22: Kingdom Worldview: Spiritual Warfare

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail Podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Episode 22. Today we’re wrapping up our worldview series with a look at the final of the three pillars of the kingdom worldview, Spiritual Warfare.

Hello, Father.

[00:33] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Nice to do this again with you.

[00:38] Stephanie: Always! Today we’re coming back to, ironically, safer ground. The last two episodes we’ve talked about such controversial topics as your favorite Pride and Prejudice adaptation and also your thoughts on God’s sovereignty. Today we’re just talking about spiritual warfare.

[00:54] Marcus: Yes, easy stuff, right?

[00:57] Stephanie:  It’s still controversial, but spiritual warfare ministry is in the Deeper Walk’s foundational roots, going all the way back to Mark Bubeck. We’re pretty vocal and anchored in our spiritual warfare teaching, but in this episode, we’re specifically looking at spiritual warfare from the perspective of kingdom worldview. To say this is massively important feels like an understatement, wouldn’t you say?

[01:22] Marcus: Yes, no doubt. My father, your grandfather, his main ministry for years was teaching people worldview. He often heard people say how much their lives changed once they got their worldview turned around and in sync with a kingdom theology.

[01:39] Stephanie: We cannot truly understand our life or the world we live in until we realize we exist in the context of a very real war. Our life, our planet, is a battleground of supernatural proportions. We have talked about spiritual warfare before. So if you, dear listener, missed it and want to learn more, you can jump back to Episodes 14 and 15.

So, Father, you know how I love a good story. One of our favorite family movies growing up was Hook, where Robin Williams plays Peter Pan, who’s all grown up and has kids of his own. Captain Hook comes and kidnaps his kids as bait for a final confrontation with his nemesis. We’ve talked before about how this storyline has some parallels to Satan’s strategy with us. Do you want to tell a little more of the story and give some thoughts?

[02:28] Marcus:  I do remember watching this movie with you guys when you were little or younger. I remember it just hitting me because there was a scene where Captain Hook has kidnapped Peter Pan’s children. He’s got them sitting in a class and he’s up at the chalkboard, writing on the chalkboard why parents hate their kids. And the little girl says, “No, they don’t. My parents love me.” Then Hook gives her a detention like, “Bad girl.” He goes on to make his case, because his goal is to go to battle with Peter Pan.

On the day of battle, for Peter to see his own children siding with Captain Hook,  I thought, wow, that is really profound. That is exactly what Satan’s strategy is. He knows that he can’t hurt God directly, and so he has to hurt God by going after his children. What he’s trying to do is turn his children against him. Not only trying to turn people who don’t believe in him away so they don’t become Christians. But trying to put a wall between Christian children and the Father, so that we don’t trust his love for us, and we don’t live out of that love for us, and we just don’t trust him.

I thought that was a pretty profound picture of how warfare works, and what Satan is actually trying to accomplish in turning people away from God.

[03:56] Stephanie: I also think that’s a great scene showing one of his strategies. One of his key strategies there is deception:  parents hate their children. And she calls him right out, “No, that’s not true.”

Do you want to talk a little bit more about how the enemy uses deception and how that affects our worldview?

[04:15] Marcus: That is a classic scene. Notice that his core lie is why parents hate their children, but then he goes in and he gives them actual evidence: Times when their parents got mad at them about something that was unfair; then his main point is before kids came along, they could do whatever they wanted. Life was fun. Life was better. “Everything was better before you came along,” is kind of the idea.

When Satan deceives us, he always anchors it in things that are true. And so the essence of deception is kind of like Satan says, “One plus one plus one is three.” He’ll say things like, “You got hurt really badly by the church. God did not protect you from this pain in your life. You have felt bad about yourself forever. Therefore, you’re worthless.”

The trick, “God can’t be trusted.” It’s all true. So what happens in our mind is we rehearse the things that are true. “I was hurt. God didn’t stop it. Bad things have happened to me,” and our mind just constantly rehearses those three true things that reinforce the devil’s lie.

But what is left out and what makes it deceptive is that he gets us to omit or overlook all these other true things. And that is: God was also hurt when we were hurt by the church. It was not from God that that happened. It wasn’t his idea that we get hurt this way; he also suffered. He was there with us in the suffering, and he is here with us now to help us recover and to help us reclaim what happened.

There is more to the story. There are more truths. If we embrace those other truths, we found out that it is not one plus one plus one equals three. It is actually more like pi plus three squared. God is up to way more than we can possibly wrap our heads around. And if we understood the whole equation, if you will, if we understood all of the true things, we’d see that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, that his ways are not our ways; as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts.

When you get to that point, then you realize that the deception leaves and the truth takes root.  Satan’s main strategy is to get us to focus only on those true things that support his lie, and to not look at all of the other true things that would overturn his lie.

[06:54] Stephanie: Yes, and it can have the most profound effect on the lenses that we’re viewing life with. One deception can start helping us interpret all these other things in life from a wrong base. It is so important to find where the enemy is trying to deceive us and replace that lie with truth.

What are some other strategies we should be on the lookout for? Deception isn’t his only tool in his tool bag.

[07:24] Marcus: You know me: I have an acrostic for this. In the book Toward a Deeper Walk, I talk about S.I.N. The acrostic seems appropriate. You know how the devil tries to get at us? The first one we call Seduction. The idea behind seduction is to lure us into a trap. He is putting out something good for us and gets us with what is good. but we are going about it in the wrong way.

Seduction itself has got a sexual overtone to it, so he might lure us in with a beautiful guy or a beautiful girl, and next thing you know, we are going someplace we shouldn’t be going. He has seduced us or lured us into a trap.

He can do the same thing by dangling. So he dangles the world out there. I sometimes think of the devil as the man behind the curtain who’s got a megaphone, and the world is his megaphone. He uses the world to lie to us, to deceive us, and to dangle things in front of us that look really cool, like, “Oh, that will  make my life so good. That’ll feel so good,” and there’s sometimes some truth to it, right? There is beauty, there is pleasure, there is something that’s good.

His goal is never our pleasure. His goal is to ensnare us. It’s a full fledged trap, and he is luring us into it. So that’s probably his core strategy right there, seducing us into a trap.

The second one is Intimidation. The devil likes to hide and to get us to blame ourselves for things that he does, to get us to blame the world for things that he does, to get us to blame the flesh for things that he does, to get us to blame God for things that he does. He’s happy to stay in the background most of the time.

I honestly think he doesn’t like staying hidden forever because he likes the glory, and the demons like the glory at some point. And so when they get discovered or when they decide it’s time to reveal themselves, their strategy tends to be intimidation. They want to show you just enough power to make you think that there is no end to their power, and to make you think that God can’t rival this power, that Jesus isn’t enough.

I remember talking to somebody several years ago, and they had been really battered and abused spiritually. They had this view of a huge devil and a small Jesus. They were too afraid to ask Jesus for help. They said, “The devil is bigger than Jesus. I can’t ask Jesus for help. Satan will be mad at me. I don’t want to do that,” which is an interesting conundrum.

So I said, “Well, why don’t you try just a test? Why don’t you just say, let’s have a challenge, and if Satan wins, you’ll serve Satan, but if Jesus wins, you’ll serve him. Invite Jesus to come and let’s have a little contest of strength between the devil you’re so afraid of and Jesus, and just see if you’re right.

And she says, “Oh, it won’t be a fair fight. The devil will crush him.”

“Well, you’ve got nothing to lose, then, do you?”

So she did. She saw it in her mind when she prayed. She saw these two warriors show up, and she said, “Okay, it’s about to begin. And, oh, my God, it’s over! Jesus just completely wiped the floor with him in one move!”

It was all over. All of a sudden, her theology was corrected. Her worldview changed, and she realized that Jesus is the one with all the power.

[11:04] Stephanie: My God has the loudest roar.

[11:05] Marcus: Yes, exactly. We serve the bigger lion with the loudest roar. Judy Dunnigan say so.

[11:12] Stephanie: Yes!

[11:12] Marcus: So that is intimidation, and that’s how he comes after us. [He wants to] get us to feel like we’re in over our heads and we need to just back out of this. I could tell you a ton of stories on that, but we’ll stop there.

The third one is Name calling. It’s this idea that he is “the accuser of the brethren,” [as] King James says. He likes to bring condemning thoughts to us to get us to anchor our identity in shame, to get us to anchor our identity in isolation, to [get us to] believe that we are not good enough for God to love us. Therefore, God can’t possibly love us. He uses name calling, and he gets us to look at ourselves as unworthy of God’s love.

I look at it this way: At some level, I am unworthy of God’s love. I like the way my dad explained this to me years ago. He said that from God’s perspective, I am dust.  It’s just – I’m dust. I wouldn’t have anything he didn’t give to me, but he did. He made me, and he made me in his image, and he made me as somebody to be part of his family and to love.

And he loved me so much, he sent his son Jesus to die for me. It wasn’t, “Well, I’ve got to fix this problem. I love this person, but I don’t like them.” It was, “No! I want to be in relationship with this person!”

He’s got a profound and deep love for us. So Satan tries to undermine that love relationship by attacking our identity, attacking our sense of who we are, and he does that through name calling.

[12:45] Stephanie: At the end of the day, all of these three things are still deception.

[12:50] Marcus: Yes, exactly.

[12:51] Stephanie: They’re just very different takes on deception. Very interesting.

Well, those are some of Satan’s strategies. What are some of our strategies? How do we win the battle for our mind, the battle for our heart? How do we recognize truth and claim it?

[13:09] Marcus: That’s a good question, because there are a lot of strategies that go into how we win the war. Part of this is being scripturally sound and studied and running things through scripture. Part of it is by learning to walk in the Spirit, and some of it is testing the thoughts that come into our heads.

I tell people all the time, one of the most important lessons that I find the church does not teach is this principle: that not every thought that comes into your head is yours. Some thoughts are coming from the Holy Spirit.

There are thoughts that are prompting you to maybe go bless somebody, maybe go be a source of encouragement to someone. I can’t tell you how many times people have prayed for healing for somebody because the spirit prompted them to do it. Or they led somebody to Christ. They weren’t even planning to talk to you but the spirit led them to do it. And it was because those thoughts came into their head and they recognized that this is a God thought I should pay attention to this.

The devil and demons also put thoughts in our heads. Sometimes that’s all they do, and then they let us run with it. One of our strategies is recognizing that, “Not every thought that comes into my head is mine.”

I remember again, going back to your grandpa on this, he talked about, “How do you test the spirits? How do you take thoughts captive” And he ran a simple process that went like this:  you ask yourself the question, “Is this a thought that God wants me to have?”

And so you’re thinking, “I feel really down. I feel miserable. I feel like God doesn’t like me.”

Or maybe you’re struggling with thoughts of anger towards somebody else or thoughts of lust or thoughts of whatever it is. You’re thinking about something, and you’re going, “Is this a thought God wants me to have?”

“Oh, no. This is more of a temptation.”

You’re thinking, “Is this a thought I want to have?” That’s the second question.

“No, I’m trying to get rid of this. This is a thought that’s taking me down.”

He says, “If it’s not coming from God and it’s not coming from you, where’s it coming from?”

That was a simple test that’s been very helpful, really, throughout my life and my ministry, too. It’s like,  “Wait a second. What is the fruit of this thought? Is the fruit of this thought, if I follow through on this, if I camp out here, Is it love, joy, peace, patience, long suffering, self control? Or is it fear and despair and shame?”

So I’m looking at it going, “Okay, I need to learn to test thoughts that are creating the fruit of the spirit and hold on to those. And then I deal with those other thoughts by saying “if” prayers: “If this thought is coming from the enemy, I renounce it, and I command the spirit telling this thought to leave now in Jesus name.”

I can remember the first time I tried this. I had a thought that produced some anxiety as I was teaching at Bethel at the time, and I was walking across campus, and I just remember thinking, “I have no reason to be afraid. Why am I? Why is this fear coming right now?”

And I just said, “In the name of Jesus, if this is just a temptation of the enemy, I command you to leave.” And in the middle of the prayer, it stopped. It was like, oh, okay. Well, that was helpful. That was exactly what it was. It was just a temptation to go that direction in my thinking.

So those are some of the strategies that we have available. Did you have any you were thinking of in particular that maybe I haven’t gotten to yet?

[16:42] Stephanie:  My brain keeps going to the Bible, and I’ll address that in a minute, but I was thinking of another of your acrostics, which is R.E.S.T. – Recognize the enemy, Expose the enemy, Stand against the enemy, and turn to the Truth, which I think we’ve covered pretty well.

[17:01] Marcus: Can you say that again? Because I actually forgot about that.

[17:04] Stephanie:  Rest, recognize the enemy, expose the enemy, stand against the enemy, turn to the truth.

[17:12] Marcus: Yes. It works. I like that. Good job!

[17:16] Stephanie: Good job. I was just gonna say rest in your relationship with God, but also, I’m in a Biblical Studies Masters program here, so I’m particularly keen on the need to be in the Bible. We need to be in the scriptures.

I have to preach to myself because the times when I am immersing myself in scripture versus the times when I am not, I can tell the difference between the patterns of my thoughts. Really being in the Bible trains us to think as God thinks. It trains us to recognize God’s voice, which will help us in our discernment of, “Is this a God thought or a me thought or a Satan thought?”

That was just where my brain was going.

[18:14] Marcus: That is one of the reasons why we do want to saturate our minds with scripture. I will say though, that part of why we bring the warfare element into this is that meditating on scripture alone doesn’t always win the battle. There are times when you have to shoot the messenger. You say to the enemy, “No, you’ve got to get out of here in Jesus’ name. There is a role for that, too. The two work together hand in hand.

[18:38] Stephanie: Well, we need balance. We need balance in all of it. Just like when we talked in our F.I.S.H. series about scripture and the Holy Spirit; that you need them to balance each other and inform each other.

[18:51] Marcus: Exactly.

[18:54] Stephanie:  Let’s step back from exclusively talking about spiritual warfare now to look at Kingdom Worldview as a whole. This is our last episode in the series. Now that we’ve explored kingdom worldview from these multiple angles and these three pillars, do you have any concluding thoughts on Kingdom Worldview?

[19:14] Marcus: Kingdom Worldview has been the heart of my walk with God and my ministry because I realized a long time ago that kingdom worldview is about having a proper perspective on what’s going on in life.

It has helped me so much just to think in terms of these three simple pillars:

I remind myself regularly that God is for me. Sacred romance reminds me God is for me. He wants me to be close to him. It’s not a battle where I somehow have to earn my way closer to God by performing better. I am responding to his love for me. I have to remind myself of the part that’s so foundational to a kingdom worldview, this idea that God is the pursuer, that he loves me, and I’m always responding to his love. I’m never trying to get him to love me. That’s huge.

Second is the sovereignty thing, because life feels out of control a lot. Especially as a leader, you find yourself dealing with the future a lot. You’re having to look down the road and see what are the obstacles that may be coming down the road we’ve got to get ready for. And so you’re trafficking in the future a lot.

Parents do this, students do this. We all have to try to anticipate the future so understanding the sovereignty of God, especially this picture of the chessboard, is helpful for me to think, “Even if I can only see the 64 squares in front of me, I can trust the fact that God is working on this multi level, enormous chessboard. He’s got everything under control, and I can count on him to work this all out for my good.” Again, that’s so foundational.

Then when I get to the spiritual warfare piece, I understand that there’s a part of this that is on me too. There is a response on my end to all three of these pillars, and that is to realize that not everything that happens in this world was preordained by God, otherwise you have God preordaining evil. What we find here though is that God has always preordained a way of escape. His promise to us is not an escape from pain, but an escape from the temptation, escape from sin, escape from slavery into that sin. We’re looking at this from the book of Joshua, that there’s no such thing as a battle that we can’t win as long as God is calling us to fight that battle.

I come back to these three pillars routinely, not just in my teaching, but for myself. I find that there’s always a deeper place to go with all of them. A deeper place to go and understanding God’s love, a deeper place to go in terms of his sovereignty, a deeper place to go in terms of warfare and what the enemy strategy is for me right now. That is partly why we call it Deeper Walk. We’re never really finished in this life. We’re always going a little bit deeper in these things. And so that’s my concluding thoughts on kingdom worldview and why it’s so important.

[22:21] Stephanie: Thank you. Can I just put you on the spot and ask you to pray for us and our listeners as we’re closing this out?

[22:28] Marcus: Oh, yes! That’s a great idea. I’d be happy to.

Our Father, you taught to pray to our Father because you love us. I think of the words of Jesus and Luke that say, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for the father is pleased to give you the kingdom,” and how you reveal yourself there as father, as shepherd, and as king. 

You’re the Father who loves us. We’re a little flock that you shepherd, and you’re our king, and you’re happy to give us the kingdom. And we thank you that we can rest in who you are, in your love for us and your sovereign control of life, in the fact that our future is anchored in a kingdom reality to come and in a kingdom reality right now. And I do pray for each one who is engaged in their own battle, that you would give them the keys to victory in their own battle right now. So we take a stand with them, plead the blood of Jesus between them and the enemy, pray that your Holy Spirit would bring clarity as to your truth and will expose the lies of the enemy. And that you would give us the peace that surpasses understanding that comes from your Spirit. In Christ’s Name, Amen.

[23:53] Stephanie: Amen. Thank you, Dad.

All right, next episode we’ll be launching a new series on The Life of Jesus. I am, of course, thrilled by this topic.

So until then, thanks for joining us on the trail today. If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the Deeper Walk Podcast and share with your friends. You can find more at our website, deeperwalk.com

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.