Strongholds: The Enemy (Faith)

This month, we are covering a seemingly simple concept that has powerful, revelatory, and wide ranging applications: Right-Right vs Right-Wrong...Right WHAT-Right HOW/WHY vs. Right WHAT-Wrong (or NO) HOW/WHY.

The overview for the rest of this Series is that God wants our brain to have Profitable Thought Processes. The enemy and our flesh wants our brain to have Unprofitable Thought Processes.

Throughout this Series we have seen the brain is the battlefield on which God and our mind participate in Spiritual Warfare against the enemy and our flesh. So, there are two participants attempting to access our strongholds: the enemy and our flesh.

This week we will conclude this series. Today, we will conclude the three part mini-series on HOW the enemy participates in Spiritual Warfare:

The HOW of God's Spiritual Warfare Overview
1. The goal is to bring about God's Will
2. God supplies the power through the Holy Spirit with an influence upon our heart
3. We (Mind) choose to speak WORDS that are truth
4. These WORDS are spoken according to our understanding and experience...our imagination and memory.

We covered HOW #3: The Mind...and summarized the post with:

God's influence upon our heart is a fully formed complex causeless thought that teaches us. It requires NO effort from us. All we can do is agree and let it reflect in our life OR disagree and prevent it from reflecting in our life.

The enemy's influence upon the heart of the individual is a deceptive thought that APPEARS complex. The individual adds the HOW/WHY to the thought and may encounter a stronghold. Once the influence is planted the enemy leaves because we are the ones who do all the work.

When this influence from the enemy is successful, the result of this is that our faith runs down...

While ALL influences OUGHT to be checked according to understanding and experience (faith), there is a greater objective concerning these two areas...

Today, we will look at these areas with HOW #4.


STRONGHOLDS: THE ENEMY (Faith)
HOW #4 concerns faith...our experience and understanding...our memory and imagination.

Notice, faith OUGHT to be used to determine which influences that come into the heart (HOW #2) are allowed to progress to the brain (HOW #3). What we are talking about today is the role of faith AFTER the screening process.

The words that are spoken OUGHT to be according to our faith. In earlier posts, we saw this faith was the REASON the Spiritual Warfare was successful or unsuccessful. So, in the OUGHT situation, the WORDS that are spoken can be fully supported by the person and the completion of The Second Feedback Loop would result in the entire experience (and the understanding of the individual as it relates to the experience) being strengthened in the brain of the individual and associated with Profitable emotions. This is one way that faith is built!

This also means that when the individual participates in the Sixth Stimulus, the individual's memory and imagination would serve the individual.

An example of this is at the beginning of the Bible:

"1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day." (Genesis 1:1-5)

The Bible begins with God SPEAKING the Physical World into existence. God has a Will. The Spirit is present among the elements. God speaks WORDS. God evaluates the result...so that His imagination can move on to the next more complicated thing to be SPOKEN into existence...

However, we saw the HOW of the flesh and the enemy's Spiritual Warfare Overview is:
1. The goal is to hinder God's Will
2. The enemy supplies an influence upon our heart
3. The influence from the enemy is meant to encounter strongholds (sin) in our brain
4. The flesh attempts to weaken our understanding and experience...so that our imagination and memory serves the enemy.

So, the flesh and the enemy want the individual to encounter a stronghold which throws the individual off course. This makes the individual Unprofitable. In this case, the completion of The Second Feedback Loop results in the entire experience (and the understanding of the individual as it relates to the experience) being weakened in the brain of the individual and associated with Unprofitable emotions.

The faith of the individual is being weakened especially as it relates to what the individual believes when it involves taking direction from God's influence. This step of weakening the individual's faith ALSO results in weakening the individual's ability to Profitably experience grace!

Since Salvation is by grace through faith...the enemy's goal is to hinder the Salvation of the individual.

This is serious...HOW ought the individual to respond when they have been taken off course by an influence that is NOT from God?

The individual ought to make sure they face the fact that what they experienced was NOT God's influence. They need to state their will so that what gets put in their brain is an experience and understanding that is NOT associated with God...so that it cannot be accessed when they are operating in faith and grace in the future.

Here is an often over-looked example of Spiritual Warfare...in fact, it takes place shortly after Jesus says that Peter had a response that came from Heaven:

"21 From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples, that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up."

Jesus is giving the disciples information. Jesus is attempting to build their faith so that when these events happen, they aren't Unprofitable.

"22 And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall never be unto thee."

Peter rebuked Jesus! Actually, THAT is NOT the worse part of this...

Peter stated a will for Jesus!

This is Spiritual Warfare!

Where is this influence coming from? What would happen if everyone present filed this away in their cortex along with their experience and understanding? What OUGHT Jesus to do?

"23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men." (Matthew 16:21-23)

Jesus performed Spiritual Warfare on Peter!

He stated a will for the influence in Peter...He stated a fact...He stated a reason.

Jesus made sure that NO ONE filed THAT moment in their cortex along with their faith.


SUMMARY
Using faith to make sure the influence that reaches the brain is from God (grace) will require the person to state WORDS according to their faith so that upon completion of The Second Feedback Loop, the individual's faith and ability to experience grace is built.

Following the flesh and enemy's HOW of Spiritual Warfare for the first three steps results in the faith and individual's ability to experience grace Profitably to be weakened...to put their Salvation in danger.

Tomorrow, we will summarize both processes by looking at conviction vs. condemnation...

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