called to do so in our own strength. We can find comfort in knowing that God is on our side while we are experiencing difficulties. According to Romans 8:31, “So, what are we going to say in response to all of this? Who can be against us if God is on our side?”

I strongly encourage you to use the spiritual sword in your daily life. Keep in mind that God's Word is the final authority and that we may rely on His promises. We are unstoppable with God on our side.

How do you use the Bible as a weapon?

When someone tries to divide people by using the Bible. It becomes a weapon if you use the Bible to attack someone or to raise yourself or your organization above others.

Because God's word is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it cuts through soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and assesses the heart's thoughts and attitudes. (NIV) Hebrews 4:12

True, but the author was addressing Christians, not non-believers, when he wrote that verse. This is significant because the sword is used to shape the lives of Christ-followers rather than to attack them. It doesn't excuse slashing and slashing any belief system or lifestyle that doesn't meet your theological bent with the Bible. You are not serving God if you use the Bible to tear down or condemn someone who is “outside” of your faith.

You know how scripture can be weaponized if you've ever seen it used to support authority, a political agenda, or the superiority of one group over another.

When the Bible is used as a weapon, it draws people further away from God. Christians are disregarded by the world they are meant to serve when Scripture becomes nothing more than a list of “who's in” and “who's out.”

Remember that Jesus' sharpest rebukes were reserved for the religious elite, not the average sinner, when you're tempted to use the Bible to prove your superiority.

What are the different types of spiritual warfare?

Spiritual warfare is the Christian concept of combating supernatural evil powers at work. It is founded on the biblical belief in evil spirits, often known as demons, who are thought to meddle in human affairs in a variety of ways. Although neo-charismatic churches emphasize spiritual warfare, other Christian denominations and groups have adopted behaviors based on spiritual warfare notions, with Christian demonology frequently playing a crucial role in these practices and beliefs.

Prayer is one of the most prevalent forms of “spiritual warfare” used by these Christians. Exorcism, the laying on of hands, fasting with prayer, praise and worship, and anointing with oil are examples of other practices.

What are divine weapons?

The Undead are hunted with divine weapons. They are claimed to be as powerful as the Gods' weapons once fully updated. Innately imbued weapons are blessed and extremely efficient against the Dark. The Way of White uses divine weapons to exorcise the undead from the land.

What are righteous weapons?

Righteous is a concealed weapon attribute that does additional damage to “enemy of the Healing Church” in varied degrees. For a multiplicative impact, this damage is applied before bonuses like the open foe bonus.

Is prayer a weapon?

Have you experienced the transformative power of prayer? Every man or woman who loves God and knows His son Jesus Christ has a powerful weapon at their disposal: prayer. I have heard prayer defined as a guided missile that can be launched from anywhere on the earth at any target and against which there is no defense. Satan will not be able to halt your prayers. The enemy would want you to do something other than pray. Prayer is a dialogue with God in which you strive to see His face and feel His hand. Seeking God's face is about developing a connection with Him, whereas seeking His hand is about receiving tangible results through prayer. Nothing beats a consistent prayer habit for transforming your faith from a religion to a genuine connection with Christ. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, prayer also energizes the heart of a believer.

What are strongholds in the Bible?

The Spirit of God desires each of you to break free from any demonic strongholds that are holding you hostage.

I believe it would be beneficial to think about the metaphor's metaphorical element a little further.

9:9 (Psalms) The LORD is a stronghold in times of adversity for the oppressed.

Because it is high and inaccessible to adversaries, a cliff might be used as a stronghold.

1 Samuel 23:14; 1 Samuel 23:15; 1 Samuel 23:16; 1 David lingered in the fortresses of the desert and the highlands of the Ziph Desert.

and my deliverer; my shield, and the one in whom I put my trust; the one who subdues my people under me

Why would a “high thing” want to elevate itself by hanging out in a high cliff or a high tower?

It's considerably easier to drive an adversary away from a fortress on a high vantage point.

In the history of Israel's conflicts, you can learn about the strategic value of strongholds.

It's just off the main route leading up to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and the airport.

The problem with this location was that it was a stronghold located along the main roadway.

The Arab Legion held the fortress of Latrun when the War of Independence began.

They could pick off the caravans delivering supplies up to the Jews in Jerusalem from this vantage point.

This was a stronghold that needed to be conquered!

It had a suffocating grip over Jerusalem!

The fledgling Israeli Defense Forces attempted to take it five times in five different ways.

The Arab Legion—the greatest, British-trained warriors on the Arab side—has proven itself time and time again.

As a result, the Israelis construct a “Burma Road” around the bastion, traversing tough terrain.

Until 1967, the Arabs controlled this fortification, which was located just five kilometers from Ben-Gurion Airport.

Nasser dispatched Egyptian troops to Jordanian garrisons shortly before the 1967 conflict.

includes an impressive display of Israeli army tanks that were purchased, manufactured, or captured.

For the past two decades, that location has posed a threat to our people's safety in the heart of the country.

How long has a stronghold in the center of your thinking life jeopardized your safety?

Is it possible?

Hey, David conquered Jerusalem and established it as his capital!

Joab unlocked the citadel's gates by breaking through a tunnel that led to a spring.

“Even if Babylon climbs the sky and fortifies her lofty stronghold,' Jer 51:53 declares.

by diverting the city's river and marching into the city on the riverbank!

God is well-versed in strongholds and understands how to overthrow them — and he'll show you how.

Do you ever want to quit up when you come up against a stronghold in your life?

Individuals who are willing to battle, people with courage, capture strongholds!

God will assist you if you ask for it. The Bible and the Holy Spirit will show you how. Amen?

One thing to remember about a stronghold: it's a location, not a person.

The mind is the castle of the soul, and Satan and his henchmen aim to capture people's minds.

“Have nothing to do with the unproductive deeds of darkness,” Ephesians 5:11 exhorts us.

If you wish to allow God's light shine on the darkness, you must have a humble attitude.

“Test me, O LORD, and try me, probe my heart and my intellect,” David begged in Ps 26:2.

After you've identified the stronghold, repentance is the next stage in bringing it down.

Honesty before God is the best policy, and humbly allowing the Spirit to reveal the stronghold in the darkness is the best policy.

It's possible that you'll have to mute the tiny lawyer who emerges from a dark corner of your mind.

A frontal assault on a stronghold doesn't always appear to work.

So, what are your options?

With a frontal attack, Jewish warriors attempted to take the Old City of Jerusalem.

From the east, I've seen a photo of Israeli generals looking down on the Old City!

They were able to cut off supplies and reinforcements after encircling the city.

After that, the Israelis were able to enter the city with little resistance.

What was the game plan? March for seven days around the city, then blow your trumpets!

How can you encircle a fortress of pessimistic thinking and old rumours?

How about some compliments?

32:7 in Psalms. “You are my safe haven; you will keep me safe from harm and surround me.”

Praise God by singing psalms and spiritual hymns around the fortress.

There's a powerful technique to surround every bad stronghold with God's contrary truth.

If you're fighting a stronghold of rejection, surround it with Abba's acceptance.

If you're having trouble dealing with unresolved anger, try surrounding it with forgiveness.

Surround yourself with the knowledge of God's love if you're battling with a stronghold of fear.

If you're fighting a failing fortress, surround it with the triumph of the resurrection!

Once you've recognized a stronghold, go to the Bible and look up the contrary truth that God has revealed.

If rejection is your stronghold, read everything the Bible says about God's acceptance.

His resistance will swiftly wane, and if he isn't already gone, he will be soon!

Please forgive me for making a compromise. Give me the guts to demolish every stronghold I own.

I bind any evil powers within me that were encouraging compromise and sin.

I submit to the light of the Spirit of Truth in order for any sin strongholds in me to be exposed.

I declare that every satanic stronghold is being demolished by the great weapons of the Spirit and the Word!

I intend to envelop this demonic stronghold in praise and affirming truth from God's Word.

I intend to capture every negative thought pattern and bring it into submission to Messiah.

By God's grace, I intend to persevere until even the ruins of this stronghold are razed.

I intend to consider everything that is genuine, noble, right, and pure.

If there is anything charming or admirable—if there is anything worthy of praise—

By God's grace, I intend to construct one fortress within my mind and heart:

“The LORD's name is a strong fortress; the virtuous will flee to it for safety.”

What does the Bible say about the right to bear arms?

On March 6, Kevin Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School and a historian of medieval Christian religious practice and thinking, spoke at Morning Prayers at Harvard's Memorial Church.

You shall have no other gods before me, for I am the Lord your God, who took you out of Egypt, out of the home of slavery.

You must not create an idol for yourself… You shall not worship them or kneel down to them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who punishes children for their parents' sins.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is read for the second time:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed because a well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state.

Friends, I come before you this morning with no policy proposals. There must be only a few Harvard professors who are less qualified to do so than I am. Looking around this room, I realize that most—if not all—of the students present are actually more qualified—much more qualified—than I am to do so.

I also have no intention of delivering a jeremiad, despite the fact that there is much to mourn and lament in the news that has recently flooded our breakfast tables, as well as our MPs' callous response to it. I also don't want to ask if gun ownership is compatible with Christianity, or, for that matter, with Judaism, Islam, or any of the religious traditions practiced on this campus and in this country, as the author of a recent editorial in the Washington Post did.

I'm also not here to criticise the ways in which greenbacks, greed, and, regrettably, even the US Supreme Court have turned our legislators into despicable stooges of their backers. Finally, I have not come here this morning to advocate that the second amendment be struck from the Constitution, as has just been proposed in a major national newspaper.

Instead, I'd like to spend this morning reflecting on what it means to read, and more specifically, what it means to read well; and, more specifically, how we should read authoritative religious and national texts honestly—that is, without misrepresentation or otherwise “bearing false witness,” as the Eighth Commandment clearly states.

Reading well or truthfully isn't just an educational requirement. It has become a significant, even life-and-death issue for our country in recent months, with some residents routinely repeating the notion that their country is founded on “Judeo-Christian values.” If this is true, it must imply that our nation arose, at least in part, through adherence to the heavenly commands you just heard recited.

Yet, all too frequently, individuals in positions of power bear false witness, and, worse, make their money, their blood money, by bearing false witness to their neighbors and constituents—to the citizens of the United States whom they have, mendaciously, vowed to serve.

To demonstrate my point, I literally brought pictures with me this morning, photographs to which I'd want us to immediately pay attention.

As you can see, the images portray two tablets, which is fitting considering our reading. The familiar sentence “The right of the people to keep and bear arms must not be infringed” was written on one of the tablets. The late Paul Fussell, literary critic, army veteran, and conflict historian, previously stated that he expected the second panel to follow the symmetry principle and so represent the crucial first half of the Second Amendment. You're familiar with the clause that links the carrying of arms to a well-regulated militia—that is, an army.

You've probably figured out that it doesn't. Instead, the NRA, which erected these two tablets, chose to list a variety of functions or services on the second tablet. When taken out of the context of public health data (like bullets whizzing through our neighborhoods or the halls of our elementary and secondary schools)—when taken out of contexts like these, the named functions—safety and marksmanship training, for example—appear harmless, trivial, and almost banal.

One form of lying is concealing the truth in this manner. We can reasonably conclude, as both the authors of the Constitution and the author of 1 John would have put it, that the Truth is not in Them, because the NRA has concealed a vital element of the Second Amendment. And, of course, they'd be completely correct. I deduce the following from this observation:

• The NRA could regain our trust in its commitment to truth if it first) honored the Law of Moses and the Law of Our Land by replacing the misleading tablet with one that expresses the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—namely, the crucial but now-missing first half of the Second Amendment; and second), focused on gun obligations, which have to do with effectively regulating the armed forces, rather than putative but dubious gun rights.
• Because, according to a recent Pew Research report, Christians who insist on reading the Bible literally are the most likely of all American religious groups surveyed to own guns, it follows that, in order to avoid self-contradiction (that is, lying), those Christians should be the most vocal in their condemnation of the NRA's sly and selective misrepresentation. They should also be outspoken in demanding that the Second Amendment be taken as literally as other normative texts, such as the Bible.
• Today's Christians and Jews should join the growing chorus of our literalist and gun-owning brothers and sisters. Why? For one thing, we don't want to confuse our students, who are being taught to read one normative text literally while also being taught to construe another partially and non-literally, which is atrocious for their intellectual and moral formation. This is obviously incorrect, because it teaches our children that, despite the divine order not to bear false witness, it is acceptable to do so when it is convenient.
• We would not want to contradict ourselves—that is, to lie—by making violent victimization more plausible, even probable, through selective reading and representation—that is, by lying—because we agree with the NRA and gun-owning Christians that children are valuable.
• Once you've lied, you're more likely to lie again. It leads to a variety of different types of transgression. Selective rather than literal reading, for example, desecrates the sacred lawmaker who only freed us from slavery by subjecting our profane legislators to the NRA's Pharaoh's enslavement.
• God's commandment forbids us from worshiping graven images, so what does the NRA's Pharaoh do except create an idol of lethal weapons and demand that we bow down and venerate it?
• We are not permitted to steal, according to Exodus. But what does false reading and representation accomplish if not to deprive us of countless numbers of innocent children? Here, lying leads to stealing, which leads to murder; and this, in turn, leads to more McConnellesque deception and Ryan-style hand-wringing and grimacing, and then the whole murderous cycle starts all over again because—are we getting the picture yet?—it is not appropriate to discuss gun regulation in the aftermath of a tragedy caused by the use of a gun. If they exclaimed with the exiled psalmist, “How long, Lord, how long shall the wicked prevail?” they could hardly be blamed, and a grieving parent could hardly be ashamed.
• If we honor our father and mother, God promises us that our days will be long. Many innocent lives have been cut short, despite the fact that they did nothing to disgrace their parents. The only mistake they made was to put their faith in people who were paid to preserve the alleged rights of individuals who wanted to break the commandment not to kill—or, in secular terms, to commit homicide.
• We are not to murder, according to God's mandate. I don't have to explain this unambiguous command. God, in his infinite wisdom, did not compel us to ask foolish and futile questions about it, such as whether people murder people or whether guns kill people.
• So, brothers and sisters, let us read our sacred scriptures carefully, honestly, and literally. Let the NRA's lying liars finally expose the full will of our Founding Fathers, lest we—lest they—flout not just the Constitution, which was designed with such care, but also the revealed will of the God whom the Evangelist John equates with Truth, with Veritas. In concluding, I'd want to remind everyone, particularly Monsieur LaPierre, that the Exodus defines the Divine source of the Law to be more than just a God of Truth. It also includes God's declaration that he is a righteous and punitive God. Alternatively, as the scripture also implies, God will not absolve anybody who misuses the Divine Name. Let the one who has ears to hear hear. Amen.