Clearly, Paul in verses 3-6, is referring to spiritual forces manifesting in human beings howbeit, in diverse ways. As false arguments, human reasoning, logic, pride, disobedience and godlessness.

The Warfare
Welcome back to the 7th part of this blog post series. In parts 1-6 we discussed extensively on the whole armour of God taking our reference scripture from Ephesians 6:11-17. 

Today, just to tidy up the "The Warfare' bit of this series...
Warfare simply means engagement in or activities involved in war or conflict. It also means combat, struggle, conflict. 

Ephesians 6:12 tells us the kind of warfare we're in as Christians;
"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood {contending only with physical opponents} but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this {present} darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) places" Amplified Version.

And 2 Corinthians 10:3

"For though we walk in the flesh {as mortal men}, we do not war after the flesh" NKJV. 

Two obvious conclusions from the above scriptures;  

1. The warfare is not against humans
I remember a dream I had most of my childhood; a woman tried to kill me several times in very subtle ways,always initially pretending to be friendly and motherly but with an ultimate intent to hurt me, which wasn't initially obvious. Considering the frequency of the dream, I decided to mark her face and possibly relate it to a physical being. One day, the scales fell off my eyes and I saw her exactly for what she was -evil, Satan's agent. I rebuked her to her utter shock, that was the last time she appeared in my dream :)


We're in a spiritual warfare and it is not against humans. 

So no need to  move about pointing accusing fingers at mere mortal beings.  Yes, the devil can work through humans who make themselves available to him, but we do not fight back at humans or physical beings else we lose. There is a spiritual strategy for spiritual combat. 
This is liberating for me also in handling everyday relations- sensitivity to understand when conflicts require spiritual handling is crucial- and I believe we can win every conflict irrespective of how they present, when we adopt a spiritual combat approach. There is so much peace handling stuffs that way :) 

2. The warfare is against Satan & his gang. 
 Yes, the warfare is against the tricky cunning old fellow of John 10:10b-the thief and his gang! The one who came to steal, kill and destroy. 
He is the ruler of this present world {to the blind and unbelieving), he commands principalities and powers of darkness of this age, the wickedness in the heavenly places and he still wields his powers among  ignorant folks. But those who know know it that Jesus Christ totally DISARMED him at Calvary...Hallelujah!

"Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it". 
Colossians 2:15. 

For me therefore, the current status of Satan is Colossians 2:15, he seems to often forget that. As Christians we have a duty to remind him every time he pulls his old stunts. 


In the concluding part, we'll look at the very interesting 'Weapons of Our Warfare'. 
Till then....stay blessed :) and keep musing over Colossians 2:15. 

My love always....

Friends/Sisters/Brothers,

Greetings!

I feel a deep need to apologize for delaying this blogpost, a topic The Lord dropped on my mind many weeks ago. As always happens every time there’s this kind of delay in developing and publishing a God-given topic, multiple events relating to the said topic begin to occur all around me.  This usually makes me sad, and I’d usually start apologizing to The Lord in my heart for not responding promptly to His prompting  🙂     He always forgives me (and I am hoping you would too). I am encouraged always because he has never told me the topic has expired and irrelevant. I believe strongly therefore that every ugly, unpleasant situation that this post was meant to fix many weeks ago, can still be fixed today. Jesus Christ is the SAME yesterday, today and forever! Halleluyah

I tinkered with the topic for this post, maybe, for way too long….and as it seems, I landed 3 mega topics in one!! To praise The Lord or to be sorry for myself?  🙂  ………  Well, I love long blogpost series  sometimes because every time a sub-section gets published, my spiritual antennae are set way up (on the particular topic), to catch as many revelations as The Lord would give me.

This is a very long, wide and extended topic. It is expansive and I am really excited to be doing it at this time.

There are 3 subsets to this topic:

1. His armour
2. Our weapons
3. The warfare

In my very short time of knowing and serving the Lord (over 2 decades now), and particularly in the past few years of serving The Lord through graceobomanu’s blog and Talk with Grace Obomanu (running into 4 years now), I have learnt that Satan takes added interest in anyone who loves and faithfully serves The Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a battle of kingdoms and happens ALL the time. Only this time, a WINNER was declared thousands of years ago. And this WINNER transferred all His winning rights and privileges to His followers. And I am one of them {say same for yourself}

Everyone who is in Christ Jesus, WINS! And everyone who is in Christ Jesus should be battle-ready at all times.

Did I hear you ask; ‘how possible is it to be battle-ready at all times’? And ‘why be battle-ready if we are already Winners’?

Stay with me on this blogpost series as we embark on an interesting, revealing and exciting journey into winning every spiritual warfare by being fully suited with the whole armour of God using our spiritual weapons.

His ARMOUR

An armour is a covering, usually made of metal, soldiers wear to cover and protect their bodies in battle. A well-trained knight would wear armour for protection before a fight. Some vehicles have hard metallic coverings -armour, to protect them against attacks.

As a verb, the word ‘armour’ would mean to provide someone with emotional, social and other defenses.

No other Bible verse best describes ‘the armour of God’ to suit the context of this article like Ephesians 6:10-18,  but first,  take a look at 1 Samuel 17:4-7, a vivid description of how a well-armoured soldier looks   🙂

 “The Philistines had a champion fighter named Goliath, who was from Gath. He was over 9 feet tall. Goliath came out of the Philistines camp. He had a bronze helmet on his head. He wore a coat of armour that was made like the scales on a fish. This armour was made of bronze and weighed about 125 pounds. Goliath wore bronze protectors on his legs. He had a bronze javelin tied on his back. The wooden part of his spear was as big as a weavers’s rod. The spear blade weighed 15 pounds. Goliath’s walked in front of him, carrying his shield.”   ERV. 

Let me thank my Pastor (Pastor Mrs Nkechi Ene, Presiding Pastor, The Carpenter’s Church, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, for drawing my attention to the Easy-to-Read Bible Version, which is very explicit with descriptions -excellent for visuals).

I am convinced that there is no need to bore you with the tiny details of Goliath’s armour (which by the way, David thought was ridiculous), well, at least not for this article, but notice that the Bible carefully listed the particular parts of body that Soldier Goliath covered. His head, chest, loins, legs/feet, and with readily accessible weapons -the javelin and the spear (in his hand).

A part of  Apostle Paul’s closing lines in his letter to the Church at Ephesus (Ephesians 6) was for the church to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might by putting on the whole armour of God. Oh! how often we, as Christians, so carelessly walk around unarmoured!  Brother Paul admonishes us to be ready always to withstand the wiles of the devil.

The Wiles of the devil don’t come at us shouting; ‘I am a WILE of the devil, I am a WILE of the devil’. That’s why Paul coined them ‘WILES‘.

Wiles are devious, cunning, manipulative, persuading tricks, schemes and strategies. Wiles are intended to deceive, seduce and manipulate.  Guess who has totally mastered the art of using wiles…. Satan!!.  He throws wiles as darts all the time. Then he awaits your response/reactions. The moment you say ‘yes’ to any of these darts, he aims at you fully.

But thank God Jesus saw through him, big brother Paul saw through him and I am hoping every Christian would see him just as he is- cunning, manipulative and seductive, constantly creating mirages to spread fear, hopelessness and despair.

The devil’s wiles are subtle, often clad as harmless baits which can easily ease into our lives and circumstances. Therefore to be sensitive, discerning and alert at all times, every follower of Jesus Christ must be  fully armoured at all times.

What is the ARMOUR of God?

In spite of the minute details provided of Goliath’s armour, I cannot categorically say it was a complete armour (forgive me). Did Goliath feel some part of his body was still at risk of being hurt despite his regalia? Possibly  🙂

Thankfully we have no such fear with our spiritual armour, ……we find the FULL (whole) armour of God in Ephesians 6: 11, 13-19;

“Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil…Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints-and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.”  NKJV.

Question: How do you ‘put on’ salvation, righteousness, truth, faith, and the word of God?   🙂

The answer to this question (and more) will be coming to you in the second part of this blogpost series.

Stay with me.

My love always……