Our foundation Scripture is 1 Timothy 6:12: Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.

This Scripture says you should fight the good fight of faith. But what we call spiritual warfare is long hours of vibrating prayers, calling down fire on the enemy. I told the young people not to pray “fall and die” prayers for their enemies because if a seed of corn fall to the ground and dies, it multiplies.  If your enemy falls and dies, you are in trouble, because more enemies will spring up and you won’t know where they would come from. Asari Dokubo said, “Don’t arrest me, there are many Asaris, if you arrest me you will know.” And now we can see it.

I want everyone of us to register it in our minds that we are called to fight. So when it is becoming tough, know that your calling is just surfacing. When they are retrenching everybody in your office, know that it is just what you are called onto. When everything is not working even in the family set up, know that God is calling you to arise as warrior. So don’t ever think again in your life because things are not going  the way you like, that maybe something went wrong. In fact, that is when everything is going right.  Because we are in a world where Satan is king, and we are holding our allegiance to another King, so we cannot have it easy; in fact we should not have it easy. The world is now the domain of Satan, God has handed it over to him. It is like when a landlord who has a house lets it out to somebody, you can no longer enter that house anyhow, even though you are the landlord; because you have lost control over that particular apartment for the period that the rent is valid.

Adam sold this world to Satan for a season. So Satan became the god of this world and that means that as long as you are in this world you are expected to worship one god called Satan (2 Cor. 4:3,4; Eph. 2:1-2). Now for you to come to the world and be boastfully saying “woe to the devil, all power belongs to Jesus” in the territory of Satan, you can be sure that you are in a battle even if you don’t know it. Can you imagine somebody shouting “up George Bush” in the presence of Saddam Husein, you can be sure that such a person will not shout twice before his head will be cut off. We children of God are actually rebels on earth. No wonder the Bible says that Satan is running to and fro upon the face of  the earth. Why? Because of you and I. Some of the basic things we must take note of are:

The battle is unavoidable, as long as you are a Christian. In fact once you say yes to the Lord Jesus, you are enlisted into the army even if you don’t know it. You may not know that you have been enlisted but by saying yes to Jesus, the mighty man of war, you are also becoming a mighty man or woman of war.

Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. 2 Tim. 2:3-5

This Scripture tells us to endure hardness and fight lawfully, that is why we need to understand the laws of fighting this battle.  Learning to endure hardness means that your life is meant to be hard. That does not mean you have to live in poverty, or that you have to be sick, but spiritually speaking if you are not hard, you will be pressed hard. You must be a stone as you are called. If a heavy load is placed on a stone, it will never be pressed down. The worst that can happen to it is that it will break. But God has said that there hath no temptation taken you but such as it common to man; but God is faithful, who will not tempt you above that ye are able, and will with it make a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it (1 Cor. 10:13). That means that there is no load that can crush us.

An example of that can be found in the book of Daniel 3, where the three Hebrew boys were brought before the tyrannical king of Babylon, called Nebuchanezzar, who set up a multi-metallic monster called god and told everybody on the earth to bow to that image. These three Hebrew boys refused to bow to it, and they were not broken.

The first thing you have to know is who you really are.  A STONE.  If you are a stone, nothing can depress you. So you have no excuse, no reason to buckle; no justification to surrender, you have no reason to give up, for there is hope in God, there is everlasting strength in Jehovah.

And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. 1 John 5:19

A rendition of this scripture says, “the whole world lieth in the firm grip of the evil one”, and we are in that world, how then will it be easy? We are in a war involving several battles. If Satan the wicked one has this world in his grip and you are in this world, you can now know what you are going through.  But it is important for you to understand and to also exercise the strategies of winning. If you are going to a battle without knowing your enemy, you are taking a big risk. That is why Paul said “…we are not ignorant of the devices (of the schemes, tricks and antics) of Satan” (2 Cor. 2:11). If we are ignorant of the devices of Satan, we cannot win. So you must know your enemy, and knowing your enemy is to know how to strategise. If you are only a professor of knowing your enemy, you have failed. You must be a professor of strategies of wining, and part of it is knowing your enemy and your source of strength.

2 Tim. 2:3 says “…endure hardness..” That means you cannot avoid hardness. You cannot afford to be a soft believer, it cannot work. How can you say you are the president in a country with a sitting president? Those who tried this died for it. No rebel has rest, no wonder God says in Amos 6:1, “woe to them that are at ease in Zion.”  There is no resting place here, we are in a warfare, and it is undeniable. If we refuse to face the facts, we will continue to be victims. Daniel 11:32 says, “Those that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits” and I say, “those that do not know their God shall be weak and be exploited.” You cannot afford to be weak, the battle is to the strong. Battles are not won by weaklings, they are won by the strong, though one may not know the source of that strength, it may not be physical. How could you explain 300 Israelites winning a whole battle of over 10,000? This is not a battle of physical strength or armoury now, there is a power somewhere that is doing it. The Yorubas would say “if you see water isles dancing on top of water, the drummer is under the water,” and that is the current that is carrying it.

No war is won by a weak person. Proverb 24:3-5 says, Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches. A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength.  A wise man may look very frail and fragile and this portrays him as weak, physically.  But if a physically strong man rushes to him and the wise man throws sand into the man’s eyes, from that point, he can beat the seemingly strong man mercilessly and win the battle.              

One of the things that is called strength is knowing your weakness. So when you are going to battle, you must recognize what your strengths and weaknesses are. But praise God! We have no weakness in Christ, we are complete in Him. No deficiency, no insufficiency, no limitation, we are not wanting in anything in Christ Jesus, but we cannot access the fullness of these provisions except by faith in Christ. That is what determines how much we now manifest, and why it seems that we are weak in certain areas.

“Endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ” means you can be a soldier but a bad one. “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life.” What to eat, what to drink, what to put on, the kind of car to ride, those things are secondary.  What a good soldier does is what is written in Job 23:12 – esteem the word of God above all his necessary food. That means placing the word of God higher than all what men call necessities – be it food, clothing or shelter. If you have  not got to that point, you will keep losing, even if you pray from now till Jesus comes. This is the Bible giving us the recipe on how to win the war. There is no solider that wants to please his commanding officer that entangles himself with the affairs of this life. And who is the commanding officer of our army? It’s Jesus. If you are going to please Him, you must put aside these things or else there are battles you will lose. We must live above these things and when we do, God will make them us have abundance of them, because God knows that now they cannot master us.

If any man strives for mastery, he must strive lawfully. Don’t be Ben Johnson, running with drug assistance. Run according to the rules, and that is why we need to understand the rules of this war. Some of the rules we have looked at so far are:

• We are in a battle
• We need to endure hardness
• We must put aside the things of this life – ephemeral things, temporal things, things that are not spiritual. We should be able to put those things under our feet. And that does not mean you don’t have them but that you should be able to put them under your feet – that they don’t control you. So, if you are going to win this war, there is no other way for you to do it than the way it is stated in the Word. You win the war by the Word. No other way.

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.  I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Phil. 4:11-13

Paul said he had learnt to be content, in whatever state he was – whether he had food to eat or not. What if in the battle Satan wants to use hunger to deal with you, are you ready for it? Can you do without eating what you want in a day? Can you do without buying the kind of dress you want to wear to that occasion? Can you do without a car? If you can’t, you are still mince-meat for the enemy. You need to learn both how to be abased and to abound, such that none of these factors make a difference in your relationship with Christ; so that you will be too focused to be distracted.

Uriah is an example of a true soldier. His commander sent him to war, and suddenly he was withdrawn in the heat of the war. His commander then encouraged him to go home to his wife and have a good time. But Urriah refused to stay with his wife to have a good time while his brethren were on the battlefield.

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. John 16:33

You will have tribulations, trials and troubles because you are in another man’s territory, and it has no respect for you. God is saying that you should be courageous and fight the battle because He has overcome the world. Jesus fought the get the victory for us, ours is to fight to maintain it. That is why you need to understand the fight.