You and I are engaged in a real battle, one of cosmic proportions. We know we are facing a real opponent because this world bears the bloody, painful scars of this conflict: war among nations, shattered lives, broken homes, suicide, rape, abuse, and immorality of every kind. My goal is to help you see that this battle in which you and I are engaged is first and foremost the Lord’s battle, not ours. Only when we see this will we be able to wage victorious spiritual warfare.

I have a declaration to make. You and I are at war! In fact, we are engaged right now in the mother of all battles. No war in history can compare with the battle you and I fighting. It can be either the cause of your greatest joy as a Christian, or of your deepest pain.

The war I am talking about is the spiritual warfare that you became a part of the day you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. This war affects every area of your life. There is no way you can avoid the conflict. There is no bunker of foxhole you can crawl into that will shield you from the effects of this battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan.

Your worldview is simply the lens through which you perceive reality.

There are really only two categories of worldviews.

One is a natural or materialist worldview, what people today call the scientific worldview. This view says that man by his reason can figure out how the world works and that man can basically save himself by understanding the world. People who hold this view seek life’s answers in the natural realm. If you can put it in a test tube, examine it under a microscope, or explain it through natural processes, that’s all you need.

The naturalistic view is not sufficient because it is limited to the physical realm. Therefore , it doesn’t answer the ultimate question: who you are, where you came from, why are you here. This view does not address the invisible part of human beings, the soul, and spirit.

The second category of worldviews is the spiritual worldview, which says there is a realm outside of the physical. 

A spiritual worldview is very popular right now, but unfortunately it is often not a biblically based. Instead, it is a man-centered view that believers in any form of spirituality that seem to pay off. This is the world of horoscopes, and palm readers, and all sorts of New Age teaching.

Obviously, this is not the worldview of the Bible. It is possible to have a spiritual worldview that is plugged into the wrong spirit. Your worldview affects your approach to spiritual warfare because it colors the way you see the nonmaterial world—and it determines whether you even believe in a spiritual realm.

In order to understand spiritual warfare, we have to address it through the lens of the spirit, with the help of the Holy Spirit.