 I will take my proof reading from Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 10. Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. And I'm going to read verse 11 and 12 in just a second. But Apostle Paul talks about be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. I want to share with you just spiritual strategies to live victorious in a spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is happening right now. You are in it. You will be in it. The only place where there will be no spiritual warfare is in heaven. But on this earth there will be a spiritual warfare. You are in the spiritual world and you are being affected by that world. Now just like when America is in war with another country, not every single day they're actually shooting at each other. But the fact that they are in war, some days they prepare, then they have the days where they go into the assault, into the attack mode, and then those days are called evil days, which we're going to see in just a minute. But Apostle Paul begins something before he talks about the spiritual warfare. He says be strong in the Lord. I love the fact that He commands you to be strong. And I want you to write this down. Being strong is a command. It's not an option. It's not a feeling. It is safe for you to feel strong. He says be strong. Be strong. That means that strength, as the Webster dictionary defines it, is a strength. Being strong is a quality of mind that enables one to meet danger and difficulties with firmness and with valor. We read today about Joshua. God came to Joshua and says be strong. And he says again be strong. And he says again be strong. And he says don't be dismayed. Be strong. See he says Joshua, see he says Joshua, you're taking over for Moses. Moses had the education. Moses had the spiritual encounters. Moses had the knowledge of wilderness. And Joshua, you are young. You are inexperienced. But listen, Moses only fought two wars. You will fight 31. Moses, though anointed, educated, famous, and great guy, he could get people to promised land. But you will. He says your advantage is not your education. It's not your experience. It's your strength. See I have to tell you something right now. Your advantage in the spiritual realm is not even your knowledge of the Bible, though that is extremely important. It's not even the length of the time you've been in the church, though that is valuable. Your advantage in the spiritual realm is being strong. You may say but how can I be strong when I don't feel strong? Well for Joshua he said because I am with you. For us it's because God is in us. See for Joshua God says I am with you will never leave you. For you God says I am in you and I'm not never leaving. Like I mentioned during prayer the only thing Jesus abandoned is a grave. He will never abandon you. He lives in you. That's one of the reasons when you don't feel strong. Just simply remind yourself I am not alone in this. The God of the universe lives inside of me through his spirit. Therefore being strong is not an option. Amen. Can somebody say amen. Any strong people we have in this house today. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. And Satan knows when you come with a little attitude. When you come you know and you you're little but you know who you are. You know you know there's some people who come and they come and even to the story and they just they just get their attitude like whoa you gotta be careful around that. And see when Satan senses that you walk in and you don't know every single thing. Like David when you come on a battlefield you don't have the proper armor. You've never been in the army but you got an attitude. And David didn't just come and say if it's the will of God I will take you down. If it's in God and his sovereignty has foreseen this moment before the foundations of the earth. David came in and he says you've been talking trash against the God's armies. He says you got God offended. He says and today I'm gonna kill you take off your head and the birds of the air are gonna have a wonderful wonderful feast. David are you higher starting? What are you on? The strength of the Lord. What are you on? The Lord is with me. He lives in me. Therefore you cannot be afraid of demons even if they come at night to torture you. Be strong. Even if they come and mess stuff in your room. Be strong. Even if there are spiritual forces that come against you and you feel that. Be strong. Because that is the first strategy. If Satan makes you weak. If you feel weak. If you are weak confess that you're strong. Because let the weak say I am strong. Amen. So I mean in every way you're gonna have to be strong. Even if you feel weak. If you are weak God still says you have to take be strong for your family. For your marriage. And for your community. Number two or the second verse that I want us to read is verse 12. So we skip one verse and verse 12. It says this for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against rulers of darkness of this age against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. The second strategy for spiritual warfare that I want you to write down is this is fight battles with spoil only. And don't be distracted with battles that have no reward. It's interesting that before Apostle Paul talked about you know us overcoming and us winning he mentioned make sure we don't fight against flesh and blood. Meaning God only anoints you to win spiritual battles not online arguments. Arguing online is like being in a win. It gets messy. That's all. God didn't anoint you to win arguments. He anointed you to win souls. A bulldog can beat a skunk every single time. But a bulldog has to ask himself a question. Is the smell worth the fight? You have to ask yourself a question. Not every battle you have to be engaged in because God anoints you to win battles against spiritual hosts, principalities, powers of darkness. He gives you enough oil for that. But the problem is this is before we get to the Goliath Satan positions the brothers of David to trip David because see the brothers are cowards. They don't want to fight the Goliath. And because we're created to fight we have to fight something. So we end up fighting people. So the brothers want to fight David to distract him so that he will lose his peace. So he will lose his anointing and so that he will never go up fighting Goliath because he's been fighting his brothers and he lost the grace on his life. That's why when you engage in fighting with people you will always feel loss of anointing because God didn't anoint you to fight against people. And if you want to fight against a real enemy you're going to have to learn to walk away from fighting with the haters. There are some people you can prove you can bring Jesus from heaven in front of them. They're going to still don't like you. Jesus did every miracle. It was verifiable by science. It was verifiable by time. He rose from the dead. It was verifiable by Romans and yet Pharisees still didn't like him. What makes you think? If Jesus couldn't prove them right you can. Arguing, debating, trying to argue people into faith, fight them into faith, all of these heavy stuff, all of that only disturbs your peace and it cripples you from fighting the real enemy. If you want to be anointed avoid fighting annoying people. That is the secret especially during this conference. There are people who blast us online. Facebook has this beautiful thing called block where you block them and you don't see them. There are people who genuinely want to know the truth and they'll write to you. They'll genuinely be upset over some things and they'll ask you and you can genuinely respond. But there are people that just simply want to try you into a fight so that you fight them. But listen, you are anointed to fight against the enemy. You have to ask yourself a question. Yes, I can win an argument. What will I get after that? What will I get from winning an argument? Some people will text you and try to just pick a fight. Don't argue with people if you want to be successful in the spiritual world. I believe one of the reasons why all Testament did not have casting out of demons is because people were busy killing each other. If you fight people, you don't have time to fight the devil. If you realize in the Old Testament there was every miracle as in the New Testament, even some greater miracles than in the New Testament. But one thing we don't see, we see demons in the Old Testament. Oh, we sure we know there were demons in the Old Testament. A lot of them. But we don't see demons coming out of people. There was one time when David played a harp and the demon would leave for a moment but still come back. But people wouldn't experience deliverance from demonic oppression. Why? Because one of the reasons is they were engaged in fighting each other. When we fight each other, we don't fight the devil. We do the devil's dirty work. And so whether it's somebody else's from the church that you came from that you don't like or somebody saying something about that, we are too busy casting out of demons, healing the sick, starting the home groups, filling auditoriums with the name of Jesus Christ, and helping the people to stop and try to win an argument with some people. And we can sleep just fine not proving to people we are right. Because their opinions didn't help our church to start and it won't crush our church. Their opinions, they are like feet. Everyone has them and sometimes they stink. Their opinions cannot pay your utility bill so they shouldn't keep you from sleeping at night. You have to be a person like Paul said, don't engage in a battle with people. That's it. Love them, pray for them, say, you know what? If you want to know the truth, come we can talk. But if you want to argue, please find someone else who isn't doing anything with their life, yuck yourself. But I'm going to be busy doing what God called me to do in Jesus' name. Because somebody say, hey man, church, put your hands together for Jesus. Number three, the strategy of Satan, if you can help a little bit with my mic. A strategy of Satan is to use the evil day to make you into an evil person. And as you're writing this, I'm going to read to you the verse. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand. I want you to see this, that Paul is saying, I want you to take up the armor of God so that you can withstand on the evil day, evil day. Somebody say evil day, evil day. I love the fact it didn't say evil days. That means that when you know how those days or the day where everything just goes against you. It starts from the sleep. You had a nightmare. You wake up, you know, and then just everything, your dog doesn't like you. Your coffee machine doesn't like you, stopped working somewhere, you can't find your keys, and just kind of everything like a domino effect just goes in, goes in, goes in, goes in. And Paul is saying what happens is in the spiritual warfare, there is a time where it's called an evil day where just things don't go right. You had them? How many you have them today? Don't now raise your hand. An evil day. And the amazing part is the Bible says that there's things we can do to keep it one day. So the next day, a clock resets. Or the Satan's goal is to take that day which you have, I have, every one of us once in a while have, to take the evil day and to extend it from evil day to evil week, from evil week to evil month, from evil month to evil season, and then to make you an evil person. That even when the evil day ended, you still have evil in your life because now it's inside of you. That is a strategy of hell, is to use the evil day that sometimes it comes on everyone of us, the good, the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous because we're in a spiritual warfare. But Paul is saying it only has to be evil day. The spiritual warfare is always, but evil day is not evil days. That means the next morning God resets his mercy and the new day begins and God shows his grace and that evil day ended yesterday. Can somebody say a man? And I want you to write this down. The spiritual armor is not to prevent the evil day, it's to prevent you from becoming an evil person. God never gave you spiritual armor to stop the devil from attacking you. He gave you a spiritual armor from causing you to become changed by the evil day that has come upon your life. And the armor of God is very simple. And I'm going to just quickly mention what the armor of God is. The first part of the armor of God is the helmet of salvation. If you are writing this down, I want you to write down, put on the helmet of salvation and take off the hat of condemnation. The armor of God is this. God wants you to cover your mind with the helmet of salvation. It means live your life out of the position. I am saved and I'm going to heaven. You may say what does this has to do with like bottom is falling out of under my feet. If like I can't make my payment on my car and my rent is due. What does this has to do? It has to do with everything. Because your life on this earth, no matter how difficult or how hard it gets, it will come to an end and living mindful that you're a child of God and you're going to heaven, removes a lot of perspective from a lot of these problems. Jesus told disciples when they came to him and said, demons obey us in your name. We are so pumped and excited. And Jesus says, make sure that's not the source of your joy. Rejoice that your names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Meaning, meaning, put on your helmet. Don't base your joy on the fact somebody got delivered or you got a breakthrough. Jesus says, wear your helmet and your helmet is your saved and you're going to heaven in a spiritual warfare. It's important to remember your citizenship is in heaven. You are a citizen of heaven. You're a soldier in the army of God, but a citizen of heaven. Can somebody say amen? Somebody say hallelujah. What the devil does in the evil day, he puts on a hat called condemnation. Well, you start digging around and looking, what did I do wrong to cause this evil day? I wonder in which way that I opened my life to the devil, the fact that I had a nightmare. I wonder, well, why is this happening? Now if the Lord reveals to you a certain open door, you got to go deal with it. But if you go looking for something to blame yourself, I have a news flash for you. You will find it. You will find so many things to blame yourself with that Satan will bury you in that head. And Jesus doesn't tell you to look for open doors. He says, lock a helmet on your head when a day goes evil. That means stop looking for causes. Look unto the fact you are a citizen of heaven. That's all. Will this end the fact that the day is evil? No, but it will protect you from becoming condemned, guilty, guilt driven, and down because of that shame and guilt. The second thing is the Lord gives us as an armor is don't lose your integrity on the evil day. He says to put on the breastplate of righteousness. Now there's two interpretations of that. One is that to put on the positional righteousness which we have in Jesus Christ and that is great. But I also believe that this means that on the evil day not to lose your integrity. Integrity is what you do who you are when no one is watching. It's so easy when life gets tough, when that day gets tough to start cutting corners and to lose your integrity. When you keep your integrity, God will protect you. I was fascinated by a story in the Bible when one king he had a dream. That's actually the first time that God visited somebody in the dream. In that story there's also the first time where someone is called a prophet and in that story is the first time in the Bible where somebody got healed. And this king he was not a in covenant with God. He took Sarah Abraham's wife as his wife and during the night God comes to him and says you are a dead man because you took this man's wife and he is my prophet. Can I always surprise how God wasn't embarrassed about his prophet who just lied? I wouldn't call him a prophet. I would say he's working out his salvation with fear and troubling. God comes to the heat and king and he says you're a dead man because you stole my prophet for a wife from my prophet. Somebody tells you about prophets they're not always perfect and he says God I did it in innocence of hands and integrity of my heart and God said this I know that's why I'm warning you. Integrity will always have God's protection even if you're not a Christian. God came to a hidden king during the night and protected him from the dumbest mistake in his life. But God wouldn't warn you if you know what you're doing is wrong. He warned him because he didn't know what he was doing was wrong. God will always protect you when you have integrity. And there are people in the world who are not Christians but they are protected in a spiritual world because they wear a breastplate of righteousness and you can name it, claim it, blab it, grab it, confess it, possess it all of that. But if you don't have integrity you will be under assault of the enemy. In the hard times it's hard to have integrity because it's easier to just kind of slide back and do whatever is easy instead of whatever is right. And just because nobody is watching that doesn't mean the devil isn't seeing it and God isn't seeing it. Because somebody say amen. Number three is that God tells us to put on the belt and the belt is this is the truth. Now I've never spoken like this I'm about to say the truth is honesty and I want you to remember this. You can only be free according to your ability to be truthful, according to your ability to be honest. You cannot be free from an addiction if you're pretending that you can manage it. You cannot be free from adultery, lust if you're always covering it up. And God says put on the belt of truth because Satan is the father of lies and the only way to overcome him is on the evil day to be as truthful and honest about your condition and your struggle and what's going on with you as you can. The moment you begin to cover and protect yourself by saying if I hide this truth from my spouse, if I hide this truth from my parents, if I hide this truth from everyone else and I'm gonna still put on a facade. See you just lost a belt in a spiritual world. You still kept your reputation but in a spiritual world you lost your leverage against the enemy because the enemy you have is a liar. If you are a liar that not only you have an evil day you now are becoming an evil person. That even when the evil day ends evil will continue in your life. Why? Because you transferred the demonic nature into your character by hiding things away and living a deceitful lying life. We hate being honest because we feel like it will embarrass us. In reality it will embarrass the demons and the lying spirits, not you. No marriage can ever work without honesty. When there is no honesty there is no trust. Every wife and every husband will say, Warren Buffett said honesty is an expensive gift. Don't expect it from cheap people. The most beautiful part about honesty, you don't ever have to remember who you told what. When you're lying it's so hard because you have to remember all your lies and you're gonna repeat all of them all the time and one small slip and all of them go like a domino effect. You can never be free if you're not honest. If people have to corner you then show you proof. This is the text message. This is what you did. This is I saw. There's the pictures. You will not have the opportunity to be changed. You want to be free whom the sun says free is free indeed. You know the truth and the truth will set you free. If you are truthful that will set you free. If you confess and I'm not talking about you going on Facebook and confess all your sins. I'm talking about you find people in your life that you can be truthful with and God says he will protect you and deliver you in Jesus' name. Can somebody say amen? I remember when last year there was a particular time I was under this attack. It was I had to do with Instagram popular page and I kept finding myself looking at things that were more sensual and they were not wrong but I knew that for me it was wrong to look at those things. There was no way anybody could find out but I felt I felt wrong about it and during my free time I would just literally browse through and I was looking for just pictures but in reality I knew that there was there was a part of me that wanted to look at things that were not good and I drifted toward that and this continued for weeks until my wife on Friday morning mentioned and she said she says everything okay and I said of course everything's fine. I knew nothing was okay but I was like I'm not gonna tell her I got this under control. I'm gonna give it I'm gonna stop this and so we had a date night we went for to watch a movie and so we got the tickets a little bit early and she went to Old Navy to look for some stuff and there we have 15 minutes and I'm sitting in the movie theater and I'm doing exactly same thing that I said to myself I won't do. I'm looking through that and it was a popular page I'm scrolling through and I'm looking for things that are sensual. Embarrassed to admit but admit but that's exactly what I was doing and my wife comes everything is fine we come at night and and there's this tension you know you don't know why but there's that tension there because you have secrets and when you got secrets you can't have intimacy and you can't fool a woman even if she's not Christian she knows it. She has this like spiritual sensors they're like going all off you're like everything is fine everything is fine she knows it's not fine and trust me she is right 99% of the time and so we're there in the bed and we're laying and she says what's going on with you and I said babe everything is amazing I just had a hard day it's always a good excuse I just had a hard day and as we're about to go to sleep I just felt this conviction of the Holy Spirit the fear of God came into me like crazy and God said if you don't confess right now what's going on you're one step away you're gonna fall back into your past sin and out of that you might never come out my God I was like but she'll kill me you know so I decided I'd rather come out clean then and have her kill me then have this sin lead me to something else and it wasn't anything immoral I don't want you to feel like I was committing some sin or anything but it was things that I knew that I was hiding from her and it wasn't right and when I confessed it to her country to my popular belief she didn't kill me she laid her hands on me and no not to choke me right there in bed because I fear for my life she's tiny but don't be fooled and I remember it like yesterday she laid her hands on me and she prayed for me coming out with that something literally that day something was taken away I deleted my Instagram I snapped it little I went completely cold turkey for a whole year with that but something snapped and I was like all that it took not even the prayer line just telling my wife but I feared that I could tell anybody but just not my wife because it will hurt her but see being honest is the belt that guarantees you freedom man woman if you be honest you may say but you don't know what they will do sin will do worse if you're not going to be honest they might be hurt at you they might not like you they might not even talk to you and talk to you and send you on the couch but one thing they will do they will trust you because they'll know you have a consciousness and you will come clean in spiritual warfare honesty is the key amen peace is not natural during an evil day and therefore you have to put it on like shoes in the evil day bible says put on shoes of peace of the gospel when the evil day happens there's something that happens with our mind typically is that our mind starts being fried our mind starts to hurt because the anxiety the stress that comes in the war and it's like this broken broken record and your mind can actually during the during the evil day can get hurt so bad imagine this your mind is like the soles of your feet imagine going hiking the Badger mountain barefoot that's exactly what happens during an evil day your mind gets cut your mind begins to bleed and naturally your mind is exposed to demonic realm that's why Jesus says that peace is not your skin it's not natural to you to be peaceful when everything is breaking apart Jesus says put on peace like you do it with the shoes that means you have to consciously tell yourself Jesus is the prince of peace he gave me peace and I put on that peace on my mind it doesn't remove the rocks in my path it protects the souls of my feet my feet from bleeding out to death because I went through this difficult situation that's why the bible says let peace of God guard rule your mind means allow God's peace in the difficult of all times to rule your mind and if you have that peace you can give that peace to your circumstances you be able to get up in your storm and like Jesus who just slept in the storm you be able to speak to the storm and silence the storm because whatever you have you can always give away and somebody say amen and then we also know that we have to act as though God's word is true this is the helmet of the shield of faith i'm sorry we have to act as though God's word is true and f or the sixth armor on the evil day you find the spirit in the sword this is this has been the source of comfort and encouragement to me almost every single time when I was younger and those evil days would come in what I would do is I would look for the Holy Spirit in prayer or in worship or in my emotions and typically there was like always like a jammed frequency and like Lana mentioned there was that thing that was not there when it's an evil day God tells you the secret where you find the Holy Spirit the spirit is in the sword you don't look for the Holy Spirit in your emotions don't look for the Holy Spirit even in other things Holy Spirit at the time hides in the sword if you want to find him you look in him in here the Holy Spirit led Jesus to the wilderness but in the wilderness you don't see any mention of the Holy Spirit except when Jesus was speaking the word the Holy Spirit's power was released in silencing the devil you will find the Holy Spirit on your evil day in the Holy Scriptures he hides right here you might not feel him here you might not see him all around you and you might even believe a lie that he abandoned you he did not abandon you but he changed his location he hides in the sword and when you use the sword you release his power the Holy Spirit is released not only when you cry and say God my life is so hard why did you leave me but when you stand your ground and you recognize this dagger has the anointing of the Holy Ghost and I have this word and when I release that word it's not just written word this becomes the spirit of God that moves through this word it's a small dagger but it's a powerful dagger because the sword in this is actually speaks of not a big sword it speaks of a small combat dagger and when you begin to use the Scriptures in the difficult time and you tell yourself my God is good he didn't leave me he is for me I am healed by the stripes of Jesus he's working things out this is what happens at that moment you will begin to feel better and the reason you'll feel better is because the enemy will feel worse actually with your words on the evil day what you're doing is you're going to this you see I've been watching movies because on the evil day the last thing I want you to remember is you have to stand to withstand that means the goal on the evil day is not to win it's not to go backwards God didn't say on the evil day I want you to beat the devil he said on the evil day when it gets over I want you to still stand and if you're standing you want many of us think on the evil day I just got chased the devil out of my life on the evil day you just have to make sure the devil doesn't chase you out of yours on the evil day just make sure when that day is over you're standing on both of your feet that is your victory on the evil day redefine your victory on the evil day and God will secure you in Jesus name can somebody say amen thank you for watching this content I hope this was a blessing to you if you're like me and you like to click on things click on this subscribe to our channel and the content will come to you every time we post it and remember the best is yet to come