The Hope of All-In Spiritual Warfare (Tuesdays with Tata)

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Friend, we're back and it's Sunday afternoon here at Moon River Ranch.

I'm sitting here with my main man, Tata, Dennis McDonald.

How you doing, Tata? I'm doing well. It's been a while. Yes,

it has. Yeah, I've been in Texas and I was thinking the time that I went before

the cedar pollen spiked. Yep.

And I thought I was going to expire there for a time. You thought you were going to be done for.

And then just recently I was there and they were experiencing a hot heat wave

and it was very hot there.

Wow. And I played golf one time with a guy and we lasted about noon and that

was it. Too hot. Just extreme.

Wow. It felt like you felt like you're someone opened the door to an oven Wow to the Inferno Friend,

I don't know if you can hear it or not But Harvey and Lewis are chowing down

in the background and they're enjoying their afternoon meal And it is a beautiful

Sunday afternoon here on the river It's not been too hot today.

And since it is Sunday, it must be Tuesday's with taco.

Absolutely. Welcome back. Thank you Good to be back I'm sure the people have

missed you and we've heard from a lot of folks that they missed you and I played a

replay Tuesdays with Tata last week and people were commenting on the fact that

they missed you. Glad to have you back Tata. What are we going to talk about today?

What we're thinking about is in Ephesians, in chapter 6.

But the context of it, if you have to think about the entire chapter,

or the entire book of Ephesians, is Paul is talking to the Ephesian church about being spiritual.

Talking about spiritual gifts, talking about faith and hope in Jesus Christ and our Lord.

But then he reminds them in chapter six what the real battle is all about.

And I'm not gonna read the whole thing, But I want I just wanted

to emphasize a couple of things in chapter

6 of Ephesians in verse

10 Paul tells that the Ephesian brethren

to finally be strong in the Lord in the strength of his might Put on the whole

armor of God that you might be able to stand against the schemes of the devil

For and then he tells us what it sound what it looks like for we do not wrestle

against flesh and blood,

but against the rulers, against the authorities.

Against the cosmic powers over the present darkness, against the spiritual forces

of evil in the heavenly places.

What does it sound like? It sounds like a structure.

It sounds like a government almost. It's highly organized.

There's various levels. And so when Jesus talked about when He would cast demons

out, the demons would talk to Him.

Yeah, that's right. So they knew who He was. There is clearly,

all throughout Scripture, we get this idea that there's a whole system of beings

other than just God out there, and Paul is making us aware of that here.

That's absolutely right.

When we, and you and I were talking about this earlier, But sometimes when we

when we feel a fit where we think someone affected offended us or or treated

us badly That way it's not the person We have to ask why?

We have to search for the reason that they did that because it may be the power

behind that That's right.

Maybe Satan and I have no doubt about it. It is.

Yeah, so We're commanded to resist the devil Not to become these weird people

who think they have authority over spiritual realms.

Peter warns us about that, about dealing with things we don't know anything about.

But to resist the devil and he'll flee from us. That's right,

and one of the things that I want to encourage everybody to do is give up trying

to figure out who he is and what he looks like. It doesn't matter.

He's there. He's real. Yeah. And he and you hit right on it. Our job is very simple.

Resist him and he will flee from us. That's right.

Now, if we if we listen to him, he will he will destroy us. Look what he did

in the Garden of Eden. Yeah.

That's what we see. That's what we see in our whole society right now.

And that is people are succumbing to the easy thing, which is to fight against

each other to say, I hate that guy or I hate that person's politics or I don't

agree with this or I don't agree with that.

We spend our whole time demonizing other people instead of loving them and praying

for them and hoping that the Lord will break through to them because many of us have.

Absolutely, absolutely. Because one of the things that the Apostle Paul encouraged

us to do was to think more highly of the other person.

That's right. And he even suggested that we outdo each other and pleasing the other person.

Yeah. And one of the things that if you, and that all boils down to one thing

in my mind, is being thankful for who you are, what you have and what kind of

condition you're in. Yeah.

And that's how, and if you place your hope in those things, as opposed to something

else, then you have the opportunity for eternal salvation. That's right.

That's right. I just was on a podcast and my book came out a couple of weeks

ago I was on a number of interviews and podcasts and one of them was a show

called theology in the raw and this gentleman named Preston Sprinkle and,

His shows about theology and and we talked about suffering and how we build

a theology How is God present with us in our suffering and all of that,

but he's written a book about about transgenderism and homosexual marriage and

those really controversial topics which we're not experts in and won't get into

here, but the title of his book is People to be Loved.

That's right. And the point that he makes is that...

Sure, argue about the scripturality of systems and decisions and things like

that, but love people, love them.

And that's our job here, that's what Paul's getting at is we're not fighting

against other people, we're fighting against sin that's in the world that's

being driven by spiritual forces, and our warfare is spiritual.

That's right, and if we equip ourselves and we put on, and we know the scripture,

we know what God said, but when we armor ourself against the evil one,

then we'll be able to win.

That's right. And he gives us practical advice here against,

so he sets this up by saying, your battle is not against flesh and blood,

therefore you need to be ready for the battle.

And what does he do? He leads us into the armor. That's right.

And the armor is, once you understand what that is, therefore,

Paul says this in verse 13, therefore take up the whole armor of God,

that you may be able to stand in the evil day, having done all, to stand firm.

Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth,

having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and the shoes on your feet,

having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace." So if you have done

all, and then if you take up the shield of faith,

then you you can extinguish the fiery darts that come from Satan.

But at the end, it still encourages us to do one thing, pray. That's right.

Keep praying. Because he says it down in that same chapter, in chapter six,

verse 18, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayers and supplications. That's right.

So if we keep that posture, being in a prayerful posture and being thankful.

Then we can overcome Satan. That's right. And I don't want to gloss over the

last two weapons that he gives us here.

What are the other two? Before you get to prayer, there's two more. Yeah. The gospel.

The helmet. The helmet to protect yourself against Satan. That's right.

Helmet of faith and shield of faith. Shield of faith.

Belt of truth.

And the breastplate of righteousness. That's right. So, we have the idea that

we are arming ourselves with all these defenses against the spiritual warfare that He's given us.

All these weapons, all these things He's given us, the armor are defensive,

the belt of truth, the body armor of God's righteousness, the New Living Translation says.

The shoes of the good news, of preparation of the gospel that prepares you to

defend yourself against these attacks.

And then the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil,

and salvation is your helmet.

And in another verse, I was trying to find it, the other place where the helmet

of salvation is mentioned is in, yeah, 1 Thessalonians 5, 8.

He says, the helmet of the hope of salvation.

Not just salvation, but the hope of salvation.

So that goes with hope is the first dose, right? Is this idea that the reason

we are able to withstand all these attacks is because we have protecting our

head, in our mind the hope of salvation.

We don't hope, we're not optimistic for a particular outcome.

We have hope in the person of Jesus Christ and the salvation and resurrection that he promises us.

That's right, and Paul reminds us throughout this whole chapter of Ephesians

to have faith, to believe, and to have hope.

And have hope in Jesus Christ.

All this equipment that he's given us, He says you're in a spiritual fight and friend you are.

I think you know, if you've been going through any kind of massive thing in

your life or paying attention to our society right now, you are in a spiritual fight.

They're coming for your children. You can see it happening like the war is on.

That's right. And if you don't think it is, you're not paying attention and

you're gonna get swept away by it. So you are in a fight and it's a spiritual one.

It's not against other people, although sometimes we have to fight people's behavior.

Yes. But he gives us the tools and they're all defenses. That's correct. Except the last one.

Take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. The only offense we

have is God's word. That's it.

It's not our muscles, it's not our money, it's not our might.

No. It's his word. That's correct.

Our reliance on him. That's right. If we take a posture of I can do it myself, we'll fail.

I think it needs to be said, Tata, especially after the last couple of national

elections, A lot of us evangelical Christians, I think especially.

I think got reminded that...

Our politics are not the same as our faith. That's right.

And I think a lot of us got really disappointed after the last election and

we felt like the world was coming to an end, that the bad guys had won and all that.

And we forget what scripture plainly tells us, that God appoints kings.

And we forget that we're not citizens first of the United States or some other

country. We're citizens of the kingdom.

That's right. And our battle is not of flesh and blood. That's right. It's a spiritual war.

But then, but remember what Solomon reminded us of? in the Ecclesiastes,

that there's nothing new under the sun.

Nothing new. It just has a different coat on. Under the sun.

It just has a different coat on. Harvey's saying amen, he wants to be part of

this conversation. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, come on in. Harvey Lewis, making an appearance here on Tuesdays with Tata.

But I think it's fascinating that, so he takes us through this stern warning.

Here in Ephesians six, this stern warning that you need to be strong,

this is verse 10, Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power because you're weak on your own.

That's right, that's right. And that's one of the things the secular worldview

really clashes with Christianity in that the secular worldview tells you that you are enough.

You're strong enough, you're good enough, you're brave enough,

you're powerful enough that you can do whatever you want to.

The Christian worldview says, no, His grace has to be sufficient because I'm

weak and I need His power.

And if you don't have it, you're gonna find yourself wondering why everybody

else seems to think they're strong enough, but you're not. And that's gonna hurt you.

And so he gives us this stern warning, Tata, I love it that you brought this

up today, because we're all in August.

And if you wanna figure out, friend, how to go all in your life in a way that

will actually make progress and get you unstuck and help you move forward, it's this.

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. And in the next breath,

he warns us that we're in a fight that we can't see with our eyes.

That's right, that's right. We're in a spiritual fight. battle.

And then He gives us the tools. And then He tells us about all of those organizations.

That to me has always been, I have pondered that many times.

But when I get to the part about the evil forces in the spiritual places.

That takes me, that's a heavy thought.

It is. There's a lot of stuff going on out there that we can't see, and it's above us.

And C .S. Lewis said it well, he said Christians worry about these things.

But the devil doesn't care if you think of him too much or you think of him

too little. He's happy either way.

You spend your whole time worrying about him and being stressed out about him

or you don't think he's real.

He's equally happy because he's got you. If you know that your power comes from the Lord,

and that you are in a spiritual fight that he's gonna help you win and you put

the defenses on that he's given you and then you remember the only weapon you

have is not your muscle, your might, or your money, but the power,

the sword, the spirit, which is the word of God.

And then it's interesting that he leaves us with.

All of this is to tell you that your only real ability here is to pray. That's correct.

That's right. Is to pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion.

That reminds me of Luke 18, when Luke said, Jesus told His disciples a story

so they would remember to always pray and never give up. That's right. So when should you pray?

Always. Always. When should you give up? Never. That's right.

And He says the same thing here.

Be persistent in your prayers at all times and on every occasion.

That's right, because if you go back and look at the example that we have in

the Garden of Eden, Satan just asked Eve a question. That's right.

He didn't make bold statements. Yep, did God really say that? Did God really say that?

Did He really say that? That's really the question the world's asking right

now. Is God really real? Does the Bible really mean what it says?

Was Jesus really God? Did He really say that?

Maybe not, then people are led away by the question,

Just like they were in the start and why are they led away because they have

not prepared themselves to answer the question That's right If you don't have

the good news of the gospel on your feet That's right to know what the truth

is and the ability to use it as a weapon when you need to,

And that's not the same as saying beat people over the head with scripture It's

saying have enough of it in you that you know how to fight when the devil lies

That's right that you know how to challenge things that aren't true.

That's right because there is a truth.

There is the truth It's not your truth and my truth. No, it's not it is the truth. That's right.

But in it so that is the whole point and it's easy to understand how people are swept away,

When they don't have anything to hold on to Yeah, so if this and Paul is giving

us the what to hold on to it's right on to the truth That's exactly not not ask question about it.

But what is it? Somebody said it a long time ago.

What if Find the truth search for what is true. That's right Search for what is true.

That's right. Not what is false. That's right, search for what is true.

I find it interesting that Paul's writing this letter about spiritual warfare when he's in prison.

Yes. He's in jail. This is one of the four, what they call, the prison epistles.

Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, I'm sorry, Ephesians, Philippians,

Colossians, and Philemon, not Galatians.

Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, written by Paul while he's in a Roman prison.

So he's literally in the middle of a fight for his life It could be executed

and he's telling us the war is not against the Romans the wars against the enemy

the spiritual warfare That's where the war is.

So if you need an example in somebody's real life of how it's not the Democrats

or the Republicans It's not the Russians or the Chinese It's the enemy and we

need to be prepared for the fight that's coming to us, which is always did God really say that?

That's it. That's the fight. Yes, and Satan is very much aware of that as it was then.

That's right. Today, he uses that today, just like it's not novel to him.

It's not brand new, but it works for him.

That's right. And friend, if you're suffering, if you're one of the new readers

that's come because you heard me on Jesus Calling or because you read the new book,

Hope is the First Dose, if you're in the midst of that massive thing,

you're going through something really hard in your life, if it's grief or bereavement

or loss or whatever it might be, Thank you.

Understand that spiritual warfare will come to you in the form of what your

brain says to you after trauma and what the brain says to you after loss.

And it'll be the same thing the enemy always says.

It'll be, yeah, people are telling you that God's gonna be close to you when

you're brokenhearted, but did God really say that?

That's right. He's gonna lie to you. Dad, you lost your wife.

And you heard some of those things in your head, didn't you?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And what'd you do?

Prayed in the spirit at all times on every occasion? And my thought was people

one of the one of the classic statements people make is I'm so sorry for your loss Yeah.

And my answer to that is I didn't lose anyone. I know where they are.

Yeah, that's right We know where they are We know where Mitch is and over mom

is and James and Rebecca and all those people who have gone before us But the

thing is it's so hard to remember when your brain is swirling with all that

pain and all those neurotransmitters,

and the enemy will get up in your head and he'll tell you, God doesn't love

you, or this was your fault somehow, or you missed something,

or you shouldn't have done that.

Or you'll remind God of all the things that you did. That's right,

and there's no resurrection.

No, that's correct. And it's not, you really have lost her. That stuff will

happen, friends, so we're just telling you that, to remember that even your

grief, and even your loss is a spiritual fight, because the enemy will take

your vulnerable state and try to discourage you,

and try to convince you that all is lost, and that hopelessness is really the

deadliest thing that can happen to you. Absolutely. So don't lose hope.

Remember the hope of the helmet of salvation is on your head to block out that

stuff that's flying at you.

That's right. And you can do it. You can fight it. And that's why we say hope

is the first dose. Absolutely.

And that's the only hope we have.

That's exactly right, it's the only hope we have. It's all in August,

Tata, so I think if we're gonna,

if we're gonna say that the secret to fighting the fight, and the secret to

understanding the fight is to know it's a spiritual one, not a battle against flesh and blood,

and we know that the answer to surviving the fight is to arm ourselves and armor

ourselves, and then take up the truth, and we know that we're supposed to pray

all the time and stay all in it, it's a pretty good example of what it means to be all in.

That's right. Because this battle doesn't stop. No, it does not.

So I'm 54 and you're 84, has it stopped?

Do I look forward to it stopping in the next 30 years?

No, it's just, and I recall it just vividly, like it happened yesterday when

we first moved to Alabama.

I woke up one morning, it was like 3 or 4 o 'clock in the morning,

and I said, Satan, how did you find out I was in Alabama? I didn't tell you.

I didn't bring you here. He knew that. He followed you.

Absolutely. That's right. We got people on the prayer wall just this week talking

about spiritual fights that they're in, and marriages that are in trouble,

and kids that are astray, and financial issues, and all kinds of things.

And we're just here to tell you, friends, that you can really find hope,

that the promises of the word really are true, but you can't know them if you don't ingest them.

You can't have that hope of knowing what God's word is and take up that sword

to use it as part of the fight if you don't put it in your heart.

You've got to know it. That's right. That's right.

It's like often when we feel like that, that's what Paul meant.

We take captive every thought.

And that may be as simple as, is that you talking to God? Who's talking?

Yeah. And so what did that cause you to do? Stop and made you think.

And made you ask questions yourself. That's right.

That's 2 Corinthians 10, 5, and that's the back half of a verse in which he

says, we demolish every stronghold, every argument that comes into contention

against Jesus, and we take captive every thought.

And the Greek there is just, I think it's storge, is that right?

I think of something like that. I need to look that up. But let me just say,

I'm not gonna quote that right now, but the word refers to a citadel on a hill

that had a perfect view of all the ground that could be used to assault it and.

So that was a really powerful metaphor because they were used to Sailing and

seeing these big castles up on the hill and it would be virtually impossible

for an army to attack them That's correct because they can prepare for it. That's right.

And so the idea is These pretensions that the enemy gives us these these ideas

these attacks of thought did God really say that nobody loves you you're alone,

you'll never get over this.

Those are strongholds that seem impossible to overcome because they sound so true to us.

They sound so true. And Paul tells us the secret to overcoming them is to take your thoughts captive.

And to say, wait a minute, I'm putting this thought, I'm biopsying it,

and I'm putting it under the submission, into submission of Jesus Christ.

I'm gonna tell him that thought is gonna come under the blood of Jesus Christ

because he's already told me that his promises are true And he is for me and

he has a plan for me and he has a resurrection for me All those things are true.

That's how you win that war Yes, and and and I can tell you and I think I've

said this before but and I'm not immune I hear Satan all day long,

He says things to me. Yeah. But one of the things that I've learned to do is

rebuke Him in Jesus' name.

That's right. And order Him behind me.

That's what our Lord did. Yeah.

The real question that somebody's going to ask when you say that is,

how do you know the voice of God and not the voice of the enemy?

How do you know when a voice tells you something that it's the enemy or God?

And John Bevere has spoken to this and written about it really nicely.

He says, the Holy Spirit will convict. He will never condemn. That's right.

He will call you out, but he'll never shame you. No, and so if you're hearing

things like oh, you're terrible You're a loser.

You're awful. You should just kill yourself or you're never gonna be.

Okay, that's never from God That's never the Holy Spirit and he will speak to

you in ways that are consistent with his word That's right.

Well, that's like negative self -talk. That's right. Where does it think?

Where do you think it comes from? That's right from the enemy That's just some

chemical in your brain But the problem is this if you don't know what God's

true words for your life are then you don't know how to rebut them,

rebut words that you hear that are not his true words. That's correct.

So it comes back around to this, arming yourself with the word and being prepared.

We call that prehab in my book. We talk about this idea of putting all this

good stuff inside you. That's right.

And even Jesus said it. Dad and John, when he was leaving, he told the disciples

that the counselor, the Holy Spirit is gonna come and live inside you.

It's better for you that I go and he come.

That's right, or if I don't go, he won't come. That's right,

and he said that what he's gonna do, The Spirit is going to remind you of all

the true things I've told you. That's right.

He's not going to make up new stuff to tell us.

He's not going to say something that's contrary to Scripture.

He's not going to shame you. He's going to remind you of what's true. That's right.

That's right. And the voice that you hear in your head, many times,

is a voice of accusation. That's right.

It's not a positive voice. That's right. And the Holy Spirit will not do that. That's right.

I think that's a great place to land today, Tata. We've recognized that we're in a spiritual fight.

We recognize that in order to win a spiritual fight, we need spiritual help.

And the spiritual help comes in the form of the full armor of God,

and the weapon of the Word, and the power of persistent prayer. That's right.

And those things working together will give us all the tools we need. Peter says it plain.

He, his divine power has given us everything we need for life and love and mercy. Oh, absolutely.

We don't need anything else. Nothing else.

So friend, it's time to go all in. And it's a perfect day to do it because we're

sitting here on the banks of the river and we're watching the bald eagle fly

by a little while ago and we're looking at the beautiful things God has made.

And we know that this world is not our home and that we are in the midst of a spiritual fight.

And so when it's time to go all in, Tata, when's it time to start?

Start today. Let's start today.

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I'm Dr. Lee Warren, I'll talk to you soon. God bless you, friend. Have a great day.

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