As we lean into Jesus and his plan for our lives we WILL face spiritual opposition and warfare. How do we equip ourselves so that we are not intimidated and beat up by the enemy’s tactics? In this episode Gina explores what spiritual opposition looks like and how we can be confident when faced with spiritual warfare.
Spiritual Warfare and Opposition
My name is Gina Stockton, and I want to welcome you to the Sacred Space Podcast. We are so honored that you are spending your time here with us. Today is an important episode because I want to talk about spiritual warfare and spiritual opposition as believers.
It is so critical that we have an understanding of what those things are, and that we understand our authority, and how we are called to respond and engage when we’re faced with spiritual warfare. So I hope you enjoy this episode and really find some confidence and boldness as you continue in your walk with Jesus.
So spiritual warfare, spiritual opposition, what is it? I think we all (if we’re believers), have an understanding that there is warfare and there is opposition; that there is a spiritual battle going on. I do think that for some of us, maybe it’s a limited view, or maybe we have some preconceived ideas of what that may mean. And we may be facing warfare and stuff that we don’t realize, or we’re opening ourselves up to a battle that really is unnecessary.
So I wanted to touch on this because I have a lot of friends and family just particularly in the last few weeks that are really facing a lot of warfare. I think it’s important for us to understand our authority, understand what this is, understand how to engage, when not to engage and, what we are called to do as God’s kids, and what we’re equipped to do when we’re facing spiritual warfare.
We’re all probably familiar with the verses in Ephesians chapter six, that makes it very clear that this is a spiritual battle. Ephesians 6 verse 12 says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities against the powers of the dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” There is a heavenly realm. We do have an enemy.
There is a spiritual battle going on, but back in Ephesians, one we’re told in verse 20 and 21 that God The Father placed Jesus in heaven at His right hand, far above all principalities, powers, dominion, spiritual wickedness, and heavenly places. So Jesus has authority over all of that, and as His kids, so do we.
We have the authority of Jesus over spiritual principalities, powers and all of those things. So what does that mean and how do we access and lean into that? So I want to talk about that a little bit. This isn’t gonna be a really deep and wide conversation. I just want to encourage you guys to not be ignorant.
You know, there’s two places we can go as believers. We can swing the pendulum one way, which is to look for the devil around every corner and blame everything on him. Oh, I got a flat tire from Satan. Oh, I have a headache from Satan. Oh, everything that I don’t like in my life is the enemy’s fault. Now all of those things, the enemy can use against you. But that doesn’t mean that everything that you don’t like, or everything that’s not going your way is the enemy. That’s not biblical and that’s not true.
We live in a fallen world. Life is difficult. We all can make choices. Some things happen that are as a result of choices. We make some things happen as a result of choices others make, sometimes the enemy is involved in that. And a lot of times he’s just not. So we want to be careful not to hyper spiritualize and try to blame everything on spiritual warfare.
The opposite end of the pendulum is to be unaware and ignorant of warfare. Therefore we’re getting just beat up and tossed around. We don’t recognize when something is in opposition. We don’t recognize that what we’re facing is a spiritual battle. We can find ourselves fighting and wrestling in our own strength in the flesh, without engaging spiritually. And we will run ourselves ragged and the enemies laughing all the way to the bank, because he has us so distracted in this battle that we’re not fighting correctly. And he is removing our attention from the things that we should have our hands to.
So we want to be in that balanced place. We want to be intimately connected with God, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, where we’re hearing His voice, where we have eyes to see, where we have discernment. Then we also are in a place of pure motives. We haven’t allowed anything that is not aligned with the kingdom to have authority in our lives so that we can engage.
We want to be in the Word of God, which is a huge weapon. Back to Ephesians, the armor of God is all about our faith and understanding of the Word, having the word at the ready. The peace of God, our salvation, the fact that we are saved and covered by the blood of Jesus, that that covers us and guards us. The breastplate of righteousness, which protects the heart and the vital organs. Our righteousness comes from Jesus. He is our righteousness.
So there’s a purpose in all of the armor. It’s just us living fully and accessing completely all that Jesus died for so that we can stand. I think that sometimes we think as believers, if I’m saved and walking with Jesus, then everything’s going to be good. And then we’re confused if things are hard, but the Bible doesn’t say that, it says we will face opposition.
So in Isaiah it says, “No weapon formed against you will prosper.” We quote that a lot. So it means that there will be weapons coming against us. But if we position ourselves, if we have not allowed anything contrary to the kingdom to have authority in our lives, then those weapons won’t prosper, which means they won’t have victory. They won’t have the final say.
So I want to share with you a couple of things that are super encouraging to me and that I think will encourage you. So opposition, I’m defining as when you are in a place where you’re going after Jesus, when you’re pursuing God, you are leaning into your purpose and you’re engaging in something that is going to further the kingdom, whether that is for yourself personally, or whether that is serving or in ministry. But you’re going forward. You’re leaning into what God’s called you to do. You will face spiritual opposition, so that’s something coming against you trying to stop that forward motion for the kingdom.
There is also warfare. It is a spiritual battle that we can face when we open ourselves up to something that is contrary to the kingdom. I think a lot of times believers in their ignorance can open themselves up to things and then they don’t understand why they seem to be fighting, fighting, fighting, and they can’t get out of this war, and it’s because they have allowed it.
The spiritual kingdom has order and there’s rights and authority. The enemy is most of the time, laughing all the way to the bank, because us as believers don’t know our authority, we don’t understand Biblically where we stand. We don’t spend the time to really go deep in the Word and allow the Holy Spirit to bring us revelation.
Footholds of the Enemy
So we kind of skirt around on the surface and then when something hits us and we can’t just do two or three things in prayer and suddenly it goes away, we don’t understand why. Little do we know that we’ve opened ourselves up to that, and we’ve given the enemy the right to beat us up in that position.
So what am I talking about? I’m talking about things that are related to the new age, to the occult, tarot cards, mediums, palm readers, astrology, types of yoga. Yes,Types of yoga. If you’re doing yoga and you’re going into the philosophy and the practices behind it, not just the movement of stretching, but you’re being led and willingly opening yourself up in those things, that is a window to spiritual warfare in your life.
Then there is also Eastern meditation. There’s biblical meditation where we are meditating on the Word of God and we’re leaning into the Holy Spirit. Then there’s meditation that is rooted in Eastern religions and things that are pulling you away from God. I’ve seen a lot of believers in ignorance, dabbling in these things. There’s a reason why the Bible talks about not mixing things. You can’t have one foot here on this side in the kingdom. and one foot out of the kingdom. That’s not going to work.
These things give the enemy rights to your heart and your mind. They give him authority to mess with you and wreak havoc with you. Until we come to God, and we repent and we renounce those things and clean those things out of our lives and remove them, we will not get out from under that wrestling.
It’s like in the old Testament, when the Israelites are in a battle. This happens repeatedly where Israel is in a battle and they conquer an enemy, and God says, “Do not take any idols, or anything from that enemy. You can take the cattle or you can take the sheep or whatever, but don’t take any idols.” Basically you need to stay pure. Don’t let any of their foreign gods and spiritual things into the camp. And then they go on and then they start winning, but then all of a sudden they start getting defeated and the leaders start going tent by tent. And they’re like, somebody has opened a door. Somebody has brought an idol and sure enough, they find this person has got an idol and they’ve hit it under their bed.
Why? What is an idol? An idol is anything that we place in God’s rightful place in our hearts and our minds. Anything. It’s that disobedience of basically turning our hearts away from what God has done, and we bring something else and give it a high place in our hearts and our minds. At the end of Psalm 139 it says, “Search me, Oh God, know my heart. Try me and see if there is any wicked way in me.” And some of the newer versions it says, “anxious way in me.” But the word for wicked, there is a word that is also used for the word “idle”, oddly enough.
So that really changes that verse. It’s easy for me to go “Search me, Oh Lord, try me, know my thoughts and see if there’s anything wicked in me.” And for me to go, “Yes, I’m not wicked. I don’t murderer. I’m not an adulterer. I’m not wicked.” It’s easy to separate myself from this verse. But if I now say, “See if there are any idols in me.” Shoot. Now I have to go, “Lord, is there anything I’ve placed above you?” And that could be our kids, that could be our spouse, that could be our job.
That can also be opening ourselves up to these other philosophies. These other things where we’re yielding to something other than Jesus, and what He’s done in our lives. The blood of Jesus has paid for us. The Holy Spirit has sealed us. So when we open ourselves up to other things, we are inviting warfare. The only way we can battle that is if we repent, renounce, and clean that out of our lives and remove that from our view and our attention.
Nehemiah: A Handbook for Warfare
What I’m talking about today is spiritual opposition. So this means I’m moving towards God, and I’m growing, I’m leaning into what he’s saying, and I’m leaning into my purpose. I’m leaning into furthering the kingdom. I’m engaging in ministry, whether that’s within the church, such as doing ministry, women’s ministry, men’s ministry, prayer ministry, evangelism. It could be working at a company and sharing my faith praying for people.
It’s when I’m in a dark place spiritually, but I am standing as a representation of the light and I will face opposition. You will face opposition. So this is the kind of opposition I’m talking about. My favorite scripture in regards to this is the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is an absolute handbook for spiritual opposition. I’m just going to breeze through it real quick to give you an overview.
So Nehemiah is a cupbearer to king Artaxerxes. This is at a time where Israel had been in a bad season. They’ve survived captivity, but Jerusalem is in shambles, the walls are broken, the gates are burned, and it’s just not pretty. Nehemiah is serving this other king and he gets word from his friends of the state of the union of Jerusalem and the people are discouraged, defeated, and that the walls are broken down.
Nehemiah is overwhelmed with sadness, and he weeps, mourns, and prays. He takes his grief to the Lord. He goes to Him, and he fasts, prays and laments. He’s praying for Jerusalem, and he’s probably also asking what do I do? And in chapter two, he goes to work as the cupbearer and the king notices that he’s sad and asks him what’s going on. “You’re never sad in my presence.” And then Nehemiah tells him, “Well, my people and my home are destroyed.”
And then the king says to him, “What do you want?” Which I think is such a powerful testimony to Nehemiah’s character. We’re getting an understanding just in the first chapter and the beginning of this second, who this guy is. He clearly loves God and has significant faith in and understanding of who God is. He’s a man of character. He’s a man of integrity because this foreign king clearly has respect for him. And so he is asked, “What do you want?”
Nehemiah throws up a quick prayer to God. And then he has a very bold question. He asked for permission to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. He’s not asking for a weekend off , he’s asking for a long time. Then he asks for safe passage, because he knows he has to travel a great distance to get there. So he asked the king of Persia for letters to give him safe passage. Then he goes so far as to ask for provision of wood from the King’s forest to help rebuild the wall.
Those are really bold asks of a king that really in a lot of ways, does not have any vested interest in seeing Jerusalem rebuilt. But God gives Nehemiah favor and the king grants him all of those things. So there’s something really powerful about this because Nehemiah is confident about this. These are things that we can learn from Nehemiah, that every one of us needs to remind ourselves of when we face opposition.
First, Nemiah has complete trust and faith in who God is. He does not have a distorted image of God. He has a very healthy understanding of God. Number two is, Nehemiah does not have any question of his identity. As one of God’s kids, he has complete confidence and peace about who he is. And third, he has a purpose and he knows what that purpose is. He knows what God has called him to do.
And because of that, he has boldness and confidence that God is gonna provide for him to accomplish his will. And he never wavers in any of those beliefs. So Nehemiah goes to Jerusalem, and he inspects the walls at night, and the next day he rallies the people. These people have been discouraged and really paralyzed and unable to do anything, but he rallies them.
He encourages them and they start getting excited and they are now going to start rebuilding the wall. Suddenly the enemies take notice and go, “What is happening?” And the first thing they do is they go to Nehemiah and they say, “What do you think you’re doing?” And he responds and says, “We will rise up, we will build, and God will prosper us.” And then he says, “You have no rights or heritage here.” That is super significant. Nehemiah knew this enemy had no rights here.
This enemy has no authority here. We need to understand that if we are leaning into expanding God’s kingdom, or we are leaning into ministry and being a light in the darkness, the enemy has no authority there. We have to understand that, if we don’t understand that then he’s laughing all the way to the bank. Then those weapons formed against us will prosper because we won’t realize our authority. and we’ll get beat up by his assault.
But when we go in knowing the enemy has no authority, you say, “I know that you’re gonna try to attack, but you don’t have authority that shifts how we position ourselves.” So Nehemiah and the people start building, and a series of attacks come. I’m not going to go deep into them or unpack all of them, but I just want you to see a couple of things.
The enemy is going to come at you from a lot of different angles. He’s going to try to find your vulnerability. If he comes from this direction and it doesn’t work, then he is gonna come from another direction. What I love about this is Nehemiah has a completely different response every time the enemy comes. And what I love is that Nehemiah never relents from complete trust in God, and complete confidence in His identity, and complete assurance of what he’s called to do in his purpose.
That’s the biggest lesson we can learn here. So here’s the types of attacks that come, and if you ever have time, go read Nehemiah and study this, because it’s a fantastic read, and an awesome Bible study. So I’m just going to rattle through the list. The different kinds of attacks that come are: ridicule, the threat of attack, rumors of attack (which brings confusion to the people), discouragement (How many of us have dealt with discouragement?).
Then there’s an attack coming from within the people, (where the enemy starts using the people against themselves with extortion. They start fighting and taking advantage of each other, and stealing from one another.) There’s temptation to compromise, temptation to come away from purpose, there’s slander, (The enemy starts spreading rumors about Nehemiah and the people that there’s betrayal. The enemy picks off someone within the ranks and uses them to try to bring Nehemiah and the movement to rebuild down.)
All of these different attacks come, and you and I can face some version of every single one of these, and Nehemiah addresses them differently. Sometimes he prays and says, “God, you deal with that.” Or, “Lord you expose their sin.” Or, “Lord you protect us.” Sometimes he has the people stand and watch night and day, looking out for the enemies, which gives comfort and peace to the workers.
At one point, Nehemiah gets angry, but like the Bible says in your anger do not sin. He waits, he steps back and it says, quote, “after serious thought, then he dealt with the situation.” He doesn’t stop working. The enemies try to say some things by sending letters, he just sends a response and he puts his head down and keeps going. He’s given discernment. And when the betrayal happens, he discerns that there’s a lie, and so he’s able to protect himself.
Nehemiah is a phenomenal example of how we, as believers, should position ourselves, how we should root ourselves deep in our trust in God. We should root ourselves deep in who He says He is. We should not allow the threat of warfare or opposition deter us from our purpose, and from the things God’s placed in front of us.
Anything that contradicts what God says about who He is, what God says about who we are, is a lie. If it doesn’t originate from Him, it originates from somewhere else. So the purpose in encouraging you in this is not to cause fear, but quite the opposite. This is for the purpose to give you eyes to see and recognize, “Oh, that’s all that is.” and then give you the tools to stand so that the weapons formed against you will not prosper.
So like in Ephesians six, you can put on the armor of God so that you can stand when the enemy comes after you. Jesus has given us everything we need, his blood covers it all on the cross. He won. The enemy is a defeated foe, and he knows he has limited time. His purpose right now is to stop the expansion of God’s kingdom to take out as many humans and especially believers as he possibly can before his time runs out. So if we can trust and believe who we are and who God is, then we can stand. We can not allow intimidation to stop us from the work that He’s placed in front of us.
I hope you are encouraged by this episode. I hope that you feel more empowered. I hope that you take the time to go dive into Nehemiah, to dive into Ephesians and just to dive into the Word of God in general, there’s so much about our authority about how to engage in spiritual warfare. I hope that you grow in your boldness and your confidence, and understand that if you’re receiving spiritual opposition as you lean in to God, it means that you’re a threat to the kingdom of darkness. And that’s a good thing.
If you want to learn about worship in warfare, I did a podcast episode in season one, episode seven that talks about the role of Worship in Warfare. I really encourage you to go listen to that. So if you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would take the time to rate and review it because the more ratings and reviews we get, actually, the easier it is for people to find the podcast on iTunes.
We are supported by Stockton ministries, which is a nonprofit organization. If you want t0 donate to help support the funding of the podcast, Sacred Space or upcoming projects, like the Dwell a scripture meditation project, or other things that we’re doing, we would so appreciate your contribution, your support, and partnership.
Father, in Jesus name, I pray for everyone who’s listening to this. And God, if there are people who are facing opposition, who maybe are weary, overwhelmed, are discouraged. Lord, I pray right now for peace to cover them. I pray for Your Spirit to comfort them. I pray for courage to rise up in them. Lord, would You give them the confidence in their authority and the strength to stand.
Lord, we do not want to be ignorant. We do not want to compromise our hearts and our minds. We want to be Your kids, and Your disciples. We want to be ambassadors of You. We want to let our light shine and not hide or cower, and not be deterred by the attacks of the enemy. Lord, I thank you that You are war-ing on behalf of us. And I pray that You would give us eyes to see, and ears to hear, and the bold audacity of David running out to face Goliath to say “Who dare defy the armies of the living God?” Lord, I want that kind of boldness. I want that kind of confidence and assurance. Lord have Your way we ask in Jesus name. Amen.
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