is this is this first one here and I'm not going to mention the scripture references though the important part of the verse is all in there. I was trying to get into the time we have available all that I wanted to share on this subject as the Lord is there. My name is Jeff Jordan I'm a research and industrial chemist Guy gave me some ideas that resulted in developing products. We were in India for two years and I saw people dying just from drinking the city water supply. It was terrible. And then the runoff water killed them as well. So I was able to develop a water filter, which we've been doing since 2011. And then recently I got a patent on a sanitation system So we're able to sell some of our product commercially, but the rest I do through WaterServe Foundation, and I'm the president of that. Paul is with Biblical Restoration Ministries. He's president of that organization, was trained for 15 years by Jim Logan, and he helps people find God's solution to life's problems through biblical counseling. So Paul counsels people every week. And it just has a lot of stories. You'll be really good on answering your questions. But we would ask, if you have any questions, just take a note of them. And we'll talk about those after we've been through the information we want to present. So our concern was that you have all of this material available, if and when you need it. And so that's why we have these handouts. Well, let me pray for us and commit our time to the Lord. and ask him to guide us in our time together today as we open his word. Precious Father, we thank you for our time in your presence. Be a word of truth and the guidance of your Holy Spirit. We ask you would stop any distractions and show us the complete peace, joy, and love we have through Jesus. The absolute victory on the cross that he brought us. He brought mankind and he made available to each of us. So we thank you and we ask this in Jesus' name. So we'll start on the first page. At the top of the page, an introduction. Here's a commentary on the book of Jude, Bible scholar and author, Dr. Warren Beersbee. The Christian life is a battleground, not a playground. Whether we're aware of it or not, all Christians have a very real enemy. My first real experience in spiritual warfare was in Chennai, in India, in 1978. I married Sherry, an Oklahoma girl. We'd been married about seven months. We had prayed about going to India as missionaries, and I had an opportunity to go and look around and meet the staff and just check it out and see how God was leading. We were asleep in bed one morning, about 2 a.m., and we both just woke up alone, sitting all upright up and it was dimly lit. I looked around the room and couldn't see anyone. We felt like the bed sheets were being pulled off. We both had the same feeling. And then I reached over and turned on the light and the window was locked, the door was locked and there was no one there. And so we prayed against this presence that had come into the room. The verse that I prayed is And that's the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son, cleansing us from all sin. And I pray that verse multiple times whenever we stay in a hotel room. I just pray that to cleanse the room from the sin and the effect of other people that have stayed in that room. And we never have a restless night. When we pray that, God cleanses the room. He's faithful to do that. And that verse refers to the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing us from all sin. It's not just our own sin or other people's sin, it's the sin of the demonic realm as well, the rebellion against God's kingdom. So we went to India four years later, and we had other experiences in the spiritual warfare area, but I can talk about those sometime. So this short prayer has really stopped stopped us having a lot of disrupted sleep. And, you know, when the FBI trains investigators for their counterfeit currency task force, they don't spend a lot of time looking at currency notes that are counterfeit. They train their people in intensively studying the original notes, you know, the real notes. And then when they know that, and when they've got a good grasp of that, they can instantly spot a fake. And in the same way, a Christian is protected by the study of God's word, so he or she can discern a deception or outright lie, and deception is Satan's main weapon against believers. The book of Ephesians puts spiritual warfare in perspective for us about our identity. It is from chapter one to six, nine, it's talking about, firstly, the believer's position, a saving grace, God's plan, a Christian walk, personal conduct, personal relationships. So much of the book of Ephesians is to who God created us to be, his eternal plan for us, and all of those other areas preparing us, but then he deals with Christian warfare. So Ephesians deals with spiritual warfare after we have learned all that God has done to plan for us in eternity, to save us, to instruct and train us, then finally to equip us to be aware of and victorious over our infernal enemy. So we do not focus on the enemy, but always on Jesus. Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present every man mature in Christ. But we're in constant combat with Satan and we need to know who he is and how he operates. That's good military strategy. Know your enemy and you'll recognize him. We have in the Bible, God's word is truth. The only source of absolute truth about God, the physical and spiritual environment in which we live. It's the most precious commodity in the world. Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. A promise from the God of truth is in those words, in the word of truth. John 16, 13 says, but when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. We are led by the spirit of truth. John 14, 6, we see that Jesus embodies truth. I am the way, the truth, and the life. So we need to read through the gospels and see how Jesus handled people. How did he handle the demonic realm? You know, we see the truth of what works because every word of God proves true. The word in Greek, two words, logos, refers to words in general, spoken, written. In John 1.1, the word logos is used to refer to Jesus. Every word of the logos is found in the dictionary. So the physical book itself does not have power. Some people believe if they're having bad dreams, if you put an open Bible under your bed, the dreams will stop. Well, the physical book does not have that power. What has power is the rhema, and that is the word of God empowered by the Holy Spirit. This is what has power over the enemy as we speak the word of God. And we navigators are so good at doing that, to quote a verse of scripture, a verse that's in season for someone's need. And it doesn't need to be the whole verse. In fact, it doesn't need to be perfect, but the truth needs to be spoken, and it has the power of the Holy Spirit behind it. Acts 17.11 describes what the church in Berea did as they fought there. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. So they received the word, they were open and embraced it. And then they checked out if it was true according to the other scriptures. Next point is man is made in God's image. Then God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness with capacity to know God and to relate to him. Then man is placed in the garden we see in Genesis 2.16. God put him in the garden at Eden to work it and keep it. We have no concept of how beautiful and full of life the garden was before the fall. It was a little patch of heaven, just a small location. But God was there, his presence was there, and Adam was there in total fellowship with God, made in his image. What a beautiful situation that was. And then Eve joins Adam, Genesis 2.22, and the rib that the Lord had taken from the man he made into woman and brought her to the man. But the serpent was also in the garden. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord had made. John 8.44 tells us he is a liar and the father of lies. Then we go to the curse from God. Genesis 3.15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Who is the seed of the serpent? You know, we follow the seed of Eve, but who is the seed of serpent? Genesis 6.12, King James Version says, all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. So all of the corruption, all of the stuff we have going on in the world, All of the evil that's entered the world came through the serpent. The third identity, it was Lucifer that was in the garden and he's described in Ezekiel 28, 12 to 19. Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre and say to him, thus says the Lord God, you were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God, Every precious stone was your covering. The sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and paper, jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. You were the anointed cherub who covers. I established you. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you. By the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within and you sinned. Therefore, I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground. I laid you before kings that they might gaze at you. You defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities, by the iniquity of your trading. Therefore, I brought fire from the midst and devoured you. And I turned you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you. All who knew you among the people are astonished at you. You have become a horror and shall be no more forever. This ending destruction of Satan is prophecy yet to be fulfilled. But we see the description of Satan. He was full of wisdom. He was perfect in beauty. Apparently light in many colors was coming from him. Timbrels and pipes, apparently music came from him. A cherub, one of the highest order of angels, covering cherub, guardian possibly of God's glory, responsible for worship of God in heaven. You know, we see cherubs, if we go to a Christian bookstore, we see cute little cherubs, and most of the angels are women, and neither of those are true. So we have to set aside and just look at what Scripture says, set aside our otherwise thinking and ideas we have, and just look at what God says. He was perfect until iniquity was found in him. And iniquity is self-willedness, is a good definition of that. as he had his own aspirations. Multitude of thy merchandise. Trading really is lobbying. He was whispering in the other angels ear, join my rebellion and I'll give you power that you don't have right now. And then we can't trust God. He profaned the name of God. And he convinced a third of the angels to follow and rebel against God. He is a slanderer, falsely accused God, imputed wrong motives, a tailbearer, flatterer, corrupt, carried tails to shed blood, committed lewdness. Jesus said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. So Lucifer was kicked out of heaven. Satan fell like lightning. So Lucifer became Satan, was cast to the earth and the angels were cast out with him. Now let's go to Isaiah 14, 12 to 15. How you are fallen from heaven, O day star, sun of dawn. How you are cut down to the ground. You have laid the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High, but you are brought down to shawl to the far reaches of the pit." Notice the five I wills in that passage. I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the Mount of Assembly. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High. Lucifer's pride caused his downfall and God's judgment. Revelation 12.4 tells us his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. The ranking of angels is very well organized. And although we don't know the number of cherubim in heaven, we do know about Archangels Michael, commander of the Lord's army, and Gabriel, God's annunciation messenger to his people, as he did to John the Baptist's father, Mary and Joseph, Lucifer was another named cherub, very powerful. Covering cherub suggests original leader of all the angels. And his responsibility apparently was covering the glory of God and protecting him. Where is Satan now? Ephesians 2.2, he is referred to as the prince of the power of the air. He operates in the air, Greek as air, He operates not in the Greek ether, which is the upper atmosphere, but close to the ground at work in the sons of disobedience. So people are either serving God or serving Satan. There is no neutral or third option. I've heard two speakers say that when they're in a plane at 40,000 feet or 35, something like that, they find it easier to pray than when the plane comes down and they're on earth. It's interesting that That testimony seems to bear out what the Greek word tells us. If we receive Jesus, if we receive Jesus, we have the right to be in God's kingdom, John 1, 12. If we reject Jesus, we remain in Satan's kingdom as sons of disobedience. Satan has legitimate authority over all those who reject Jesus. He rules over rebels, enslaving them. Below that are some of the 50 names of Satan in scripture. In his position, he's prince of this world, prince of the power of the air, the god of this world, the ruler of demons, his character, he's the devil, defames God and believers, serpent of old, crafty deceiver, great dragon, the evil one, influences the world, destroyer, of physical and spiritual life. In activity, John 10.10, he comes to steal and kill and destroy. He's the tempter. He's the accuser before God. He's a murderer from the beginning. He's a liar, the father of lies. He's the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience. I wanna go now to the three parts of man. This is defined in a couple of verses. that support this, 1 Thessalonians 5.23, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then also Hebrews 4.12 indicates the same thing. But over the page, we have the first of several target-looking diagrams. Before the fall, the three parts of man was body, soul, and spirit, all in harmony with God. The outward physical being, five senses, it's our means of doing and speaking. The soul is our personality and means of expression. And it has three parts, the mind that thinks, the emotions that feel, and the will that chooses. And then there is our spirit. Our spirit is our true identity. It is our means of knowing and responding to God. So Adam knew and responded to God, but then at the fall, Man's spirit became dead to self and God. Man's body became weak and dying, and man's mind became darkened, deceived, and corrupted. Man's will became enslaved to sin, and man's emotions became controlling and out of control, because they were no longer fed by the spirit in harmony with God. And so death spread to all men because all sinned, So that's the genetic avalanche that's affected all of mankind. So when a person receives the Lord Jesus, then God restores his image in us. So the spirit, our old nature was crucified with Christ, and our spirit has been made new. Christ has given us a brand new identity. Our spirit is now indwelled in union with God's spirit. So we do have a human spirit. It was dead in trespasses and sins. It's like a house with the power turned off. Everything's there to work, but there's no power. When the Holy Spirit comes in, then all of man's gifts and abilities, who he is, are empowered by God's spirit. And so we are born again. The body will be replaced. And even now, it will carry out the directions and of the renewed mind. The soul, the mind, emotions, and will begin to be renewed by the truth of God's word, Romans 12, two. And then the new man has been reborn. It is now holy, blameless, complete, perfect, unconditionally loved, righteous, kept in union with God's spirit. And the, you know, I like, In John 3, you must be born again. As God gave us that example of a one-way trip, there's no way we can lose our salvation. We're guarded and protected, the Holy Spirit is in us, our spirit is made new, and we are in union with him. The other thing that's there is the flesh. And I wanted to point out, when I was studying the Bible, there was a kind of a doctrine that we have We have two parts in us. We have the old nature and then we have the new nature. And they're like two dogs, a white dog and a black dog. And the one that wins is the one we feed the most. But this is a retraction. The Zondervan company changed sinful nature to flesh. And that's the Greek word sarx. And it's not the old nature. The flesh is the memory of how we used to get our needs met before we knew the Lord. So a drunk that hits the bottle, that meets his needs, when he comes to the Lord, he's not gonna be able to change that right away because that's in the flesh area. And so he lives with that, it shows it there in his body and soul area. So we have the new man and the input of the word of God with those yellow arrows pointing out, it's affecting the soul and then that affects the body, that's why You know, people take care of their bodies and go overseas as missionaries. They want to serve God. And that's the Holy Spirit that makes that change. But they have this conflict with the flesh. And that's in the next one down. If we are new creations, why do we still sin? Well, we still have a threefold enemy. Indwelling sin or the flesh, its drives and habits and memories. Satan appeals to the memories of the old nature, the world system tries to conform us into its way of thinking. So we are still prone to walk according to the flesh, and the flesh is the memory of our old habits, as we said. So the world, the flesh, and the devil are the three enemies we have. So spiritual warfare, oh, The antidote to that is, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. So we focus on walking by the spirit, it overcomes the power of the flesh and we gradually grow in victory over it. Spiritual warfare is about the battle for the mind. And in looking at this battle, we want to understand what the battle is and who the enemies are. I want to read Matthew 16, 13 to 17. Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, others Elijah and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But he said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven. So where did Peter say this idea came from? His father in heaven, yeah, Jesus' father in heaven. So we go down a few verses and pick it up in verse 21. From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you. But he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan, you are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. So where did Jesus say this thought had come from that Peter expressed? Satan. Yeah. And Peter apparently did not distinguish the difference. He probably thought they were both his thoughts when he had them. And many of us think that the thoughts we have are just our own. You know, they come from our background. They come from everything that we've absorbed. And if they don't come from the word of God, then they're not God's thoughts. And we have about 50,000 thoughts per day, some from God, some from Satan and others from ourselves, from our memory and, you know, the way we respond to things. A new and compelling thought to act or make a decision with some urgency, especially if motivated by fear or a sense of urgency can be from the enemy. Because that's what the enemy does. He deceives us with bad information and then puts heat on it and tries to make us to make a fearful decision to act on our own behalf rather than trust God with it and let God work it out. 2 Corinthians 10 5 tells us to take the thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. In this part of the country, it's like calf roping at a rodeo. We chase and lasso that thought and bring it to God's word to make it obedient to the Lord. Is this thought the way God thinks? Is this what the word says? We renounce and reject bad thoughts. There is a nonstop battle for our mind, in our mind and for our mind. Demonic spirits cannot read our mind, but they can inject thoughts. When I think back on those bedclothes, You know, demons don't have muscles and they don't have the way to move things. And I just think that we both had the same thought at the same time that those bedsheets were being pulled off our bed. That's the way he operates. And we've seen many occasions when there's been something like that happen. 1 John 4, 1 to 3 gives a biblical test for thoughts that may have been injected by evil spirits. So what we do is we ask God, would this spirit or this thought, because the spirit will inject the thought, so would this spirit or thought agree that Jesus came in the flesh? God replies with a yes or no answer every time. He always does this. If you'll do this, he will reply. He gives us this test in scripture to discern the spirits, and he will surely reply when we ask him. The next thing we want to talk about is a biblical worldview, the three realms. The biblical worldview has three functional realms, the realm of God or deity, the realm of angels, which is holy and fallen, and the realm of people and things. The God of the Bible is the only occupant of the realm of God. Isaiah 57, 15 tells us that he is the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity. God inhabits eternity. He's outside of time. He can move into the time spectrum at any point and arrange things for us. God is sovereign on the throne over all his creation. And then Satan apparently aspires to inhabit this realm as the equal of God. But he is not in the realm of the year and never will be. He's a created being. And then the next realm in diagram two is the realm of angels. And this realm is fully populated and fully functioning, just as depicted in the scripture, over 300 references to angels in the Bible. The number of angels is limitless. There are many types of angels, cherubim, seraphim, archangels, etc. Their character as created by God is holy. Their role is that of a servant, ministering spirits. Their functions include ministering to God in worship, ministering to Jesus, ministering to the saints, each of us are saints, protecting, conveying God's guidance, delivering from enemies, serving as personal guardian angels, destroying enemies, controlling the forces of nature. The believer's relation to God must have a solid foundation in biblical truth and must be a functional relationship, not just theological information. For all other relationships to be what they ought to be. On our diagram here, we have the big circle of God and then to the right is the throne of God, just illustrating that God is on his throne. in eternity. And then we have the realm of angels sent to serve, the arrow pointing down and the believers are just loving life, their arms are up, they're rejoicing, delighting, they're blessed. Then we go over the page. It must be based on truth. Our relationship must be based on truth. Our life needs to comply with what God says about it in his word. especially about sin and our identity in Christ. We must be totally honest with him, putting on the armor of the belt of truth. It must involve the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must be a functioning part of our worldview. The Holy Spirit must be the spirit of wisdom and revelation for us in order that we may have a full and correct knowledge of God. He is the one on whom we depend for guidance, Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. So in our illustration, we have the truth of God is working in the lives of the believers, and the Holy Spirit from God is also teaching them that truth as they're in the Word, and that's the relationship we have in learning truth. The next diagram, and diagram five, The original harmony of creation was destroyed when one of the highest angels rebelled. So Lucifer rebelled and became Satan and then took a third of the angels with him. His battle toward the believers is temptation, firstly, and then attacks. So the temptation and then toward the unbelievers, it's deceit. He deceives them and he controls them. His primary tactic is deception. It's a clever tactic because when you're deceived, you don't know it. See, if you're attacked, you know it, or if you're tempted, you know it, but when you're deceived, you just don't know. You think, well, what I think is right. There's no reason to question it. and that's the way he works. Deception is the trap by which he controls it. He needs to tell unbelievers only one lie. There is a way other than the cross to find meaning and fulfillment in life. I have a friend in India developed a sort of a gospel presentation. He'd sit next to a Hindu and he'd tell them he was a Christian and the Hindu would say, oh, I believe there are many ways to God. He said, yes, yeah, I agree. In fact, the Bible says we'll all stand before God and we'll give an account for what we've done, especially what we did with his son. It's just a clever way to get over that obstacle. If you meet someone like that in the new age, it's right into that. Then the diagram six, Christ is sealed. He's seated far above rule and authority. Ephesians 1, 19 to 21, the believer is raised. And that's us up with Him and seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So we see on our diagram there to the right of God's throne is that after the resurrection, Christ was seated far above all rule and authority. And we are raised, if we've accepted Him, we are raised with Him and seated with Him in the heavenly realms. And we are victors. We're in that position. And so we are to reign in life through one man, Jesus Christ. So we look, well, why did Jesus come? Well, he came to save his people from their sins. Matthew 1.21. I didn't write these references in there, but go ahead and do that. Matthew 1.21. Jesus came to save his people from their sins. Colossians 2, 13 and 14, all of our sins were nailed to the cross and canceled. We are absolutely forgiven. That's the sin of our whole life. It's not just the sins up to today and we have to confess more tomorrow. It's Jesus died for sin to bring us into fellowship with God. Then 1 John 3, 8 tells us that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. You know, the last thing that Jesus said on the cross in John 19.30 is, it is finished. And then he gave up his spirit. What was he referring to? He destroyed the works of the devil. He reconciled man by dying for sin. And both of those were completed. Then we read in 1 Corinthians 2, 7 and 8, about the hidden wisdom of God, none of the rulers of this age understood this. If they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. So they thought that, hey, so clever crucifying the son of God, but that was God's wisdom to destroy all of Satan's kingdom. And we benefit from that now. So we go to diagram seven. So Seated with Christ in the heavenly realms is our actual position. It's our position spiritually and then it will be our position physically after our resurrection. Satan is constantly on the tack against the believers. And we must expect other kinds of attacks. Deception is still his primary tactic. His principal aim is to cause us to be spiritually ineffective by living at a level that is not to the glory of God. So he will try to make us to do things that don't glorify God, and then he'll load us with guilt. And we don't carry that guilt, we just agree with him, yes, that was sin, I did it, and then thank God for his forgiveness. And just tell God, I acknowledge that that is sin, and with your presence, I'll endeavor not to do that again. So the unbelievers become believers through the cross at the bottom there and they're born again. The believer who does not appropriate his authority in Christ will live as though he is a victim and will see himself as a victim. And that's the guy right at the bottom there. He doesn't have his arms up in joy and fullness of the Holy Spirit living in him. but he sees himself as a victim. He needs to repent, put on the whole armor of God, and assume his position of authority in the Lord Jesus Christ, seated with him in the heavenly realms. The late Dr. Howard Hendricks was a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. He said to one of his pastor's friends, he asked him, how are you going? And the guy said, not bad under the circumstances. He said, what are you doing under the circumstances? You need to reign in life through Jesus Christ. That's who he made you to be. Our true position is seated with Christ. We have acceptability to God. We have access to God. Just imagine a holy God and we can come right before him and before the throne of grace in time of need. And we have authority in Christ. So this is the spiritual AAA club. We need to remember these things. We always have access to God. He is always with us. He will never leave us nor forsake us. We have absolute authority. Jesus gave us the great commission backed by his authority. And then we have acceptability to God because all of our sins are paid for on the cross. So we're going to go to the next section. The last bit is to put on the full armor of God. The key passage here is Ephesians 6, 10 to 18. Yeah, I'll take the time to read that. Therefore take up the whole armor of God. starting at verse 10. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm. Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness. And as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. Praying at all times, in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints." So that is the armor of God. The first piece that's mentioned there, and the order of these is very important. The first piece is the belt of truth. The Roman belt was six to eight inches wide and strapped around the waist, and other items hung from it. And it gave the soldier freedom to move. All he had was his sword and his shield and anything else he needed was hooked on his belt. If we attempted or attacked, we know it. But if we are deceived, we don't know it. We live in an age of deceit. We get lies from all directions when inputs don't agree with God's word. Our cultural background, our entertainment, the media, advertising, government, just living life. constantly confronts us with wrong information. It is foundational to put on the belt of truth and not be deceived. The second item is the breastplate of righteousness. It covered the vital areas for the heart and lungs for the soldier and penetration of the breastplate was usually fatal. The righteousness that will protect you is not your righteousness, it's Christ's righteousness. The righteousness from God that depends on faith. I added another verse there, Proverbs 28.1. The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion. So sin in our life just will get to the point where we're frightened of our own shadow. And of course the soldier has to face the battle. He can't turn and run, he's very vulnerable. And so we face and engage the enemy. That's the way we stand strong. The second, the third one is, shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. With securely strapped sandals, these had leather thongs that went up the calf a little way and just gave real stability to the thick leather sole. Some had nails for reinforcement if it was slippery ground. A strong no-slip stance in battle through the victory that has already been won. The first three armor items are positional, that is, they're God-given, and the next three are to be taken up. Ron York said one day, I heard him saying in a message that he'd visited a ministry and it wasn't doing really well, the guys were kind of struggling, and he said, how many of you have shared the gospel with someone in the last month? And he looked around and none of them had. He said, you're just not in the battle. No wonder you're having trouble. And that's what being in the battle is, that we're ready with the gospel of peace. And my wife and I, at a restaurant, we'll ask the waitress, I'm sure many of you do, we're about to pray over the food, is there something we can pray for you? We've never had a no. In fact, one waiter sort of sat down and prayed with us, he had some problems and wanted to be involved. The shield of faith, the shield was four foot by two foot six, overlaid with linen, and leather to absorb fiery arrows. Faith is simply believing God and that we will do what he has said. The shield was to be totally protecting with no damage or holes. Just imagine a shield with holes in it and any unrepaired holes could cause the soldier to lose the battle. You know, a lance through the shield and through the breastplate of righteousness and he was done. So we need to be in the battle without unresolved issues. If you struggle with Genesis 1 and don't know how to put creation and evolution laid out, that's a hole. I mean, that's something Satan can use to keep you off balance. Or lack of assurance. If you don't know for sure that you're absolutely saved, then how can you have power in the battle and use the shield? Satan will attack in that area. or you have doubts about your total forgiveness. All of our sins are nailed to the cross. They're all gone. We're totally forgiven. The word of truth is, fix the holes by studying the sufficient word of truth to be strong by believing the Bible. This last page shows a battle strategy that the Romans had. And it really says things about being in a close community and operating, say, in a church, you know, with people working together. The integrity of the shield was essential in group battle, and 27 soldiers could use the shield together in the tortoise formation. One form had six soldiers in front, then three rows of seven each, covering the slides and top with interlocked shields. Testing involved running chariots over the formed tortoise. Man. There was a diagram of this I saw, and fortunately they had a few tortoises all working together, but a chariot was galloping over them. The weaponry is how the Roman Empire conquered such a vast area militarily. The helmet of salvation has nothing to do with salvation since Paul is riding to save people. It is the guarantee of salvation and the hope of God's promised deliverance in the situations we are in in life. It provides protection for the head and protects the brain and the mind against wounds that could possibly prove fatal for the soldier. We claim Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 as we trust the Lord with all our heart and don't rely on our own insight. That's the helmet of salvation. We know that God will answer the issue, and so we trust him with it and he will provide. The next is the sword of the spirit. The Roman Mercurius was 24 inches long and sharpened on both sides. With this revolutionary innovation, they returned legendary battle victories. Soldiers had to be specially trained and well-practiced to use this close-in weapon, because they had to let the other guy swing first with his skidamar, and then when he's off balance, they just, you know, duck the first swipe and then go in. So they had to be trained to do that. The allness of prayer. Verse 18, the New King James Version says, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. Prayer is the heavy artillery. It's the long range weapon. You know, we pray for people around the world and God answers. It's very real. He answers from eternity, so he can change timing, just all, you know, answer prayers before we even pray them. Paul was likely changed at times to a Roman soldier while imprisoned in Rome and drew spiritual insights from both the armour and its description in the Old Testament writing. Well, how do we put on the armour of God? Well, we do it by prayer through the items. We do it daily. I do it daily. Warren Weersbe said that he put on the armour before he got out of bed. That's a good time when you're waking up, put on the armour of God, because the battle will be on as soon as you get up. Charles Stanley said he puts on the armour over his pyjamas. The late Charles Stanley. So that finishes section A, and now we're going to the next part where Paul is going to speak about blessings and curses. I need this. All right. Awesome. That's working. All right, everybody. Hope you're strapped in. This reminds me of a story of an older man that went to see his doctor. He walks in and the doctor says, I've got the results. He's kind of nervous. And he says, well, you have high blood pressure. And he says, you have short-term memory loss. And the man says, well, at least I don't have high blood pressure. So we're praying against short-term memory loss today. OK, the material that you have is a lot of history and a lot of material to study on your own. That's why we've given you so much. So if you want to pull out mine, That's me, that's my card. If you scan that with your phone, it'll take you to our website that we have. Everything on our website is free. We have a section under our handouts that is all about curses. You can find out as much as you want or as little as you want. We have a ton of more resources, strongholds. breaking curses, prayers, all kinds of stuff. And the steps to freedom is what we're going to focus on mostly the rest of our time today. So under what that sheet is, we're also recording this, you know, probably around Wednesday we'll have this video online as well in case you wanted to go back and re-watch it. So that's always a blessing. So the first page, if you want to look at your notes that has mine, these are Greek words for curses. We just did a lot of research and study for you so that you don't have to. If you want to go deep into it, look at what the Bible says. There's history. There's a whole section. There was too many pages of the Hebrew in curses. Okay, and so that's that page. We did give you some scriptural references of curses. It's page two and page three, Genesis to Mark, where it specifically says curses. And then at the end, there's a story of a harmless souvenir about a pastor who was invited to stay at a resort place with someone from his church. He shows up and there's an item in that place that's been cursed. And he's dealing with all these lustful thoughts and he's struggling and he doesn't know what to do. And then he just prays and asks God, I've been memorizing scripture, I'm praying and these thoughts are not going away. And what's going on? And God has him focus on this little tiny statue on the bookshelf. And he goes and flips it over, and the statue says, to the god of success. Okay, it was an idol. It was like a modern day idol. And so he, you'll read the story. It's a two pager on the back. He can't burn it. I mean, it's not his place, right? He's a guest. So he goes, puts it in the closet, asks and prays that God would keep the enemy that's attached to this thing in that closet. And he had the best vacation ever. Okay? And brings it back out, puts it back where he left, went and met the man again. And the man said, how was your vacation? And he said, well, it was good, but we kind of struggled, you know, at the beginning. And he said, let me ask, was it that statue that I got? And he said it was a $2 Christmas secret Santa gift. And I said, yeah, I really felt like I should get rid of it. So I deal with this stuff a lot in my biblical counseling. If you want to do more research, I'm going to give you some recommendations. There's a video series on YouTube called Spiritual Warfare by Jim Logan. Jim Logan is who trained me to do this. He was taught in seminary that spiritual warfare doesn't happen. It happened back then, doesn't happen today. Until he met a missionary that the whole mission organization knew she had demons. and he didn't know what to do. So he went to Moody Bible Institute, got training from a man named Fred Dickinson, who was the head theologian at Moody for 20 years on spiritual warfare, and then came back and helped this lady. And then he started speaking all over the world on spiritual warfare. Now that video series, just to get you some understanding, is given to missionaries. Okay, so the stories he gives and the explanations, he doesn't need to convince them that spiritual warfare is real. He just needs to show them that what they experienced on the field, God is more powerful than all that. And he talks about stories of people that had to come back from the field, not because mom and dad had something, it was the kids that had something going on. and the kids got involved in something, or the enemy was working in their life, and things like that. So even my sister, when we were on the mission field in India, she was having nightmares, you know? And she was given a cabbage patch doll in India, and in India, the cabbage patch dolls were put in front of an idol, and then they asked the idol to bless the doll. Okay, so what we want to focus on today, everyone get out your Steps to Freedom book. So that's what these, we're not going to reference this much anymore. We are going to go through this. Okay, this is a gift to all of you, both the Water Serve Foundation, my dad's ministry, and my mom's ministry, and my ministry, we put our resources together and bought you all one. The reason why I'm telling you that is because this is worth it, okay? So let's say a man comes up to you, or someone, and says, I've got a real problem, can you help me? Okay, now usually what we do as men, in general, is we give you little crumbs first. You know, I'm really struggling, okay? Because I can't reveal to you the whole cake, because if I show you the whole cake of what I'm really dealing with, if you reject that, that's it. I'm done. So I'll give you a crumb. You know, what do you think about spiritual warfare? You know, what do you think about feelings or emotions or experiences that are going on. And now you've got this resource book. Okay, and you say, you know, I really think it can happen. I mean, the Bible's full of stories of spiritual warfare. You know, the oldest book of the Bible, Job, is all about spiritual warfare. Okay, last book of the Bible, Revelation, it's all about warfare. The Apostle Paul says that we don't struggle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places. Okay, so here this man comes to you says I'm really struggling and you say you know I can I yeah, I really think that God can help you through some stuff. You know what's really going on and Maybe he tells you I'm hearing voices and nobody else can hear him or I'm experiencing things at night and nobody else experiences or I have addictions I can't get away from. It seems like they die down, or I feel like I'm doing really good in my Bible reading, my quiet time, my closeness to God, but then something grabs me, pulls me down every time. Okay, and that can be because I've not dealt with some of the curses, generational curses, we're gonna specifically talk about, that can be a part of my family's life. We're gonna look at Exodus 20, and we're gonna look in Deuteronomy about how God visits the iniquities to the third and fourth generations. Okay, and an iniquity, if you wanna look that up in the Hebrew, it's choosing against God in a certain area. a certain sinful area that I've not surrendered to God, okay? And so what these steps to freedom does is it's a spiritual inventory on your past. It's like going through the dumpster of your life, okay? And getting rid of the trash. And Jesus is doing it. Let's turn to page two. I wanna read you something really. Second paragraph. Okay, page one talks about the whole gospel, making sure the person's safe. Someone calls me on the phone or visits the office, first question I ask, are you really a Christian? And let's talk about your salvation experience. Okay, we've had people that come that wanted to get rid of all the demonic stuff in their life, but they were not willing to turn to Jesus. Sorry, we can't. Your life's gonna get seven times worse, that's what it says in scripture, if you're not willing to turn to Jesus, okay? So page three, the second paragraph that starts with remember, you are a child of God and you're seated with Christ in the heavenly spiritual realm. That's what my dad talked about, okay? That I need to understand the enemy is very smart, okay? And he does not want me to know that he's really defeated in my life, okay? That God lives inside of me, okay? So God owns the house, right? And it's my house, okay? And the enemy, he wants to come in as a guest and he wants to stay as long as we will let him. And some people have let him stay for a long time. They've never closed the door that allowed him to get there in the first place, and they've never kicked him out. And we're going to look at that. That's what this talks about, in a way. And it's just taking the authority that God has given us to do that. Okay, second, that this means that we have authority and the power to do His will. The steps do not set you free. This book does not set people free, okay? We just need to know that Jesus sets you free and you will progressively experience that freedom as you respond to him in faith and repentance. Okay, so these steps aren't magical, these steps aren't special, these steps aren't, this is a book, right? You can still burn it and it's okay, you know? Okay, but this book can help and really help me to get free and then help me to lead other people in deeper freedom through their past. Okay, one of the greatest areas, we're gonna visit this real quick. One of the greatest areas is the occultic background. It's easy to get saved, but to deal with the occult, what if they've made promises, what if they made blood covenants to the enemy, they gotta break all that. It's still there. And Jesus sets us free, 100%. But when I've specifically told the enemy, I promise this, then I've gotta say, okay, Jesus, I break this. Let me give you a story. A missionary came to see us from Indonesia, and he was preaching, Every time he'd preach, he'd have his hand in his pocket because when he preached, his hand would shake. Every time. And he had nightmares almost every night. I don't think it was every night. And he came to our office and we just said, hey, we'll work with you for a week and just pray through all these areas. Pretty much go through the steps to freedom with you. Go through, cleanse anything, ask God to bring up anything that is secret, that we don't know. All this stuff, okay. He did the occult when he was 16 years old. Now he's 45, 50, okay. And there was one thing in the occult, we ask God, because Psalms 139, 23, and 24, search me, O God, and know my heart, and reveal if there's anything hidden within me, right? And that's what David was praying. So, and lead me to the passage. So he's talking about, here this man did something called automatic writing. which automatic writing is when you open yourself up to the enemy and you allow the enemy to control your hand. And it happens in the occultic setting. And this man would write. And he didn't even know mentally what he was writing. It was just automatically writing. And God brought that up. That was the first thing that popped up when he prayed and asked God if there was anything he'd never asked forgiveness about. That came up. So he prayed, and I'm sitting, this is my first or second year there, so I'm new to all this. I'm sitting there and I'm watching this missionary, okay, and he's praying and asking God. When he mentions automatic writing, his hands start shaking. right there on the couch, and my eyes are like this big, and I say to Jim, I said, gee, do you see that? It's actually shaking. And he goes, yeah, yeah. And then he just asked God to forgive him and cleanse, and immediately it stopped. And then the man went and preached that night. The whole time his hand did not shake that night. He had no nightmares. the whole time, okay? So it's something, that's why first step, let's go to page one. What happens if I'm blessed by somebody that is not a Christian? Somebody wants to pray a blessing over me that might be Mormon. Well, it says that I become, you know, I'm cursed, because it's not from God, it's from the enemy. You have two camps, God's camp, the enemy's camp. So even if someone's walking around saying, hey, I wanna pray for you. So this is first step, okay? First step is that you would take yourself or someone through this, write down, put a check mark on any occultic thing that you have done, in the past or are currently doing, okay? Because the enemy wants to use this in my life, okay? That's on page five. And then on every page, in the bold print in the middle, it gives you a prayer on how to go through each one of them and ask God to forgive you, ask God to cleanse you, ask God to help you renounce and reclaim that area, okay? We're gonna walk through these pretty quick since we're running out of time. Okay, that's the first area. Second area is deception, which is truth. Okay, so and then page eight explains how deception works. The enemy is the father of lies. Okay, and most people are deceived. Usually deception has our feelings involved. That's why it's different than a lie. I can't tell you how many people come to see me and they say, I don't believe God loves me. And I say, why not? I don't feel it. I said, oh, that's not supposed to be a feeling. Feelings come and go, but he wants you to know, okay, based on truth, that you love him and then he'll give you feelings when you need feelings and, you know, if I get sick, did I lose my salvation and does God not love me anymore? You know? Okay, so this is really important to understand because if I'm not standing on truth, then it's really just, you know, whatever's going on in my life. So there are times I've had to work through people to say, okay, we need to go through some truth statements. There was a guy that I was working with and he was not getting free. And I was very new at doing this. First year, second year, I didn't know what to do. So we take bathroom breaks, which is our way of saying, I don't know what to do. I'm going to go pray a lot, and we'll come back in five minutes." So I went and prayed a lot, and I said, God, I don't know what to do. That's a good place to be, you know, sometimes. A lot of times, it's the humble route, you know, letting go what we learned yesterday, you know, surrendering and saying, God, I don't know. I know you love this man. I know you want him to be free. He's not free. He wants to be free. That's usually number one, but he's not free. So I need help to understand. And I get this thought, you know, he must be believing lies that are there. Okay. So, oh, well, that makes sense. So I walked back in and I said, we're going to do this completely different. We're going to just ask God to bring up the lies you're believing. And I want you to give me a verse. If you don't know one, I'll give you one that will be contrary to that lie. And then you just make a statement saying that I'm going to believe the truth and reject the lie. and it only took three lies, and then he was completely set free. Right there, I could see it. I could see just a complete different change in this man, you know? So that's the importance of step two. Step three is bitterness and forgiveness. If I could work with one person just one time, the topic I would touch the most is bitterness. The reason why Matthew 18 explains in the story, Jesus says in the, the king who had a servant that owed him 10,000 talents, and then the king forgave him, and then he found his own servant that owed him 100 pence, but he would not forgive. And this story is very interesting that Jesus, he's talking to Peter, his disciple, right? And he says to Peter, at the end of that story, he says, that man gets delivered to the tormentors until he will pay back all that is due to him." Now that's not the last verse. The last verse, Jesus says, is, so will my heavenly Father do to you if you do not forgive from your heart. Okay? So here I might try to resist the enemy. I might have all these stronghold things going on, but I have bitterness in my heart. That's either grieving or quenching the Holy Spirit. God is putting the target in my heart about what's going on is bitterness. He's saying, Paul, you have to forgive that person. And your life is not going to get better until you go through forgiveness, because pride, you are really telling me no. You will not forgive. And who torments Christians? the enemy does. He loves it when we're bitter. He loves it when we're unforgiving to people, okay? And so that's step three. We have to go through that. Step four, rebellion. I'm going to touch on this really quickly. Rebellion, 1 Samuel, is the sin of witchcraft is what it says. Okay, that is where Samuel comes to Saul and tells him, rebellion is different than disobedience and foolishness. It says in Proverbs that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child. That's where I don't know what I'm doing that's really wrong. Disobedience is disobeying laws and regulations. Okay, curfew is set at a certain time. This rule or this law is set there. Okay, but rebellion is pushing against the authority. You can't tell me what to do. Okay, I can do whatever I want. Okay, now when I do that, it says in Romans 13 that God has put our authorities over us to protect us as a blanket, and whoever resists the authority resists the one who put them there. Okay, so I'm pushing away God. That's why 1 Samuel 15.22, it says that rebellion is the sin of witchcraft. my life. Okay, so that's step four. I need to ask God. There are some people that came to see me and they've never prayed through rebellion. They were rebellious as a teenager and they never asked God to forgive them for it. The enemy was kind of using it in their life. Pride versus humility. We know James chapter 4 verse 6, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Okay? And humbling and saying, okay, God, I'm all in. I will do whatever you want me to do. I love those people. Some of the hardest people to work with are pastors and very, very, very spiritual people. When a man came, he had the whole book of Revelation memorized in King James. He could quote almost any verse he gave them. And he was probably one of the most evil men we had ever seen. He would show up at church, he would preach, he would look into the audience and he could tell which women he could go and sleep with in the afternoon. After memorizing the book of Revelation, after having all this scripture, I'd ask him a verse, he'd give it to me. But it's all up here. He's memorized the verse. And he's not applying it. So we worked through, tried to go through bitterness, tried to go through pride. But you know what his greatest struggle was? Was that he was too intelligent. He was not willing to surrender that to God's control. He was using it. And scripture memory is amazing. We need to do scripture memory. It's part of our wheel, it's what we use. It's really hard to work with people that don't have scripture memorized, but this guy was using it in a whole different route. And he did not get help. Jim Logan worked with him, I worked with him, and then we talked to other counselors that knew him and they couldn't help him either. Sexual sin, okay, that is a whole topic by itself because, you know, when two people become one, they really become one, okay? And so when I step outside the covenantal marriage, then I'm opening the door, the biggest door with a welcome mat to the enemy saying, come on in. Okay, and he walks right in. Okay, so we have them go through an entire, you know, background, what it does here of just kind of dealing with the sexual stuff in their life. Okay, curses and blessings, I just want to touch on this really quickly, and then we are done. Okay, and my notes is over here. Okay. I'm gonna lead everyone, curses are, Usually words spoken and written that have supernatural power and they can get passed from generation to generation. That comes from Bromley in the New Testament. Okay, if you really want to do a fun study, curses are all throughout the Bible. But what's interesting, there's about 300 references to curses. That's the last step that we just looked at, breaking generational curses. There's about 600 verses on blessings. God wants us to be blessed. Okay, but part of the blessing is we have to deal with generational curses. Exodus 20 says God visits the curses to the third and fourth generations. I had a man come. I went through pretty much the steps to freedom. We got right up to the curses part, breaking curses. I said, okay, let's pray this prayer. He's praying it, and then the words disappear. He's like, where did they go? I said, I have no idea. I can still see them. And you know the verse about how the enemy blinds our minds to truth? You guys read that one? Yeah, okay. I go, huh, that's really interesting. So then I just stopped and said, okay, let me pray. And I just asked Jesus, would you stop this man's eyes or his mind from being blinded? And boom, words came back. Finished through the prayer, and then I asked him one question. I said, has anyone in your past been involved in the occult? And he said, you know, it's interesting you ask that. About three generations, my father was a shaman, kind of a witch doctor. And that just kind of got passed down the general generation. We had another man that would sit in our room, and he could see floating spirits within our room. And so I asked him if he wanted to see them. Said, nope, and said, okay, well, let's pray. You know, God doesn't want us to be afraid. He just wants us to take the victory. So he said, just ask Jesus. You don't wanna see these anymore. You wanna remove the enemy, and he did, and they were all gone. All right, guys, so curses happen, and you know, Janet, I wanna reference one verse, and then we're gonna look at a prayer. Galatians 3, 13 through 14, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law and became a curse for us. For it's written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. So that in Jesus Christ, the blessing of Abraham might come to all Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. Jesus became the curse. Okay, really interesting. Jesus told us to bless and not curse. Because of what Jesus did, I could be set free of generational curses. I could be set free of parental curses. My father can say things to me. Pastors can curse and things. Even spouses have the ability to curse. There was a man and his wife and him were in a big fight and she said, I wish you were never born. Interesting phrase. And he said it wasn't much longer, he started having some really strong thoughts of suicide. I said, that's really interesting. I said, well, let's pray and break, you know, ask God to release you of that and just break down. And he had never had any more thoughts anymore. And I said, you know? And then I asked, do you have any suicide things in your background? And he said, yeah. Yeah, there were some people that went, you know, did take their life. OK, so we have, real quickly, Abraham. There's a lot of resources. You're going to find this all online. Okay. Okay, there are false gods is the first way that curses come into my life. The occult, disrespecting parents is in Proverbs. I'm just giving you this and you can watch it online as well. Disrespecting our parents is Proverbs 30, 17. Treachery with our neighbors, Proverbs 17, 13. Injustice to the weak or the poor, Proverbs 28, 27. Unnatural sexual experiences and incest is Leviticus 20. 10 through 16, anti-semitism, you know, I will bless those that bless you, I will curse those that curse you. Okay, depending on our flesh, Jeremiah 17, 5 through 7, stealing and perjury, Zechariah 5, 1 through 4, and stinginess towards God. Okay, so what I just wanna do this last thing is, I'm just gonna lead us in a prayer. And it's up to you, nothing is forced, okay? If you feel like you might have some maybe some generational curses or God has brought up something, then just repeat some of the words I'm praying. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, not at all, no worries at all, you know, okay? And I'm just gonna ask God just to take control and just to bring up if there is something, you know, in our past that we need to deal with. Okay, yeah, yeah. So I will just ask God to bring up something that he might put his finger on, okay? and then we'll go from there, okay? And then we'll pray and be done, okay? So if there are some of you that feel as though there is a shadow of a curse over your life and you wanna be released, I'm gonna lead you in a prayer of release today, okay? The first thing about the prayer is that I'm acknowledging to God that I believe in what God has been saying throughout scripture and I wanna be released. God doesn't overstep our will, yes. Oh, my own page. Sorry. For $300. No, just kidding. Just kidding. We'll make sure everybody can get whatever, all the stuff. Okay. So let's pray, guys. So if you feel like there is a curse over your life, you just want to see God. If there is, just, I want to be obedient to you and then just follow what I say. Lord Jesus, I believe that you are the son of God and the only way to God that you died on the cross for my sins, that you rose again from the dead, that on the cross you were made a curse with every curse that is due to me, that I might be redeemed from the curse and enter into blessing. Lord, I confess any sins committed by me or my ancestors. I ask your forgiveness of anything that I'm holding against another person who has harmed me or wronged me. I choose to forgive them as you have forgiven me. I also forgive myself because of you. I renounce all contact with the occult in any form. I renounce and break any promises or covenants I or my ancestors made to the occult. I commit myself to get rid of any occult objects that you might bring to my mind that I'm holding on to. And now, Lord, after receiving by faith your forgiveness, and with the authority I have as a child of God, I release myself and those under my authority from any curse over our lives. And right now, in the name and the blood of Jesus, I declare a release from any generation or curse upon me. I claim that freedom in Christ I receive it by faith, all to the glory of God. In the holy name of Jesus, amen. All right guys, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for how much you love and care for us and that you want us to understand spiritual warfare so that we can help others that are dealing with things. Lord, thank you for the steps to freedom as a tool. Thank you that we can understand our spiritual authority in Christ and understand, that you don't want us to focus on spiritual warfare, you want us to focus on Jesus, and then to use that authority to overcome the enemy, to bring more victory in our lives, to bring more victory in family's lives, or friends' lives. Father, we ask that you would train these men so that they would know more about spiritual warfare, so that they would be more equipped to help people that you bring into their path. to lead them not only to spiritual freedom and to help disciple them, but to also deal with some issues in their past that they may be fighting and struggling with. Lord, we thank you that you are totally and completely in control and that we do not need to be afraid of the enemy. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, thanks guys.