Latest / Believe & Become | Ministry, Biblical Encouragement, God's Will, How to Change, Holy Spirit / 59. Discerning Spiritual Warfare Without Fear

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59. Discerning Spiritual Warfare Without Fear · Believe & Become | Ministry, Biblical Encouragement, God's Will, How to Change, Holy Spirit

• 0:00
  Josh: Have you ever wondered, is this spiritual warfare or am I just having a hard day? Sometimes Christians can become so focused on the enemy that everything starts to feel like an attack. Other times we completely ignore spiritual warfare and miss what is actually happening. Today we're talking about how to discern spiritual warfare without becoming fearful, hyper focused on the enemy, or overwhelmed by what might be happening in the spiritual realm. If you're tired of leading others while secretly battling doubt, discouragement and mental warfare,
• 0:33
  Corina: and you want practical tools to renew your mind and walk boldly in your calling as a leader, you're in the right place.
• 0:39
  Josh: Welcome to believe and become.
• 0:41
  Corina: We're Josh and Corina your spirit filled coaches, here to help you overcome those limiting beliefs and lead others confidently.
• 0:48
  Josh: If you're ready to hear God's voice more clearly, to step into your purpose and find joy and strength in the
• 0:53
  Corina: everyday silence those Bible app reminders judging you from your lock screen and let's jump in. Sometimes it's hard to discern whether what we're experiencing is the enemy or life or maybe something of our own making. And I had this client who had been healed. She had gone to a healing conference. She had this long time thing going on and she went to this healing conference and got healed. And in that conference conference she was taught that she had to hang onto her healing and that if she stopped believing, then her sickness would come back. And so she felt the physical symptoms lift, she felt everything started to get better. She was doing really great, she was really excited. And then kind of little by little, the symptoms started happening again and she began to lose faith that what she had received was actually hers. And so she ended up in this kind of cycle of fear, being overtaken by fear that her disease was coming back and then trying to hang on in faith to like get back her healing, which she had already received. And so we actually just worked together to kind of identify what was going on. Because when I first talked to her, there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of anxiety. Everything was like a 10, like life or death. This is it. If it doesn't, if I don't get healed, I'm. I'm going to see Jesus. And so more than even focusing on the healing, what really stood out to me in that first session was just the overwhelming sense of fear that she wasn't gonna be able to get back what she had received. And so it was really an interesting journey that we went on together of recognizing that when God gives you something, it already belongs to you and you don't have to make it happen. He's not gonna take it away from you. But this. It was almost like she was partnering with the fear of Los. And so it was. It was kind of a little bit of all the things, I think. But there was a really big component of the enemy is putting this fear on her, of losing her healing of fear of death, like, all of these kind of things that were going on around her in the spiritual realm. And so we had to take authority over that fear, and we had to really come into agreement with the truth of what God spoke over her. And so often, I think we're kind of in that place of there's kind of maybe a little bit of everything going on, a little bit of spiritual warfare, a little bit of my own beliefs, a little bit of maybe the circumstance, and it's kind of all gets jumbled in there. We can really easily go, this is the enemy and I'm going to fight. And, you know, like, just go after that, which is great. He needs to. He needs to go. But what about all the stuff that's left? What about those beliefs that we haven't addressed? What about that partnering with the fear and the lies of the enemy? Like, those are all things that we really need to come go after as well, because really, the warfare is in our minds. It was just a really interesting situation where we had to kind of go after all the things, but we didn't have to really do any spiritual warfare. When her beliefs came into alignment with the truth of what God spoke over her and what he wanted to do in her life and what he had already done in her life, the fear lifted. It went away. And so that battlefield really, truly is in our minds. Almost, I would say, like 90% of the time, the battle is in your mind more than what the enemy is actually trying to do to you.
• 4:48
  Josh: So let's talk a little bit about spiritual warfare. It can be a lot of different things. I think we give the enemy too much credit. A lot of times we like to blame stuff on him that, you know, I really don't think that he's doing it to us. A lot of times, or we think, oh, this has got to be some oppression or something like that. And certainly that happens to some people. Anytime that we have come into agreement with lies, that opens the door for demonic work. For the enemy to do stuff to us, to torment us, especially unforgiveness is really, really key door that we can open. Anytime that we harbor bitterness towards people and we refuse to forgive people that Is a huge. Opens a huge door for him to do stuff to us. But the reality is, once we repent of those things and we close the doors, we break agreement with those lies. He has no authority to bug us anymore. And so then I think it becomes really a matter of reprogramming the way that we think. To think like Jesus, we have to actually be intentional to repent to the truth. Repenting is. We always think of it, oh, as I'm confessing my sins and receiving forgiveness, yes, that's an element of repentance, but it's really just changing the way we think. I'm going to repent to the truth. I'm going to continue to renew my mind with the truth until those lies basically don't have an effect on me anymore. And so we close the door to what the enemy is trying to do. And then we enter into God's glorious truth by renewing our mind and putting. Putting into practice Romans 12:2, that we get to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
• 6:34
  Corina: Yeah. And I think that is, you know, part of the process that we lead people through is recognizing the lie and breaking agreement with the lie. And right there, when you break that agreement, the enemy no longer has right. And so we. We kind of take that back. We take back our authority in that area. But I think the rest of it is really where most of us get stuck is walking it out and believing that we are set free. Free and continuing to agree with the truth instead of going back to those old ways of thinking that were grounded in lies.
• 7:09
  Josh: I remember a time a few years back where I was really battling against fear in my life and anxiety. And I remember just being in our bedroom and just feeling such an overwhelming presence of this fear, like an attack. And it felt in the moment like my emotions were going crazy, My heart was racing, and I felt like. I felt like Satan himself was in the room bugging me, like, poking at me. And I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I doubt it was actually Satan. It might have been some kind of evil spirit that was trying to bug me. But also it might have just been I had given fear too much agreement. I'd given it too much permission to work in my life. And really, Corina came alongside me, and we prayed and we broke that off. We broke agreement with it and that it went away. And fear is a spirit. We can agree with it and give it room in our lives, or we can say, no, fear, I'm not going to partner with You, I break agreement with you. I remove any authority I've given you in my life. And I'm going to walk in the truth that Jesus has set me free and his perfect love casts out all fear. And that is essentially spiritual warfare in a nutshell. It's just, okay, we recognize that I've been given something too much permission in my life. I'm going to break agreement with it, and then I'm going to renew my mind with the truth. So sometimes we overcomplicate it and we start saying, okay, we're gonna, you know, rebuke things and renounce things, and we get real worked up, and we're yelling and screaming and getting all. We don't have to do all of that. A lot of times it can be actually this beautiful, gentle process that the Lord leads us in of bringing up little lies. We renounce them, and then we just agree with the truth, and those things can't bug us anymore. There is a process. It takes some time to change the way we think, but God is faithful to lead us through that.
• 8:58
  Corina: Yeah. And 2 Corinthians 10, 4, 5. We know it well. The weapon of our warfare are not carnal, but they are powerful in the spirit to pull down strongholds, to demolish the work of the enemy in our lives. And so when we do that, when we take our authority and we say, I will not agree with this any longer. You no longer have a. A stake in this. In this war. The enemy has to go. His. His primary weapon, the thing that he like, his only real defense is lies. And so when we come into agreement with the truth, when we break agreement with a lie, we're actually, like, exposing him, and he has nowhere to go because he can't lie to you anymore in that area. And so instead of being so concerned about, is it, is this the enemy or is this just me? Maybe we need to look at what am I. Is this belief that I have. Is this area fueling hope and joy and peace, Peace and. And love, the things that. That God brings into our life? Or is it bringing fear and condemnation and doubt and discouragement? You can know who's talking to you by the fruit that it produces in your life. So it's really valuable for you to recognize the feelings that are coming with the belief that you're believing or in the circumstance that you're in, and it could be something really great, maybe something really good is happening. You're gonna get married, you're having a baby, you're getting a new job, and instead of Being ready and like, oh, this is amazing. God's gonna do good things. You're like, what if I can't do it? What if I'm not qualified? What if, you know, what if I don't know what to do? And there's just all of this fear and confusion. You can always know those thoughts are not from the Lord. And so recognizing what it feels like, what fruit is it producing, that's huge.
• 10:56
  Josh: Yeah, I love what you said. We can judge the voice that we're listening to by the fruit of it. If the fruit is hopelessness and discouragement and just being bummed out, upset, like you're listening to the wrong voice. But if your hope is increasing, if your joy or peace, the fruit of the spirit, is increasing in your life, that means you're renewing your mind with the truth from God. Yeah, that's the fruit of mind renewal. When we're paying attention to God's voice and not some other voice. And I think so many times the enemy just plants a lie and then backs off and says, okay, my job is done here. They're going to be all wound up in this lie, believing it and renewing their mind with it for so long, and I don't have to do anything because, yeah, look, look, they're meditating on it. Oh, great, I did my job. You know, so we give him credit. It's like, well, actually, I just came into agreement with something that he planted in my life a long time ago. And so once we get rid of that, then that's when the freedom comes. And that's what we love to do with our clients. Part of our Clarity Coaching process is to come alongside people and identify areas where we lack hope. And then we go, we ask the Lord, what's a lie that we're believing in this situation? What's the truth I need to renew my mind with? We help our clients through that process every single day. And it's incredible the way that the Lord shows up. He reveals truth and he sets people free. And it happens pretty fast. And then we help you out with the process of renewing your mind with that truth on a daily basis until it becomes automatic, becomes part of your brain, becomes part of who you are, and it just comes out of you. And that is the amazing part that we just live for. So check out our Clarity Coaching program. It's@joshandkarina.com coaching. The link is in the show notes, in the video description. Click on that. We would love to work with you, to come alongside you and just Help you experience the freedom that Jesus paid for. So let's give you a few action steps to live this out on a daily basis. The first thing to do is just to identify the message, not just the circumstance. So when something difficult happens, we are going to ask, what am I tempted to believe because of this? So I'm not just going to be discouraged by the circumstance. How does that affecting my beliefs? Because everything in our life flows out of our beliefs. That's why we're called believers, not doers or something else. It's all about what we believe because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. We can judge what's going on inside by what's coming out of our mouths and the way that we're reacting to circumstances. And so again, like we were saying, we're going to just judge. Okay, is what I'm believing, what I'm thinking, what I'm renewing my mind with, is it producing fear, hopelessness, condemnation or accusation, then that's a lie. We know it's not the truth because God's truth, God's glorious truth sets us free and it gives us hope and it gives us joy and peace and patience, all those beautiful fruit of the Spirit that Paul describes. Then we know that we're listening to the right voice. We can ask ourselves, does this belief actually agree with God's word and his character? Is this word that I'm receiving, if I am hearing something in my mind, we're trying to discern, okay, is this myself? Is it from God? Does it agree with God's word and his character? Then we know it's from him or something that he's put inside of us, which is just as good, really, if it comes from God and it's already in us, yeah, that's amazing. So we just need to take some time to evaluate what's the fruit of these words, these beliefs in my life, and then be intentional. I'm actually going to choose to believe what God is saying, not what the enemy saying, or maybe just negative thoughts that are rolling around in my head that I've maybe inadvertently programmed my mind to believe, didn't know it. So we just need to go through this process of mind renewal to get our mind, our brains, lined up with what God is already saying.
• 15:03
  Corina: One of our mentors, Steve Backland, says, my hopelessness about a situation is often a bigger problem than the situation. And I think this is really something that you can apply when a situation arises, when a circumstance arises in your life, how do I feel about this circumstance? That's often going to be the determining factor of whether this turns around or not. I truly believe there are really horrible, awful things that happen and people walk out of them with peace and confidence and just a greater trust in God because of how he saw them through. That doesn't just happen because they got lucky. That happens because they're choosing to believe that God is seeing them through. And so we have a lot to do with how things turn out. And so we can choose to believe that no matter what happens, God is working and he is going to work this situation out. Or we can choose to believe that bad stuff always happens to me and my life just sucks and this is probably going to end badly like everything else. Right. We can choose to partner with those lies. That is the message underneath. Is what is that message underneath that you're believing? Is it that this is the end or that God is going to come through? And I think that's really what it comes down to. What am I believing because of this circumstance? And what do I need to believe? So that's our next step, which is ask God for his perspective. Ask Jesus, what do you want me to believe about this situation? What is the truth that you see? Because we see the. What you might call reality of a situation, right? What, what we see in front of us. That's what we. The. The physical thing. But Jesus sees the bigger picture. God sees way more, way farther beyond what we can see. And so we need to ask him for the truth. His truth reigns over the situation that we're facing. So Jesus, what do you have to say about this? What do you want me to believe about this situation? And then we get to partner with that.
• 17:04
  Josh: Yeah, it's so important to get God's perspective on what's happening in our lives. Our viewpoint is so narrow, it's so limited. But God sees our entire life, from the beginning to the end, and he knows how to weave it together for our good, for our benefit. He says, for I know the plans I have for you. Plans to give you hope and a future. God knows he knows how to work all that together. And we don't have that perspective. We can't even begin to fathom how God could possibly do that. But that's what he wants to do. So we get the choice. Am I going to believe the truth of what God is saying or am I going to get stuck in the discouragement of my perspective? So we're just. I love it. What Corina was saying. We're just going to ask God, give me Your perspective. What do I need to know? What do I need to believe about this situation? Write those things down and then renew your mind with the truth of what God is saying.
• 17:59
  Corina: So if this is something that you struggle with, you struggle with recognizing God's voice in the midst of difficult situations, or maybe you're just walking through something that feels really heavy, you don't know what God is saying about it. We would love to partner with you to hear God's voice for your situation, to uncover those lies that you might be believing and maybe partnering with so that you can begin to see the truth, what God really says about you and your situation. So if you're Interested, go to joshandkarina.com coaching and just check it out, see if maybe we would be a good fit because we would love to walk with you through this situation into the beautiful things that God has for you. So our last step is agree with the truth and move on. We can break agreement with that lie and stand in confidence knowing that the enemy no longer has a place. I love Josh's story about fear because I think that what you pay attention to will grow. And so if Josh decided, I'm going to just be afraid, then that fear would continue to have a place that fear now gets to live in. You know, our room, gets to hang out with Joshua, he goes. He gets to be constantly afraid, which we have both experienced that as well in our lives where we've just partnered with fear and we maybe tell it to leave and it doesn't leave and we don't know what to do. And so we just keep being afraid. It's not, It's. It's not the life that God has for us. But when we say, no, you don't have a place here, you have to leave, we take that authority. And then we get to ignore fear and we get to believe and trust that God is with us, then we can rest in his peace. And so we just agree with the truth. We break off the lie. We agree with the truth. We tell the devil to get out. And we rest in the truth, that God is good, his word is good. And if he says that he is protecting you, if he says that he is with you, if he says that he is providing for you, whatever his scripture, the word has said, whatever he's spoken to your heart, then you can know that is the truth. And so we agree with the truth and we come into alignment with it, with our words, we begin to declare it over our life. Every time that old feeling, feeling or lie, pops up, we say, nuh. This is what God said. And we just continue to move forward in what he has called us to.
• 20:23
  Josh: Yeah. I really felt the Lord on when you said alignment. That's such a key word for us as believers. We need to come into alignment. We get to choose with our will what we're going to align ourselves with. The Bible says we become what we behold.
• 20:38
  Corina: Yeah.
• 20:38
  Josh: So if we're beholding the truth, we come into alignment. Our, our body, our soul, our spirit, everything can come into alignment with God's truth. That's where his peace reigns. That's where his truth reigns in us. And I just sense actually God's grace coming on you right now. He's providing alignment. He's bringing you into alignment. That every single part of your life, every part of your thoughts, your will, your emotions would all come into alignment with what God is saying about you right now. He's destroying the lies of the enemy. He actually says right now, you don't have to spend your life fighting the enemy because he's already made you victorious. He won the battle. Jesus won the victory. And then he gave it to you. He said, it's yours. Walk in it. And he's giving you his grace. That's his supernatural power to change and to do what he's enabled you to do. He's giving that to you right now to live in victory every single day of your life and to renew your mind with truth instead of lies. You don't have to keep fighting the enemy all the time because he's done. He's been defeated. You have the victory walk in your victory today.