Yesterday I knew that in the Spirit, a shift had taken place and the Lord was taking me to a new school and on a new adventure. Today I know what that school is. It is God’s School of War. I’ve been invited to the War College of the Kingdom of God and I’m excited about it. I believe in the coming months I will learn more about the invisible and visible battle taking place all around us every day, and more importantly how to effectively win skirmishes, battles and major campaigns against the darkness than I’ve ever dreamed possible before.

Walking with Jesus is after all, entirely about the war in the spiritual realm, at least until all things are brought under Him in heaven, in earth and things under the earth. It’s about the war between spiritual kingdoms in the lives of individuals, whole communities, cities, states, nations, nature and the world. It is very much light against darkness, spiritual wickedness against the powers of heaven, and Lucifer (the limited) against God (the Unlimited). Jesus won total victory over darkness on the cross so it’s not a matter of who will win the ultimate battle. Light trumps darkness. But it has been left to Jesus followers to demonstrate the awesome power of His victory in earth by continuing to crush satan under our feet as well. Paul said in Romans 16:20, “And the God of peace will bruise satan under your feet shortly.”

I woke up this morning for the first time in a long time with a bit of fear. It wasn’t a terror type of fear, but it was a fear nonetheless and it wasn’t the “I’m in total awe of God” type of fear. I went to the Lord who is my refuge and my shield and found peace an assurance there. But apparently out of my enthusiasm in following a thread from Holy Spirit yesterday I did something that crossed an invisible line and it didn’t go unnoticed.

Mike Ward and I had been sharing some thoughts back and forth and finding there are some strong similarities in many of the things the Lord is working in us right now. Mike shared some things with me that a known prophet had said to he and Beth a few years back and there were things in there that were very intriguing. The part that stood out to me most was that there are things that get prayed about and the Lord indeed provides the answer, but the answer gets hung up due to some spiritual warfare type issues. He went on to explain to Mike and Beth that at such times they needed to call those things out of darkness and command them to be presented before them.

I’ve been in the trenches before. I’ve read the scriptures on spiritual warfare. This made sense to me. In fact check out this picture from the book of Daniel 10, where he had been fasting and praying for 21 days and then an angelic messenger appears to him in a vision, “Fear not Daniel: for FROM THE FIRST DAY that you set your heart to understand, and to chasten yourself before your God, YOUR WORDS WERE HEARD, and I am come for your words. BUT THE PRINCE OF THE KINGDOM OF PERSIA withstood me twenty–one days: but then, Michael ONE OF THE CHIEF PRINCES, came to help me…” This is one of the most graphic illustrations of spiritual warfare in scripture. Remember, THERE IS ALWAYS MORE GOING ON THAN WHAT EVER MEETS THE EYE.

This thought of calling out things that the Lord had already spiritually provided, but were being held in some way by the darkness, got my spiritual antennae twitching. I thought of Joshua (a type of Jesus – their names meaning the exact same thing) and when they were going into the land that God had already granted by promise to them. Taking possession of the actual Promised Land was a time of battle and conflict because, those who were already living there and in possession of what belonged to Israel by the promise of God, weren’t about to just give up and wander away.

Regardless of what God had decreed about ownership of the land, the current inhabitants believed they were the rightful owners and were not going to simply give up the ground. Those currently in control of the land were determined to maintain that control even though God had already by a word authorized Israel as His true designated owners.

In my mind this is where I get confused. To me, because I understand the absolute authority of God’s word, I think if God spoke it should just happen, right? Why then should there be any resistance? Why should I not just have what God already told me, and confirmed to me by His Spirit that I could have? Why don’t I walk out my front door and find a bag of money that the angels delivered to me by overnight express? What about that healing someone needs? What about that other miracle someone needs?

The reason is that there is certain ground the adversary has been living in and possessing for years (centuries? millennia?). And often, time has allowed the contrary spirits to fortify their position of control. It is an entrenchment and fortification of evil on a thing and even though God has promised by a word that a certain thing belongs instead to me or to us collectively, there is conflict in possessing that ground of promise in reality. A conflict over rights of possession and actual physical possession of what has already been authorized by God is inevitable.

And what if the fortified resistance to the word of God, in a single moment simply falls down flat before me? Well there is still the matter of clean up work where each individual spirit of resistance living there has to be, shall we say, “dealt with”. The Lord was adamant with the children of Israel they don’t leave any of the opposing forces alive in the land. “Don’t make any alliances with them”, He said, which they did anyway and led to their future problems down the road.

Let me get back for a moment to the fear I awoke with this morning. Some years ago I made a near fatal mistake (literally) in the arena of the spirits. I had enjoyed a fairly good string of successes in church planting, a growing influence in national and international speaking engagements, prophetic meetings, a vibrant worshipping church, the best people in the world, ministries in the church budding forth everywhere, founder and principle of a private Christian school (to train future warriors), a writer of foundational teaching and training materials for Christian growth and moving ahead on the cutting edge of things of God.

At that time the message of the kingdom of God, linking the Christian life and the invading power of heaven on earth was not preached or spoken of widely at all, but we were teaching it. We were on the cutting edge of that message. In fact I had a plan of invasion to reach our city and other cities with demonstrations of Jesus power touching humanity in very real and close, “hands on” ways. I was ignited by the whole idea of engaging the enemy and driving out the forces of darkness throughout the land, person-by-person, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, city-by-city, ad infinitum.

One day I was reading the book of Acts and came to chapter nineteen. I read this, “Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying ‘We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.’ And there were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so. And the evil spirit answered and said, ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?’

At that moment I was blown away by something I had read a hundred times or more but had never realized. I knew the evil spirit realm was certainly aware of who Jesus was from the moment Jesus appeared on the scene, but here I was reading right before my eyes that the apostle Paul was so threatening to the realm of evil spirits, that they also knew who he was and that by name. Here was Paul, a man under the power of Jesus leadership who was creating so much havoc on the spirits of darkness that he was notable to them.

I prayed a prayer at that moment and repeated it in other prayer sessions that probably in retrospect, was not very advisable. I won’t tell you exactly what I said, but it was structured around the idea of Paul and his notoriety among the devils. I’m pretty sure I even preached publicly about my intention and the prayer I prayed. Most certainly my heart was in the right place but that doesn’t often compensate for being a complete freaking idiot on some things. I really didn’t know what I was doing.

Had I taken into serious consideration the rest of Acts 19, I might have changed my mind or at least my tactics, maybe going about my intentions a little more subtly instead of just broadcasting to the spirits of darkness what my intentions were. Verse 16 goes on to say, “And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.” I can relate to this because in a very real sense, I lived this experience. If Mr. Sceva had an eighth son I guess you could say that was me.

I came under the most severe and brutal spiritual attacks imaginable. There was nothing I could relate it to anywhere in my prior experience. Everything came at me from a multitude of directions all at once and it was relentless. I had laid out a public challenge but had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. Where as before I had this stream of success, I then went into a period where it seemed every prayer I prayed and every thing I did went the opposite of my intention. It was as if all hell broke out around me. Imagine that! Picture stepping into a hive of killer bee’s and you probably have a pretty good idea of what it was like. In the end I got stung nearly to death.

This morning was a shot across the bow. This is because yesterday I decided to try a different tactic. I thought, “Okay, I know the Lord has told me a certain thing and I believe He has already authorized and confirmed to me by His Spirit that it’s a done deal as far as God is concerned, but I don’t see the answer in the real world yet, and I really need to see it in the here and now.” So, I started to wonder if the reason I wasn’t seeing the promise yet was because I needed to command the darkness to release what was already mine, given to me already by the Holy Spirit? Instead of going constantly back to God to ask again for something He already gave me, it made sense, now that He had given it to me to go direct to the enemy of my promise and command the release of what was mine.

So, I concluded I should run a Christian experiment on this. I decided that the tenor of scripture teaches us the Kingdom of God and the people of God are to be the aggressors against darkness and not the other way around. So, under the authority of Jesus, I commanded the darkness to release what I believed to be mine. In other words, I took the battle to the enemy where I think it belongs. The apostle James said, “Yield yourselves therefore to God. Resist (meaning to set yourself against) the devil, and he will flee from you”, James 4:7. See, now that just makes sense to me. Jesus is the power, and of course, the authority of that power flows out as well through those who are yielding themselves to His Spirit and operating by the Spirits voice.

So, the spirit of fear I sensed this morning was, I believe, a reaction to my action. I shot my arrow yesterday and I got one right back this morning. It was an attack against my faith. I honestly can’t tell you whether this is a good sign or a bad sign. I’m thinking it was probably a good sign, almost like a confirmation that I might be on track with this thing. Time will tell.
As long as Israel stayed on the other side of the Jordan River there was no real danger to those who were controlling their lives and futures regarding the Promised Land. And as long as we as believers pose no real threat of casting the devil out as the controlling power of what God has given us by His Spirit then why bother with us? Maybe if we’re NOT in a battle of some sort, it’s because we’re of no consequence meaning we’re posing no threat.

I will continue my experiment and keep you posted as to what happens. Let’s pretend we’re in a laboratory of spiritual science. But here are a couple of words of wisdom:

If you’re going to fight, do it right: I sincerely have no idea what that means yet, but I’m going to learn what it means. I have some ideas, but I need time for the to clarify themselves. Jesus is the Lord of hosts, which is a military term. He will also “teach our hands to war”. But I also believe there are safeguards to put in place for the thick of the big battles that I didn’t have in place before.

Learn to understand your enemies weakness: I believe the Lord is going to open some things up in this arena as well that will be amazing, simply amazing. I also believe the Lord is going to give the ability to observe activities and know the type of spirit activity working behind the scenes enabling things to be dealt with on that level. It’s the difference between dealing with symptoms or dealing with root causes.

So, I’m going into Jesus College of Supernatural Warfare. Pray for me and wish me luck! Anyone who wants to come along, let me know.

Randy