======================================================================== A LIVING CHURCH IS ENGAGED IN SPIRITUAL WARFARE by Santosh Poonen ======================================================================== Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of every individual, including children, being actively engaged in spiritual warfare through prayer. It highlights the authority believers have over Satan when they have a clear conscience and have repented of sin. The message encourages praying with authority, resisting the work of Satan, and seeking to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit for empowerment in spiritual battles. Topics: "Spiritual Warfare", "Authority in Prayer" Scripture References: Ephesians 6:12, James 4:7, Acts 1:8, 1 John 1:9, Luke 10:19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This sermon emphasizes the importance of every individual, including children, being actively engaged in spiritual warfare through prayer. It highlights the authority believers have over Satan when they have a clear conscience and have repented of sin. The message encourages praying with authority, resisting the work of Satan, and seeking to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit for empowerment in spiritual battles. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I'd like to share a brief word of encouragement, something I've been meditating on the last three or four days, about prayer, which I thought would be good to share. I believe, dear family, that we must be a church that everybody is involved in spiritual warfare. It's not just something that us elders or the older men in the church do. It's something, especially for you children, I want you to know that you too must be involved in spiritual warfare. If you have a clear conscience, that means all of your sins, you've repented of your sins, confessed your sins, and you have a clear conscience before God, then you have authority over Satan. If you've repented of all your sins and especially sins of pride, if you can honestly say you've examined your heart and you're not aware of any pride in your heart, you've repented of pride, repented of all known sin, then you have authority over Satan. You don't have to be an old man or anything like that. And many people, when they think about having authority over Satan, they think about casting out demons. That is just a very small part of having authority over Satan, because the number of people in the world that are actually demon-possessed is not that high. There are demon-possessed people in the world, but it's not the biggest problem in the world. And we must make sure that we know that authority over Satan is something that is true for all of us in every sphere of our life. Any place that we are in, the devil is operating. It may not be a demon-possessed person, but he's operating there. And he wants all of us to have spiritual authority. And I'm especially speaking to you children, but for all of us, that you too must know that God wants you to have spiritual authority and think what a wonderful church we will be. We are a wonderful church. But how amazing it will be in God's sight and in the heavenly's if everybody at RLCF, every person at RLCF is exercising spiritual authority in prayer. That means when you pray, you're not just praying. It's good that you all pray. I love that, especially, I mean, these meetings, of course, but I think of our Sunday morning prayer times before the meeting. It's a race to pray, especially your children. You're all eager to pray. Sometimes you're starting at the same time and then you wait and that's wonderful. It's really good that you're so eager to pray. Now I think it's good to progress to the next level. And the next level is that we pray with authority. We pray with confidence that God hears our prayer and that prayer is recorded in heaven and has authority, praying with authority. So that means we're not just praying, Lord, thank you for this day. Have anybody who's sick or help anybody who's traveling or things like that. That's good. That's a start. But as you progress from that, you're praying with authority that you have a specific burden on your heart. And those burdens come from circumstances that God allows you to face. So children, it could be, it's not just on Sunday morning now, I'm thinking of on a Wednesday afternoon. I'm quite sure that something happened for each of us today, just today. You take, for example, today, something happened for each of us today where we should have exercised spiritual authority. Something doesn't have to be a big thing, but there's something happened in every one of our lives today where we should have exercised spiritual authority. I believe that with all my heart. Were you aware of it? Did you just sort of miss it? You ignored it and you weren't in tune with heaven enough to know that, man, God allowed that circumstance to happen where I was for me to exercise spiritual authority there. I may not even have said anything out loud, but in my mind and maybe in a whisper, I prayed and I bound the work of Satan and resisted him. I do that often, dear brothers and sisters, dear children. Often I'm in a situation and maybe I just suddenly sense a little bit of oppression in a room that I'm in or somewhere, I sense there's something here, maybe some demonic activity or somebody is under the influence of Satan in some way. I don't have to say anything to that person, but in my heart, I pray, bind the work of Satan, resist it and know that God has placed me there in that situation to exercise the authority of Jesus Christ. I'm especially speaking to you children because I believe God wants us to be such a church, a praying church, a church that prays with authority and exercise that authority. Now, don't get carried away. Don't think I'm going to go out and cast demons out or anything like that. I don't think anybody here, as far as I know, nobody in this meeting has ever cast out a demon or maybe never will. That's not important. What's important is that wherever the devil wants to try to get a foothold, whether in my life or in any situation that I'm in, in somebody else or through some conversation, I can resist Satan. And those people who are under the influence of Satan may not even know that I'm praying against Satan who's influencing them and the things they're talking about in school, let's say. But I deal with Satan and I bind his work and that conversation can come to an end or I walk away from it. Of course, that's the best thing. So I was thinking about that because we had a couple of situations on Sunday where we should have exercised our spiritual authority. And if you were aware of it, whatever came up, whether it's something somebody said or somebody acted, I wonder what your response was. In most of your cases, you probably weren't even aware of it, which is fine. But if you were aware of it, what did you do with it? Did you just sort of kind of like look around and think what's going to happen next? Or was there a sense of, Lord, the devil's trying to get a foothold here somehow. I want to do my part to exercise the authority of Jesus Christ. You could be a 6-year-old little boy or girl, 10-year-old little boy or girl, and you don't have to have high thoughts, but you pray. If you have a clear conscience, you've confessed all your sin, and you pray against Satan, you will realize that Satan has no power over you or over this church. And you can do that not just when we're together on a Sunday or a meeting like this, but when you're by yourself. You don't have to have another person from RLCF there, or even another Christian. You could be all by yourself, but Jesus Christ is in you, you have a clear conscience, and so God can use you to exercise the authority of Jesus Christ in that situation. So the next time something like that comes up, whether it's in a Sunday meeting or something like that, let it be our response. Every one of us who are quietly, silently, what I did in those situations is I put my head down and say, Lord Jesus, I bind the work of Satan here in this place. I speak to Satan, I say, Satan, you have no place in my life, you have no place in this church, you have no place anywhere where God has placed me, and I resist you in the name of Jesus. You rebuke Satan. And I tell you, I learned from a young age that it was perfectly okay, not just okay, but it was good to speak to Satan and to resist him and to not be afraid of him. I happened to witness two or three instances where a demon was cast out, but it was done in such a calm, steady way that it was clear who had authority. There was no screaming and yelling and physically trying to resist or anything. It was just quiet, and the authority of Jesus was established over Satan. And I'm glad I saw that as a little child, because from a young age I realized the devil is not somebody I need to be afraid of. Now it's not somebody that you fool around with either. You don't just jokingly make fun of Satan. He has power. He has power. He still has much power, more power than we have. The devil has more power than we have, but we have authority over him. And I'm thankful that at a young age, I think the first time I saw a demon cast out, I might have been six years old or something like that. But it wasn't done in a way that I was afraid of it. The elders there were not afraid. They didn't tell us children to go away and somewhere in a corner so that we didn't see it. I'm glad we saw it. Now, I'm saying this now because you children may never get to see a demon cast out. That's not the important thing, but you must know what I was thankful that I knew at a young age is that if you're in Christ, Christ is in you. If you have a clear conscience, you have authority over Satan. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. And I hope you'll carry that with you, children, everywhere you go. So anytime you face a situation and God will bring more situations like that into our church. And I was talking with one of the other brothers recently, a few days ago, that we don't say, oh, Lord, don't let those come such people come here or let those situations come to our church. No, I pray that if there's somebody who's under the oppression of Satan, that God can say to them, I know where I can send such a person. I can send them to RLCF. They will deal with Satan. They are humble people. They're a broken people. They're not trying to impress anybody. They keep their consciences clear. And I can send that person, man or woman, to RLCF and they'll get help there. So we welcome such that we don't go looking for it. And we don't have had such high thoughts that we assume that we can, you know, take authority like that. But we say, Lord, we hope you can bring them here because they'll get help here in a quiet, steady way. And if you can't send them to RLCF, tell us why. Are we unbelieving? Are we a fearful people? Is there a lack of a clear conscience in any of us? Is there sin in our midst that we haven't dealt with? Is there any one of us that doesn't have complete confidence that we have authority over Satan? Then Lord, let's repent. Let it be so that everybody at RLCF has a clear conscience. There's no secret sin. You may have fallen. I'm not saying that you live perfectly, but if you've fallen, you've repented as soon as you got light on it and you've gotten on your knees, repented of it and got back up and continued following Jesus. That should be the kind of church we are. That's why we have these prayer meetings, is that we reinforce the authority that God has given us over Satan. I hope you remember that. Also, before we go into the story now, I remember a few years ago why the Lord laid it on my heart to read these biographies. If you remember, for those of you that were here, we started reading the book, They Found the Secret. I recommend that book for you that are old enough to read it. Children, you heard me say the stories. You can go back and listen to many of them. The recordings are there. You can read the children's version of it that I typed out. You can read that in children format. I was reading that book. I finished reading that book. The thing that struck me about that was that all of them, and you'll see that even with the stories we've been reading in this book now, they knew their God, were good Christians, you can say. Their sins were forgiven. They were born again. They were baptized. They attended a good church. They were involved in ministry. They did a lot of evangelism. Some of them were preachers, pastors, and all that. You could say good Christians, but they were lacking the power of the Holy Spirit. They had never experienced a baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire. They never experienced the power of God coming into their lives and strengthening them. It became a burden in my own life, lest that should be true about me or any of us at RLCF, that we would just become a good church, a good New Covenant church, a good even CFC-affiliated church where we're listening to good teachings and we like the teachings that we listen to and all of that, and we'll just become a good group of Christians or a good church with good activities, but we don't have the power of the Holy Spirit. It was the burden of my heart then, and I was challenged afresh as I read the story of John Hyde that it's my burden even today. I believe it's the burden of all of us elders, that there shouldn't be even one person at RLCF who's not continually being filled with the Holy Spirit. I don't know if that's the case, if that's true. I don't know if it's true. Each one of us knows, but if for any of us, our honest testimony today is, Lord, I don't know if I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. There should be a repentance and a mourning and a crying out in this meeting today. I say, Lord, why is it that after hearing for so many years that the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit is for every single believer, that I still don't have an assurance that you filled me? Will you fill me today? That should be the cry of our hearts, and so all of these people that we read about, whether it's all the way in the olden days to Christmas Evans, remember Christmas Evans we heard about, D.L. Moody, Samuel Logan Brangle, and many others like that. There was a time in their life where they were just good Christians, and because they loved God, because they were honest with God, they were honest. That's the key. They weren't just satisfied that they had a good testimony. Even somebody like D.L. Moody, who was preaching already to thousands, but he knew he was not baptized in the Holy Spirit. He was honest to admit it before God, and that's why God baptized him with the Holy Spirit and gave him an anointing and a ministry that was truly what God intended him to have. So I have a fresh burden this evening that it should be true about every one of us at RLCF that we're filled with the Holy Spirit. Don't be discouraged, brothers, sisters, children. Don't be discouraged. Don't look backwards. God is not a backward-looking God. He's a forward-looking God. He says, today, if you hear my voice, don't harden your heart. Today, if you will be honest and acknowledge that there's a lack of boldness in your life, that there's a lack of purity in your life, there's a lack of humility in your life, there's a lack of love and forgiveness for others who have harmed you, there's a lack of joy 24-7 in your life. If you're honest enough to admit it, then God will fill you today. Believe it and cry out to him and say, Lord, I'm not going to pretend anymore. I'm not going to continue as if everything's okay, but I want to be desperate. Many of you can probably say, Lord, my wife knows I'm not the Christian that others think I am. My husband knows I'm not the Christian that others think I am at RLCF. I want to be honest with you today, Lord. I want to bring it into the light before you and confess my sin. All revival begins with the confession of sin. All revival begins with the confession of sin. Now, you don't have to confess it to others, confess it before God, because even a lot of false revival, I think, can be a false confession of sin to others to appear holy or to appear like I've been revived. Confess it before the Lord. If you've wronged somebody, then confess it to them. But let there be a cry of repentance in our hearts this evening to set matters right, to decide that today onwards I'm going to walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, never allow even a little stain of the world or of sin to be there in my life. It'll be a wonderful, wonderful day today and a wonderful day tomorrow and wonderful days ahead for us as a church, for us individually and us as a church. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/hOvlAbyo-Aw.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/santosh-poonen/a-living-church-is-engaged-in-spiritual-warfare/ ========================================================================