Pushing Back Against the Devil’s Opposition
Every Christian has a divine purpose in the earth that the Lord has positioned them to fulfill. We must keep in mind, however, that life on this earth is not really about life on this earth. This life is just a test to determine how we will be positioned with the Lord concerning rewards and responsibilities throughout our real life, our eternal life. Eternity in Heaven for born again Christians is the real life; the one that lasts for quadrillions of quadrillions of years. “Life without end” should sound familiar to everyone who has ever heard the basics of the Christian faith, but few realize that everyone, not just the preachers, are responsible for fulfilling our Divine Assignment. Our success in doing that will determine how we are going to spend our time throughout the real life, the eternal one.
When we look at the condition of our nation, and even the modern Church, you might be hard pressed to find anyone who even remotely cares about an individual purpose from God. Of course, this is just as our enemy, Satan, desires. Simply look at the entire earth and its immoral direction, and we can see that we face a global opposition from our enemy, Satan. We don’t expect much change from the barbaric places that have been immersed in false religion for centuries, but when the nations which formerly embraced the faith of our Lord Jesus turn to such wickedness, we can’t help but think that time is running out for this earth.
Modern Corruption
Nations have jettisoned the sanctity of unborn human life, like those of Canaan who sacrificed their children to the god Molech, burning them alive in a furnace. They killed them in hope of a good harvest season, just to satisfy their greedy bellies. Unfortunately, America has led the way in this abomination due to our advanced medical technology and our retarded lack of basic morality and human decency.
The whole world seems to be on a celebration of gender fluidity, identifying nearly 100 potential choices. The Bible reveals the only truth available to mankind and tells us in Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” The next verse tells them to be fruitful and multiply. Any combination that can’t multiply, or procreate, is simply not according to God’s design and cannot receive His blessing.
Entertainers and athletes in our culture have determined to appear as strange looking as they can, even as though they came from an other planet. Now it seems that you can’t be the lead pastor of a modernist church without copying their bizarre, faddish appearance. I wouldn’t be accepted to preach truth and wisdom in some of these churches because I occasionally wear a tie and I always wear socks!
All the while, there are those of us who radically committed our lives to the Lord and have never departed from our relentless pursuit of the presence of God and His holy anointing. I don’t say that with any sense of self-righteousness, because when I received the Lord 46 years ago, I was a drug-addicted professional rock drummer. I have never forgotten from whence I came, but I have never sensed any condemnation because I have been radically saved and am all-in for God’s kingdom from my first day as a born-again Christian.
The Great Push Back
In the process of our relentless pursuit, we have all found what I call the great push back from Satan. When we have this opposition, this push back, we simply must determine to push back even harder, knowing that our failure can only come if we quit, and our victory will only come if we never stop pushing back. We do need to stand with one another and push back together in order to get the quickest and best success.
Let me tell you a push back testimony from my own life. In November of 2016, I began holding healing services for LCU. With today’s modern technology, I knew we could make these services available to all of our students at our extension campuses throughout the whole world. When I was a student at Rhema, I attended and served as an usher at Healing School with Brother Hagin for one and a half years. We were all on one campus, so the opportunity to attend was extended to all students. I had to wait until today’s technology allowed us to offer the same training for all LCU students by offering this opportunity to receive supernatural healing while following us on streaming Facebook services. We stream out these services on our LCU Facebook page and then archive them all on our www.divinehealing.faith website.
The very first week that we started, I also conducted a healing service in a church the following Sunday morning. I even saw a vision of God’s glory cloud come rolling in at the end of the service. Right before getting into the car to leave, I felt a pressure in my chest and my arms went numb. I ended up having to spend the night at the hospital because I had to have a stent placed in the LAD artery of my heart. Well, I knew that this was just the push back of the devil, because I had no potential causes for this physical weakness, and there was no plaque blocking the artery, it simply collapsed. Satan wasn’t happy that I started healing services so he tried to intimidate me to stop. He can send spirits of infirmity to do his handy work. So I had to determine to push back even harder. Now I can testify that we have had three years of great success in our healing services, and I have even conducted a number of healing revivals.
When I went back to my cardiologist for an annual checkup last year he commented on how healthy I was and how open all the arteries of my heart were. He even emailed my family doctor reporting to him how healthy I was. I had to go to my dentist the next week for a cleaning and my dentist stated, “Boy, your gums are really healthy.” He then asked, “What are you doing?” I didn’t tell him exactly about the healing services, but I did say something about putting the Word in my mouth. Well, I knew it was from declaring the healing Word of God to others and watching the results happen in their bodies, but I was also getting all of the benefits of pushing back against the devil in my body as well. I knew that I felt great, but it is also great to get a confirmation from your doctors declaring how well you are doing physically.
I was recently at the Kenneth Copeland ministers conference when I got word that an LCU graduate friend of mine had to go the the hospital with a staph infection in his leg. He is the Senior Pastor of a bilingual church; one that I had conducted a healing crusade at. I called him as soon as I got back in town so that I could stand with him to push back against the devil. He immediately bore witness to what I was saying and invited me to preach for him that Sunday. His wife had just asked him if he could have a replacement preacher since he just got out of the hospital. He had called his associate only to discover that he was in the hospital because his dog had just mauled his hand. He required surgery that Sunday morning. We knew we were in a push back war with the devil. Well, we had a powerful service indeed, with prayer for the pastor, even though he felt well enough that he provided the Spanish interpretation for me.
Stand Together
Today’s committed ministers need to stand in unity with one another. We definitely must be lights shining in the darkness. Our jobs are to convince those who think of themselves as simply rank and file Christians that each one of their assignments is of equal importance to the Lord. Even if someone lives to be 120 years of age, the Bible calls this life a vapor. That is, like the vapor that you expel from one breath, and when you compare that to how long eternity is, it is hard to believe that so many are squandering their eternal rewards for the foolishness of temporal fleshly desires and shallow distractions on this earth.
I can’t go into all of the scriptures here that refer to our eternal reward consisting of eternal responsibilities and positions, but I don’t think that we will be sitting around on clouds playing harps forever and ever. There has to be a grand purpose to God creating a new Heaven and a new earth. I believe that He will fill it with His eternal family, and we will all have corresponding rewards and responsibilities according to our earthly faithfulness.
Let’s stand together as we push back against the devil, leading others into following the divine purposes for their lives. Remember the words of our Lord Jesus from Matthew 25:21, “His Lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.’”
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