Category Archives: Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

As we walk through various trials and attacks of the enemy God is our refuge, our strength and our shield. He equips us with all we need to wrest the Kingdom back from the one who stole dominion on Earth. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much: as events count down to the return of Jesus Christ we need to focus our energy on drawing closer to God in prayer and worship.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Prophesy and the prophetic, Walking in the Spirit

The Charge of the Light Brigade

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A prophesy given to me on 8th-9th Sept 2021

“Many of you are like phones that are running out of charge. While some are topped up, others among you are running at 40%, 30% or 20% charge. Some of you are on low power mode. You need to be fully charged. You need to be connected to me all the time, so that you never run out of charge. For I am doing a new thing in the Earth and the ground is being prepared. You are the Light Brigade, bringing light into the darkness in my name and in my power. Unlike the first one, which was done in the strength of man, this charge will not fail; but you will need to be fully charged to complete the mission. It will be as in the day and Gideon, when my people revealed their lights as one and the massed powers of darkness fled before them. Stay connected to me, so that when I blow the trumpet and say “Charge!” you will both hear the call and have the power for your light to shine. Those who are connected will hear the call, and all around the world my Light Brigade will shine as one. Do not be like the phone that cannot receive a call because it is out of battery, but make sure you are fully charged, connected to me. This is my charge to you.”

(Historical note – for those not familiar with UK history, the “Charge of the Light Brigade” was a famous military disaster that took place in the Crimean War in 1854. It has been the subject of much literature and art , especially the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, as an iconic example of pointless heroism.)

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Pursuing Love

Walking in the Light (2)

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Just after I had published the article “Walking in the Light” last night, Anne called up the stairs: “Bob, can you help me get the chickens in?“ It was about 11 pm. We had both forgotten to shut in Jessica Hennis and Roadrunner, the two hens that have the run of our garden. The long Summer days are already starting to draw in, and Anne actually commented: “It’s dark now!“  I took my phone and said “it’s okay I’ve got my torch,“ and switched it on to shine a light up the garden. And then I realised that I had just written about exactly this, and that God was speaking to me prophetically.

So what was He saying?

We shine the torch of love on the path ahead of us so that we don’t stumble. But we also shine a torch for others to keep them from stumbling as well. And what was the purpose of our walk? To shut in the hens so that the fox didn’t get them. God has given us responsibilities. The chickens go into roost by themselves, but it isn’t enough for us to just leave them to it: we have a responsibility to keep them safe.

The purpose of our walk together was to keep the enemy out. Jesus came to destroy the works of the evil one.  So we walk in the light and we help others also to walk in the light in order to thwart the work of the enemy within the realm of the responsibilities that God has given us. To paraphrase 1 Peter 5:8: the devil prowls around like a sly fox, to see what chickens he can devour. But God has given ministries and allocated responsibilities within the church so that we can walk together in the light; and it is as we grow in love and look after our “chickens” that the boundaries of the darkness are pushed back and the devil – who can’t come into the light – has less and less room to roam.

Today the Lord says to us: “Is your torch switched on? Who are you holding it for? Are your chickens safe?

Jesus said “the devil has nothing on me.” (John 14:30) The day will come when he has nothing on the church either and no darkness within it for him to roam in: that will be the day when Jesus comes back for his bride.

Are your chickens safe?
Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Prophesy and the prophetic

The Words of Darkness Are Cancelled

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Below is a prophetic word from Geoff Pick, founder of the Facebook group Prophetic Releasers for UK Revival.

Geoff writes: As a small group of us gathered on zoom to seek God and share prophetic words with others. The Holy Spirit was answering my prayer of the last few days to reveal the heart of heaven concerning the present moment of crisis. A sister shared that she sensed the angel of revelation was present to speak. Below is what the Holy Spirit is expressing concerning His call to us at this present moment. Please weigh and respond to His call as it speaks to you. You are of course free to share this as you are led.

Image reproduced from Prophetic Releasers for UK Revival

“The Spirit of God has come to reveal the hidden work that goes on all around us. The decades of grace lasted long and these days of abundance lasted long, yet the hope of heaven become dim and distant in those days of peace and safety. The enemy had quietly been sending sleep on many busy lives and time for treasuring God alone became rare for so many of my own.

The plague has been an alarm to call the sleeper to awaken. The moment for many to seek the Lord of all. The Spirit of death has said, “let the children of God be deceived in this time of uncertainty”. While a few are reckless with their own safety and the welfare of others, others sit in fear of the powers of darkness. Many voices cause much noise on the subject of the plague, bringing contention and distraction.

I’m not calling you to absorb words that dishearten you. I want you to continue with confidence in my promises, deepening your prayer life and stretching your faith in me for the coming harvest. As the world loses its busy momentum and pleasures, I am detaching my people from these former distractions. Now is a time for strengthening you, the body of Christ, and for each one of you to come to me and surrender wholeheartedly.

The present season in the world brings days of uncertainty. I am calling you my own to experience the reality of resting and rooting down in me. Trust me to guide, lead and provide, as the difficult times continue to ebb and flow.

My body is to be strengthened and envisioned for battle. Prepare your swords for advance. You are not to fear the darkness, as my victory sits ahead, you shall see my Kingdom moving forward step by step. There is a vast road ahead of conquest and battle – stand together – led by my Holy one, the walls of the enemy have already been commanded to fall before you who walk before me.“

Be prepared; hold on., Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

The Bus Stop

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A prophetic word of encouragement

When we wait at a bus stop, we know that a bus will be coming, although we don’t always know when. The other night, I felt the Lord just say “bus stop” to me. I believe this is His word to us:

“You are at a bus stop, waiting for my bus to arrive. Nothing happens at a bus stop, the surroundings aren’t particularly exciting or beautiful, and it could be that you are standing on your own. You may be cold and wet, but you stay at the bus stop because you know the bus will be coming. You aren’t hoping that it might come; you know that it will come, so you stay where you are in full expectation of its arrival. And however cold and wet you are, however tired you might feel because you have been standing there for a long time, you know that the bus is coming, and when it arrives it will be warm and dry and you will be able to sit down. You don’t need to walk any further, because the bus will take you on to your destination.

My bus is on the way. The revival that you have been praying for is on its way. Don’t worry about your ticket: it is booked. And when the bus arrives you will find it full of people who are on the same journey, although they have come from different places. You will know some of them; some you will remember from a while back, and others will be strangers. But you will all share the joy and excitement of the journey, and soon you will all be friends. You may wonder where the bus is going because it will be taking you to places that you didn’t expect, but don’t worry because I will be driving the bus myself. There will be other stops to pick up more people, but don’t be tempted to get off before I say we have arrived. The tempter will try and draw you away, saying “This is your stop,” but it will be a lie, because when we arrive at the destination I have planned for you, everybody will leave the bus as one, perfect in one.

So carry on praying and waiting. Don’t give up or be drawn away. The bus is coming.”

Discipleship and witness, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Whatever you Bind on Earth… (Teaching)

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“Whatever you bind on Earth will be bound in Heaven” (Matt 18:18)

The Greek tense here is actually a future perfect: “It will have been bound in heaven.” In other words we can only “bind and loose” on Earth that which has already been bound or loosed in heaven. When Peter, and through Peter the church, was given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, these were the terms under which those keys were passed on. Keys are a symbol of authority: with the authority that Jesus has given us in His name, we can unlock Heaven on Earth.

When Jesus taught us to pray, we learnt to pray for God’s will to be done one Earth as it is in Heaven. In other words, for that which is bound or loosed in Heaven to be bound or loosed on Earth. King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus was also the firstborn of all the New Creation. Not only are we His disciples, called to do what He did; but we have His DNA and we have His Spirit within us. He has set the precedent and laid down the pattern for everything he has called His followers to carry on doing in His name. He held those keys Himself before He passed on a set to the Church, and we see that His ministry operated on the same principles that He gave to Peter.

Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing. (John 5:19) He didn’t bind or loose anything on Earth that He didn’t see the Father bind or loose in Heaven. Although a few people have been given some partial revelation, none of us really know the dynamics of the relationship between Heaven and Earth; the realm of the Spirit and the realm of the flesh. But we do know one thing, because it is in Scripture: what is here below is a “shadow” of the greater reality above. The original glory of Creation, when it was good, and God walked with King Adam in the garden, was lost at the fall. Sin moved in, Heaven moved out, and reality became a shadow. But when God’s will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven, the doors of Heaven are unlocked on Earth and the shadow takes on something of the substance of its true spiritual nature.

So how do we disciples follow the pattern we were given in order to “bind and loose” on Earth in the name of Jesus? The keys we have been given are the keys of heavenly authority: what we don’t do is see “binding” just as something we might carry out on demonic “strongmen” (Matt 12:29) or principalities (Ps 149:8) and try to use the term as a verbal weapon of spiritual warfare. We do see the power of demons bound in the gospels, and we see people loosed from their grip; but the words describe the results of effective deliverance ministry; they don’t bring it about. I think we make a lot of noise and fire a lot of blanks when we try and “bind” demons, and unless we have seen it done in Heaven first we are surely wasting our time.

Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of Lights. This is the key to how we exercise our heavenly authority on Earth: we simply release what we have seen the Father doing. And here again we have to model our ministry on the ministry of the Master. If we want to see what the Father is doing, we need to spend time with Him. We need to ascend into heavenly places in worship and prayer in order to take hold of what the Father has given us for the situations we are bringing to Him. We need to be hungry for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, because it is by these gifts that we receive revelation. Revelation might be the end of the Bible, but it is the beginning of effective ministry. Whether we are dealing with demons, sickness, relationship issues, material provision, or anything else where we are calling on the Lord, it is only by revelation that we can see what the Father is doing in Heaven, and so it’s only by revelation that we can unlock His Kingdom purposes on Earth.

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Prophesy and the prophetic

Entering the Land 3: Gilgal (Teaching)

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We are the new generation, and we are camped between the Jordan and the Promised Land. We have not been this way before. Some of us feel we have been here a long time, waiting for everyone else to catch up; others are just arriving. Ahead of us we see the promise of many prophetic words for this coming season being fulfilled. But as we look into the promised land we see the walls of an enemy stronghold before us. Each of us is facing a wall: it may be in our ministry; it may be in our personal lives; it may be the strongholds we are seeing in the nations, and it may be any combination of these. But the Lord says: “Because you are seeing Jericho, it means you are about to enter the Land.”

And we ask: “Lord, how?”

And He answers: “Gilgal. I will roll away your reproach as I did at Gilgal. Make yourselves vulnerable Me, and rest in my presence. And then in that place of peace I will bring you my word, and you will move out on my word to enter the land with a trumpet sound and a shout of victory, and you will see the walls of the stronghold collapse. Where is your reproach? I will roll it away. What stronghold do you face? You will see its walls collapse.”

And some of us might say: “Lord, I’ve been staring at that stronghold for years, even for all of my life. How come I’ve never yet seen the victory in this?”

And He replies: “Because only now are you at Gilgal. But you need to take off your shoes, for you stand on holy ground.”

Whatever shoes we have worn to take us to this point must be removed: from here we move forward in the holiness and the beauty of His presence. When that stronghold collapses it’s because of the unassailable victory of the cross. It is not about us, it’s about Jesus. And if it’s taken us most of our lives for him to get the glory, that’s fine, because that is our purpose and the point of our lives. It doesn’t matter how long it’s taken to get to this point: it’s the glory of the cross that counts.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Entering the Land (2): Greater is He that is in you…(Teaching)

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“So it was, when all the kings of the Amorites who were on the west side of the Jordan, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel until we  had crossed over, that their heart melted; and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the children of Israel.” (Joshua 5:1)

The new generation of the children of Israel had been circumcised and were gathered between the Jordan and Jericho. As I wrote in the previous article we, the Church of Jesus Christ and the brothers of the second Adam, are the new generation who will enter the Land of Promise: the old generation, the children of the first Adam, cannot enter. And we live in a time when many prophetic voices are declaring that the Divine Nature will be manifested more powerfully than ever before when a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit equips us to live more fully in the good of the “great and precious promises” that we find in the Word (See 2 Peter1:4). So we too find ourselves between the Jordan and Jericho: we’re born again of the Spirit – we’re over the Jordan – and we know that there is a great advance ahead of us. But first we need to get past Jericho. What can we learn?

First of all, we need to remember that “greater is he that is in us than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4) The darkness is scared of the light, because it knows the light is stronger. The devil knows that he is no match for the spiritual weapons of our warfare, which are “mighty for pulling down strongholds (2 Cor 10:5),” because of course he knows what they are. The question is, do we? I think one of the devil’s main strategies in our warfare is to make sure we don’t. Jesus cast demons out ‘with a word’ because they knew who Him. The demons that overpowered the sons of Sceva knew Jesus, and they knew who Paul was, but they obviously couldn’t see anything of Jesus in the sons of Sceva. Their words alone were not enough.

Over the years I have done my share of “spiritual warfare.” I think I’ve won a few battles, but I have also lost many; and I have come to the conclusion from reflecting on my own experience and applying what I understand from Scripture, that we spend a lot of time firing blanks when we think we are shooting down the enemy.  We can talk, pray and declare all night, but Paul says that we are to “stand” when we have “done all.” When we “stand” in prayer against the forces of darkness, have we “done all?” Are we actually wearing the armour of God, walking in faith, righteousness and truth, spreading the gospel and speaking God’s word, or have we just rushed into prayer mode while the armour of our spiritual selves is still shut away in a locker in our heavenly home? James says we need to be “doers of the word, not hearers only” (James 1:22). The two house builders of Jesus’s sand and rock parable have both heard His word, but only one of them keeps it.

The enemy knew who Paul was because he clearly didn’t just teach the church about the armour of God; he wore it himself, all the time. To put on the armour of God, stand in it, and to “do all” is to put on Christ and walk in the Spirit. The enemy looked at Paul, and doubtless at Peter and the other apostles after Pentecost, saw Jesus, and had to succumb to the victory of the cross. Paul didn’t give us a check-list for a quiet time procedure in Ephesians 6, he gave us a picture of what the weapons of our warfare look like when we let our spirits do the walking in our lives. If we are walking in the light before confronting the enemy, he will see us coming before we reach him: he will recognise Jesus in our faith (the shield), our righteousness (the breastplate), our thinking (the helmet), our words (the sword), and our footsteps (the shoes). He will still put up a fight, but will be defeated in the end. But if he doesn’t see them he won’t know who we are, and no amount of “praying against” him will make any difference: we will just be firing blanks.

We must remember that the same spiritual powers of darkness that were over  the “Kings of the Canaanites” are at work in today’s world. If they had had shut up Jericho for fear of the people of God, what weapons of warfare are they scared of finding in our possession today? The answer can be summed up in a single word: Christlikeness. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more like him we become, and the more likely we are to pull down the strongholds that stand between us and the promised land.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Living by Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Entering the Land (teaching)

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(Adapted from my new book, “Two Seconds to Midnight,” scheduled for publication in the Spring.)

Many of us believe that a season of harvest is coming soon, and that it will be greater than anything that the church has yet experienced; that we are about to enter a “promised land” of revival. We read about God’s people entering the Promised Land in the book of Joshua, and the principles that we see there speak to us today. If we pick up the story at the beginning of Joshua 5, we can find four main points: the men were circumcised; they celebrated Passover; they ate unleavened bread; Joshua worshipped the Lord and took his instructions from Him.

Circumcision
When they had all crossed the Jordan and set up camp at Gilgal, the Lord commanded Joshua to make flint knives and circumcise all the men of Israel: all those old enough to bear arms had died in the wilderness, and the new generation had not been circumcised with the sign of their covenant relationship with God. When this had been accomplished, God said to the Israelites through Moses: “This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” (Jos 5:9) The reproach of Egypt was the yoke of slavery that they had been under: now, through this act of consecration to the Lord, this yoke was broken.

Under the new covenant, we, the Church, are that new generation, born not of the flesh and the will of man, but of the Spirit of God (John 1:13). Each one of us is a new creation. There is a Land of Promise waiting which the “faithless and perverse generation” of the flesh cannot enter. but there will be another Jericho facing us as we come up against the godless systems of the world.

Paul reminds us (Romans 2: 29) that  “he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter.” To face the end-time Jericho we will need hearts that are totally open and yielded to the Lord. It’s easy to gloss over the use of the word “heart” in this sort of context. But if, in biblical terminology, the heart is the seat of the emotions, this is exactly what must be yielded to the Lord. It is so often our unyielded emotions that cause damage and disunity, and consequently defeat; whereas it is the unity that commands the blessing, as we well know. Only with “circumcised hearts” can we be free of all that ties us into the old, binding us to the yoke of slavery to sin, and be free to take the yoke of Jesus and rise up in the spirit.

Passover
The second heading is Passover. There is only one way to be yoked to Jesus Christ, and that is under the power of His blood. I believe that the Church needs a restored understanding of the power of the blood, and especially of the truth that “the life is in the blood.” Whenever we take communion as Jesus commanded us to do “in remembrance of Him,” we reaffirm not only the covering of the blood and all that it means in terms of forgiveness of sin and shelter from its consequences, but we affirm also the life of the Spirit that courses through it in our renewed hearts.
After Passover comes Pentecost. Our preparation for an end-time outpouring has to be a season of Passover. Many Christians the world over have felt that coronavirus lockdown has been, and still is, a taste of that season, shut off from the world and reaching out for the protection of the blood of the Lamb. We know that many Christians, sadly, have not survived the virus; but we also know that there are many testimonies of genuine divine healing that were granted through the power of the Blood.

Unleavened bread
The deeper significance of unleavened bread has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I’ve always felt that there is more to it than it being a reminder of leaving Egypt without having time for the bread to rise. Jesus talked about the “leaven of the pharisees,” for example, when He was warning the disciples to keep away from their deceptive doctrines; and it is a positive symbol in the parable of the leaven, which is probably (I haven’t done a word-count) the shortest parable in the New Testament. So what might be the symbolism in its Old Testament usage?

Just the other day the Holy Spirit gave me my personal revelation. This may not be the same for you, and I’m not saying it is what He has breathed into the scriptural significance of unleavened bread for everyone to receive, but the following is what He gave me. A negative reaction to something was rising up in my soul. The Lord said to me: “That thing rising up in you is leaven. Get rid of it.” Having “circumcised our hearts” we need to keep them soft.  Paul writes: “For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” (1 Cor 10:17). To move forward into our Promised Land we need to deal with any leaven in our souls that causes us to rise up emotionally and undo the work of the cross in our lives. The children of Israel “ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same day.”  The grain of our land consists of the seeds of truth sown into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and these are what we must feed on as we advance. We cannot arise in the spirit if we let negative emotions rise up in our souls: the best way to keep unleavened our corner of  the “one bread” that we are part of, is to make sure that we are feeding on the truth.

Worship in Holiness
And so, with hearts soft and sensitive to God, covered in and fully grasping the power of the blood of Jesus, and feeding on the living truth of His Word instead of the leaven of our emotions as our spirits are filled with His, we come into the Holy Ground where the Commander of the Lord’s Army is standing, and we worship Him. In this place, we can say, like Joshua, “What does my Lord say to His servant?” (Jos 5:14). And His commands to us will be of the same order as His words to Joshua: first, respond to His Holiness (Take off your shoes), and only then move in to defeat the enemy.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

The accuser of the brethren has been cast down.

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 “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.” (Rev. 12:10)

We have been raised with Christ and are seated with Him in Heavenly places. We know that those heavenly places are vast beyond any notion of human measure, and we also know from Ephesians 6:12 that somewhere “up” there “the principalities and powers of this present darkness” are doing battle against the will of God and the saints of the Lamb. But Ephesians 1:21 gives us some detail about where, in those heavenly places, Christ is seated. He is seated “far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” And not only is Christ seated there, but we are too:

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2: 4-6)

We have been raised to those same heavenly places above the same principalities and powers, by the love and mercy of God, to be seated there together with Him. And while we have been lifted up there, Satan, the “Accuser of the brethren,” has been cast down:

 “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.” (Rev. 12:10)

If you have been born again – and you almost certainly have been, or you wouldn’t be reading this – you know this as a fact, and it’s always good to remind ourselves of the scripture where that truth is declared. But I think many of us – me included, for sure – can take a massive stride forward in our walk of faith if we live every day in the knowledge that any accusing words coming into our minds originate from the devil, and that when we walk free of the accusations of the enemy we can walk in salvation, strength, the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ. It’s what Revelation 12:2 says. Accusing is what the devil and his fallen angels do. And now that they have been cast down, and “there was no place found for them in Heaven any longer,” (Rev. 12:8) their desire is always to bring us down with them. Whether we are accusing ourselves, or accusing others; whatever the accusation and wherever there is a pointing finger, we can be sure that the voice doesn’t come from heaven, because there is nowhere in Heaven that accusation has a place.

By contrast, we read the following in Revelation 4: 1-2 “After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, ‘Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.’ Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne.” In the book of Zechariah, the prophet writes five times that he “raised his eyes” to see what the Spirit was revealing. If we too “raise our eyes” we also can sometimes catch a glimpse of what God is doing. Jesus has opened a door in Heaven and has given us access to where we can look in the Spirit to the One who is seated on the throne. And if we keep looking, we can see ourselves seated there as well.

Zephaniah said this:
“The LORD has taken away your judgments,
He has cast out your enemy.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
You shall see disaster no more.” (Zeph 3:15)

The accuser can have nothing more to say to us, because the Lord has taken away our judgements. Even in our trials we can “count it all joy” (James 1:2) because of the enduring fruit that is borne by the testing of our faith. So when we look up to where we are seated and praise the One whose great love lifted us there, we are not only encouraging ourselves and giving Him glory, but by the very stance that we take we are doing battle with the enemy of our souls.

The psalmist knew this battle well:

“As with a breaking of my bones,
My enemies reproach me,
While they say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God. (Psalm 42: 10-11)

Our praise to God is always an act of war.

I enjoy Premier League football and occasionally go to watch matches. One day we had tickets for an away game: it was the last game of the season, and our opponents on that day were in a relegation battle with their bitter rivals from the same city. Normally all attention is on the game taking place in the stadium, but on this occasion the home fans were far more interested in the score from their rivals’ game as it flashed up on their mobile phones than what was happening on the pitch in front of them. When it was obvious that the rival team had lost and would be relegated, the following chant reverberated round the stadium: “We’re staying up; you’re going down! We’re staying up; you’re going down!”

When the enemy whispers his accusations in our ear, we just have to remember one refrain, adapted slightly from the football chant: “We’re staying up; you’re staying down!”

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Are You a Believer?

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“I also asked about the ten horns on the fourth beast’s head and the little horn that came up afterward and destroyed three of the other horns. This horn had seemed greater than the others, and it had human eyes and a mouth that was boasting arrogantly. As I watched, this horn was waging war against God’s holy people and was defeating them, until the Ancient One—the Most High—came and judged in favor of his holy people. Then the time arrived for the holy people to take over the kingdom.” (Daniel 7: 20-22 NLT)

Are you a believer? Do you believe that the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for your sins, was resurrected on the third day, is seated at the right hand of God and will return one day, possibly quite soon, to judge both the living and the dead? Do you believe that Man was created in the image of God and did not evolve from lizards? Do you believe that unborn children should not be murdered? That you and I were designed to have a lifelong relationship with a member of the opposite sex? And do you support a political party that, in the main at least, upholds these values?

If you do, you are in good company: you are in “the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.” (Heb 12:23) We belong, not because we know better, but because we believe.

But when you speak of these things that you believe, are you mocked and vilified? Are you made to feel at times that you are simple-minded, ignorant and foolish when you even think them; that it really is time that you woke (pun intended) up to reality? If this is you, remember that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,  against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) The voice that seeks to make you feel ashamed of what you believe is not the voice of the secular media, it’s not even the voice of the editor of that left-wing journal that claims to speak for freedom; it comes straight from the mouth of the prince of the power of the air whose servants they are, who “boasts arrogantly” against the Most High God and wages war against His people. The more arrogant the voice, the closer it comes to judgement.

And if you are a brother of sister in the USA right now, be encouraged, Child of God, for the Most High will, in His time, judge in favour of His holy people.

“See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.” (1 John 3:1)