Your Faith Power: How to Win Every Spiritual Battle
God has called each of us to walk and live by faith.
Faith is the antidote to worry and fear. It is our “no fear zone.” Paul encouraged a young pastor, Timothy, to find this place of peace and refuge in God by fighting the good fight of faith. “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (1 Tim. 6:12).
Faith, dear ones, is a fight. It’s a fight within ourselves to believe God and His Word regardless of our circumstances or sense of unworthiness. It’s a fight to believe that God is good amid a culture of death. And it’s a fight to believe that our faith in Jesus and the power of the gospel is not misplaced when we see all the evil and corruption around us. But that promises in order to benefit from them. The promise of rest in Scripture must be mixed with faith as well (see Heb. 4:2).
Romans 5:1-2 says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” These rhythms of grace are accessed by faith. We need God’s grace that has abounded toward us, and we must mix faith with that grace to prosper. We need grace and faith. It is God’s grace that makes faith a good fight.
No one calls a fight “good” if they lose. I only had one good fight as a kid. I’ve been part of several others (not because I initiated them, but I got dragged into them anyway), but they were not good. One nearly killed me. If it hadn’t been for my brother pulling the kid off me, I might have died. (It was not a good fight!) On another occasion a fight presented itself, I determined I was not going to lose. I would die before admitting defeat. I kicked. I scratched. I bit and fought like a girl all the way to victory. It was a good fight. Still, she nearly beat me! (Let it go.)
The lessons I learned from that one good fight have served me well to this day. We have to fight the way God called us to fight. We don’t fight with people. That’s a recipe for disaster. We don’t even fight to obtain the things God has promised us in His Word. Rather, we fight to maintain our good confession. We fight to protect what has already been obtained for us by grace. We fight against our flesh to enter into the complete, finished work of Christ on the cross. The author of Hebrews calls this fight the “labour … to enter into that rest” (Heb. 4:11 KJV). That same chapter in verse three declares, “…we which have believed do enter into rest….”
We also fight against principalities and powers in spiritual warfare, knowing that we can experience victory in and through Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul talked more about this spiritual fight and the weapons God has provided for us in Ephesians 6. One piece of the six is said to be of most importance:
Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one (Ephesians 6:16).
Of all the weapons God has provided for successful warfare, faith is the most vital. Faith is a currency of the Kingdom. It is how we please God and must be mixed with every other spiritual principle or weapon for that principle or weapon to be of benefit to us (see Heb. 4:2; 11:6). Faith is also a shield. It quenches all of Satan’s darts and protects us from worry, anxiety, and fear. Faith provides light to our spiritual eyes and allows us to walk in God’s Kingdom principles. It makes us effective with the other five weapons (girdle of truth, breastplate of righteousness, gospel of peace, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit or Word of God).
The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23)
What we focus on will dominate our hearts and lives. Fear has a focus as does faith. Fear focuses on lies, fraud, and darkness. Faith focuses on truth, transparency, and light. God has called us out of darkness unto His Kingdom of light. Through Christ, we are called to be light (see Matt. 5:14; Eph. 5:8).
There is no greater darkness than a child of light, a Christian, continuing to live in darkness. When we value the world’s system above God’s Kingdom, we become party to the death, deception, and darkness that are in the world. If COVID-19 taught me anything, it is that Christians, at large, are as carnal and fearful as the world. God gave me a clear word regarding COVID-19 and the mandates that would come out of it. He told me not to fear, but to boldly stand for freedom, the right to work, and the sovereignty of our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit. I was canceled by more than one social media platform over that. But even now, when I try to expose all the fraud and lies ensnaring this generation, I get as much pushback from Christians as from media hacks and propagandists. What great darkness has befallen the Church!
Twitter and Facebook were not the first to conceal truth. Cancel culture started in the Church. In many circles the truth is rejected as much as in any place in the world. I’m not saying this to condemn anyone, but unless we wake up, the soft tyranny of corrupt government systems will not cease. Election fraud will continue, and we will descend into a country oppressed by dictators. All the things we are dealing with now—weaponizing science for political gain, weaponizing our government institutions (i.e., FBI and IRS), and an out-of-control media—will continue and escalate until people are held accountable. The good news is we are in the beginning stage of a great awakening. Light is shining in dark places, with sin and corruption being exposed. God’s people are waking up and turning back to Him, His Kingdom, and His righteousness. Prodigals are coming home. The lost are fleeing Egypt and turning to God. The Kingdom is advancing because the just are choosing to live by faith (see Matt. 11:12; Gal. 3:11).
Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Faith begins and ends where God’s Word is known. It comes by hearing (which is characterized by listening and obeying) God’s Word and is fed the same way. Fear comes from listening to the world, and it too must be fed. Neither faith nor fear can survive without fuel. The world supplies fear’s fuel through lies, fraud, and vain philosophies. Feeding on those things will produce fear and worry in your heart. But if you feed on the gospel (the good news of who Jesus is and what He accomplished on the cross to make you and me sons and daughters of God and co-heirs with Him), it will produce faith.
Colossians 2:6-7 says, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.” Just like we received Jesus as Lord by grace through faith, we walk in Him by grace through faith. Remember, grace is what God does for us independent of ourselves. Faith is our positive response to that grace. We must choose to believe, to be “rooted and built up in Him” so we can be established in the faith. And we must be disciplined to keep hearing the Word of God and, in humility, accept it as final authority.
So, how does this faith work? By Kingdom laws or principles that show the eternal truth and constant nature of God’s Word. Romans 3:27 says, “Where is boasting then?” In other words, if we are saved by grace through faith, there is no place for boasting. “It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.” Notice faith is a law and is governed by spiritual laws. Just like there are certain principles and laws that govern the world God made, so there are spiritual laws that govern the Kingdom. These laws are constant and were created to be a blessing to us when we understand and cooperate with them. Consider the law of gravity. Without gravity, life on this planet would be impossible. The law of gravity is a blessing. But if that law is violated, if you jump off a building, what was created to be a blessing will become the antithesis of one. This truth is hidden all over creation—the laws of motion (which include inertia, momentum, and aerodynamics), the law of thermodynamics (energy), and the laws of electricity.
Do you know the laws of aerodynamics were around in Jesus’ day? People could have flown airplanes in biblical times had those laws been discovered. We (meaning people in the twenty-first century) didn’t invent aerodynamics, the laws of thrust and lift that override the law of gravity. The only reason we have airplanes today is because someone discovered the laws that govern motion and thrust, and we benefited from them. The same is true for electricity. The laws that governed electricity existed in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve could have had artificial light had they known of those laws. How many more natural laws are waiting to be discovered? What inventions (benefits) might those laws inspire?
Kingdom laws also have to be discovered and cooperated with in order for us to benefit from them. I grew exponentially when I realized this truth. When I learned the laws governing faith—like how it comes and what it sounds like—my prayer life exploded. So did my fruit. I realized that, up to that point, I’d been complaining instead of praying, walking in doubt and unbelief instead of faith. The fruit of my life wasn’t reflecting what I saw in Scripture because I didn’t understand grace and faith. I was trying to earn God’s blessings and favor instead of simply receiving it by faith. God, in grace and by grace, had already provided everything I needed at the cross. All He required out of me was to believe and receive. I learned how faith speaks and my words were either death or life, fear or faith.
Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” And Jesus said in Matthew 12:34, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” We are eating the fruit of our lips. To this day, I meet Christians who do not understand the power of our words and how faith works. They mock any teaching from Scripture as it relates to words, not realizing they are mocking faith and the laws that govern faith. I couldn’t go on speaking words of doubt and defeat and expect the fruits of righteousness to grow in my life. Second Corinthians 4:13 says, “And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, ‘I believed and therefore spoke,’ we also believe and therefore speak.” Fear speaks, and faith speaks. Fear speaks in murmuring and complaining. Faith speaks in praise and thanksgiving. Faith is eternally optimistic for it knows in whom it has believed (see 2 Tim. 1:12). When trials come to separate us from God, faith speaks: “God is for me. He loves me, and nothing can separate me from His love. I’m going to make it through this” (see Rom. 8:37-39). Faith addresses the obstacles of life with an attitude of victory (see Mark 11:23-24). It speaks to the mountain as Jesus taught us to do. Fear, on the other hand, lets those mountains talk to you and convince you that God is not able (or willing) to help, especially you!
