Good morning And welcome. This is pastor Lucy painter with your daily insights. For the past 11 days we have been talking about battles frontline. We have talked about what it means to be in battle. What strategies are employed in battle. We've talked about the discipline of war. The dues and the dawns of war. We've seen how battles are worn. We've seen how battles are lost. We have been saying here that we are in constant barrel but who are we fighting with? What forces are we in battle with? Where does the enemy we are talking about attack and what we ponds should we use in our defense? And so today we are going to take a different dimension as we continue to talk about being in the barrels frontline. The book of a fashions. Chapter six verse 12 says for our fight is not against Flesh and blood, but against Principalities against powers against rulers of darkness of this world and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

The battles we have been reading about over the past few days are battles that were fought on the natural plane they were fought in the physical sphere against flesh and blood enemies. They were fought with natural weapons with and wildly ways and while the art and the discipline of war remains fairly, the same as we have seen, the enemy is different. The conditions for peace are different too. We saw that in some instances in the wars we have covered so far some enemy troops surrendered, truce is like that with the Gibbons were negotiated because war against fellow men calls for some resi painful sympathy. But the war we are engaged in as believers is different. It is a wall with a force greater than any worldly force, a power greater than any confederation of armies greater than any technology.

The world we are in is a true ruthless war with the order of evil himself. You know, the verse we've just read is not a call to believe that there is a fight going on and we should pick about weapons and go into it. It is a statement of fact, the fact that we are already in battle and we are in a spiritual warfare. Whether we are conscious to the fact or we remain ignorant, it doesn't change that fact. Yes, we are in constant conflicts with men. Yes, we are called to bear testimony against the depravity of men, to endure their reproach to conquer them. With our testimony. We are in constant effort to confuse arguments again. It's the scriptures from nonbelievers and yet the word of the Lord says, we do not wrestle against this.

We don't wrestle against this. Yeah, but against Principalities and powers against the rulers of darkness, against the Prince of this world. The ruler of Darkness that has overshadowed this world with sin. He who has from the beginning of time sought to keep the light of God from this world. He who seeks to enslave others outside the safety of the covenant of the gospel of jesus christ. We wrestle against Prince parity the spirit of evil which wields the power of the tempter himself. Spirits who sole purpose is to alienate us from God. These are great paris. But the fact that we are called to wrestle with them means that they are not invisible. It means that their power is transitory, that it's limited.

That whatever agency they're exercise through, they can be overcome our warfare as a fashion 6 11 says, involves combating the wells. The schemes of the devil and paul uses a variety of terms to describe the levels at which these schemes are orchestrated. They are of different levels. They are established into different ranks but commissioned to knock us down. These are the spiritual hosts of wickedness that attack the Spirit in the higher level, they attack the spirit in the level at which it contemplates heavenly things. They attack the Spirit in the level that it begins to come into communion with the Lord. These are the spirits which ruled over us when we were still in darkness. We are not new to them. By virtue of being believers, they daily labor to bring us back to bring us to distraction.

They labor to infuse and believe in place of our faith to drag us back into revolt against the Lord. And as we wrestle to secure the promises of the covenant, they labor to hinder us from obtaining them. And you know, we said last week that we are in a war with an enemy who doesn't mind using every weapon at his disposal against us. We are in a war with more than just our human enemies and our fallen nature. We are in combat against an enemy with thousands of ways to be gallus. Our enemy, our human enemies are at his disposal. Our contention with the Kano and corrupt inclination of our nature is at his disposal. But our main con prophecy is with the invisible powers that seek to destroy us. These are the sources of our spiritual conflict and with whom warfare must be maintained.

You know Darkness. When we talk of darkness, darkness is a symbol of ignorance, suffering and sin and these are the malignant spirit, the rule over the fallen world. This is the kind of Dominion. These powers would delight in establishing in us a Dominion consolidated around the selfish, corrupt and based passions of the human mind. You see, the empire of Darkness has existed for ages. It extend far and wide. There could not be a power more difficult to fight against. But this is the empire that the Apostle says. We must wage war against. This is the region, we must establish the Dominion of God in we must wage war against spiritual wickedness against superstitions and false doctrine against evil customs and pleasures of the world.

We must wage war against our own sinful inclinations. But even as we fight, we must remember that victory lies not in what we do, but in what jesus did on the cross, we must get to work with the Lord like we said last week, we must appropriately and apply what Jesus did on the cross because we are in a battle that is being fought on different levels in front, a battle that has been fought across this world and be old and we must therefore prepare for all kinds of attack because though we know that christ will reign on earth as he reigns in heaven, our dispensation is to be inactive, engagement with the spiritual forces of evil. I know today has been tough and and speaking all these deep deep stuff and I pray that the holy Spirit is really explaining it in in a way that is understandable to you in in each and everyone's level but I'm saying that we are in an ongoing battle with mighty powers of this fallen world and the spirits in higher heavenly places.

The only effective weapon against this enemy is found in christ in his word and in his truth, it is him that triumph against sudden, it is through him that we must overcome the enemy. It is through his word and his truth that we must wrestle against the evil forces in this world. For it is only through the word of God, it is only by a binding in christ and him in us that we can have victory over the paris of darkness. But remember whether you are ignorant or whether we are conscious of it, the statement remains, it is a fact that we are in Aw, Fair Shalom. This is pastor, Lucy painter with your daily insight, and this is battles frontline day 12.