(00:03) Stephanie Warner: Welcome to Season 4, episode 44. Hello, Father.
(00:08) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter. We’re laughing. It’s like this is what, Season 4, episode 44, right?
(00:14) Stephanie Warner: That’s what I said.
(00:17) Marcus Warner: Yeah. And we’re starting with this recording at 4:44. So this session’s going to be on numerology. No, I’m just kidding. Yeah. Just an interesting coincidence, the all the fours there, so…
(00:29) Stephanie Warner: That was fun. All right. And also more importantly, we are continuing to celebrate four years of podcasting with a big giveaway where you’ll have the opportunity to win courses and books and all different kinds of things. And you can find more about that out in the details in the description. And come on over to our @onthetrail_podcast Instagram and hang out with us there. We would love to see you.
So we, Father, are diving into chapter two of What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare. And you know what? I had a lot of announcements last week. So this week I’m going to add a few more because I don’t want to keep piling on. But one of them is if you did not know, we have this book also available in Spanish, so if that’s something of use to you, now you know. You can find that at Amazon or our website, deeperwalk.com. And if you’re enjoying this series, I just wanted to also give a shout out. You might also be interested at the end of August, we are having a spiritual warfare conference with Marcus Warner and Karl Payne and Pastor Dan Allison, and there’s going to be, it’s called Battle Ready, and it is a pay it forward conference, and you can find out more about that also in the description. So you are invited.
Father, oh no, I skipped one evergreen announcement, which is you can find the discussion guide for this series, for this book study also for free in the description of this, because our goal for this series is to equip you with a spiritual warfare first aid kit so you can function with more freedom on your deeper walk with God. And we want to equip you in multiple ways. So there you go.
All right, let us dig into chapter two, “Permission.” So, in this episode or in this chapter, you spend a good amount of time in the beginning talking about the throne room. And how the reality of understanding God’s throne room helps us understand the foundations of spiritual warfare. So why did you do that?
(02:56) Marcus Warner: Well, you know, it’s kind of interesting. I think one, I had a conversation one time with a professor from a Christian college who asked if I leaned more power encounter or truth encounter in my approach to spiritual warfare. And that’s sort of an insider question. It was his way of letting me know that he’d read a little bit about this. At the time, Neil Anderson had come out saying, oh, I practice truth encounter, and that is we expose the, you know, lies and replace them with truth. And that’s kind of what we’re all about. And so I was like, well, it’s interesting because, you know, my dad obviously worked with Neil for many years. I was very familiar with that.
And I said, if I had to give a label to what I do, I would call it a legal encounter. And he goes, Well that’s interesting. What do you mean by that? And I said, Well, the Bible talks a lot about a courtroom in heaven, right? There’s the council of El in the Hebrew, talks about the Council of El in the Old Testament. There’s multiple descriptions of the Bible of a throne room where books are kept and decrees are made and judgments are passed and from this idea of a throne room is the whole idea of the sovereignty of God, that He is the king over everything and that because God is sovereign even over spiritual warfare, which is like, okay, so with that idea of a courtroom, of a throne of God being sovereign, I said our understanding, our theology of spiritual warfare, has to sync with this. It has to be compatible with this or it’s not biblical.
And so, now I know there’s some people who take courtroom stuff and they spin a whole kind of prosperity gospel theology out of it. And that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just acknowledging the fact that this is actually a pretty clear teaching in the Bible.
(04:50) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. So what are some highlights of what the throne room teaches us about spiritual warfare?
(04:57) Marcus Warner: So in this case, what it teaches us is that because God is sovereign, the core lesson is that demons need permission to do what they do. And so we go back to the very beginning and that God had to permit there to even be spiritual warfare in order for this to happen. And so because God is sovereign, he’s like he allowed Satan to have permission. And we’re like, you’re like, well, why would he do that? And the simple answer is the fall of man, right? What happened in the Garden of Eden gave permission to the devil to have a certain amount of freedom in this world.
Now, God has limited that, right? So he permitted it, but he limited it. And we see in the Bible a few ways in which these limitations have happened. One was we’re told in 2 Peter, for example, that there are angels that were locked up in Tartarus or these things would be worse. And it’s like, okay, well, thank you, God, for doing that, limiting it in that way. We’re also told that Satan had to ask permission to do things. So we see him asking for permission to mess up Job’s life. He has to ask for permission to sift Peter like wheat.
And so we get these ideas that He’s limited it this way in terms of, you know, just what demons can and cannot do in this life. He’s also limited it in terms of – and this war will end at the end of this age. So this age Paul referred to as a present evil age. And one of the things that makes this a present evil age is this is the age that begins with the fall of man, you know, and ends with the second coming of Christ. And in this age, the devil and his demons have permission to do things that they won’t have in the next age. And so that’s where it starts.
And then we see this idea of demons needing permission to do things. And so you got to bring this together and understand that, okay, God is still sovereign over all of these things. But the devil has more freedom right now in this current age than he would have in a different age. And because of that, we need to understand something about, you know, how that works and what the devil’s activity is.
(07:19) Marcus Warner: So when it comes specifically then, the other two lessons that I highlight from this throne room courtroom concept is that not only does the devil need permission to do what he does, but demons in general need permission. That sometimes God just grants it because there’s been a petition made to him, but sometimes we give permission. And that is like, look, we opened a door by what we did. We entered into an agreement with the devil. And if you enter into agreement, like shake hands with the devil, that’s giving permission.
And so we see this at an institutional level, we see it at an individual level, we see it at a territorial level, regional level. So again, this idea that permission can be given to our adversary to greater activity in our lives, it doesn’t mean, you know, we’ve given permission to unabated access, but it means that we’ve been giving him permission to more than he had before, and we are going to feel the effects of that in some way in our lives.
So I think starting with a legal foundation helps people understand this idea that permission is at the core of spiritual warfare. And particularly in our battle to live in freedom, we have to understand what it is that we often do that gives the devil more permission than he should have.
(08:48) Marcus Warner: And then the other principle that comes out of this is authority. And that Jesus, when he rose again, could say all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. When he was seated at the right hand of the Father, Paul could say that he’s been given a name above every name. And so we see what’s interesting there is that Jesus simply by virtue of being the second person of the Trinity, you’re like how could he be given authority? How could he be given a name? Didn’t he already have these things? He’s God, right?
But what is being emphasized here is that what he did in his death and resurrection and his ascension mattered. And what he did at his death, resurrection, ascension actually changed the dynamic of how warfare happens and how we experience spiritual warfare and it changed the setting and the foundation on which the battle is now engaged because there is a level of authority that Jesus has that he shares with us.
Now, Jesus has unlimited authority. He gives it to us. So our authority is derived from his authority. It’s limited, right? But it is real. And so there are things that only happen when we exercise the authority that Christ has given us. So that’ll be the next chapter, right? In the next episode, will be on authority. And this one I think we’re going to dive into permissions.
(10:13) Stephanie Warner: We are. As you were unfolding all of that, I just kept thinking about how like when we talk about counseling and inner healing and things like that, you frequently say there’s only one wonderful counselor and it’s not me, right? It’s Jesus Christ. And when we’re talking about warfare, we alluded to this a little bit in the last episode, but, you know, spiritual warfare is not about going human toe-to-toe versus a demon, right? Jesus Christ is the victor, he is the champion, he is king, he is everything. So that’s the context in which we’re coming into this. Yeah.
(10:51) Marcus Warner: Yeah. And one of the things that I experienced pretty early on when I started working with my parents in this area and started gaining more exposure to all of it in practice. One of the things I learned in that was that demons know you have authority. They want to know if you know you have authority, right? Demons know Jesus conquered them and Jesus is supreme. They want to know if you believe it. And so they’ll test you on it and they’ll push you on it a little bit.
And if you stand strong in the truth of what God has given you, then they don’t have a whole lot more options other than they have to try to trick you. Because the victory is yours, so they have to deceive you into thinking that it’s not, and to try to trick you into other ways. And so that was kind of an early lesson was to realize that yeah, they know you have authority, but what they’re pushing on is see, do you know it? Do you really believe it? And same thing with permission. So…
(12:03) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. And so I guess to wrap up that overview, I like in this chapter when you address the two principles and authority, you talk about the legal grounds and how permission is like doing the work of a lawyer and authority is like doing the work of a police officer. And so I’m sure we’ll unpack that concept more in the next episode. But yeah, permission as doing the work of a lawyer. Let’s go into that idea.
(12:28) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so we’re talking about a courtroom, you know, throne room, books are kept, judgments are made, permissions given. And so what do lawyers do? They go in and they deal with the legal permissions that are going on. So, you know, before a police officer can exercise authority, that authority has to be backed legally. And so, that’s what the work of the lawyer is – to take care of all those legal permissions.
And then the police officer’s job is to enforce what has been done in the courtroom. And so we in spiritual warfare work, you do both. You kind of do the work of a lawyer in that you’re dealing with permissions. And so you’re saying, okay, this person really did enter into agreement with the devil. This person really did sin. They really did, you know, practice the occult, they really did all this stuff. So we got to deal with the legalities of that permission. So, how do we do that? By taking it to Jesus, who paid the penalty for all of these things, who nailed all of the accusations against us to the cross to take them away.
And we take them to Jesus, and because of what Jesus has done, we can tear up the written accusations that are against us. We can, you know, confess and renounce and repent of those things. And so that is why we can do that. So we can break these agreements that we have made with the enemy because Jesus has made that possible. And those are no longer binding. One interesting verse says Jesus became a curse for us. And the idea is there, well, on the basis of that, I can now break any curses that have been made against me because he became a curse for me.
And we’ve had a lot of people who have been in occult settings and had curses placed on them and sometimes even agreed to those curses and uttered the curses on themselves. And they were able to renounce those curses and say, No, I’m legally no longer bound by that because Jesus took care of it. So I’m giving this to Jesus. And so it’s just the gospel continues on, right? More good news. Yeah, more good news. You don’t have to be bound by this, that you’re not strapped with this forever because you made a mistake.
(14:54) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. So this is our spiritual warfare first aid kit, right? So we are going to walk through our… you’re like, how do I know if I’ve given permission, or what do I do, you know, what gives permission, right? So Father has a handy dandy acrostic, we’re going to walk through. This is the battle for your soul. I could go a couple octaves lower and be Andre the giant, but…
(15:21) Marcus Warner: Yeah. Echoes of Princess Bride, right?
(15:24) Stephanie Warner: Come for your soul.
(15:27) Marcus Warner: Come for your soul, yes.
(15:30) Stephanie Warner: Yes. So this is S.O.U.L.L. with an extra L stands for Sin, Occult, Unforgiveness, Lies, and Lineage. And so these are areas where permission can come in on an individual basis. So let’s walk through those.
(15:40) Marcus Warner: Yeah, and let me just tell you where that came from too. So Neil Anderson wrote The Steps to Freedom in Christ, and there’s seven, you know, categories that he has people go through. And I was always forgetting one or two of them, so I wanted a way to remember them. And S.O.U.L.L. was inspired by that as I tried to think of categories.
There are other categories that could be listed. For example, some people treat fear as a separate category, and like, let’s just go after fear. That’s one of the devil’s biggest weapons. I tend to put fear under the category of the lies that we believe because most of our fears are rooted in anxiety. And the anxiety is coming from things that we believe. And so I’m fine making it separate. So different people have come up with their own.
(16:29) Stephanie Warner: This isn’t the end all be all…
(16:33) Marcus Warner: This isn’t the end all be all. It’s just I created this so that I could remember it and especially when I was working with people to make sure that we had covered the basics.
(16:41) Marcus Warner: I also know people who said, oh, idolatry ought to be in there. But I again, I kind of put idolatry under occult. But I’m fine with it being separate and that sort of thing as well. So this is how I get there. Sin – sin opens a door to the devil, in that if we don’t close that door, the devil’s going to claim the right to come in.
And I actually like Neil Anderson’s story about this illustrating it, which is the idea that let’s say that I have a house with a yard and it’s got a fence around it, and the neighbor’s got a really mean dog. And so I’m always careful to keep the gate closed. But one day I forget, I leave the gate open and that dog comes running in, right? Well, that’s sin. That dog is sin. It comes running in because I left the gate open. I got in my weakness of my flesh, right? I open that door. And now the sin comes running in and bites me on the leg.
And Neil’s story of this, I think, is so insightful because he said what most Christians do at that point is they beat themselves up and they start like beating themselves on the head, like, what an idiot. How could I have left that, you know, door open? I deserve this suffering, you know, and the devil wins twice, right? He wins one, in that he got in because the door was left open, and two, now he’s getting you to blame yourself for it and letting him off the hook. And so he’s like, what we need to do is beat the dog down in this case, get him to stop biting me, right? Get him out of the thing and shut the gate.
And that I think is a good way of looking at this. The passage of scripture that is the clearest on this, I think, is Ephesians 4:26-27. It says, In your anger, do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the devil a foothold, right, or a place in your life. And this is linking these ideas that it is sin that opens that door and gives them a place in your life.
(18:45) Stephanie Warner: I was just saying I always saw sin as opening the gate and the demon as the dog…
(18:49) Marcus Warner: Yeah, but you can look at it both ways, right. Because Romans 7 kind of makes sin a being that is after us and trying to get at us. So in the Romans 7 context it would be sin that’s running into our lives and sin is now actively dwelling in our members and that sort of thing. And so it applies. You also say, Well, what is sin personified? It sounds like a demon to me, so…
(19:14) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. And so this is also especially if it’s unrepentant sin.
(19:21) Marcus Warner: Well, it’s exclusively unrepentant sin. In other words, if I sin and I repent, then that’s kicking the, you know, enemy out and closing the door. And which is why we want to keep short accounts on our sin. You know, but if we bury it and we hide it and we keep it secret and…
(19:41) Stephanie Warner: Or we call it not sin.
(19:51) Marcus Warner: Or we don’t call it sin because we say, well, people used to think that was a sin, but it’s not. Then that’s one of the ways the enemy tricks us into letting him stay. So that’s the first one. And then there’s a lot of categories of sin, right? There’s compulsive sins and habitual sins and sexual sins and, you know, idolatrous sins, and there’s rebellion, pride, you know, there’s a lot of sins. So rather than listing all of them, I just put that as a category.
In fact, to some extent, the next two are categories of types of sin. The O of the acrostic S.O.U.L.L. is Occult, which is a specific kind of sin, right? It’s just a sin in which I am actively engaging with demons and what I am doing, whether I realize it or not. I am actually doing something that is giving me koinonia with those demons, right? To use the fellowship concept from Paul. And so that’s what happens in the occult.
(20:43) Stephanie Warner: So if sin is opening the gate, then occult is opening your garage door or opening the gate and saying, hey, I’ve got a party out here, come on in. Yeah.
(20:55) Marcus Warner: Yep. Yeah. So one is a handwritten invitation. Yeah, one is maybe unintentional at some level. The other one is like, no, I’m giving you an engraved invitation to come and hang out with me. So this would be things like, you know, I’m a Christian, but I go to a seance, or I’m a Christian, but I’m going to play with a Ouija board and ask for spirits to talk to me. You know, I’m going to…
(21:19) Stephanie Warner: Or tarot cards or yeah.
(21:25) Marcus Warner: Right, tarot cards, all these things, I sometimes put it this way. It’s like, if I am a Christian and I commit adultery, are there consequences? Yeah. Right? If I’m a Christian and I sin sexually, there’s consequences. If I’m a Christian and I sin in some other ways, there’s consequences.
Yet some theological systems teach that I can do these things and there’s no consequences. And I’m like, no, yeah, that doesn’t open doors to the enemy. I’m like, on what basis? I don’t see any theological or scriptural basis for giving Christians assurances that those kinds of things are not going to open up doors to the enemy. And experience certainly teaches us that that does. So the occult deserves kind of its own category because it is a unique kind of sin that puts us into direct interaction with the demonic realm.
(22:14) Stephanie Warner: And then…
(22:14) Marcus Warner: Yeah, the third – we’re talking over it. We know where we’re going, right? The U, right? So the next one is Unforgiveness, which again is a kind of sin because it’s the sin of bitterness, and I am not obeying, you know, the command to forgive those who wrong me. But it gets its own category because it’s kind of unique, it’s sort of a something that deserves its own kind of explanation. And there’s a lot that could be written on forgiveness.
What I have found interesting is, there are different Greek words for forgive. And Paul’s favorite is actually related to the idea of grace, which is to be gracious to other people. And it often gets translated into English as to forgive those people. But it definitely emphasizes the heart out of which God wants our forgiveness to come. But it also means, I tell people all the time, it’s not about feeling something. It is in the end about obeying and choosing to forgive.
So again, the key text here is Matthew 18, where Jesus is talking about the unforgiving servant who ends up in prison, and that there is torment in his life as a result of his unforgiveness, which I think is very appropriate because there’s a lot of people living in a kind of torment, and it’s because they have not forgiven people that God wants them to forgive.
(23:58) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. And the body keeps the score. So whether there are, you know, demonic things, which sometimes people have found, you know, healings and stuff when they’ve forgiven. But also just if you’re bitter all the time, that’s going to affect your body. That’s just that’s whole it.
(24:14) Marcus Warner: Yeah. Well you know, so to this end of like body and occult and sin and permission, I just heard a story recently of again, this was a shaman in Africa, and there were a group of people who all had physical ailments, right? And the shaman solution to them was to have them sleep on graves overnight, so that the demons in them could be sucked out and go to a different realm. And the testimony was that they all got better. Right? And so that sounds like, oh well, if that’s the only thing you hear, you’re like, I’m going to go to the shaman when I have this because they all got better. Well, the rest of the story was, and they all died one year later. It’s like by the time the one year anniversary of them doing that happened, they were all dead.
And it’s because when Satan does things, he sells it. And when God does things, it’s a gift. So God’s healing is always a free gift. Satan will heal, but it’s always a trade. And that’s why if you don’t deal with that kind of stuff, it can have some massive consequences in life. So just an example, probably an extreme example, but you know, it makes the…
(25:33) Stephanie Warner: Sometimes extreme examples help bring clarity. Yeah. All right. So that moves us onto lies. Lies we believe.
(25:41) Marcus Warner: So lies. I’m not talking about lying to people, which is just another kind of sin, but I’m talking about lies we believe. And single this out again because this kind of gets at the heart of the truth encounter thing that Neil Anderson was emphasizing. And it’s this idea that when I believe the lies of the enemy, I am entering into an agreement with him that says, you’re right, God’s wrong.
And again, I heard a story recently of somebody like, oh, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think, you know, if I believe a lie, that’s actually making an agreement. But then they prayed and said, God, if that is true, would you show me? And they had this kind of experience during their prayer time when God showed them what was going on. They got rid of it. And as a result of it, this lifelong battle with fear kind of went away. And it’s not like you never struggle with it again, but it’s at a completely different level, right, than it had been before. And it was because there was an agreement that had to be broken.
And so I was like, That’s kind of what we’re talking about here, is that I’ve seen this in my own life, especially with fear when I think about it. There’s often been a core lie underneath that fear, that when it got exposed and dealt with, the fear went away. And I think one of the best books I’ve read on fear was called Fear is a Liar. And I thought it was a great name because it’s true that the lies we believe often have consequences. It’s not always fear, but it’s just a one example of the kind of bondage that we can experience because of things that we believe.
(27:28) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, well, and to the point of, you know, the scale of the fear went away, you know, like in certain situations there’s still some fear, but maybe it’s a natural fear versus a supernatural. Because another thing that you frequently say is demons are like sharks. That if there’s blood in the water, they’re not gonna say, You’re in enough trouble already, I’ll leave you alone, right? And so whether that’s a physical thing or an emotional thing or whatnot, there can be multiple engines driving that emotion at the same time and so you can deal with at least part of it. Yep. Anything else you want to say about lies or shall we move to lineage?
(28:05) Marcus Warner: It’s a big huge topic, but no, we can move on. The last one, lineage, and lineage again is one of those controversial ones, and people used to often talk about it like generational curses, and I have tended to not use that language partly because it’s so controversial with some people. And I talk instead about generational iniquity, which is a clear biblical teaching.
The idea of an iniquity is that something has become twisted and deformed. And we all know that there are families that have become twisted and deformed through the generations because of unresolved sin in those families. And if you are born into that family, you’re born into a system in a sense that is already deformed and it’s going to have an impact on you. The other thing that happens, I would say, is that there is in my family line, like we’re so individualistic in the West, we don’t think like this. But if in my family line, a door was open to God’s blessing, right? God promises that He loves to bless to a thousand generations. But it’s also true that if a door has been opened to the enemy, that can impact generations of people.
And so we actually see this idea of generational consequences for sin is a fairly common idea in the Bible. It’s not a one-off thing. Even Jesus was like, all of the sins for all of the generations from you know here to here are going to come on this generation. I’m like, well, that’s a pretty big consequence. You know, in the Torah it says, because of Ammon and Moab’s sin for ten generations, they aren’t allowed in the tabernacle. So this idea of generational consequences for family lines and for generations to come is not a unique idea in the Bible. It’s actually written into the Torah. Jesus taught it.
But the issue then is well what does it mean and what are the specifics of how it works. And I don’t know all the details of it. I just know that at its core it’s the idea that there is something legal that has changed in this family line.
(30:30) Marcus Warner: And I may need to go do some legal work to remove the permissions that have been granted to the enemy in my family line. And I know some people who’ve been doing this for decades who will tell you that they have never met anybody who actually was, you know, had to deal with demonization who didn’t have lineage issues. And so it’s quite a lot more common than we think, especially in the West where we’re so individualistic.
(30:57) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. So we are running short on time. Is there anything more specific you want to say on Christians and demons in particular before we close out this chapter?
(31:10) Marcus Warner: Yeah. In this sense, all right, so Christians are owned by Jesus Christ. We have been bought with the blood. So we belong to Jesus. And I’ve run into people on the way who were convinced that the devil had a claim on them and owned them in some fashion. I’m like, no, that’s a lie. You’re owned by Jesus Christ. His claim on you is older than any claim that the adversary may have on you. Because Christ’s claim on you goes back, it says in Ephesians 1, before the foundation of the world. So before the foundation of the world, He saw you in Christ as his own.
And so I think that it’s good for us to understand kind of the starting point here. And so as a Christian, I just need to understand that there are things that I do that give the devil permission to do stuff in my life that I don’t want him doing. And what we want to do is we want to close those doors and get rid of him. This isn’t really a debate about possession, it’s a debate about influence and activity.
(32:18) Stephanie Warner: He’s on the property.
(32:20) Marcus Warner: And right, he’s on the property, let’s get him off the property. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here, and that’s where our focus is.
(32:28) Stephanie Warner: Cool. Well, next week we will be talking more about authority. And we can keep unpacking all of this foundation. Thank you everybody for being on the trail with us. Don’t forget to check out our celebratory giveaway stuff going on. And you can find more details at our Instagram and in our description of this episode. Thank you to every donor who keeps us here. We are able to offer this podcast for you around the world weekly, because of you. So thank you and all glory to God. Father, any final thoughts?
(33:06) Marcus Warner: Yeah, you mentioned earlier something about people having a fear of maybe I’ve given permission and I don’t know it. And I’m like, so one of the reasons that there are tools like the Steps to Freedom is to kind of give you a basic inventory of things to go through. It’s a good idea just to every now and then go through a practice like that and give God the opportunity to show you is there something in my life where I have given permission?
But if he’s not bringing conviction, and you don’t have all these symptoms and things, then I don’t think, I know for a fact God doesn’t want us going around with fear that maybe I missed something, maybe I missed something. This is just so that we know that there are ways of dealing with things. And so that’s my advice is, if you are wondering, maybe I do have something and I’ve never found it, schedule an appointment with somebody, go through, you know, some kind of a freedom session and…
(34:04) Stephanie Warner: We have links to that in the description as well if you need a prayer minister. Yep.
(34:04) Marcus Warner: See if there’s something. Yep. But I know that God doesn’t want us beating ourselves up like that and living in fear that maybe I missed something. I think that’s something you can say, you know, just say, no, I renounce the lie that I have to live in fear of this. And I hope that you can live with greater peace because of it.
(34:28) Stephanie Warner: Amen. All right. See you next week.
