7/35 Your heart and Spiritual Warfare in Christian Foundations
As we continue looking at the journey from being a Slave to the World’s way of thinking and behaving, we need a complete change of response. The concept of ‘Personal Spiritual Warfare’ is new for some people. Some people don’t believe we are in a battle or that we have a spiritual world out there that is against Godly things.
However, when we begin to see with spiritual eyes, the real world becomes more relevant! Sad to say, we often give the enemy of our souls ‘legal rights’, which then become our personal ‘battlefield’. This Battlefield is in our mind and in our Heart!
Our response to our Commander and Chief must be how we can learn to renew our Mind and how to clean out our Heart and then protect it from this enemy.
There are three very common grounds where the enemy can influence our life.
Part One: “The Enemy’s Legal rights in Personal Warfare”
- The heart is the key to the enemy’s working in our lives.
We need to know what is in our heart because this is important to Satan’s hold on our life. It is here we can see the strongholds he uses to influence us. Remember, we live out of our heart; it is the ‘wellspring’ of our life (Proverbs 4:23). If you are interested in more info on the Heart, come visit www.totalwholeness.mentorsnotebook.com/blog
Because we want to continue to help you practice hearing from Him, as this question: “So how is your wellspring doing today?” Did you hear that still, quiet impression or get a picture or have words to describe your inner condition?
In one of our growth groups, the Lord has us spend time looking at our Heart as though it were a Garden. So, what would you Heart look like if it was a Garden? Weeds, paths, overgrown and tangled vines or areas of beauty and sunshine? Spend a few minutes as ask that question of the Lord. Draw or 
write down what He says to you.
One picture in the group was of a small stream blocked by rocks, branches, slow flowing and then ‘wasted’, dispersed into nothingness. What would your wellspring like?
How much real life is there in your spirit for walking and talking with God? What does He want to do about your picture?
- The Enemy’s Legal Rights I have ‘invited in’ by my choices:
In my over 20+ years of counselling experience, I have found the most common blocks’ to growth in Jesus are the legal rights we give to the demonic. These main areas are so common, we began to call them: “O.U.T”:
O = Occult involvement, U = Unforgiveness and T = Trauma.
3. The Occult is actually the easiest and yet the hardest area to deal with.
Sadly, this monstrous stronghold is very common in the world today but we also we find it in the church body. One of the problems is that in our Westernised world, we have little understanding of the spiritual world around us. Any contact with the spiritual dimension outside of the Holy Spirit is grouped under the term occult, which means ‘hidden’. Many people become involved in occult areas without realising the spiritual realities involved.
The most common occult areas are:
Activities that try to predict the future such as séances, taro cards, palm reading, fortune telling. Attempting control over people or events by magic, mind control, charms, chants, curses, idols, talking to spirits, channelling, spirit guides or other deceptions. Alternative health therapies, healing by ‘alternative energy sources’, ‘rebalancing energy fields’ – all without the Holy Spirit, such as: yoga, reiki, crystal therapy, iridology, homeopathy, etc.
Occult games: Dungeons and Dragons, etc.
Counterfeit sources of ‘truth’ such as secret societies, cults, lodges, martial arts, mind altering substances, astral travel, superstitions. Having occult books or objects in our home. All these ‘pollute’ the holiness God asks of us.
4. So why our heart would get involved if these areas are so dangerous?
Curiosity, control over others, knowledge about the future to combat fear, peer group expectations, ‘protection’ against another’s curse, the need for personal ‘power’, status, trapped in cycles of ancestral curses, all in ignorance of the power source behind the activity.
5. A second huge area is: Unforgiveness
This is one of the most taught about, yet least understood areas in church teaching. I’ll be brave enough 
to say that it isn’t really the unforgiveness that the Lord is most concerned about. It’s the heart judgement that causes the unforgiveness that we must deal with. If you have been struggling with really forgiving someone ‘from your heart’, stop and look at the heart judgement that lies beneath the unforgiveness.
Judgement is second nature to us since Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The world is engulfed in their own opinions, biases and prejudices. We can make an observation and then we have about five seconds before that observation, or discernment either goes into making a judgement or into intercession and release. So criticism and judgement can be defined as God-given discernment but without forgiveness!
Jesus taught a lot about unforgiveness and heart judgements; both can cripple our spiritual, emotional and physical health.
Our loving Father loves us so much, He actually is ‘jealous’ for our whole being to walk with Him. He’s not after just our religious service, our outer life, but He is after our HEART. This really is good news for people who don’t value them-selves … why would they believe that the Creator of the whole universe really wants to walk and talk with them? Let me assure you, HE REALLY DOES!
- In one of our next posts, we will look at another big area of demonic legal rights: T = trauma.
**** Again the heart is very important, as trauma can be a blockage to God’s best for us. Another area we all need to face and deal with is the heart and its idols.
As you are learning to practice listening to the Lord’s voice, go back through the list of Occult areas. Are there any there that you have been involved in, either as a child, teen or an adult? Mark the ones you have experienced. Next question, “Lord what do you want me to do about this area?” Be willing to:
a. Hear your Heart’s agreement to deal with each area. It could be you will need the Lord to come talk to you about why you got involved or what He sees is wrong with the area before your Heart with agree to follow Him. Make sure you have your Heart’s agreement first!
b. Repent – agree with Him about the harm of such events,
c. Break any spiritual consequences of being involved
d. Take back anything the enemy has taken because of that involvement,
e. Forgive, release anyone else who was involved, including forgiving yourself.
f. Then, “Jesus is there anything else you want me to do about ….” (the area of Occult you were convicted about.)
Remember you are doing this out of the conviction of the Holy Spirit so claim back His peace in every area of the Occult! This is one of the biggest areas of blocks to growing close to God!
In our next post, we will continue with the topic of Personal Spiritual Warfare. The Battle zone in within us!
Susanne Fengler. Blog Author
www.christianfoundations.jesus-treeoflife.info
Tags: O.U.T. and growth
Filed under: From Slave to Sonship, Spiritual Cleansing
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