Cindy Trimm - The Art of War for Spiritual Battle: Essential Tactics and Strategies for Spiritual Warfare

One
First Principles

Therefore, in your deliberations and preparations for war, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:

(1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with right on his side?

(2) Which of the two generals has the most ability?

(3) With whom lie the advantages derived from heaven and earth?

(4) On which side is discipline most

rigorously enforced?

(5) Which army is stronger?

(6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained?

(7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?

By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.

THE ART OF WAR , 1:1214, PARAPHRASED

IN THE BOOK of Acts, Jesuss last words before He ascended to heaven gave the church a direct order, which was to be carried out before His return:

[Do not] depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father.... But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

ACTS 1:4, 8

It was a military-like command to go out and take territory for God and expand His kingdom around the earthbut only after having first received the power and strategies from heavens war room. God was ready to unleash His kingdom and His divine power upon the earth. As we stand here more than two thousand years later, this commandment has still not been completely carried out.

You may ask, What exactly is Gods kingdom? Gods kingdom is simply any place Gods will is performed on the earth as it is through the administrations of the government of heaven. When one attempts to understand the kingdom of God, the seeker must first learn what is meant by the actual concept itself. It has become almost a catchphrase in the body of Christ, without many people truly understanding the concept thereby or living out their proper authority.

Over time, the true meaning of the kingdom of God has been overshadowed by the religious conventions of Christianity, church denominations, and the traditions of man, thereby hindering believers from true freedom. Let us take some time to truly understand what God really intended by this phenomenon called the kingdom .

The kingdom of God is a literal, spiritual realm accessible only to born-again believers. This realm encompasses the power and resources essential to the believer if he or she desires to achieve the manifestation of heaven on earth. (See Genesis 2:45.) It can be best understood from an analogous perspective of the natural cosmological systems of the universe.

In the kingdom of heaven, the believers earthly experience is filled with the essence of the righteousness that is God. It is a spiritual realm in which believers are privileged to exist and function at prosperous levels while physically living in the earth. This life is lived with the perspective originally intended by God at the forefrontthat is, fulfilling Gods original mandate to humanity as presented in Genesis 1:28that we are to have dominion on the earth.

The kingdom of God has its own unique characteristics, consisting of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. It encompasses countless other principles; however, these three concepts are, at best, a summation of what the omniscient God purposed for His earthly kings to whom He gave complete dominion over all that exists in the earth.

As previously stated, this lifestyle can only be accessed and experienced by those who have faith in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. According to Luke 17:20, this kingdom cannot be perceived by the natural eye, because it is the sovereign rule of our unseen God through His citizens in the earth realm.

To achieve the maximum benefits God intended, we must move from merely surviving and settling for mediocre lifestyles to living abundantly. God did not intend for His people to live beneath their potential. We find evidence of this in the Old Testament, and it was later manifested and maximized in the perfect example of Jesus Christ while He lived on the earth.

Jesus Christ emphatically proclaimed the kingdom of God. Since He so passionately promoted kingdom living, it is wise, at the least, to seek and obtain all that He purposed and planned for your life from the beginning of time.

Christ has instructed us as believers, above all other pursuits, to seek the kingdom. It should be the epitome of our priorities. In this realm we demonstrate our royalty and manifest our authority.

Open the spirit of your mind and allow these laws of the kingdomwhich are based on principles found in the Word of Godto be firmly planted in the fertile soil of your heart. Then, and only then, can the kingdom be internally understood and subsequently realized through your existence as a kingdom ambassador in the earth.

Ignorance Is the Enemy

The greatest enemy of the church is not sin but ignorance. Satans number-one goal is to keep you ignorant concerning the kingdom, as was described in Hosea 4:6:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

Because you have rejected knowledge,

I also will reject you from being priest for Me;

Because you have forgotten the law of your God,

I also will forget your children.

Even as Satan challenged Jesus in Matthew 4, so it is today with the church. The key confrontational issue has to do with the kingdom, because it is literally Gods rule on the earth through manHis earthly representatives.

Think about that for a moment.

What rules heaven? Gods will as expressed in His laws and principles. Is there sickness in heaven? No. Is there poverty in heaven? No. Is there slavery, sex trafficking, drug and alcohol abuse, oppression, famine, war, child soldiers, persecution, terrorism, malnutrition, bankruptcy, or water that isnt safe to drink in heaven? No. Ill tell you another thing; heaven doesnt need orphanages or divorce courts either, because those arent issues there. The things that are tearing our world apart dont exist in heaven, because Gods will is as accessible there as breathing the air is to us.

The next question is, what rules the earth? As long as man does not take his rightful stance, posture, and place in God through prayer, evil and evil human beings will rule. Herein lies the challenge. You must arise and take your place so that through you God can restore order, peace, righteousness, morality, ethics, just governance, health, and healing.

Though we all have different racial and ethnic backgrounds and are from all types of families, our emotions and passions have commonality; they respond to the human condition and life challenges, hardships, and disappointments in very similar ways. God planted it within each of us to want to make a difference in our worlda difference that will bring good and not harm, peace and not strife, prosperity and not poverty. But too few realize that the groundwork for this overcoming lifestyle begins in our prayer closets. It is the place of training and preparation. It is the boot camp to overcoming. Just as one who is not practiced in the art of sword craft cannot artfully wield a sword, no person on this earth can correctly use Gods Word who has not been trained in it by the Master Himself. Prayer is that place of training, and also the place of overcoming. There are battles still raging for the peoples of the earth, and those battles are fought in the spiritual realm before they manifest in the natural. I remind you that the Spirit realm is the causal realm. If you prevail in the Spirit, you will win in the natural. If you can learn the art of victory through intercession, then such struggles that steal the souls of humanity need not ever manifest at all.