Your Enemy Is Real
This next group of blog posts comes from the third book in the Basic Training! series: Stage 3 Spiritual Warfare. By this time in the Pureheart process, you’ve locked down your devices, identified your triggers, you’re getting your acting out cycle under control, established accountability with your B.O.B group, and “Severed Spiritual Chains”. Because it is vital to your healing and maturity, we’ve devoted all of Stage 3 to teaching you about Spiritual Warfare. Have you ever met the devil? Demons? Do you know how to stand your ground against the cosmic forces of evil? Do you know how to fight against demons? Or how to equip yourself with the life-saving armor of God? “Stage 3: Spiritual Warfare” offers you a specific strategy for winning the invisible war that rages about you, starting with the fundamentals as laid out in this introductory chapter.
Brace yourself—it’s time for battle!
Your Enemy Is Real!
Welcome to the War, brothers and sisters. Or at least my war. I counsel brothers from literally almost every denomination known to man, but most of them seem to be taking a siesta, spiritually speaking. Sipping on a coke, lounging in their swimsuits in the middle of the war to end all wars as we enter into the Last Days. Indeed, this war will grow so intense, there will be war not just on earth but in the Second Heaven, as God’s angels finally round up all demonic powers and cast them into the Lake of Fire prior to Judgment Day. It’s high time you get your spiritual armor on and actually start wrestling against the spiritual forces of evil in the spiritual realms, as Scripture plainly commands (Ephesians 6). And here you thought all these Warfare Worldview stories were just quaint metaphors!
Having lived an extreme life of near constant spiritual warfare—severely demonized, rebuking and casting out demons, being attacked by demons and witches and warlocks, fasting and praying for revival—it’s easy for me to fight the unseen war. Easy for me, but a serious challenge for Christians raised in a materialist, anti-supernatural culture, never having seen a demon or cast one out, and typically clueless to life in the spiritual realm. The vast majority of my brother counselees, even though they read the Bible daily, don’t really believe in the devil and his demons. They’re like the man I quote below, a pastor from a Bible-believing, thoroughly Evangelical denomination.
Note: this is an excerpt from his testimony, in his own words, after we had covered his sexual history (and I had rebuked his demons).
Some months later, after remaining pure (with a few close calls), I had another experience that shook my world and changed my life going forward. I had been struggling with temptation, but I would not give into it. I was praying for sustained purity, but I could tell that the devil was still after me. So one night when I was asleep, I was awakened by a strange presence. It was a terrifying presence. And almost simultaneously with this awareness and my waking up, something jerked me across the bed. This happened twice. I was terrified. I screamed, and it awakened my wife. I had no idea what was going on. I could feel the presence in the room, but I could also feel it inside of me. My skin was crawling, and I had a sensation that something was moving in me right below my skin. Now I was crying and so afraid. I kept looking around the room, because there was this lurking presence all around me and inside me. I kept trying to rub and scratch whatever was moving underneath my skin.
My wife started praying out loud for me. She, of course, was scared as well.
Sitting on the side of the bed in absolute terror (something that I have never felt before or since), I was crying, and my wife was yelling very loudly, while holding me, for the devil to get away from me, in the name of Jesus Christ. It took about an hour that night, but I was finally able to settle down. I was definitely shook up, but I was also exhausted, and so I was able to get back to sleep.
I was never one to believe in this kind of thing. I believed in God; I also believed all the miracles in the Bible. I just didn’t really believe in all the demonic things that I had heard. They seemed more like a Hollywood B movie than reality. But this thing that happened to me that night was real. I believe before that night I had been living under a curse and was being demonized by Satan and his minions. I believe that I opened my life up to this kind of influence because of my sexual relationship with prostitutes. The joining of flesh opened the joining of our souls, and the demonic influence that was in them now made their residence in me. I know this all sounds too weird to be true, but as a one-time skeptic of these kinds of things, I can assure you that this was very real.
Note how this pastor had no idea he was demonized. He was utterly clueless to the fact that he had been both deceived and devoured/demonized by the enemy of his soul. Most Christian men I counsel remind me of U.S. Marines just after Pearl Harbor—warriors in theory only, untested in actual combat, and utterly unfamiliar with their enemy. In Basic Training! Stage 3 Week 14 I cite grim examples, both Biblical and historical, to set the proper context for this stage on Spiritual Warfare. One reason God says “yes” when the devil comes a-calling is so that people like me, who experience the satanic extremes of life, can admonish the rest of you who don’t. You can no longer afford to remain foolishly ignorant about the devil and his demons, like the Marines before Guadalcanal. Hence your first takeaway from this chapter: The demons you are supposed to be wrestling against are far worse than any Japanese soldier and far more dangerous.
You must personalize the murderous danger of spiritual warfare, because everything you value and love is at play in this war. Your sexual purity, your health, your mental sanity, your job and finances, your marriage, your children, your ministry, your testimony, and ultimately your eternal destiny and reward all hinge upon your effectiveness as a soldier warring on behalf of the God of Angel Armies (the Lord of Hosts). Nothing less than the destiny of the world is at stake, because you live in the last days and thus are called to fight in the Last Battle.
Your Brother in the Battle,
Timothy
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Excerpt taken from Pureheart Ministry’s Basic Training! Stage 3: Spiritual Warfare
Copyright ©2023 Timothy Davis