(00:01) Stephanie Warner: Welcome to Season 4, episode 50. Hello, Father.
(00:06) Marcus: Hello, Daughter. We’re back.
(00:09) Stephanie Warner: We are. Good to see you. I actually was in Michigan, but we didn’t record while I was there. So, you know, hi. You’re in another room.
(00:17) Marcus: I am. I’m actually in a yeah, I’m at a house up in Michigan. You’re in studio in Indiana. So, hopefully this time next week I’ll be back in Indiana.
(00:23) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, yeah. Well, this episode is a Q and A episode. So that’s kind of bridging between, we just wrapped up our What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare and our book study series on that. And this week is the Battle Ready Conference. and we gave attendees, and also our On The Trail listeners, the opportunity to submit some questions ahead of that conference, and so we’re just tackling a couple of those in today’s episode, and then there will be more at the panel, and we’ll go on.
So, before we jump straight into the questions, I just thought it would be fun. We hosted a summer giveaway over July, and people submitted some testimonies, and I just thought, hey, you know, a listener Q and A episode is a great opportunity to read a couple reviews and testimonies and such of the podcast. So I’m going to open us up with just a couple quick ones of those, and then we’ll get into the questions.
So testimony number one. Bob says Deeper Walk and the On the Trail podcast have shown me that it’s possible to hold both a view of spiritual realities and respect for neurobiology, and that God works through both modalities. And I liked that. I think that’s what we’re striving to do. So I’m glad. Bless you, Bob. Wesley says it’s encouraging me to be open to connecting with other believers, and overcoming years of fear and open doors that have kept me bound from walking in God’s abundance for me. I love it.
(02:23) Marcus: Yeah, there’s a lot of people stuck in fear. We live in a very fearful culture, and it’s understandable. And that’s why we talk about the five engines of all this stuff, because there’s so many things that affect all that. And understanding the warfare part of it is a piece that you don’t get a lot of training on. So glad we could do that.
(02:44) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. And this anonymous listener says, I appreciate listening to the show on Apple Podcasts. I’m a homeschool mom and part of our church’s healing prayer team. Listening to Deeper Walk shapes my approach to prayer and ministry. So…
(03:00) Marcus: No, that’s really encouraging. Yeah.
(03:11) Stephanie Warner: It is. All right. I wanted to start with those notes of encouragement. and now into our questions. So again, if we don’t get to your questions here, the panels, the panelists might get to it during the conference. So you can show up live and make sure you ask your question there again, or register for the conference and hear it later. You can do that for free. Link in the description.
Question number one. Bonnie asks, I understand we have authority to command unholy spirits to leave. But is it appropriate or possible for believers to give commands to holy angels?
(03:46) Marcus: That is a good question. See, and I’ve heard a lot of people who teach that you can, right? And there’s some, in my opinion, strange teaching on authority out there in the world. I’ve heard people say things like, I move angels around like a commander on a battlefield kind of thing. And I’m like, on what basis are you doing this? Because let’s be honest, the Bible is not detailed in its explanation of how all of this works.
The foundation for the idea that we have authority is that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, and that Jesus is seated far above principalities and powers. That means that all authorities and powers are subject to Jesus, and that we share in that authority, but it is not spelled out in scripture. The extent to which we share in that authority, only in that we are co-heirs with Christ and we are connected to this authority in some way.
So my journey on this might be helpful just explaining this. And when it comes to spiritual warfare ministry, most of the way this happens is that you have someone in front of you you’re trying to help. And then you go back to the Bible and saying, is there anything here that will give me a frame of reference for interpreting what I’m seeing in front of me. And so that starts with just realizing, oh, spiritual warfare is a category, right?
That is something that could be happening here. Would that explain what’s going on? And then you push in beyond that and say, well, what does the Bible tell me about spiritual warfare? And the reality is the Bible kind of gives me a framework, and it gives me an understanding of these things, but a lot of the specific applications aren’t spelled out.
So we see Jesus, for example, tell a story about binding the strong man. But there’s no passages of scripture that say, and here is how you do it, here’s the context in which it needs to be done, and this is how it applies to your kids, and this is how it applies to your church, and this is how it applies there. So all of those questions have to be answered by experience.
(06:07) Marcus: And that is, what have you found to be true? Now, with reference to angels specifically, what I would say is that, there is a biblical principle that every servant is accountable to his master, and has to get his praise and his correction directly from his master. And so it tells us as Christians, for example, not to judge other Christians, because they’re not accountable to me, they’re accountable to Jesus.
In the same way, angels are accountable to Jesus and to the authority structures that God and Jesus have created, you know, in the heavenly realms, which we are not completely privy to, how that works. So most of the people who are claiming that, hey, I can command this angel to do that, and command this legion of angels to do that, are operating on what I would call extra revelation. And that is, they believe that they have been given a vision or something from God and telling them about stuff.
And it’s hard you know, without being right in there to test what they’re experiencing. But from the Bible itself, there is nothing that would indicate that we can give orders to angels and tell them to do things and give them assignments. I do, however, pray for that, right? So on a regular basis, I will ask God, would you assign holy angels to our property? So for as long as we’ve had a family, that’s been a prayer that you’ve heard me pray many times. God, would you just surround this home with your holy angels, would you surround, you know, the ministry and the offerings with holy angels? And I will pray that on a regular basis.
But there’s nothing in the Bible that says, I can just assign them to that task. So that’s where I go with that. The main reason that I know I can evict wicked spirits through this authority is that, we see this happen in scripture, and experience tells me, this is the first use of authority I was ever introduced to, is first, how do you limit demonic activity? And secondly, how do you get rid of it altogether? And so that’s where this starts.
So I just want to be kind of up front here. What we’re doing is we’re dealing with what’s in front of us, and then we’re going to the Bible and looking for help. And the Bible gives us principles and it gives us things, but it doesn’t always give us specific answers. So when somebody asks me, what does the Bible say about this? I’m always a little like hesitant. It’s like I can tell you what my experience has been, but I would not want to say that the Bible teaches this is how it’s done.
(08:41) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s really helpful. That’s a helpful framework for here, like this is my interpretation, this is my experience, this is what I see. yeah.
(08:55) Marcus: ‘Cause everything else is an implication, right? And so there’s some people – they run a long way off of one principle. And the principle is, I’m seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, and that is a position of authority. And then they just run from there like, I understand completely what that means, and I’m not sure any of us fully understand what that means, and what all the extent of that is in terms of practice.
(09:18) Stephanie Warner: Well, and it might be worth mentioning. So Bonnie actually in a question in a different forum asked same thing. I understand we have delegated limited authority over unholy angels. And that might be helpful to note too in that sort of terminology.
(09:35) Marcus: Yeah. Well you know, her question’s a good question. I’m just saying that in my experience I have never commanded a holy angel to do anything. But I have asked God on many occasions to assign holy angels to do certain tasks. But there are people who say, well, you know, we all have guardian angels and we have this and that, so why can’t I? But these things are all based off of inference and implication, and it’s difficult to say with authority that that is how it works.
(10:12) Stephanie Warner: Right. I will make a note to also add, for those who are listening and want more and aren’t familiar with delegation and limited authority stuff, we have a whole little series we did on that. So I’ll link that.
All right, let’s move into question two. This is a little bit of a longer one, but I’m going to read most of it because I think it gives good context. Jenny asks. I have listened to the What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare podcasts and read the book. I understand the principles about spiritual warfare for your children and teaching them when they are younger about how to battle the enemy. What I would like to know is about spiritual warfare on behalf of my adult children.
I have some adult children who professed Christ as a child and I saw the Lord at work in their lives. Now they practice witchcraft and openly give the enemy permission to work in their lives. I pray against the enemy in this because it seems to me the enemy may be bound by this, but then again they continue to give the enemy permissions. I wanted to ask, what does the Bible teach about praying to bind the enemy in their lives? Do parents have an authority over the enemy in the lives of their adult children?
(11:26) Marcus Warner: Now that’s a very sad story, right? And it’s all too common. Many people pop into my head who have some kind of similar experience, where their kids used to be on fire for God when they were young. Somewhere along the line that changed, and today they are not walking with God at all, and they are at some extreme, right, out there in terms of their, you know, hostility to or openness to the things of Christ. And it’s just hard, right?
When you’re a parent, you know, you gave your whole life to this and you’ve done your best. And we realize that now, there’s just a whole lot of things that are outside of my control. To kind of build off of what I said before, the Bible doesn’t come right out and delineate these things, right? It doesn’t say, and with your adult children, you can do this or you can do that. So all of this kind of has to come from experience of what have different people experienced with this.
So I’m going to some friends of mine in my thinking who have had situations like this with their kids, their adult children, and they’re very versed in spiritual warfare. They prayed spiritual warfare for their kids on a regular basis, but it has not yet had any impact in terms of, you know, their walk with God. And I think it’s because ultimately everybody stands before God on their own.
Everybody comes out of a context, right? We come out of our generational context. And there is a covering that we can provide. But when they intentionally remove the covering and break that, sometimes God allows them to experience the weight of what has happened. And oftentimes, just like with addictions, people don’t change until the pain of their solution is greater than the pain they’re running away from.
And so you pray, but you also pray, understand that one element of spiritual warfare the Bible refers to as patient endurance. You know, it’s like this aspect of warfare calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints. Now that’s specifically talking about persecution, but I also think it applies in cases like this where there’s just a long-haul battle going on that I don’t have a recipe for victory in.
(13:57) Marcus Warner: And so it calls for patient endurance and for continuing faith. So the bottom line answer is I cannot, from everything I have experienced, I cannot cancel permissions for my adult children. The best I can do is cancel ancestral stuff coming to them from outside of them. I can cut off curses being brought against them to some extent. I can pray blessings on them and so on.
But sometimes the part of the blessing of God is allowing them to feel the weight of the consequences of what they’ve done, so that they will ultimately come back. That unfortunately often requires them to feel pain. Because like I said, a lot of people won’t change the path they’re on until that path itself is creating pain for them. And I also think of Hosea and Gomer, and how when Gomer ran away and went after pagan gods and went after her lovers, that she continued going, then God put like a thorn bush in the way, so to speak.
And I often will encourage people to pray that God please put, you know, this hedge of thorns in their path, make it unpleasant for them in a sense. But there’s not a magical formula, and that’s not what’s being asked for here, but there is not a clear passage either saying this is exactly how that works.
(15:31) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Well and I would just add just a note of hope of like, I do know people who have been through that journey and the kids did ultimately come back. and I think there’s just yeah, there’s not a one-size-fits-all scenario there, but specifically for the permission stuff, I think, yeah, you’re right in terms of cutting off the ancestral stuff and just continuing to pray and you know, loving.
(15:58) Marcus: Well, and some of the things I do, it would encourage is like, you know, when you’re going into their space, you bind things while you’re there. You know, and that’s where when they’re coming into your space, you bind things while they’re with you. And sometimes they’ll notice the difference and they’ll begin to say, you know, when I’m in this space, there’s more peace. There’s whatever. So there are some things, you can control what you can control. And I do think that we have authority to limit demonic activity when it directly involves us.
(16:28) Marcus Warner: I just don’t think we can limit it for other people who are adults without their permission or their participation at some level. Now this can be as little as, do I have your permission to pray for you? Do I have your permission to do things? So I have even with some people who came from counseling, who really weren’t in a position to do much battle themselves, cause they were just so, almost barely functional, right?
And I would just say, can you nod your head yes if I have permission to do this on your behalf? And they would go, yeah. And then I would say, on behalf of this person who’s granted me permission, I renounce your right to be here. I confess, do you agree? And I’d come back, do you agree? And just have them nod. So there are ways, things that you can do in a practical way to deal with situations where permission wouldn’t normally be yours or jurisdiction wouldn’t normally be yours.
(17:22) Marcus: And some of it is asking them for permission to do certain things. and you know, other times they aren’t going to give you that permission, that’s okay. You just got to honor where they’re at and keep praying. But I agree. a friend of the family who had a son that, you know, used to be a Christian leader, and is now a self proclaimed atheist.
He’s been teaching on the encouragement for prodigal parents for a couple decades now. And one of the statistics I’ve heard him share is that 80% of prodigals do return. It’s like that’s a vast majority of the time, we see people come back. And so he offers that as a little bit of hope and that’s why I say patient endurance is also always going to be a part of this.
(18:14) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yep. And keeping close to God for yourself and listening to Him, and letting Him love on you as you love on others. All right. The next question is very similar, but in case you have a little bit more to expound on, this is from Krista asks, Am I able to cancel permission given to the enemy for someone when praying for them? Or is that something that needs to be confessed and renounced by the one who gave the permission and cancelled by them in the name of Jesus.
(18:46) Marcus: Yeah. So that is a good, you know, again, it’s a real common because a lot of the questions people have are, I understand that there’s permission, I understand that there’s authority, I understand that there’s jurisdiction, where are the boundaries and how’s that work?
And unfortunately, that’s where the Bible is not clear. The Bible isn’t super clear on, here are all the boundaries. We just realize that these principles are there, that there is a principle of jurisdiction. There is a principle and a reality. And just to define terms again, authority is the right to represent power.
(19:16) Marcus: And so when you are dealing with the demonic, you aren’t going, all right, this is a power between you and me. Let’s see who’s stronger. That would be stupid. What you want to do is say, this is a power encounter between you and the kingdom of God. And I am here as a representative or an agent of the kingdom of God, and thus I have the authority of representation here.
So when you’re praying, you can always pray with authority in this sense that, in the name of Jesus, as a child of God, as an agent of the kingdom of God, I am boldly coming before the throne to ask for certain things to be put into place, for certain things to happen. God, would you assign angels? God, would you put up roadblocks? God, would you do all these things? So I take some of that authority as the right to ask God for things, right?
And so I would transfer, when I’m in doubt, it’s like I start with prayer and let’s pray boldly. So we’re told, come before the throne of grace with confidence and boldly make our request known to God. And then, if I will seek permission in certain cases from people to pray for them in more specific ways and exercise certain authority on their behalf, but nothing is quite as, you know, powerful, shall we say, not as effective, might be a better word, as somebody doing this for themselves. And so that’s always the gold standard that we’re after. The rest of it we are doing what we can and committing it to God.
(20:51) Stephanie Warner: That’s good. I guess I’ll just have a kind of a catch-all question here of, given these, what are some practical steps or principles for authority and permission and praying for people and all of this in general, like, yeah.
(21:10) Marcus Warner: Yeah, So, things I may be take for granted, right? And that is that I tend to look at binding prayers and cleansing prayers a little bit like washing my hands. And that is, I do it every day because there’s germs every day. I pray something spiritual warfare every day because I know that these attacks are new every day.
But I also don’t go much further than that. I’m not taking an hour just to think through every possible scenario in which the enemy could be active and specifically commanding that that won’t happen. That is obsession. And that is not healthy, in my opinion. So I don’t want to sit here going, he could do this, he could do that, he could do this other thing. I better pray that. I better cover this. I better like, unless I feel specifically led to pray that way, that’s not it in general.
(22:15) Marcus: I’m just like in general saying, God, I ask you to bind the enemy from having more influence in my life than you want him to have. I ask you, God, you know, to place your hedge of protection around me and my family. I just, you know, I’ll pray general things like this, but again, it doesn’t have to take longer than washing your hands would take either.
The exception to that is if you are in a particularly difficult battle. And it’s clear that it’s a battle, then in the same way that you might have to do a little bit more than hand washing to get clean, there are times that you do that. In such cases, I will generally, you know, recommend finding somebody who can pray with you, and so that you have some support and just an agreement, like where two or three are gathered, Jesus is there with you.
So you know, find somebody else, pray with them and that would be my core principle is like keep it simple and then dive in as you have to dive in, but don’t spend your whole day just thinking of all the possible things that could go wrong. It’s just another form of fear bonding and fear mapping your world. And we actually want to promote joy and gratitude rather than fear mapping.
(23:27) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. Oh man. I just had like five questions pop into my head, but I guess, could you also then as almost maybe a segue onto our next series that might only make sense in my own head. I’m disclaiming a lot. Would you put spiritual warfare into the context of breakthrough and how, you know, we’re dealing a lot with spiritual warfare here, but it’s not always a demon or there’s sometimes more going on than, yeah.
(24:03) Marcus: Yeah. Well, you know, one of the dangers, you know, when I would do like an all-day seminar on spiritual warfare, even though, you know, even though you set it up and tell people this is one of five engines, not everything is a demon. After spending five to six hours just talking about demons, it begins to feel like you’re making everything about demons. And just because it’s been the point of focus for so long. And so this is one of the dangers of, if you’re only focused on the spiritual warfare, then you do tend to expect it to fix things that it wasn’t designed to fix.
And so that’s why I tell people if I’ve got a physical issue that isn’t being caused by a demon, spiritual warfare isn’t the solution. If I’ve got, you know, fear bonding that I developed because of my attachments growing up, demons may take advantage of that, but they aren’t the root of it. And so I still need to do things related to that, to learn how to transform the way that I attach to people.
So, and even beliefs, while the root of all beliefs, all false beliefs, is the devil, it doesn’t mean that he is the one actively whispering to us every time that we believe a lie. it’s more saying that we’re in his territory, we’re on his turf, we’re giving access. but it doesn’t mean I’m, you know, I’m in an active battle even with every single belief that I have. So I think that the big picture here is, sometimes, you know, you’re just working on your belief systems without dealing with it as a spiritual warfare problem.
And sometimes you’re just dealing with bonding and other things like that. And I know a lot of people who used to be really heavy into spiritual warfare, who now rely a lot more on tools like REAL prayer to get at, let’s help this person connect to Jesus, let’s let Jesus guide them through this. In fact, I did a series a while ago called Emmanuel-led Spiritual Warfare, and the idea was, let’s connect to Jesus, and the Jesus who is always with me, and have him lead me into, what do I need to do in this complex warfare situation.
(26:25) Marcus Warner: So that’s getting into the deep end of the pool. That’s more things that happen in the complex trauma recovery area. I remember, like for example, first time I heard Jim Wilder teach on narcissism, he had a little emoji or something on one of his slides of the devil sipping like a martini. And basically the idea was, he said when somebody is a narcissist, the devil can take a vacation because this person’s doing the devil’s work for him without the devil having to do anything. And so he’s like, the devil could just sit back and relax was the idea of the emoji, because this is happening.
So in the same way, there are a lot of flesh patterns, and there are a lot of belief systems that do the devil’s work for him. It’s not always a battle directly with the devil to make that thing end. But what we’re trying to raise awareness of is that sometimes the devil is involved in these things. And when that’s the case, you need to know how to deal with it.
(27:38) Stephanie Warner: Right. Like we were saying with that book study with the WEBSKA, What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare book study. Like that’s we’re trying to give you first aid spiritual warfare, first aid understanding so that you can navigate stuff. But, you know, as we were talking about some of the questions, some of them are very clearly spiritual warfare-based, and you want to include spiritual warfare in what you’re doing.
But I was just thinking, you know, even with like the prodigals and such, the cases that I’m thinking of where people had been on fire for God, left the faith, came back, or even are in the process, you know, or seeming like they’re a lot softer toward coming back or whatever. Prayer and spiritual warfare is a factor and also community and attachments and things. Like there are just many pieces that are touching it. And so, you know, our listeners probably know this. But I just wanted to make it known and say it.
So on that note, I’ll segue over to saying our next book study, very excited for, and yes, I’ll just show up the book, is our Rare Leadership book. The white one, the original, with Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder. Very excited. This is Four Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead. And I will just tell you right now, if you are someone who does not identify as a leader, this is still for you.
I know when this book first came out, I talked to several people who are like, yeah, well I guess I’ll skip that one ’cause I’m not a leader or whatever. And I’m like, No, no, no, no. This one is so helpful for so many areas of your life, and I’ve seen people apply these principles to their families and to their friendships and you know, just it’s good maturity development and all the things. So I hope you’ll return. I hope you come back.
(29:33) Marcus: Yeah, if I could jump in on it. So the reason that it is so transferable is that when you think leadership, you tend to think vision, mission, strategy, accountability, getting things done, right? All that is a part of leadership. What this book is focusing on really is maturity. And that is that it is immaturity that sabotages our leadership potential. And so it’s really in some ways a book on maturity. And because of that, it has application to everybody.
(30:02) Marcus: And because this is not going to be walking you through how do you create a compelling vision and gather people and motivate them and you know, and make things happen. It’s not that kind of a leadership book. This is how do I lead with maturity and not lead with immaturity? And so because of the focus on maturity, it is relevant to everybody. And the number one feedback I’ve gotten from most of the places I’ve taught this, even in corporate settings, has been, this is going to change the way I approach my family life. This is going to change the way I approach all these other relationships. It’s not just the leadership book.
(30:42) Stephanie Warner: Yep. So I’m excited for that. Stay tuned, everybody. Thank you for your questions and your testimonies. Thank you for being on the trail with us. We so appreciate being able to offer this podcast free around the world, and to be walking alongside you weekly. It’s a true joy and a privilege, so thank you for everybody who partners with us to make that happen. Father, any final thoughts for this episode?
(31:07) Marcus Warner: Yeah, you know, I was just thinking about this. I’ve been actively engaged in spiritual warfare ministry for over 40 years, and that’s hard to believe. But I find that one of the things, I think, that people are often afraid of is that if I get too involved with this, it’s going to take over my life. And I think that one of the things that encouraged me is I watched my father and mother go 40 years, 50 years in this ministry, and now that I’ve been doing it is how normal your life is. It’s like you still do very normal things.
It’s like you’re not looking for a demon behind every rock. I remember my dad used to say there might be a demon behind every rock, but I don’t have to worry about all of them. And so, I just want to encourage people like a warfare worldview is largely a worldview that says I am bonded to God, and because I am bonded to God, I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, because of this union with Christ. So spiritual warfare is to some extent an outgrowth of my union with Christ. And reinforces really the centrality of all the core things about walking closely with God.
But not out of fear of what would happen if I don’t, but out of confidence that with all the battles that do arise, I’m not alone and I’ve been given everything that I need for life and godliness. So, hopefully, people can understand what I’m trying to say here is that I think people are often afraid that it’s going to somehow ruin their life or take over their life. And I just haven’t found that to be the case.
(32:57) Stephanie Warner: Um-hmm. That’s a good word. All right, thank you, everyone. We’ll see you back next week.
