From Victory not For Victory

This month at our Living Stones College, I’ve been teaching a course on Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance. Although I’ve taught this course previously, I was really excited to teach this class again. Over the last several months, God has really been teaching me so much through ordinary experiences of life — much of it precipitated by the death of my father in September. Since the first of the year, I’ve noticed that my prayers and the way in which I pray has changed dramatically. You see, I never enjoyed corporate prayer because much of the time was spent finding the darkness and trying to kick it out. After awhile, that mode of waging war grows incredibly old.

Instead, I’ve received the fresh revelation (although the truth isn’t new or something I haven’t known) that we aren’t fighting for VICTORY, we are fighting FROM VICTORY. You see, we’ve already won. One of my favorite scriptures related to spiritual warfare is Colossians 2:13-15.

You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.

Jesus Christ took on our sin that we might be made alive with Him. The power of the cross has canceled any charges that could ever be placed against us. By doing this, he has disarmed all the powers and principalities that try to rule over us. What’s even more exciting, he made a public spectacle of our enemy! Now we must contend to see the reality of that victory made manifest in the earth.