Dressed for Warfare (Part 2)

battle ready now just a little recap on last weekend this is Ephesians chapter 6 verses 10 to 12 Paul writes and he says finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might put on the whole armor of God Well, I said last weekend that when it comes to the armor of God, he says, put on the whole armor, which means when it comes to that, we do not choose which pieces or parts of the armor we want to put on and which parts we don't want to put on.

He says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this age, against power.

spiritual host of wickedness in the heavenly places.

You know, a pastor once saw this congregational member in a grocery store and so he goes up to him and says, hey John, I haven't seen you in church lately.

You haven't been consistent.

What's up? And John goes, shh, pastor, I'm in the secret service of the Lord.

And so the pastor's like, secret service? Then why do I see you playing golf every Sunday morning? And John goes, undercover.

But when it comes to the battles of the Lord, there is no secret service agent.

There is no undercover in Jesus' name.

We must all be battle ready.

He says, stand against the wiles of the devil.

Now the word wiles here is the word schemes.

The word schemes means deceptive strategies.

the bible says do not be ignorant of the deceptive strategies of the devil you see one thing that the devil and the demons don't want you to know is to know his strategies because once you know their strategies you figure them out then you've got them and that's why deception is such a real deal in this hour in our lives we gotta be we must not be ignorant of the devil's deceptive strategies amen 2nd Corinthians 2 11 the Bible says lest Satan should take advantage of us for we are not ignorant of his devices we're not ignorant of his devices you see the battles we have in life they're not fundamentally physical in nature flesh and blood Paul says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood I said last weekend people are not your problem We are battling, we're waging a warfare against principalities, darkness, holes of wickedness.

We're in the heavenly places.

What does that suggest to you? Heavenly places means the spiritual realm.

If we don't know how to navigate the spiritual realm, we will not know how to fix the physical realm.

We won't know how to be effective in our warfare in the natural realm.

The battles in the invisible are responsible for the battles in the seen and the visible realms.

And so spiritual warfare can be defined as this, a conflict in the spiritual realm that affects what you are going through in the physical realm.

Does that make sense? It is the battles in the unseen that's responsible for the battles in the seen.

Now Paul goes on to say in verse 13 of Ephesians 6, Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand.

Stand therefore having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shot your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all taking the shield of faith which... with which you're able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Paul breaks up the armor into two categories of three pieces each.