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SPIRITUAL WARFARE?
by Dr. Andrew Corbett
Every
church should be a worshiping church. Our motivation for
worship is our love for God. Many leaders have tried to
motivate people to worship God based on selfish motives,
or even hatred for the devil. If we make anything other
than love for God our prime motivation, we actually draw
away from God and glorify what we focus on. For example,
if someone is taught that worship will get them special
blessings from God, the risk is that their focus could
be on the blessings rather than the Blessor. Every true
encounter with God resulted in worship in the Bible. When
Peter received his revelation about Christ in his fishing
boat, his immediate reaction was to fall down in worship
of Christ while acknowledging His greatness and purity
(Lk. 5:8). When someone has an encounter with Jesus, they
don't have to be told why they need to worship Him!
It
is fair to say that worship is a part of our spiritual
warfare. For a few years I was guilty of the belief and
practise of focussing part of my worship on destroying
the works and activities of the enemy. But God has shown
me, through His Word, several dangerous aspects to this.
Judson
Cornwell describes in his book Let us Praise, that
he used to be called upon by his song leaders to take authority
over the devil if the song leader sensed a heaviness over
a meeting. His usual practice was to either publicly or
privately rebuke/bind/cast out/ destroy the devil and his
influence from their meeting. But then God showed him that
this was misplaced time. By focusing on the enemy and what
he was doing, he was actually giving glory to him, rather
than God! No man can "bind" Satan. Only Christ has the
power to eventually bind Satan when he will be bound for
an age and thrown into the bottomless pit (Rev. 20:1-3).
On every occasion that the early Church was harassed by
Satan, not once did they dare to speak directly to him
(as the Scripture forbids -2Pt. 2:11; Jude 9), instead
they worshiped and exalted God- not for ulterior motives.
The early church was quite content to worship God in a
comfortable house, or in an uncomfortable prison cell!
The circumstances and surroundings were not important.
When Paul was being harassed by an evil spirit, he didn't
speak to it, he pleaded with God about it (2Cor. 12:7).
This goes against much of the current teaching on "spiritual
warfare". Our focus must be on loving God, not necessarily
a cheap imitation brought about by hating the devil!
Worship
means to move toward and kiss. As a congregation its possible
to worship God in various ways with the result being like
a kiss to God. Broadly, worship can involve any act of
service and surrender to God. James says that true worship
(or religion) is when the church visits orphans and widows
in their trouble, and keeps itself unspotted from the world
(James 1:27). This is one way the church can worship God.
Other ways include, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked,
visiting the sick and imprisoned (Mtt. 25:31-46). Singing
and prayer constitute worship.
EVANGELISM
NEEDED
Our
fight with the powers of darkness is a foregone conclusion.
We win. But as it works out, we are not battling with them
simply to defeat them and thus usher in the kingdom of
God, but rather our objective is to reach the lost. While
Christ won the victory on Calvary, we enforce that victory
in the world by proclamation of the Gospel. Our enemy will
bring out every distraction in and out of the book to stop
us from this. This becomes our battle, with the lost becoming
our mission, and the Lord becoming our goal. Our offensive
weapons are for us to put to death our old nature, obey
God readily, and reach the lost in evangelism. We must
make our evangelism an act of worship, not merely a duty.
God is clearly saying to His last days’ Church- seek
Me.
What
we focus on determines where we go. We need to stop seeking
demons, and devote our entire energy to seeking God, no
matter what the circumstances, surroundings or emotions.
Certainly the unseen enemy will seek to destroy God’s
work and people, but every attempt will be thwarted by
God for His ultimate glory as we continue to look to Him
even in the midst of attacks. By abandoning closet evangelism
and reintroducing proclamation evangelism, the church will
again be waging the kind of war where souls can be reconciled
to God. This focus provides individual believers with a
motivation to live right, talk right, and think right so
that they will not become a stumbling block to the unsaved.
This involves real spiritual warfare: the believer putting
their flesh to death, despite its warring, so that the
war between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness
can be fought according to the design of the Word of God,
and the example of the cross of Christ.
I
have not dealt with the topic of deliverance. I see this
as a separate issue to spiritual warfare. I would
ask the reader not to confuse the issue of delivering a
desperate person afflicted by demonic oppression or possession,
where an evil spirit is immediately present, to that which
this article has addressed.
Amen.  Andrew Corbett
Download Dr Corbett's eBook The Most Embarrassing Book In The Bible.
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