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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.
A lot of Christians don’t even know they’re at war. But others can see the results of the battle in their lives, because they have become casualties of spiritual warfare. They are discouraged, depressed, downtrodden, and defeated. Others are marital and family casualties. Divorce, conflict, and abuse are some of the battle scars these believers bear.

Since we are at war, and since there is so much at stake both here on earth and in eternity, we’d better find out what spiritual warfare is about and how to fight the battle successfully.
Spiritual warfare is that conflict being waged in the invisible, spiritual realm that is being manifest in the visible, physical realm. In other words, spiritual warfare is a battle between invisible, angelic forces that affect you and me the cause of the war is something you and I can’t see. But the effects are very visible in the kind of problems I mentioned earlier in the day-to-day stuff you and I face all the time. It’s hard enough to fight an enemy you can see. It’s much harder to fight someone you can’t see.

In his classic statement on spiritual warfare, Paul wrotein Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
The point I want to you to see here is that we make a big mistake if we think people are the real problem.  People can be bad, no doubt. But as bad as people can be, they are merely conduits for this greater battle. Satan has been successful in getting us to fight people rather than fighting that which is causing people to be the way they are. What we need to understand is that what happens through people, including you and me, has its roots in something much larger. This fact does not excuse the wrong things people do. They are still responsible. But it helps us focus on the real enemy.

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.
What is Satan’s battle strategy in spiritual warfare? Paul outlined the strategy of the devil. Speaking to this the Corinthian church, the apostle wrote in 2 Corinthians 11:3, “But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”  Satan’s battle strategy is simple. He is out to deceive us, to trick us into buying his lies and temptations. He’s been at his plan for countless years, and he’s good at it.