Spiritual Warfare, Stand Firm

Dr. Ray: Hey, welcome to my show, Self Talk with Dr. Ray Self. In today's episode, I'm going to talk again about spiritual warfare. I know it's a topic that's been very popular with a lot of podcasters but I want you to understand folks, this is real. It is affecting you, it's impacting you. You're being attacked. If you're a Christian, you have been harassed and attacked by demons. We know that greater is he that is in us than he that's in the world but not to recognize demonic attacks and how to discern between a demonic attack and simply our flesh is a very important skill that Christians need to learn. So in this episode, I'm going to talk about how do you know when it's demonic and how do you discern whether it's demonic or it's just our flesh, and what do you do about it. This is a very important show. I hope this show will bless you very much. Hey, don't forget we're sponsored by the International College of Ministry. It's a Holy Spirit-filled, accredited seminary that I founded years ago go and we are enrolling right now at icmcollege.org. You know God's calling you, why not get equipped? Matter of fact, if God's calling you, you really need to get equipped. Go to icmcollege.org and enroll now. God bless you. Thank you for listening to today's show this is Dr. Ray Self.

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All right, this is Dr. Ray. Welcome to my show. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for each person listening to this show today. I pray that my words will be a blessing. I ask you Holy Spirit, just to um, direct me and guide me and lead me uh, in these words today; in this show today. Let your anointing fall upon every listener in Jesus' name. Amen. So here we go, we're going to talk about spiritual warfare. I know that in the Christian world, it's a topic uh, a very hot topic with uh, podcasters but it's a real thing. It's a real thing scripture warns us about spiritual warfare. Jesus was involved in spiritual warfare. He cast out demons, He resisted the devil and we are commanded to do the same thing. Let me share a couple of scriptures with you. In the, in the book of Ephesians chapter 6, beginning at verse 10, Paul says “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” And then he goes on to explain, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against powers, against world forces of this darkness, against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.” So Paul told us that the main fight that we have is against rulers and powers and wicked forces. Spiritual forces, forces of wickedness. Spiritual forces of wickedness. That, that's what we're fighting against. That's the main battle. 

What I have found out, and experienced myself, that so many Christians are clueless. What they do: these things happen to them, to their marriage, to their job, to their life, they don't understand. They're being harassed and they just start, they get frustrated, get angry, and they try to solve the problem by complete natural means. Meanwhile, they're having a supernatural attack, they're totally oblivious to it, and they're just frustrated and they're angry and they're depressed and, and just trying to figure out what to do and trying to, to figure a resolution. And the whole time the reason things are so confusing and so disruptive and so depressing is that you're having a demonic attack. Now- [clears throat] excuse me. To balance this, I want to say something. There are many people that believe if you do spiritual warfare and you resist these demons and get them out of your life, everything's going to be fine. No, that's not true because you still have your flesh and a lot of what we deal with in the world, it's not the devil, it's people. It's just people being people. It's our natural born sinful tendencies just acting out. 

So what I've discovered over my many years as a Christian that what demonic attacks do, and typically what Satan's strategy is, is he looks for an issue in your life. He looks for a problem in your life, a, a stress point, a scar, a particular weakness and he attacks that and tries to exploit that, okay? So what happens is you may have a particular, you know, weakness for feeling rejected or, or betrayed. Or maybe a weakness for all– always struggling financially or maybe a weakness of uh, an issue in your life with marriages and relationships. And these are, you know, maybe little cracks in your armor so to speak and that's where Satan attacks. So, so many times what the demonic attack is doing is it is magnifying and enhancing a problem that already existed. So when you resist the enemy and you cast the demons out, this is going to help you a lot, it's going to be good; but it's not going to solve the entire problem. Does that make sense? 

There's a kind of a funny story from many years ago. Um, I knew a young man and um, I'm not going to tell out any names or even where it was or– going to keep everything very anonymous here. He was a young man and he had um…, he, he got saved, he got radically saved. But prior to that, you know, he was doing drugs and living a very worldly, wild, crazy life. Well, in his worldly, crazy, wild life, he married a, a, a much older woman who had at that time, I believe four or five children, okay? And needless to say, this marriage was not going so well and there was just a, a lot of issues there. And of course, there was some demonic attacks in the midst of it. Now, he had received the Lord and he had you know, received the the Holy Spirit into his life but he was still having a lot of issues. So he comes to us in the ministry I was involved in for deliverance, “I just need some deliverance, I need some deliverance.” And so we, we prayed over him, we prayed over him, we prayed over him and we, we bound the spirit and cast this spirit out and rebuke the enemy, rebuke the assignments against him, command these particular demons to leave. And you can see his countenance changed and he really improved. He became much– his, his demeanor changed his, his joy came back, his peace came back, but then he goes home and he's still married to a woman with four kids. 

In other words, in a way, it sounds kind of silly, but he was looking for a quick fix. And yeah, you need to get the demons out of your life but it's not a quick fix. In other words, he still had the same issues he had with the, with his wife and all the kids that, that he inherited and all that, you know, he kind of married into a very dysfunctional situation. However, getting rid of the demonic infestation definitely helped but didn't solve his problem completely. And so getting rid of the demonic manifestation will help you a lot. 

Now, a lot of men suffer uh– one of the key things for– let me talk to the men here just for a second. One of the key issues with men is feeling disrespected. In, in the book of Ephesians, it tells us you know, “Wives, respect your husbands,” you know, “husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church and was willing to give his life up for it.” But men, men crave respect. That's one of the primary needs of a man. And so any time a man feels disrespected um, it, it triggers him. It, it, it infuriates him. And sometimes certain men - a lot of men - have wounds. They have scar tissue in the area of respect. They've been disrespected, maybe they were abused as a child, disrespected by teachers or uh, parents or coaches or whatever; but they have a sore spot there. And so what happens is that men tend to walk around looking for disrespect and it, and it, and it filter– it filters their ears. In other words, some men hear disrespect when disrespect is not being said. 

There's, there's a spirit that's called uh, Leviathan, and this particular spirit is a twisting spirit. And what he does is he loves to twist words where something is said by one person, it's twisted and something completely different is heard by another person. But for instance, a man who struggled with disrespect, what'll happen is the demons will come in and they will twist a situation. So this man will continually feel disrespected in all kinds of circumstances and it's a struggle. And the man is, is you know, feeling like Well, the pastor disrespected me, my wife just disrespected– my boss disrespected me. What's happening many times is he's actually not being disrespected but the demonic influence or the Demonic harassment in his life is causing him to hear that way and feel disrespected. So when you do the spiritual warfare, all of a sudden his ears open up and he's able to hear clearly what's being said without filtering. In other words, what demons– one of the assignments of demons is to twist words. You see it in the Garden of Eden. You know, “Did, did, did God really say you should not eat of the knowledge of the tree of, of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?” There– that, that's not exactly what God meant. In other words, Satan twisted God's words just a little bit to entice Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; and in Adam as well. But you see, there was a twisting of God's words from the beginning and that's one of the big demonic attacks. 

But the key for us is when we get… well let me just tell you what happens to me. When I get attacked, so many times– you know, I'm, I'm kind of, I'm a, I'm a very deep feeling emotional guy. I, I feel things very deeply. I have a high gift of compassion and I feel things very deeply and that's a good gift because I think I do have– carry the love of the Lord and I'm able to forgive people very easily. However, I also feel things very deeply. And so sometimes you know, things happen. My wife may say something and I'm feeling a deep hurt and I'm feeling a deep wound. And then the demons come in and they start giving me, start lying to me, “Yeah, you know, she's really disrespecting. Yeah, she meant what she said. Yeah, you know, she's always like that. Yeah, this, this is what you– she thinks you deserve.” It's all this sort of stuff. So what happened is, you know, I'm struggling in a certain area and then the demons get in the middle of me and my wife, twist things around, aggravate things, magnify things, blow things– take uh– blow things out of proportion. They take that, they– the demons will build a mountain out of a mohill in a heartbeat. But what we have to do in the midst of these emotions, because when we're attacked we get hurt and, and when we get hurt we get angry and when you're angry, it's hard to be logical. But it's really critical in the midst of these attacks is to calm down and think, What's going on here? What is happening here? Because what happens is the demonic attacks, they may make you feel angry, may make you feel uh, resentful, may make you feel depressed, may make you feel high levels of frustration. And you got all these emotions going on and you're not being… you're not thinking. You're not discerning what is really causing the problem. And so many times what's causing these problems in your life is demonic harassment, does that make sense? 

And remember, whenever you have a tendency toward… maybe you have a tendency toward feeling illegitimate, maybe you have a tendency for feeling unworthy, that's a big one. Maybe you have a tendency for you know, feeling rejected or, or betrayed or maybe you have a tendency toward not feeling uh, acceptable, not uh, feeling like you measure up. And these are tendencies, these are wounds in your flesh. And here comes the demons using every single opportunity they can to reinforce that. But when you, when– Paul said this; you know, Paul said in, in Corinthians, we are not ignorant of Satan's schemes. In other words, be aware. Be aware of what Satan is doing and telling you right now, that first off to think that Christians can't be harassed by demons is ridiculous. And I g– I… it's just ridiculous. We've all been harassed by demons. You, you know it. We've all been harassed by demons. Can I be possessed? No, abs– I've got the Holy Spirit in me. No demon's going to possess me, amen. But is Satan going to attack me? He attacked Jesus Himself. We're not immune from demonic attack, amen. However, when your emotions get stirred up, it's hard to discern. At some point, you have to take a step back and you have to look at what's really really going on, amen? 

I remember once my wife and I were um, she was driving me to the airport - I was catching a flight out of Orlando - and we got into an argument about something. I don't know what it was but it was one of these arguments where “By golly, I'm not going to get out of this car till I show my wife the truth,” and she was going to show me the truth. And we were back and forth at each other. I mean, we're not yelling and screaming but we are passionate about opposing views of opinion. And both of us were trying to prove the other person wrong. By the way, if you're in a relationship, trying to prove your spouse wrong or your husband wrong is a really dumb thing to do. What we need to do is look for a resolution, look for an answer instead of trying to– Nobody wants to be the wrong person so if you're one of these people - this is a rabbit trail - if you're one of these people who thinks you have to fight to win in every single argument, all you're doing is destroying relationships. Fight to win is a terrible way to communicate. Look for a resolution instead of trying to prove that you're right and the other person is wrong and destroying a relationship. Look for an answer. Look for God's answer to the problem, okay? 

So anyway, my wife and I, we're going back and forth. I'm determined not to get out of the car and all of a sudden, God just interrupted me. And I was upset, I wasn't going to get on that plane till I was able to get my wife under control. Hahaha. How do you think that worked for me? I was going to get my wife under control and then I felt very strongly I needed to pray. And I began to pray and do some spiritual warfare. And I didn't feel like it, but I did it anyway. And all of a sudden, the peace of God came into that car. We're sitting in the car in the airport park– parking lot. The peace of God came into that car. I got quiet, my wife got quiet, and we just sat there in the peace of God. And then after a few moments, we looked at each other and I said, “What were we talking about?” And she goes, “I don't remember.” And I said, “I don't remember either.” Amen? We never– and to this day, we don't remember what the argument was about. Promise you, some demons that got– were harassing us and influencing us and magnifying our issues, okay? And that's one of the key things they do is they magnify hurts, wounds, scars, um, places where you've been hurt in the past. That's where they come in. So yes, we do need to resist the devil, have him flee from us. The book of James says submit to God. That means be, be surrendered to God. Be totally surrendered to God and resist the devil and he will flee from you. 

So we have the key thing. Number one is, ask yourself or pray this prayer. Lord, increase my discernment so I can discern when demons are attacking. See, the gift of discernment is called the discerning of spirits, it's not the suspicion of people, amen? It's the discerning of spirits. And when the gift of discernment is operating, you'll be able to discern if this– is this just flesh, is this the Holy Spirit, or it's a demonic spirit. Then once you discern– and you, you can ask God. “God, give me discernment. Lord, help me. Help me to discern. Give me the gift of discernment. A, a matter of fact, everybody listening, I would encourage you to do that. But with the gift of discernment, it's like all of a sudden you'll have knowledge, you'll have an understanding of what's going on and what spirit is in operation. So what I do in the middle of hurts and wounds and emotion… I, I just want to emphasize this because these demonic attacks stir up your emotions. And the problem is, when your emotions are stirred up, it's hard to think clearly but you have to press through this. So you got an emotional situation, a situation where you're being triggered you know, left, right, inside and out. But at some point, you get still and you discern this is a demonic attack. At that point, you have to be bold and stand with authority. And what I encourage you to do is to say something like this with boldness, with faith. “Heavenly Father, I thank you that you have given me authority. So by the authority of the name of Jesus Christ, I rebuke this assignment. I rebuke every unclean spirit attacking me and my wife and my family right now.” Whatever your situation is, “I renounce this attack. I command you, unclean spirits, to stop now. I command you to get out of my home. I command you out of my car, I command you away from my family now. By the blood and the authority and the power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, you will get out. Your assignment is broken. I am bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, I am operating under His authority and I command you to stop your attack, stop your harassment. Get out of my home, get out of my life, get away from my wife, get away from my kids, get away from my ministry, get away from my money, get away from my body. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, I rebuke you, I renounce you, and I thank You, you will leave. You're out of here, in Jesus’-- you will not come back in Jesus’ name. Amen.” 

You see folks, there's times to pray a prayer, a petition. And petition is when you're asking God to do something. But proclamation is when you're doing what God told you to do and God told us to stand firm. God told us to resist the devil. God told us in Mark 16, it says one of the signs of a Christian is we will cast out demons. He said, “You, hey you listening to me.” He said you, you will cast out demons; he said Ray will cast out demons. I mean, it said John, Mike, Mary, Sue, Ellen, all of you got you will cast out demons, okay? He told you to do it. So when you're praying asking God to do something He told you to do, yeah, good luck with that. It's kind of like your children. You know, you, you, you told your children to do something, you're not going to do it for them because you told them to do it. Jesus has given us authority because He knew we would need it. Because the prince of this world is very active. There's a lot of evil going on in this world right now and it's scary stuff but you know what, we're bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. We're not of this world. We're living in a different kingdom. We have the Holy Spirit living in us, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus. And I do see a lot of evil all around me but I know that Jesus purchased me and I know I belong to Him. And if you received Him as your savior, you belong to Him so it's important for us to do as scripture commanded us. To “stand firm, put on the full armor of God that you'll be able to stand firm against the schemes of the enemy,” okay? Um, He gives us some other tips a little bit later. Of course, you know, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate and the feet and all that stuff. But he also said in verse 18, kind of gave us a tip. “with all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit,” “pray in the Spirit, and with this view be on alert,” “be on alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints–” Be on alert; pray in the Spirit. And this helps, um… praying in the Spirit helps, taking authority helps, having faith and boldness. And notice when you're casting out demon… demons, speak with authority. Speak with authority. In other words, just command it. Command it to stop. And I've seen this work so many times. I've seen this work on my job, I've seen this work at my marriage, uh, I've seen this work with my finances, I've seen this work with my body. It works because this is authority that God gave us, amen? Amen.

 So, Father, I thank you for each person listening to the show. I thank you, Father, you have given them authority. And Lord, for every person facing a demonic assignment, Lord, give them the power, the authority, and the courage right now to face that assignment and break that assignment by the blood and the power and authority and the name above all names. The name above all names, Jesus Christ.

Thank you so much for listening today. Been kind of a heavy show but it's, but it's an important show. Amen. You can tell maybe that I was attacked recently, and I was… My wife and I were. We had to do some warfare, amen? Yeah, I wish I could say you know, that these attacks don't occur but they do. But we have victory. We have the victory. We are victorious in Jesus Christ. Hey, thanks again for listening and God bless you. This is Dr. Ray Self, signing out.

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Dr. Ray: All right. Well you have just listened to another exciting episode of Selft Talk with me, Dr. Ray Self. Hey, don't forget um, you can partner with us to help us do this show at icmcollege.org/donate. icmcollege.org/donate. I really um, appreciate you helping us uh, with this show. It's just uh, uh, you know, we need it. It's, it's an expensive endeavor. Uh, don't forget my books. I got a couple of books I think would bless you. Redeeming Your Past, Finding Your Promised Land; Hear His Voice, be His Voice. Those are all on amazon.com. And you know, don't forget to um, on the website, our main website, icmcollege.org, that's the college. But the reason I promote the college is - course we'd love to have you as a student - but there's also free resources on there. There's a number of free lessons concerning the prophetic, spiritual warfare, and counseling and so take advantage of these free lessons um, at icmcollege.org. Maybe you're thinking about getting your… finally getting your college degree. Well, do a free evaluation. All this stuff is free. Get an evaluation for a degree. That's again, at icmcollege.org. We'll send you an email and tell you exactly what it would take for you to get your college degree, Holy Spirit-filled college degree. I love you much. Thank you so much for listening and God… God bless you. God bless you.