Summary:

Spiritual warfare takes place in the arena of your mind when Satan puts pressure on your thinking to turn away from the Word of God. However, when you war a good warfare, you are
victorious over the devil. God will never allow you to go through a test
that you cannot pass; He will always make a way of escape.

1. Spiritual warfare takes place in your mind.
   1. Your mind is the arena where you will either win or lose the battles of life.
   2. The spiritual warfare the Apostle Paul refers to is not fought in your physical body (2 Corinthians 10:3-6), but it is fought in your mind.
      1. A carnal person is someone whose thinking goes against the Word of God.
      2. The Christian's primary weapon is the Word of God and is used to pull down strongholds.
         1. The war takes place in your mind, where strongholds exist.
         2. Strongholds are created by thoughts that have been allowed to run freely in your mind, which in turn are nourished by more thoughts, creating a fortified
            house of thoughts. Strongholds will make you say, "I can't stop doing this."
         3. You can pull down negative thinking with the Word of God.
         4. If a thought doesn't line up with the Word, it isn't from God.
         5. Open your mouth and speak the Word to cast down thoughts.
         6. You can't cast down thoughts with thoughts.
         7. You are responsible for speaking the Word and casting down thoughts.
      3. You can't stop thoughts from coming, but you can choose not to receive them.
      4. Thoughts are seeds.
   3. One of Satan's primary attacks is to influence your thinking.
      1. He plants images in your mind then tries to get you to nourish those images with more thoughts.
         1. Satan will always bring an image to you to support your negative thoughts.
      2. If you meditate on something long enough, you are nourishing the image and will eventually act out on it.
      3. You must become a maintenance person over your thought life.
      4. Wrong thinking will be passed down to your children if you don't cast it down.
      5. Satan uses the weapon of suggestion.
         1. Songs, people and conversations are instruments he uses to plant seeds of wrong thinking in your mind.
            
   
   
2. Fighting good warfare means that you win (1 Timothy 1:18-19).
   1. Good fights are always won.
   2. If you want to war a good warfare, and your circumstances reflect the opposite of what you are believing God for, hold on to your faith with
      confidence and a clear conscience.
   3. The enemy's thoughts are designed to get you to faint in your mind.
      1. Satan wins the war when you give up mentally.
         1. Don't get weary and faint in your mind.
            
   
   
3. Don't turn on fleshly lust (1 Peter 2:11).
   1. While you can repent of sin, "turning on" fleshly lust, or feeding your fleshly desires, will create a war in your soul (mind, will, emotions).
      1. You have to battle enough with the devil so don't create new battles that you don't need to fight.
         1. Flee fornication.
         2. Tell people who proposition you that you are "dead" to your old way of thinking.
         3. Christians should turn away from uncleanness.
   2. It is not as easy to turn things off as it is to turn them on.
   3. Christians are citizens of heaven on earth and should carry themselves that way.
      1. Don't act like the world.
      2. Purity equals power.
         
         
4. Temptation is pressure applied to your thinking to get you to go against the Word of God.
   1. Satan is the tempter (Matthew 4:3).
   2. Pressure comes through seductive thoughts and suggestions.
   3. People often justify yielding to pressure by telling themselves that it is okay, or that they "deserve" to enjoy a certain sinful encounter.
   4. The enemy will come as soon as you have made a decision to go the right way.
   5. As a Christian, you have to come to a point of deciding to turn away and do what you have to do to avoid yielding to the temptation.
      1. How can you teach others to be victorious in spiritual warfare when you aren't even victorious in your own warfare?
      2. The loss of things in the natural is usually an indication of spiritual failure.
   6. Discipline doesn't work without boundaries being established.
   7. When you are trying to get delivered from certain things, you can't afford not to establish solid boundaries around your decisions and stick to
      them.
      1. It will then take determination to carry out your decision.
         
         
5. If you are currently being pressured, God has provided a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13).
   1. Your pressure is not uncommon to the human experience.
   2. God promises that He won't allow you to be pressured above your being able to overcome.
   3. If you are presently being tempted, pass the test by deciding ahead of time to resist the temptation.
   4. Your present temptation is confirmation that you have victory over it.
   5. God will not allow you take a test you can't pass.
      1. Every test God allows the enemy to throw at you is an open-book test; you win.
         
         
6. There are certain things you can do to escape temptation.
   1. Prayer (Luke 22:40, 46).
      1. Jesus advises you to pray so that you can stay out of temptation.
      2. When you spend time in prayer in the midst of pressure, the intensity of the pressure will lessen and eventually leave.
      3. Pray the Word and pray in tongues.
   2. The Word of God (Luke 4:1-8).
      1. Jesus resisted the devil by speaking the Word of God when He was tempted. His actions forced the devil to leave Him alone.

Scripture References:

• Philippians 1:27-28
• 2 Corinthians 10:3-6
• 1 Timothy 1:18-19
• 1 Peter 2:11
• Matthew 4:3
• 1 Corinthians 10:13
• Luke 22:40, 46
• Luke 4:1-2