The devil’s three main weapons are fear, sin and deception. In John 8:44, Jesus says that the devil is a murderer and a liar. As a murderer, he releases violence against us, and this brings fear. As a liar, he releases deception against us. And he has always tempted us to sin.
All these three weapons get their energy from a demonic
presence that accompanies them. God has an unlimited Presence; the angels and
demons have a limited spiritual presence, and their presence is qualitatively
different from God’s.
The presence of God bears fruit, and so does the presence of
the enemy, but of a rotten kind, if we allow it to operate in our lives.
Galatians 5:22-23 says that the fruit of God’s presence in
our lives is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness and self-control.
The fruit of demonic presence in our lives, if we allow it
to affect us, are the works of fear, sin and deception.
In Ephesians 2:2, Paul writes about the pervasive presence
of the demonic forces around us, and how it brings sin into our lives.
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
This demonic atmosphere around us makes it harder to believe in the Word of God, makes us forget His promises, and seeks to disconnect us from the flow of the Holy Spirit within us through making it difficult for us to experience God’s presence.
Enemy is the master of attacking us through manipulating our
emotions. This is because our emotions are more intertwined with our beliefs
than we realise. Through affecting our emotions, the devil can affect what we
believe and influence our behaviour. Robert C. Solomon, Professor of
Philosophy, writes on the philosophy of emotions.
Beliefs and emotions are related in many important ways:
belief as precondition or presupposition of emotion, and belief as brought
about by emotion (say, by way of wishful thinking or rationalisation).
This is quite an illuminating point of view. I don’t know if
it happens to you, but when I feel low, facts look different from when I feel
optimistic. When I feel low, nothing seems possible; when I feel hopeful, even
impossible seems possible.
I reason in an entirely different way when I feel hopeful
than when I feel depressed. That is because our emotions affect our beliefs.
They affect our thought processes deeply, and they manifest in our thoughts.
Paul writes in Romans 12:2,
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
In Ephesians 4:20-24, Paul says that “the spirit of your
mind” needs continual renewing.
But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
The Spirit-filled state of your mind is continually
bombarded with deceitful lusts, fear and arguments. These attacks come from the
inside—what Paul calls flesh—but also from demonic beings.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5,
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ
One of the main weapons the devil uses against you is
releasing fear-filled arguments. These are some of the fiery arrows Paul asks
us to use the shield of faith against in Ephesians 6:13-18. Their goal is to
disconnect your mind from the continual indwelling of the Holy Spirit. If they
achieve to do that, the devil knows he will be able to defeat you.
These fiery arrows are not just facts; they are burning with
demonic poison. We accept them because they sound factual, but they are at best
only partial facts and immersed in fear, and in other emotions such as anger
and a sense of guilt.
The main goal of releasing fear and guilt is not necessarily
to make you submit to them, but to make you vulnerable to sin and deception.
Here, the enemy is using our psychological defence mechanisms against us.
The only way to combat demonic fear and guilt are the
presence and promises of God; all attempts of self-defence without the Holy
Spirit can lead to destructive or addictive behaviour.
If you breathe in the demonic fear produced by the prince of
the air and his vassals, the fearful emotion itself will become a factory for
fear-filled thoughts, and your fear-filled mind will end up doing the devil’s
job for him.
I have the gift of discerning spirits, and I can often
discern how a demonic disturbance seeks to encapsulate my mind like a bubble or
a sphere that begins to interfere with my thought processes and produces a
diversity of fears or other negative emotions.
When under this demonic disturbance, for example, on the way
to work, I can fear a multitude of things from a relationship breakdown to
financial ruin, and whatever else, depending on what news headlines I read in
the paper. It is as if the atmosphere of fear was able to seep deep in my
thought processes and dig up even my deepest subconscious fear, and articulate
it clearly.
The enemy might not necessarily feed me these individual
fear-filled thoughts, but instead, he surrounds me with a spiritual environment
that begins to feed my imagination and reasoning processes. He doesn’t need to
read my mind, but simply surround it with his presence, and my imagination will
do the rest.
Our reasoning and emotions aren’t that separate from each
other. Contrary to common understanding, emotions and thoughts don’t displace
each other.
So, the enemy often attacks our faith through manipulating
our emotions that begin to warp our beliefs, which will in turn begin to affect
our behaviour. But because emotions and beliefs are so interwoven, the enemy
can also attack our emotions through arguments—the process also works in
reverse.
The apostle Paul saw many arguments as spiritually loaded.
He writes in 2 Corinthians 10:4-6,
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.
Emotions also appear to behave like arguments. Robert C.
Solomon writes,
Emotions are in fact assessments that are perceived as particularly important for the agent . . . For this reason, emotions play a crucial role in the process of decision-making.
If the enemy can affect your emotions, he can influence your
decision-making. Robert C. Solomon concludes,
An emotion is a system of concepts, beliefs and attitudes,
and desires, virtually all of which are context-bound, historically developed
and culture specific.
Our six basic emotions are: fear, disgust, surprise,
sadness, happiness and anger. The devil can manipulate each one of these
emotions to weaken our faith. I focus on fear here, because it is one of the
main weapons of the enemy. But the devil can use all these emotions to
disconnect us from the presence of God.
I often find that the enemy seeks to use my memories against
me. By bringing certain types of memories to my awareness, the enemy will also
bring the mood associated with the memory.
Our emotions affect the way we see the future. Fear makes
the future seem hopeless.
Jean Paul Sartre, an atheist existential philosopher,
writes,
The meaning of realism, of naturalism, and of materialism lies in the past: these three philosophies are descriptions of the past as if it were present.
Often, when the enemy fights against God’s promises in your
life, he leads you to focus on the material and financial limitations of your
life. If he can make you think about your life mainly on materialistic terms,
he can easily kill any God-given dream in your life through bringing a sense of
determinism, so that you become a prisoner of the past. He will whisper to your
ear: “Look at your life. Things might change, but they will change so slowly
that you will never make it to the future God has promised to you.” But God is
the Master of multiplication. He doesn’t multiply seeds from 1 to 2, but from 1
to 30 or 100. Matthew 13:8 says,
But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
But the devil will tell you that you will only add from 1 to
2, and even that, only with the greatest of your effort.
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and it is indispensable in our
battle against the enemy. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:13,
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Hope, faith and love are all attributes of God Himself, and
that is why, when we are full of His Spirit, we are also full of hope. And hope
is the greatest weapon against depression and despair. But the fear of future
is the opposite of hope for future.
Can you see why the devil loves prophecies spreading fear?
Can you see why our media can’t get enough of doom and gloom? The devil likes
to feed our thought factories of fear, so that we would live our lives in an
atmosphere of fear.
The enemy attacks the emotions to colour the narratives and
the metaphors through which we perceive our lives, and through connecting your
emotions to false memories that are only partially based on reality.
The reality is that no matter what happened in the past, God
is still with us, and God was in control even in the past. And He will also be
in control in future.
Satan is an expert in fear, because he has lived in fear for
thousands of years. He and his demonic army know every nuance of fear. They
have been in the presence of God, they know who God really is, and they know
that, one day, they will be judged.
The apostle James writes,
You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! (James 2:19)
The demons fear God, and this fear goes to their very core.
Hence they can’t help but to radiate fear. And a demonic spirit that spreads
fear will also spread rebellion, unbelief and deception.
All Christian leaders are under heavy spiritual attack, at
all times, but many of them are not even theologically open to an idea about a
negative, supernatural force influencing them. Hence they respond to a
supernatural attack in the natural, self-medicating against the symptoms but
never really dealing with the real cause. This can lead to all sorts of
addictive and destructive behaviour, including alcoholism, addiction to sex and
pornography, and drug use.
1 John 4:18 says,
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.
This isn’t a word of judgment for those who feel fear, but a
word of encouragement. But isn’t it interesting that the apostle John positions
fear as the enemy of God that must be overcome by the power of God?
I used to be of the opinion that a little bit of fear in my
life didn’t really matter. But I have come to realise that fear can easily
bring disobedience into our lives. Abraham sinned because of fear. King Saul
sinned and lost his anointing because of fear.
Also, fear opens up all kinds of other emotions and wrestles
our mind out of submission to the Holy Spirit. It weakens our resistance
against the demonic powers and the power of sin. Sometimes, the devil just
hates to see you blessed and wants to rob you of joy, so he attacks you with
fear.
There are many negative emotions, but fear is perhaps the
most destructive one, as it is very deceitful, and we don’t always realise that
it opens the door to demonic influences in our lives.
This article has been extracted from my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus Through the Gifts of the Spirit.
You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mpjoensuu/ or by visiting markojoensuu.com.
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