spiritual-warfare

Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation resisted may become more, not less, fierce.

In such an admirable position of the New World, man has no other enemy than himself.

The devil is a bad devil.

By the anointing of the Holy Spirit, anybody who is afflicted by any phobia can be set free.

There can be no substitute for a personal study of the Word of God! Daily devotionals, Bible commentaries, and recorded messages by anointed preachers and teachers are wonderful and useful. However, they cannot take the place of the Word of God. They must not replace a time of personal study of the Word. Every Christian individual must study and meditate upon the Word for him or herself. Nobody can do that for anyone else.

The modern world has forgotten the necessity of encouraging men to be better. They speak of sick men or healthy men, of interesting people or uninteresting people; they never, or seldom, indicate that there is and must be an interior and spiritual improvement in man before any of the glowing coals of humanity can be reached. They have cultivated everything but the goodness of man. The result of such shallowness is everywhere apparent.

Fear is a scheme that the devil uses to great effect. From my personal study, the words __o not be afraid_ or __ear thee not_ (depending on the Bible translation) appear over one hundred times in the Bible! The message from God is quite clear: we need not be afraid!

The Bible explains that Satan is real, nurses a serious grudge and has impressive power. But having been created, he has limitations. He can never be equal to God in anything."--Kristine McGuire, An Insider's Guide to Spiritual Warfare, Chapter 3, "Know Your Enemy.

Even Satan can quote scripture out of context why are we surprised when men do it.

A heroine makes progress against an enemy who would manipulate her thoughts when she begins to probe his and see weakness.

Have you ever wondered why you did not rapture and go to heaven the day you became a Christian? It is because God has work for you to do here on earth! Having gone to heaven, Jesus expects you to be his body on earth. You are his hands, his feet, his voice.

Joseph moved to prove his sincerity in his vision-they moved ahead to invalidate his sincerity and what they think is his imaginative illusion.

For specific prayers, there are specific answers.

Since the basic cause of man__ anxiety is the possibility of being either a saint or a sinner, it follows that there are only two alternatives for him. Man can either mount upward to the peak of eternity or else slip backwards to the chasms of despair and frustration. Yet there are many who think there is yet another alternative, namely, that of indifference. They think that, just as bears hibernate for a season in a state of suspended animation, so they, too, can sleep through life without choosing to live for God or against Him. But hibernation is no escape; winter ends, and one is then forced to make a decision__ndeed, the very choice of indifference is itself a decision. White fences do not remain white fences by having nothing done to them; they soon become black fences. Since there is a tendency in us that pulls us back to the animal, the mere fact that we do not resist it operates to our own destruction. Just as life is the sum of forces that resist death, so, too, man__ will must be the sum of the forces that resist frustration. A man who has taken poison into his system can ignore the antidote, or he can throw it out the window; it makes no difference which he does, for death is already on the march. St. Paul warns us, __ow shall we escape it we neglect so great a salvation_ (Heb 2:3). By the mere fact that we do not go forward, we go backward. There are no plains in the spiritual life, we are either going uphill or coming down. Furthermore the pose of indifference is only intellectual. The will must choose. And even though an __ndifferent_ soul does not positively reject the infinite, the infinite rejects it. The talents that are unused are taken away, and the Scriptures tell us that, __ut because though art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth_ (Rev. 3:16).

A man might as well hope to fight a swarm of flies with a sword as to master his own thoughts when they are set on by the devil.

No matter how fierce the enemy seems--when fear cripples us, anger enrages us, or selfishness possesses us; when adversity crushes us, opposition hounds us, or temptation plagues us--God is greater.

We as Christians are called to battle. The problem is, we don__ fight about the right things and we do fight about the wrong things. We aren__ getting in the battle that we should and so we fight over petty, insignificant things. Why? Because we are bored. We are soldiers created for fighting against the enemy, Satan, but instead we fight against each other.

If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were educated. But a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.