Good morning fellow Making Space for God friends! Today I want to focus on spiritual warfare. How about that light topic for a Monday morning?! Paul writes this about spiritual warfare: The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. (2 Corinthians 10:4)
Can I hear a collective WOW!
As Christians, we have a different set of weapons than the world uses. They are as Paul puts it :”other-worldly.” They have power that emanates from God and it is a power that tears down strongholds. The definition of stronghold is: A place that has been fortified so as to protect against attack.
Even the most fortified places, however often succumb to attack and are defeated. The good news, is that believers have weapons– divine weapons that always demolish the enemy’s strongholds. Let’s talk about some of the enemy’s strongholds. They may surprise you!
Anger, shame, lying, gossip, manipulation, self, (yep even self can have it’s own little kingdom), stealing, murder, envy, drug and sex trafficking … the list is endless. We can be aware of any of these strongholds in our lives, but feel powerless against them.
But God…
He has already won victory on the cross and He hands us His divine weapons of warfare. He offers us freedom through forgiveness of sins and healing through the transformational power of the Gospel. The Word is like a two-edged sword that in one zap… like Zorro (anybody remember Zorro?) that thing comes down. The other weapon that is divine is love- supernatural agape love that we cannot muster up. It comes from within a transformed heart who sees people through “kingdom lenses” not necessarily condoning actions, but loving them and pointing them to Jesus. 
And the third weapon is prayer– often underused and seemingly a waste of time but prayer is a powerful weapon we have. Jesus taught us how to pray and exhorted us to use this weapon against the assaults of the world, the flesh, and the enemy.
Paul then constructs the linchpin of this explanation of our divine weapons. He said that these kingdom weapons abolish arguments and pride. Have you ever been in a situation where you think you need to defend the gospel and the other person’s argument seems to trump yours? First, we do not argue others into the kingdom. That is God’s job. We live with our weapons at hand ready to pray, to hold up the Word, and love. Every argument falls in the wake of these divine weapons. Why? Because the world (translated flesh) does not have these weapons at hand. Arguments will fall and rise. People’s good ideas or philosophies will do the same, but the Word of the Lord will remain.
We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (I Cor. 10:5)
