Every warrior, both natural and spiritual, must have a firm foundation of training and experience. The best training for any soldier is actual combat. This is why the armed forces of most nations provide their soldiers with drills that are as close as possible to a real combat situation. For special strategic missions, only soldiers with advanced training and experience are considered for duty. Remember, all truth is parallel. There are some assignments God will give to many soldiers in His army, but there are strategic spiritual assignments that He will give only to the most experienced and trained warriors. What does this mean? It means that you are going to war at a level equal to your training and experience. As you receive more experience and training, you will be allowed by God to fight even greater spiritual battles. You will be allowed to fight in these battles because you are able to win!
SPIRITUAL WARFARE PRAYER FOR YOUR FAMILY
The battlefield of training for most soldiers in God’s army is in the home. This is an area of intense attack by the enemy. Families are
commonly attacked in the areas of a husband and wife’s relationship, the relationship between parents and children, health and finances. Although the enemy may attack families in more areas than these, starting your warfare over your family by shutting down his attempts in these areas is a valuable way to pursue victory in your family.
Let’s briefly review a basic of spiritual warfare:
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ…
ll Corinthians 10:3-5
Our warfare is not of the carnal realm because our enemy is not a carnal, or natural being.
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal…they are not natural. They are supernatural. With these weapons, we have the power to defeat the enemy!
Know who your enemy is! In the June, 1996 issue of Victory Miracle Living, we discussed how to locate your enemy. If you think your enemy is your family, you need to review that issue and locate the enemy before you begin warfare in your family.
Our warfare is not of the carnal realm because our enemy is not a carnal, or natural being. We cannot defeat the enemy’s attack against our family by carnal means. We must fight the attacks of evil spirits in the spiritual realm.
Psychology will never defeat the enemy!
Fighting and arguing in the natural will never defeat the enemy!
Running from the enemy will never bring peace into your family!
To defeat a spiritual foe, we must fight in the spiritual world!
WAR OVER YOUR MARITAL RELATIONSHIP
Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
Song of Solomon 2:15
Have you ever had a fight with your spouse over nothing?
Of course you have!
It may not have seemed like nothing at the time, but later, after you looked at the argument while you were not in the heat of the fight, you probably realized that the problem was not worth fighting over.
What happened?
Satan was attacking your marriage with what are sometimes referred to as little foxes. We may more correctly understand it as a specific attack by a spirit whose purpose is to cause fighting on a small scale. It plants discontent, murmuring and irritability. It’s job is not to destroy the marriage in one fell swoop, but to slowly cause deterioration of trust and kindness until there is no closeness in a marriage relationship.
Many times when a couple is hit by these little attacks, it is because they are battled by the force of evil imaginations.
…Casting down imaginations…
ll Corinthians 10:5
What is an evil imagination?
In the Greek, II Corinthians relates the word imagination as logismos, which is a conscious, calculated evil. It is an evil calculation, thought or imagination implanted into the relationship by an evil spirit.
It may be that a woman dreams her husband has been unfaithful. When she awakes in the morning, instead of thanking God that He has given her a faithful husband, she secretly harbors resentment toward her husband for what she has dreamed.
It may be a miscommunication that causes a man to believe his wife does not respect him as he feels she should.
It may be a simple problem that could be worked out in a loving conversation, but neither the husband nor the wife takes the opportunity to do so.
Other marital problems are caused by sin in the relationship, or even in the lives of one or both members of the couple.
Sometimes a person may love God with his or her whole heart only to find marriage an extreme challenge because his or her spouse does not share that same dedication. Also, one person may be hypocritical in their faith, thinking he or she is more spiritual than is true. This causes the spouse to react negatively to the relationship.
Many other attacks can manifest in a marriage including, adultery, lust, hate, pride and a multitude of others, but ALL of these problems can be defeated in prayer!
Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking a secular counselor can heal our wounds and fix our broken heart and broken marriage when the author of marriage, God Himself, wants to move in our life and bring us to victory over the enemy’s attack.
Dear God’s Victorious Army members, mark this down…
The key to any successful marriage in the Body of Christ is successful spiritual warfare!
MARRIAGE WARFARE PRAYER STRATEGIES
The first warfare prayer strategy that should be prayed in any marriage is a prayer to manifest the fruit of the Spirit.
“But Brother Cerullo! I want to be more spiritual in my warfare prayer than that!”
That’s a big mistake.
Sometimes we get so super-spiritual, we forget what the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives!
You can’t have successful spiritual warfare over your family until you receive and exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. This is what we must have if we are to experience marriage in the way God intended!
Also, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit causes the enemy to lose hold of our lives. They can’t touch our marriage if we are daily bringing forth the fruit of the Holy Spirit. The little foxes can’t come and spoil the vine!
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance…
Galatians 5:22-23
As you daily pray for your marriage, pray that you receive and bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in your marriage!
“But you don’t understand, Brother Cerullo, my spouse is hateful!”
Attack your spouse’s hatefulness with the fruit of the Spirit called love! You’ll destroy every ounce of hatred in your marriage!
Remember, your spouse is not your enemy, the demonic forces trying to sabotage your marriage are the enemies.
Your second warfare prayer strategy for your marriage is to bind the works of the flesh which may be working in your marriage. At this point, we must be willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat these forces. Our victory here may require extensive fasting and prayer. We are not dealing with Satan, here, but the force of Adamic nature which manifests in the works of the flesh.
What are the works of the flesh?
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, reveling, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21
Not only will those who allow the works of the flesh manifest in their lives not inherit the Kingdom of God, they will have a failing marriage as well.
These works cannot be played around with! These works cannot be flirted with!
These works cannot be counseled!
These works must be crucified!
Do whatever is necessary to prevent the works of the flesh from manifesting in your marriage!
Your third warfare prayer strategy for your marriage is to bind any demonic forces that are trying to set up strongholds in your marriage. While you are in this form of militant prayer, you must also tear down any strongholds that have already formed and are manifesting in your marriage.
Ask God to show you what evil spiritual forces are coming against your marriage and call out the demonic forces by name when God reveals them to you.
Above all, when you are coming against demonic forces, remember God’s Word teaches us that our offensive part of the armor of God is the Sword of the Spirit, the Scripture!
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God…
Ephesians 6:14-17
We must repent of our own meaningless tradition and hypocrisy.
We must repent of our own meaningless tradition and hypocrisy.
Your fourth warfare prayer strategy for your marriage is to petition God for a divine direction and a flow for your relationship.
No one can be successful in any relationship, including marriage, without realizing the plan that God has for that relationship.
Why?
Because God is a God of purpose. He is a God of plan…a God of design…a God of objectivity. He has not ordained for your marriage to simply exist for no apparent reason!
He has a plan!
What is His plan for your marriage?
When you receive a word from God concerning
your marriage, that word gives you a firm foundation you can stand on when fighting the enemy.
A couple who have received a word from God that they would have a ministry to young people can stand on that word when the enemy attacks their marriage. They can remind the devil that God has a plan for their life, so their marriage must stand!
Above all, spend time praying in the Spirit and in travail for your marriage to bring forth the destiny and purpose of your union in God. God wants to use your marriage to glorify His Kingdom and will do so as you win the spiritual war for your marriage.
WAR OVER THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN
The Church is in a crisis in dealing with the needs and attitudes of young people. Today’s youth have more interest in worldly music and what is on television than they have in the Church.
Why has this happened?
There are two reasons. The first reason is that the Church has become so religious that we cannot compete with MTV and such TV shows as Beverly Hills 90210 for the attention of our young people. We do not provide a Godly forum for our young people to express themselves. Instead, they rebel against hypocrisy and religion and turn to the pied pipers of their day for direction.
Suicidal rock and roll musicians and oversexed television stars are leading our young people to destruction while we are too wrapped up in church politics and boring theology.
The next reason is that today’s young people want to get involved in something real. They would rather experience real pain than false hope. They would rather hurt than be phony.
Young people want parents who live the life they talk about in church. They want to see their mothers and fathers have the power of God moving in their lives. No young person wants to hear their parents talk about how real God is only to deny it in their daily personal lives.
Our young people are tired of phony Christianity!
They are tired of hypocrisy!
They are tired of worn out, recycled sermons! They are tired of hearing one thing and seeing another!
What do they want?
They want someone to rise up in the power of
God and do what they’ve been preaching all along. Like the rest of the inhabitants of the world, young people are crying out for someone to produce the proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
Our strategies for warfare prayer over our children and young people should center in two areas. First, we must bind the spirit of religious tradition from coming into their lives. We must also repent of our own meaningless religious tradition and any hypocrisy in our lives.
After religious tradition is bound, we must bind the spirit of this world so it cannot operate in the lives of our children and cause them to go astray seeking after the things of this world. We must bind the spirit of demonic music and expression. We must bind the spirits of drug and alcohol abuse. We must bind the spirit of rebellion and worldly thinking and allow the power of God to manifest in their lives and become real to them.
Next, we must pray for a reality of the power of God to come into the lives of our young people that would cause them to realize that Jesus Christ is alive today and in control of their lives.
Our final strategy should be to become the instrument through which our children and young people see proof that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and is living on the inside of us!
Produce the proof!
Show the reality of Jesus to your children and young people and they will never doubt that God is real!
WAR OVER YOUR FAMILY’S HEALTH
One great war zone for your family is in the arena of health. The devil wants to destroy the health of your family through many different means. His plan and objective is to drain your family of health so it cannot be effective in fulfilling the purposes of God.
Satan’s strategies for destroying the health of your family are to attack directly with spirits of sickness and infirmity, attack by making your family too busy so rest is neglected, and cause mental anguish and stress to result in sickness or disease.
When the forces of evil attack your family directly with spirits of sickness and infirmity, you must discern this activity and begin immediately to counteract the attack through spiritual warfare. The first step is discerning that the problem is caused by a spirit. If you do not have the discernment to know when something is caused by a spirit and when it is not, you will never be able to pray strategically concerning the health of your own family. You must first receive the gift of discerning of spirits from God. Then you can know what is causing the infirmities in your family.
Once you have discerned that a member of your family has a sickness or infirmity caused by an evil spirit, you must battle directly with the evil spirit involved.
Let’s be completely balanced. It doesn’t hurt to take someone to the doctor if they are sick, but understand, the doctor may only be able to treat the symptoms. In order to deal effectively with the infirmity, you must lay the axe to the root of the problem and destroy it at root level.
How?
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Matthew 16:19
God has given us the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven! When we go after an evil spirit trying to bring sickness or disease on our family members, we don’t play around with psychology!
We don’t play around with games!
We don’t worry that we don’t have the power to get rid of the evil spirit!
We go straight to the root cause! We speak to the demon and say, “In the Name of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, I command you, spirit of infirmity, to leave my family now! You have no authority to cause sickness in my family. You will leave now and the sickness will depart!”
Our only strategy in dealing with demon powers is to stand toe to toe with the devil and let him know that we have power in the Name of Jesus to set our loved ones free!
“But Brother Cerullo! What if it doesn’t work?”
Let me tell you something. I don’t go around making excuses about why I don’t see the sick healed!
Why?
Because I see them healed! I command the demons to flee, and they flee! I’m raising you up to carry the same anointing that God has given me! I’m imparting that anointing into your life through this lesson so you can speak to devils and cause them to flee from you and your family!
You can command evil spirits to flee in the Name of Jesus, and they will flee!
Submit yourself therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:7
Take some time right now and give God praise for this anointing in your life.
…0 thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
Psalms 22:3
We must allow the Holy Spirit to be the source of strength for our lives.
We must allow the Holy Spirit to be the source of strength for our lives.
God inhabits the praises of His people. Praise is power in spiritual warfare!
The next strategy you must use to ensure the health of your family is to teach the entire family discipline and organization. Satan loves to burden God’s people down with cares to the point that they are not able to do all the things that God wants them to do. Satan tries to make us so busy that we have no time to rest and our bodies become weak with exhaustion.
We must set priorities for our lives. God is a God of purpose. He is not a God of disorganization. If you don’t have a good system of organization and priorities in your life, you will not know what things you need to do and what things can wait until later.
We’ve got to understand that we must take care of these bodies so they will last as the temple of the Holy Spirit until we have carried out the command of Jesus to fulfill the Great Commission.
Sometimes God’s people need a rest. This is why God instituted the Sabbath.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Exodus 20:8
Although in today’s society, the idea of a Sabbath day has been forgotten, God has commanded His people to remember it, although we are not bound by religious tradition.
The Sabbath was made for man in the Old Testament, but a day of rest is still a good idea for God’s people and is taught in the New Testament. See how it affects mankind in its implementation:
There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
Hebrews 4:9-10
The word rest in the first part of this passage is the word, sabbatismos, which means keeping the Sabbath, but the rest described here goes beyond just setting aside a day a week to rest. It actually means to enter into the rest of God in our daily lives so while we are living, Christ is living through us and we are in a state of perpetual rest in God.
If we teach this spiritual concept to our families, we can function in a perpetual state of refreshment in the presence of God!
This is also related to the next strategy we will use to defeat Satan’s attack on the health of our families. Stress and mental anguish cause much sickness, especially in our high pressure society today.
Many Christians try to carry the burden for their life’s work for God on their own without allowing the Holy Spirit to be the source of strength for their lives.
God wants us to lean upon Him for everything we need as well as everything we need to accomplish. When we do not do this, we open ourselves to the enemy’s attack of stress.
Stress is a form of fear. What does the Bible say about fear?
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
ll Timothy 1:7
Attacking stress is the same as attacking fear. We must face the enemy of fear and enforce, through prayer, the promise God has given us. When you pray, bind the spirit of fear. Speak out loud and command the voice of fear to be silent! Get bold in your prayer and let the enemy know that you are the one who is going to be victorious. Then, every time any hint of stress comes into your life, attack again by binding the enemy, commanding it to be silent and to depart from you or your family member.
Keep in mind that the enemy usually uses a combination of techniques when attacking God’s people. He does not stick to one strategy at a time. The three areas we have discussed and studied, strategies to defeat, may all be used by the enemy at once to make his most effective attack. In our counteroffensive, we have to use all the strategies God has given us to be 100 percent effective.
Next week, we will study spiritual warfare strategies for your church. Make sure you fill out your Soldier Communiqué on page one and return it to me today!
Now, go to the action pages and begin to defeat every attack against your family!
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Resources
This powerful 2-DVD set is available for $10.00 (while supplies last) – an incredible School of Ministry value – This is Dr. Cerullo’s full four-hour, signature spiritual warfare impartation message. Your life, your family, and your ministry will never be the same!
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This is the 265 page textbook for the Declaring War on the Devil’s War School of Ministry course. Right now, grab hold of one of the greatest truths God has ever revealed to me for fighting.
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This message is for the child of God that is ready to rise up to a new level of prayer power and results.
$10.00
Morris Cerullo’s #1 best-selling book of all time! A powerful message for victory over the spirit of fear.
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· Unity in the Spirit · The New Anointing · Proof Producers · Miracle Book · God’s Faith · How to Win The Battle For The Tongue · Divine Appointment with Destiny · Lord Teach Us to Pray
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