Tag: Jesus and Satan

Satan, You Can’t Have My Family

Satan is destroying families at an alarming rate.  We must stand up and resist the enemy.  Fight for your family! Stand in the gap.  Your prayers are powerful.  To resist is to take action; it is not being passive.  It means you take a stand and don’t budge, come wind or high water.  You stand on God’s promises while confessing His Word.  When you do this, then God does the rest.

Many believers continue to live in defeat, worry, anxiety, depression, and unbelief. They lack knowledge of who they are in God and what position and identity they have in Christ. Lack of faith and trust in God has them living in defeat. Ignorance in this area leads to failures.

The battle must be waged against the devil and demonic forces, and not against the person who is behaving in an ungodly manner. It is the devil who is the spiritual enemy. Spiritual warfare should not be waged against a mate, a child, a loved one, or a boss. The loved one should be treated with unconditional love, while Satan is being engaged in spiritual warfare. In order to wage spiritual warfare successfully, a Christian must continually submit himself/herself to God, put on spiritual armor (see Ephesians 6), and continually resist the devil.

The good news is that we can appropriate our freedom in Christ Jesus by the power of God’s Word and the blood of Jesus Christ. To appropriate means “to take possession of, secure, allocate, assign, appoint, and so forth.” God wants us to take possession of all of the kingdom’s rights and benefits that He has already deeded and guaranteed to us. We have been delegated power and authority over all the power of the enemy. I firmly believe that lack of knowledge will keep a Christian from enjoying the blessings and the peace of God.

Weapons for spiritual warfare include the name of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit, keys of binding and loosing, the power of praise and worship, effective prayer, the power of agreement, and the Word of God.

Take Action

  1. In the Spirit, be bold as a lion.  Learn to pray, intercede, and wage war.  Remain connected to the Holy Spirit.
  2. Pray for discernment.  Pray with power.  Pray fervently. Pray without losing heart.  Pray all the time.  Tie your heart, mind, and emotions to God’s heart.
  3. Always begin praying with thanksgiving to God for people who need our prayers.
  4. Thank God for your loved one and for God’s awesome plan for their lives.
  5. Avoid controlling prayers that focus on the negative and ask God to change, sever, transform, stop, bind, and remove.  They tend to bring upon the person a burden of guilt and condemnation.
  6. Pray in faith, trusting God to intervene in their lives. Confess and declare all of those good things that you expect to see manifested in their lives.
  7. Refuse to be moved by what you see, hear, or feel. 
  8. Bind all strategies of the enemy from becoming effective in their lives.
  9. Pray in a positive way with thanksgiving.  Pray scriptures, not your own words.  Allow God to be God.

The Holy Spirit will be your helper and guide. Forget about your feelings, and walk by faith. Embark on a journey to wholeness that will restore your life and the lives of your family members. Satan does not have to take your family or your mind. God has enabled us to triumph and to overcome evil with good.

Seek God’s Word about these principles and apply them to your everyday life through prayer. Applying these principles in my [Iris Delgado’s] life, my husband’s life, my daughters’ lives and into the lives of countless others, I have seen miracles of deliverance from manic depression, sickness, disease, fear and torment, destructive thought patterns, rejection, unbelief, and wrong relationships.

Prepare your heart. If you submit to God with all your heart, put on your spiritual armor, and aggressively resist the devil, the devil will have to flee from you, your household, and from those for whom you pray. The key is to yield your life to God completely and to be obedient to His Word. Once you experience the love and the power of God in your life, you won’t desire anything else.

“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” Luke 10:19

“Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:7

Excerpts from “Satan, You Can’t Have My Children”, by Dr. Iris Delgado

To God be the glory

LifeintheSpirit.net

Source of image: Unsplash

Is Mormonism a Christian Denomination?

“Mormonism is a Christian denomination and I am a Christian.”

Response:

I want you to know that I have a high regard for my Mormon friends and the Mormon Church for the strong family values it espouses, its work with the poor, its incredible music, its emphasis on physical preparation, and its financial acumen.  But I don’t believe that its theology is sound. 

I realize this sounds terribly arrogant and presumptuous, but I am concerned about where you will spend eternity.  I ran across a cardiologist named Maurice Rawlings, who has had many of his patients die.  (He is either a great doctor who gets the worst cases, or a lousy doctor…)  He is able to recusitate many of them, and has discovered that about half of them experienced light and joy in heaven and didn’t want to come back, while the other half experienced utter terror in hell, and didn’t want to die again.  All of which compels me to realize that these matters are not merely academic discussions, but have to do with the REALITY of death and ask what is on the other side. You can see more here:  http://www.freecdtracts.com/testimony/hellandback.htm.

The other reason I have become very interested in really knowing about the spiritual realm and life in that realm is that this country boy is getting older.  The closer I get to the finish line, the more interested I am in what’s next. 

I share this concern with you as a friend, and hope you will accept it in that light.  I also hope that if you believed I was headed in the wrong direction (which you well may believe), that you would bring it to my attention.  Our friendship does not depend on agreeing on everything, because it is based on respect for each other as persons.  I have friends who are liberal Jews, agnostics, and Hindus; some of whom I can discuss these matters with, and some of whom I cannot.  But I treasure their friendships.  Our paths have crossed, and I am much richer for it. 

You may know this, but I was raised as a Lutheran, then became a subjectivist, a humanist, a Marxist, and have attended various churches over time.  I have enjoyed the journey, experienced great discussions about the meaning of life (usually with an adult beverage), and tried on these various world views.  But as I get closer to the end of this life, I realize it is time for me to become serious about what happens next, and its implications for those who I care for.  And I care for you.  Although I am by no means an expert on Mormonism, I understand its basic tenets vary significantly from traditional biblical Christianity, and include:

  • God the Father had a father, and used to be a man on another planet.
  • God is married to his goddess wife (a mother god), and has spirit children.
  • Jesus and Satan are spirit brothers and were born as siblings in heaven.
  • A plan of salvation was needed for the people of earth so Jesus offered a plan to the Father and Satan offered a plan to the father but Jesus’ plan was accepted.
  • God had sexual relations with Mary to make the body of Jesus.
  • There are many gods, and after you become a good Mormon, you have the potential of becoming a god with your own planet, you and your wife giving birth to spirit babies that are then born on earth.
  • Jesus’ sacrifice was not able to cleanse us from all our sins.
  • If it had not been for Joseph Smith and the restoration, there would be no salvation (including exaltation to Godhood).
  • There is no salvation without accepting Joseph Smith as a prophet of God
  • The book of Mormon is more correct than the Bible.
  • One of the most fallacious doctrines originated by Satan is that man is saved alone by the grace of God; good works are necessary for salvation.

Source:  “What Does Mormonism Teach?” by Matt Slick – http://carm.org/teachings-of-mormonism

These are not minor differences of theology, but another gospel, which is condemned in _________ (quote the passage).

“My original reason for becoming a Mormon had to do with being granted full custody of two high-school age sons when their mother and I divorced and she moved to Guatemala.  They had been raised in that faith and I strongly believed that we needed a church family to survive.  Being a good father and husband, as far as we believe, will be the first questions asked when we return to be with our Heavenly Father.  If you can pass that test, and you two certainly can, then everything else should fall in place.

As you no doubt know, families are what we are all about to the extent that we believe that “families can be together forever!”  And I am banking on that to be true which is the reason we make such an effort to afford those privileges to those who have died before having an opportunity to accept Christ as their Savior.  But not for a second am I not grateful to be counted among your friends and those for whom you pray.”

Response:

The Bible is clear that entrance to heaven relies on a person repenting of their sins and accepting Christ as their savior.  The qualities of “being a good father and husband” are insufficient for salvation.  With regard to families in heaven, Jesus addressed this very issue in Mark 12:25, when He stated:  “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

“I don’t think I am any kind of exception, but I have always appreciated anyone who believed in an Almighty Beingwhile privately distrusting those who only believed in themselves.  My best friend since the 10th grade, as you may recall, is a Society of Mary Catholic Priest.  In fact, I probably have more Catholic friends than any others; stands to reason since there are a billion of them out there!  And my favorite movie is “Shoes of the Fisherman.”  We even sent our daughter to Catholic School in the eighth grade; great experience for her. 

My sister, a Disciples of Christ member, is about to marry her Baptist dentist.  My sister-in-law is a Methodist and we always enjoy the exceptional singing when we attend her church.  Interestingly enough, it was in a Sunday school class in her church that we first met my wife’s present boss, Morehead State University’s president, who was teaching that class.  I’ll never forget after that first lesson some 25 years ago, he looked over at me and without warning asked, “Ok, how giving us the Mormon point of view of this lesson!”  You can bet that for years afterwards I was prepared for that question.”

Response:

I too appreciate those who believe in the Lord.  Do you remember _______, who was the C.D. Specialist in Columbia?  I will never forget the time I drove up from Arkansas to attend a conference in Columbia, and arrived the evening before the event.  I went out to a Red Lobster, and ran into him, who was eating dinner by himself.  He looked terrible – like death warmed over.  Turns out, his wife had died a month earlier, and both he and she were atheists.  As far as he was concerned, she ceased to exist, like a mosquito that was swatted.  I haven’t heard, but he looked like he was about to follow her.

I, too, have had different religious experiences, which I have relished.  In addition to attending a variety of churches, I have lived with (male) Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, Catholics, and Hindus.  These have been wonderful folks, which I enjoyed getting to know.  But the questions I am faced with (particularly now, as our daughter is returning from India), are:

  • Are they all true? 
  • Is that even possible? 
  • How do we know what is true? 

I hope to interact with our daughter about these questions soon.  As you probably know, Hinduism is called “the embrace that smothers” because it claims to embrace all other religions.  Hence it is attractive to many.