Spiritual Warfare and Church Planting

 

       Hello everybody, my name is Dean Davis, and this is “Multiply,” the podcast that provides a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters.

One of the greatest privileges of being a church planter is to be an ambassador of Christ. As the Lord’s ambassadors, we go to places where he is not known and proclaim the Good News. It is a beautiful thing to share the Good News. God saw us struggling in a broken world trying to save ourselves. He sent his Son Jesus to set up a new kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy. Jesus defeated Satan by the power of his sinless life and his bodily resurrection.  This is the Good News we proclaim as ambassadors of Christ.

Even so, Satan, the defeated adversary of God, works to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10). He wants to prevent us from being reconciled with God. Each of us, when we began living in this world, was dead in our transgressions and sins. We followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among the disobedient at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith (Ephesians 2:1-8).

So, as church planters, saved by the grace of God through the work of Christ, we go to places where Christ is not known. We invite those who are dead in their trespasses and sins to be born again as children of God.

This, of course, is an act of spiritual warfare. Every time you proclaim Christ, every time you announce his love, every time you lift up the name of Jesus, you are resisting the Adversary. Every time you clearly and truthfully proclaim the word of God, you are advancing the Kingdom of God. Every time a lost person repents of their sin and puts their trust in Christ, the Kingdom of Christ advances against the Kingdom of our enemy.

And Satan is not happy when the Kingdom of God advances against him. He fights back like a roaring lion seeking whom he might devour. But we are not of those who fear and shrink back. As wise church planters, we put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10 – 18). To protect ourselves, we take up the Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. We mobilize God’s people to pray for us and for the people who will find abundant life in Christ through our message. And we go forward. The battle is not easy. Our foe fights us at every turn. But greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

So, dear church planter, put on the whole armor of God. Pray without ceasing. Mobilize intercessors. Love your neighbor as yourself. Share the Good News in the power of the Holy Spirit. Trust God to deliver whole families from the power of the enemy so that they too might have abundant life in Christ.

This has been “Multiply,” and I’m Dean Davis asking, “Who will you share this encouraging word with today?

 

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