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Spiritual Warfare - It May Not Be What You Think

Spiritual warfare is not about separating us from the love of Christ. That’s impossible and the devil knows it. Instead, he attacks us to take ground from us - ground that the Lord has already given to us. The Lord only knows how to give good things, so we can be sure that the ground He gives us is good ground.

Good ground produces good fruit. That’s pretty obvious even if you’re not a farmer. Only a good tree can produce good fruit and good trees are planted in good ground. The Bible tells us that a tree is known by the fruit it bears. Good fruit, good tree. Good tree, good ground. When we are rooted in the good ground the Lord has given us, we will bear good fruit. When we give up that ground we can’t bear good fruit for God.

The fruit of the Spirit we bear while rooted in the ground God has given us is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Produce that kind of fruit and we can take the message of the gospel into the whole world as an unstoppable force. We engage in spiritual warfare so we can hold that ground. Forget about being separated from Christ, that can’t happen. His love is too great for us to lose and too mighty for the devil to take away. Since we can’t be separated from Christ, why would the devil even bother attacking us? The answer is simple. The devil is trying to get us to give up our ground so we can’t bear fruit for God. If we can’t bear the fruit of the Spirit, how will the world know that we belong to Christ? If we aren’t bearing fruit for the very One who died to set us free, how can we possibly convince others that He can set them free, too? When they see bad fruit or no fruit at all, how will they believe us when we declare the greatness of God and His power to save them? For the world to have any chance at all of seeing Christ in us, we must produce good fruit in accordance with all that God has destined for us. That can only happen when the Holy Spirit in us works to produce that fruit. The Holy Spirit works in us when we are planted in good ground. That’s why Psalm 92:12-13 says that those who are planted in the house of the Lord will flourish in the courts of our God like a palm tree. Good ground, good tree. Good tree, good fruit.

By standing our ground in the full armor of God we can defend what is ours. The full armor of God is no mystery. It is simply Christ Himself. In Him we have Truth, righteousness, peace, salvation, faith, and the very Word of God. It is Christ who has imparted to us the Holy Spirit who gives us the power to fight back. Here’s the catch, though. If we allow this spiritual warfare to go on indefinitely, we will never take new ground for Christ and we can never be given more ground. We will be stuck endlessly defending the ground on which we already stand. We cannot expand our borders if we do not take the fight to the enemy and into his territory. Christ is the Armor of God. He is our strength. He is our refuge and fortress. Knowing this, all we have to remember is His final words on the cross. “It is finished.” All the battles have already been decided. Christ wins. Spiritual warfare ends when we put on the Armor of God, which is Christ Jesus. Only in Him can we stand our ground. Only in Him can we take new ground. Spiritual warfare isn’t as much about winning as it is about surrendering completely to Jesus. We don’t win anything out of our own strength. But, Christ has already won it all.