How to Win Spiritual Warfare and Defeat the Devil

Have you ever had thoughts arrive one after another — thoughts that leave you feeling guilty, afraid, condemned, and further from God than you were an hour ago?

You start finding fault in what you did. Then in what you did not do. Every situation somehow turns into evidence of your own failure. Often the thing was not even wrong, and still a pressure builds in your mind saying “this is wrong” — and that pressure is what carries you into tension and dread.

• “Maybe I have disappointed God.”
• “Maybe I am not a good Christian.”

Then you do the right thing, and the accusation simply changes shape. “That was not enough.” “You did not do it properly.” And step by step you sink further into that same pressure, that tension, that dread.

1. First work out where the thought is coming from

Before anything else we have to know whether the thought troubling us is from God or from the devil. Until you know whose voice it is, how are you going to resist it? A thought you have mistaken for God's voice is a thought you will lay your weapons down in front of.

Scripture says it plainly:

Confusion — that is the word to hold on to. So if a thought keeps dragging you into confusion, tension and dread, it is not coming from God. God does correct us, but his correction pulls you towards him; it never pushes you away from him. And when God says something to you, he says it with peace. The thought, the voice that comes from God, brings peace with it.

You have been given authority over those thoughts

This is what God taught me: a thought that is troubling you, pressing you into tension and dread, is not from God however much it may sound like him — and you can destroy it. Because in the New Testament we have been given authority over the devil, and over everything that torments us.

But believers often get tangled between the Old Testament and the New. People say, “Terrible things happened to Job too, and God allowed it.” Yet if God himself were doing all of this, or arranging it, why would he then hand authority to believers? Job was not given that authority — he stood in the Old Testament. We have been given it. We do not have to go on enduring sickness, tension and dread; if we did, God would never have given us the authority in the first place.

2. The difference between the Old Testament and the New

We stand in the New Testament, so we have to understand God in the light of the New Covenant. Take the census David took. One passage says the LORD moved David to number Israel:

But another passage says:

So to understand a scene in the Old Testament, we need the revelation the New Testament gives us. The New Testament is what tells us who was actually behind it.

Knowing the Father through Jesus

The clearest revelation of God the Father comes through Jesus Christ. That is not a reason to discard the Old Testament. We read the Old Testament and we look for Jesus in it — because Scripture says the law was a shadow of the good things to come, not the things themselves.

And the fullness of God is in Jesus — Paul writes of Christ:

What did Jesus do?

He healed everyone. He never made a single person sick — so God does not make anyone sick either. We read God's character off what Jesus did, not off our own circumstances.

3. Do not fight the devil with your own obedience

I am not saying obedience does not matter. We are to obey God, because obedience draws us closer to him. But we cannot beat the devil on the strength of our obedience.

The devil is a master deceiver. You will get something wrong somewhere. And if your attention is fixed on your own failures, you have handed him room to work in your life. He will keep saying:

• “You did that wrong.”
• “You did not do that properly.”
• “You did not obey God the way you should have.”

Fix one failure and he will point at the next. Then a third. Then a fourth. The cycle never ends. The devil knows Scripture better than you do — but the way to defeat him was never to prove yourself flawless. It is to resist him.

4. Our righteousness is the righteousness of Jesus

We do not fight the devil with a righteousness of our own. We have the righteousness of Jesus. It is his obedience that makes us righteous, not our own. You can get something wrong and still be righteous — because your righteousness comes from Jesus Christ, not from your own flawlessness.

So when the devil accuses you with your failures, do not go looking for your righteousness in your performance. Your righteousness is in Jesus — and it does not grow on a good day or shrink on a bad one.

5. Submit to God, and resist the devil

So now that we know the devil can come against us, the question is how we resist him. Scripture says:

If Satan comes against you — if he hands you thoughts of fear, thoughts of guilt and condemnation, or brings sickness — do not sit there wondering, “Have I done something wrong?” or “Has God allowed this for some reason?” No. Stand up in faith right then. Shut the door of your room and attack the devil with all the strength you have. If you have received tongues, pray in tongues; if you have not, speak the word. Resist him — and he will flee.

My testimony

One day my mind filled up with thoughts of guilt and condemnation. I could see my own fault in everything. The negative side of every situation stepped forward. Things that were perfectly ordinary started to look like sin to me.

But that day I made a decision: “I am not going to accept these thoughts quietly.” I shut my room and resisted them for about an hour. I rebuked the devil and resisted those thoughts with everything I had, like a man treading them underfoot.

I did not stop at that moment to work out whether those thoughts were from God or from the devil — whether God might be teaching me something through them. At that moment I trod on every thought that was troubling me, every thought that was giving me stress and anxiety. I made no compromise with them. This is what God has taught me: whatever comes against you, destroy it. [Luke 10:19][Matthew 16:19]

Sometimes the devil takes so much ground in your mind that you have to stand against him with complete seriousness and faith. I looked at those thoughts as though serpents and scorpions were in front of me — and I was not handing them authority over me, I was treading on them. And I kept doing this for an hour.

That day I believed I had been set free from those thoughts. Slowly they began to fade. The pressure of them had given me chest pain as well, and that pain eased too, and by the next day it was completely gone. And I was free.