The Battleground of the Christian Life
You must understand that there is a great warfare that everyone, especially believers, must face. Scripture clearly states that the world is a battleground between God’s children and Satan’s agents. Once you repent and raise the banner of the King of Kings anywhere, the devil will become furious with you.
His agents around you will heat the furnace in anger against you, trying to bring you under subjection and influence you to obey the evil laws in the territory they claim to own. You must understand that the Christian life is not about ease but is likened to warfare, wrestling, and fighting (2 Corinthians 10:3-5; 1 Corinthians 15:30-32; Ephesians 6:12). If there were no battle to fight and war to engage in, Paul would have told us.
The Internal Strongholds
There’s a stronghold to pull down right within your heart to bring light into your darkened understanding, to liberate your heart from deceit, wickedness, and defilement. There’s a stronghold built by the devil in every human mind. You need to fight to destroy the powers of darkness in your mind and defiled conscience. You need to liberate your deceived heart that’s desperately wicked. Your soul, which has been enslaved by sin, needs deliverance. Your warfare must start from the root, right inside you, to conquer the effects of the fall of man.
The Call to Fight from Within
Believers are called to fight and pull down the old man, the body of sin, the carnal nature, the flesh, and every filthiness right inside us. We must destroy and completely pull down the inward enemy, the dominating tyrant, and the mortal nature from the root (1 Timothy 6:12; 1 Corinthians 9:25-27).
Overcoming the Flesh and Spiritual Forces
Every rooted evil imagination, every high thing, and every evil force that reigns over you must be cast out. All bad characters in us must be brought down to obey Christ. We mustn’t give up like Achan, but we must fight the good fight of faith. We must strive for mastery to obtain an incorruptible crown. We mustn’t beat the air or run this race with uncertainty. We must bring our bodies under divine control and submission to God’s will to avoid the mistake Achan made.
While still in this flesh, we must understand that there are spiritual, invisible forces fighting to bring believers down to disobey God. The people we see in our midst doing wrong things physically are the agents of those invisible forces. They are not our main enemies, nor are they the source or strongholds of our conflict. These evil forces plant evil imaginations in their agents to fight against God’s knowledge in God’s children. They want the knowledge of God to die so that they can establish their evil knowledge here on earth. That’s why they use their human agents to fight believers who know God. Believers should arm themselves with the resources provided by God to fight, wrestle, war, and defeat them here on earth (Ephesians 6:10-11, 13).
The Armor of God and Spiritual Victory
Believers have all the armor provided by God to fight every spiritual warfare. When you put on this armor and use it rightly, you will be assured of victory. Without putting on the whole armor, you will not be strong enough to fight and will surely lose the war. Before you can start fighting and become strong in the Lord, you must have died to sin and become alive unto God (Romans 6:11-12).