Spirit Wars: Winning the Invisible Battle Against Sin and the Enemy | Kris Vallotton

so tough and like it wasn't tough for us like we just had the most beautiful first year of our marriage and then the second year i had a nervous breakdown that lasted three and a half years i mean if you're gonna have one have one right like don't mess around with like i had a nervous breakdown lasted a week that's not a nervous breakdown that's a burp in your spirit and so i was uh i did i i was obviously i was a christian i i loved jesus and um one day the way it started is i was working a lot of hours managing a repair shop and i went home one night late and my wife was eight months pregnant and um i got in the bathtub and i was taking a bath and when i went to get out of the bathtub i had this thought that i was gonna die now you know i've had lots of thoughts i'm gonna die i'm sure you all know you're you're not gonna live forever on planet you're gonna you know what i'm trying to say it wasn't that kind of thought it wasn't like a philosophical or or thought about oh i'm going to die someday it was like someone put a gun to my head and said i'm going to kill you right now and um i my heart started pounding out of my chest i fell back in the bathtub i i literally could not get strength to get out of the bathtub i thought i was having a heart attack i started yelling for my wife who was very a very sick eight months pregnant lost weight through the seventh month kind of pregnant so she you know waddled into the bathroom and tried to help me out of the tub and couldn't get me out of the tub and called our doctor and who was a friend of ours and he's you know she's like my husband's having a heart attack having a heart attack and you know he said wait wait wait take his pulse tell me what his symptoms are and within about two minutes he said that's not a heart attack that's a panic attack he's not gonna die it's gonna be okay and um that was the first panic attack i ever had and i started having about 50 of them a day and i had i would um i'd sweat the bed wet at night my wife my poor pregnant wife would get up in the middle of night and change the sheets and i would soak the bed all the way to her side and couldn't sleep and i went months with sleeping an hour or two hours a night so we decided that we'd moved to um trinity county weaverville a little tiny town actually we moved to a town called lewiston with 900 people and i thought you know i didn't know what was happening to me and i was so for about i you know for about a year i just tried to um do what i knew to do and you know i went obviously i saw my doctor the next day he gave me basically gave me valium tranquilizers that didn't you know all it did is make me numb it didn't solve my problem and so we moved to a little town called lewiston and um we knew about lewiston because we had on our honeymoon we had went to lewiston to go fishing we didn't know anybody there and i was so distressed i said i need to find some place like where the birds fly slow you know like we lived in san jose it was just so crazy and i thought this maybe if i get in a place that's slow i'll get well so we got to lewiston um another long story by the way i worked every day so it was like i would work during the day as long as i kind of kept busy the anxiety would reduce so that i could at least think and but the nights were just horrible so we got to lewiston that's a whole other long story but the part of the story i want to tell you is instead of getting better it got worse when the environment around me slowed down it amplified what was going on inside of me and and then ins instead of just being physical um it started to become spiritual and i maybe it started spiritual i don't know but um demons started to visit me it wasn't illusions it wasn't like i was i was starting to you know have have hallucinations now actual demons that would knock pictures off the wall and turn lights on and off in my house were visiting me like my wife would be there and the lights would go on and off pitchers would fall off the wall by themselves whole wall full of pictures would just fall off simultaneously and i started having visions of doing horrible things to my to my family to my friends and and i was completely distressed didn't know what to do and you know in those days if you told somebody what was going on they put you in a mental hospital my i don't want to be in a mental hospital um and so um this is a much longer story and because i'm taking this to a different place i i i'm not ashamed of the story of just i'm going somewhere else with it uh you know i couldn't keep food in in me i weighed 135 pounds it was just not good couldn't sleep and um and the visions were getting worse and worse and uh one night i used to get up in the middle of night and again we were living in the mountains so it's really hard to get radio or television in those days and i i would get up in the middle of night we had one of these stereos remember the stairs of the record player okay some of the young folks like you used to have a record player on and i would i i would get up in the middle of night and i you know we didn't i'd we didn't have headphones and all that kind of stuff in those days and so i would lay my head against the speaker and turn the radio on really quietly it's not to wait my family and i would listen to talk shows or just anything that would try to get my mind off of what was going on and i turned on this radio station i don't know what station it was or who was even speaking and and i knew the bible really well i had been discipled for four years by a guy that insisted we read the bible every day we pray every day this is like the disciplines of christianity were very much in my life i very much loved jesus he dramatically changed my life when i received him in 18. and so i'm laying i laid my head against this the speaker and this man said through a bunch of static which i could only hear like every third word i picked up that he said god he said god hasn't he read you know ii timothy 1 6 god hasn't given us a spirit of fear but love power sound mind i knew the verse really well he said some of you think you're going insane but the truth is is that you're listening to a spirit of an insanity and he said spirits talk to you by giving you their thoughts it's all he had to say i'd never see i was taught that a christian could be mentally ill but a christian couldn't be demonized so i was actually taught out of my solution and so i turned off the radio it's about three o'clock in the morning snow on the ground freezing cold i'm laying on my back in the front room and i say to jesus what should i do i'm in i'm i'm in the this is my third year of not all of this going on and the lord said to me i want you to tell the spirit of fear and the spirit of insanity to leave you and i'm like this cannot be this simple you know if you have a three and a half year problem you don't want it to be that simple right how many of you know exactly what i'm saying like like it would have been nice if you told me this like three years ago would be nice so i'm laying on my back and i say and i'm desperate you know and i say you spirit of fear and your spirit of uh i'm sorry spirit of insanity and your spirit of fear leave me right now and i'm laying on my back and i've seen many demons by this time i used to see him daily in fact i couldn't be in a public building because i would see demons talking to people and i would see them manipulating people and that's a whole other story but it i i'm i'm glad that part's over i don't see that happening anymore it lasted about seven years of my life but it did tell me how the spirit world works because i would actually see the spirit world and so um so i'm laying on my back and i say your spirit of fear and your spirit of insane you leave me now and i didn't see anything i didn't see anything but it felt like you know those lead things they put on you when you have your teeth x-rayed it it felt like like that except for on my complete body and it got up off of me i didn't see it i could feel it and instantly my mind came back the first time in three and a half years i could actually think of thought totally clear and for a solid week i would think i would think okay i'm going to think about dying just to see if i'm actually well you know you've probably done it before like am i well or am i just you know am i is it just a psychological thing and i would think about it nothing would happen no anxiety no panic i'm like oh that thing's gone and it stayed gone for a week a solid week like every day was so nice i could eat i could keep food down i slept all night it was like it was like it was being like being born again again to be honest and then i was driving home one night really late at night with dark windy road charlie wouldn't remember rush creek road in my jeep and i was just so happy i was just singing and like i was back to my my myself and and i and i said out loud in my jeep by myself just kind of externally praying and processing i said i'm going to tell everybody about this and instantly a voice came into my mind and said if you tell anybody about this i'm going to kill you and all the symptoms return i couldn't drive i pulled over on the side of the road shaking dramatically my mind was in a mess trying to figure out how i'm going to get home and this really quiet voice said to me does the devil hate you i'm like yeah he said why didn't he kill you when you were born again so you wouldn't tell anyone about him about jesus i said oh i don't know he said because he can't all of his power lies in an illusion and the only power he has over you is the power you give him the rest is the journey i can't from that day on i figured out that getting free and staying free were two separate things and i spent the next three years learning how to stay free and i ca i came up with this phrase that in those days i would say angels and demons travel at the speed of thought and i began to learn how to manage my thoughts because i realized that when i put faith when i put faith in something's about to go wrong no let me say it differently so you can receive it when i but when i started to believe something could go wrong suddenly i empowered that realm and that realm began to have power over me and i believe now that fear is faith in the wrong kingdom i believe that you you can have a lot of faith in fact i believe that sometimes men and women have great faith they grow in faith you grow from faith to faith right and sometimes you take that faith and you suddenly the enemy convinces you to take faith and put it in his kingdom and some of the most powerful people i've ever met that are having anxiety and panic attacks and having all kinds of demonic problems are people of great faith who put it in the wrong kingdom because i don't think that that the kingdom of heaven works by faith i think the spirit world works by faith the entire spirit world works by faith in other words i think that you you receive from god by faith but i also think that you receive from the enemy by enemy by faith and you determine what kingdom you receive from by who you believe and so i i didn't i didn't know any of that stuff but i started realizing like when i kept my mind on the lord and on what he said and i believed what he said i lived in perfect peace 20 seconds later i could put my mind over here and in those days and i have to say like i'm way more resilient now but in those days it was about 20 seconds if i had 20 seconds over there i would end up with two days of trying to get rid of the 20 seconds and so bill johnson in those days said you can't keep a you can't keep a bird from landing on your head but you can keep it from building a nest and i began to learn to survive how to do spiritual warfare and um and so i want to make a couple of statements out of that and i'll say here's one the first one is i don't believe most christians actually believe in demons no when i say believe in demons i mean they acknowledge them theologically and philosophically but when they have a problem they don't even factor in that it might be coming from the invisible man so they have a problem physical mental financial whatever and they they go to the doctor and by the way i'm not i'm not an anti-doctor guy or anti-counselor guy i'm not even an anti-don't take medication guy i'm just saying that you're tri-dimensional if you have a physical problem that's coming from the physical realm then jesus said the sick need a physician i believe in supernatural healing and i believe in doctors but if you have a demonic problem you're not going to solve it with a drug and i'm saying that most christians don't actually practically believe in a demon they actually don't actually especially i'm talking about in the in the western in western culture we don't actually believe that there's a realm that affects this realm and maybe at best we think it's god's realm so i i want to just do simple something simple and say this that we live in as humans we live in the first heaven and the first heaven if you haven't heard the phrases i just gonna kind of if you don't have bethel's phrases you know i just give you some language god created the heavens and the earth that that first heaven is what we see here we call this the heavens it's like what you see right here and then ephesians 6 says that that there are principalities and powers in heavenly places how many know there are no demons in god's heaven we call that the second heaven you won't find any phrase second heaven we ne we we call that second heaven because principalities and powers live in heavenly places but they don't live in god's heaven now the way we get the numbering system is that paul said i knew a man who went to the third heaven now we know that he's talking about himself but for the sake of this conversation we're just saying their first heaven is the heaven you see you live in all humans live in the second heaven is the demonic realm that the demonic realm lives in the second heaven and then there's the third heaven and that's the realm that jesus lives in and let me say this it's also the realm that you live in so second corinthians 5 17 says if many man be in christ he's a new creation the word new there is actually the word prototype in other words there's two words for the word in the greek for the word new one means like you got a new car and the other means prototype never before created this word means never before created so when you receive jesus christ you became a creature that had never before graced the planet what i'm getting at is god didn't just cause you to be born again he caused you to be born as a different creature that's why the least in the kingdom is greater than john the baptist who was the greatest prophet of the entire old testament because john wasn't in the kingdom when you got born again you got born into the kingdom as a new creation in other words god did something new he didn't do the next thing he did the new thing and when he created you knew you are the first creature that we know of at least biblically that actually lives in two dimensions simultaneously you live on earth and in heaven so you actually live in both dimensions you live in the first heaven and you live in the third heaven now you don't just live in the third heaven see because there's angels and cherubim and there's and and some some friends of mine that that are way smarter than i am said that there's actually in the third heaven there's actually eight levels to the third heaven now i'm not trying to make a case for that but i will say this there's angels and there's and there's principalities and there's powers not just on the negative side but also on the positive side also in god's heaven and you're seated in heavenly places but you're seated in heavenly places far above every principality and power because you're actually seated on the same throne that jesus is seated on and by the way jesus is not seated on his throne he's seated on the throne of david isn't that interesting and you're seated with him okay now the point is do you live from earth towards heaven or do you live heaven to earth so if you live from earth to heaven the second heaven has power over the first heaven let me say this before jesus died on the cross the second heaven had all power over the first heaven and authority but when jesus died on the cross and he rose from the dead and we rose with him we went from first heaven authority to third heaven authority and now all authority is under our feet metaphorically speaking the second heavens under the first heaven and you have authority about over what happens in the second heaven did you hear what i just said but if you don't know what's going on then you become a you actually become you become a victim of the invisible man because you don't actually understand what's happening so he messes with you when he has no permission to do it but you give him permission in ephesians chapter five paul says don't give the devil a place which means you can and just for christians that might be in here that you were taught like the devil can bother if you're a christian well first of all the devil talked to jesus so sorry about that secondly first uh john 4 says beloved so that's us don't believe every spirit but test the spirits to see if they're from god for many false prophets have went out in the world the point is don't become a false prophet by listening to the wrong spirit that means you can thirdly you wouldn't need armor if there was no battle and by the way you can't have a victory if there's no battle and you're called and you're called more than a conqueror that means there's things to conquer that means you have resistance good word chris thank you for that no too late too late i know i i think that if i don't do anything else today except for convince you that what you know theologically is actually working on your behalf or against you depending on where you're living and that it that that that first heaven that second heaven okay so i i know that i may not have credibility with some of you but let me tell you that the second heaven can do things like knock pictures off the wall i'm saying all i'm saying is it actually has ability to do physical things in this in this dimension and i could tell you things that if i told you so those of you that don't know me you would probably walk out of here thinking he's nuts but you know when i got free i started helping people get free you can imagine i lived with the vengeance for 15 years i was tormented for three and a half years spent another three years trying to stay free and finally when i got totally free i'm telling you like charlie harper i've known charlie for i don't know if almost 40 years and my house was the house of deliverance people were coming we cast demons out they'd come back i don't know if anyone ever got stayed free because they often got repossessed but we did deliverances all the time i had a vengeance for people i mean for the against the enemy and i had a compassion for people who were tormented so we learned a lot about how the spirit world worked and the fact that that spirit world really was working on our behalf in the angelic realm and against us in the demonic realm and it actually affected everything from people's marriages to their their mental physical health to their businesses to their prosperity or lack of poverty and so on and so forth and we begin to realize like begin to realize like ignorance is not bliss and so andy taught asked me to talk a little bit about spiritual warfare honestly not so much my favorite subject anymore except for what i get in a group of people looking me at me like this and a few shaking their heads like i've been there brother i'm with you i totally understand what you're talking about and um every time i do any a talk like this i just i just did um three hours in school ministry on spiritual warfare i get all kinds of notes daddy someone finally gets me my pastor thinks i'm crazy my husband thinks i'm nuts you know it's like when you hear someone that validates that's real that's really happening and it's happening to you it's kind of reassuring like i'm not crazy there's actually something real happening to me and so and i want to just uh if you'll turn to ephesians 6 we'll just pick up a little bit here and see if i can make some kind of sense out of this for you we um in ephesians six we call it the sit walk stand book because in ephesians chapter one and two paul says we're seated in heavenly places and i love this part of ephesians and by the way lots of theologians believe that the book of ephesians which was written by paul in prison and by the way in a in a specific prison where there was very little light that most theologians think this book took about six months to pin so what's really interesting if you think about it like a chronology that paul's actually in chapter one and two he's actually in this place with god where he feels like he's seated in heavenly places with christ and you'll you'll those of us that remember or know the book you you'll know that paul's talking about our authority in christ and that everything's under our feet and that you know that christ put everything under the feet of the church and that we're principal you know the principalities and powers are all under feet and it's all about what god's done for us and so you have two and a half almost three chapters about your authority in christ and what jesus did for you and then chapter three and four paul says now walk in the high call of god in christ jesus and we go from sitting to go to god goes what are you doing i'm sitting you said sit here till i make your enemies a footfall it's time for you to work and so i now i'm to not just it's not just about you know let me say it this way the emphasis becomes not grace not what god did for me but what god wants to do through me and i have there's verses like i was created for good works in christ jesus and i learn that i'm supposed to do something with my heavenly seed not just hang out and sip suds with the king when you get to chapter six which potentially is six months of paul writing this season has changed and paul i would propose to you begins to experience warfare on a level that he wasn't experiencing when he wrote chapters one two three four and the end of five and he writes this finally be strong in the lord this is verse 10. in the strength of his night might put on the former of god so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil the word scheme there it actually comes from a word that means the devil stalks you and he develops a plan by watching your weaknesses so he doesn't so just so you know like the devil's insane but he's not stupid and by the way the devil's not attacking anybody in here because the devil can only be at one place in one time we're talking about demonic spirits and so they actually have a plan against you that is predicated on your weaknesses and he waits for an opportune time as he did for jesus when luke 4 after jesus met the devil in the wilderness it says that the devil departed for until an opportune time and when jesus popularity dropped and the people stopped liking him and his you know and the pharisees started hating him and judas wanted to betray him the devil goes okay let's enter in judas because he's got our plan in mind and so paul calls that an evil day we call it a bad hair day okay thank you chris finally be strong in the lord put on the strength of his might put on the full armor of god so that you'll be able to stand firm against the devil the schemes of the devil so now we go from sitting to walking to standing for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers against powers against world forces of this darkness and by the way world forces of darkness only met only go after world changers so it's a little bit of a compliment when a world force of darkness is after you because you need to be doing something some people never have spiritual warfare because they're they're not doing anything worth resisting i call them the row row row your boat gently down the stream christians yes anyway okay rulers against powers against world forces darkness against spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places therefore take up the form of god so that you will be able to resist the devil resist in the evil day having done everything to stand firm stand firm there's a few things i want to just pick up from here and the one is if you go to verse 12 in your translation do you see it says for our struggles not against flesh and blood but against what's the word yours uses mind uses rulers new american standard i think principal principalities some versions say principalities that word rulers there is really interesting word because it actually comes from the word no it actually is the word origin or beginnings now i know this is going to sound unrelated but if you turn to philippians chapter 4 verse 15 i'll read you something that may surprise you verse chapter 4 verse 15 you yourselves also know paul's writing to the philippians you yourself also know philippians that at the first preaching of the gospel at the first preaching of the gospel you're like where are you going the word two words first preaching of the gospel is the identical word rulers okay okay like what are you trying to say i'm trying to say first preaching rulers is the same greek word it actually means origins okay what are you trying to say i'm trying to say there's a principality called origin what does the principality call origin do re preaches who you are and where you come from i propose that evolution is coming from a spirit called origin it's redefining the origin because it doesn't want you to be made in the image of god so it creates a new preaching a new doctrine that says you came from a big bang you're from amoeba you crawled out of the ocean you became an ape you and the reason it's doing that is not for science sake it's for the fact that it re tells the story of creation so you are not children of god the devil doesn't want you to be children of god so it uses science preaches a different gospel and and it's there's a spirit called origin that actually retells the story i propose that origins behind abortion that it's retelling the story of when life starts it says that's not a human it's not a human first trimester it's not a human second trimester what is it it's a fetus it looks human it's not human and then it convinces very intelligent people that that totally makes sense have you ever wondered why super smart people believe ridiculous things it's because it's not human you can't talk them out of it because they didn't get talked into it i'd propose to you i hope this doesn't offend anybody but too late i propose to you that the spirit origin is behind your gender identification and it says you weren't you you were born a man but you should have been born a woman and so on and so forth even though it's against your genealogy even though it's against your biology even though it's against your physiology origin goes yes but it makes perfect sense and supreme court people and scientists and all these brilliant minds come up with ridiculous conclusions because it's not about the intellect it's about a spirit that makes totally irrational things seem totally rational and then the people who are totally rational are the crazy ones the people who think that's a baby you're the crazy ones because i'm telling you like this is what it means for spirits to influence the world things that don't make sense at all make total sense to people who are under a spirit that's retelling the story he's preaching a different gospel now there are other kinds of warfare that's going on too have you ever had a completely irrational conversation with your employees that they are totally convinced that you said this and like you would think listen i don't have a perfect memory but i wouldn't say that in a hundred years and they're convinced you said that i used to walk into restaurants when i was super sensitive and i would see a spirit sticking his his head in the side of someone's head and i could hear him say she hates your guts and then he'd walk over he would walk over he'd move over to the other person that the woman and say he hates you he thinks you're ugly what was he doing inciting people against one another and then he would step back and watch them fight and laugh about it this is the reality of a world that's invisible but tangible this world is invisible but it's tangible in that it's influencing the realm of the visible as a matter of fact hebrews says that everything that was made was made by things that are invisible so sometimes you have things going on in your life and you're like what and the heck is going on and you're like and you don't even factor in this might be coming from a whole other realm second corinthians chapter 10. for though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses listen this now he's going to describe fortresses we're destroying speculations lofty things raised up against the knowledge of god and we're taking every thought captain obedience of christ i first of all i need to address something i wish i had more time but i need to address this you are not in a war with your old man so i was taught when i received jesus through the beautiful jesus people they taught me that there was a black dog and a white dog inside of me the white dog was the new man and the black dog was the old man and whatever dog i fed that's the dog that ruled my life it's a beautiful picture it's just not true when i received jesus christ the old man died if you read romans five six seven and by the way don't start at seven five six seven and eight forty seven times paul says you're dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead times four at seven in fact his whole point about you're no longer no longer on the law you know why he paul in romans says you're no longer under the law because he said law only has jurisdiction over people when they're alive you know why you're no longer in the law because the law only is for people who are alive and you are dead so when you receive jesus christ and you got baptized you understand baptism is not a pro a symbolic act see a symbolic act is an act we do from to remember the works of god they set up stones 12 stones why do you set stones so when you're when you're when your sons ask you why did you set up those stones you can say oh let me tell you about the works of god how many know communion is a symbolic act do this in remembrance i take communion to remember what side of the cross i live on but baptism is not a symbolic act baptism is a prophetic act do you remember when naaman the leper went to elisha and elisha never even came out of his tent but he sent gehezei out and he said go tell him to dip seven times in the river jordan and he'll be cleaned you remember this and naaman the leper is mad his servant convinces him to dip seven times in the river he dips seven times and he comes out clean how many know that there was no magic in the water that was a prophetic act physical obedience brings spiritual release when i get in the baptism tank i enter the tank with a cross and i get put under the water and there's two parts to this prophetic act the first part is we put you under the water why because what romans 6 says that if we if we if we if we are crucified with him in the likeness of his death under the water then we shall surely be raised with him in the likeness of his resurrection so this has two parts the one first one is we put you under the water that means the old man's dead but the most powerful part of baptism isn't the water it's when we take you out of the water because it says and then we rise in newness of life never to die again so i entered the car i entered the baptismal tank with a cross but i exit with a crown because bible says first john 4 as he is not as he was as he is so are we in this world are you with me so what i'm getting at is this you are not in your in a war with your old man here's the challenge if you believe you're in a war with your flesh i thought my flesh is evil no no you're born again in fact husbands love your wives as you love your own flesh no one ever hated his own flesh but what nourishes and cherishes it brother that brother's just in the flesh the word became flesh and dwelt among us david said my soul and my flesh hunger for the living god how do you know your flesh loves god your old man is dead everything about you loves god your soul loves god your flesh loves god you're just the lover of god everything in you loves god brother i don't know if that's true it is i get paid to know this and here's the challenge if you think you're in a war with your old man you can't win the war because you haven't even engaged the right enemy so i'd propose you that the devil doesn't just masquerade as an angel of light he masquerades as you see when jesus died on the cross you know matthew 28 is the resurrection resurrected jesus he said all authority's been given to me in heaven and on earth therefore you make disciples the connotation is because the devil no longer has authority i have it all that means the devil has none how many understand the devil's disarmed and defeated he has no arms or feet if he's in your pool his name be bob are you with me but the but the lord said i'm going to give you power over all the power of the evil one in other words the devil has power do it a must but he has no exusia he has no authority you have authority and power like a sheriff you have a badge you have authority and you have a gun or if you're from england a stick [Laughter] every time i say that i get all these facebook pictures of british guys with machine guns which i just came back from there they're definitely have machine guns i'm just being funny what i'm getting at is this is that you're not in a war with your flesh your flesh is inherently good we have a new flesh now that doesn't mean you don't have to grow up it just means your flesh isn't prone to evil are you with me a baby poops his diapers not because he's evil but because he's young it's okay at six months it's not okay at six years so i'm saying there are things that we expect of you when you're a young new believer that you do not because you're evil but because you're immature so maturity is a different process but how many know you're not evil you're just immature there's a big difference between i'm prone to evil and i'm immature i'm not saying you don't have to grow up i'm saying you don't have to grow good because you're already righteous i know i'm so good at this i don't know if anybody else likes to do this but i just encourage myself i just preach better i know it kind of borders on arrogance i i know i'm doing my best so okay so let's go back to uh second corinthians chapter 10. although we walk in the flesh we do not war against the flesh my point the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh why because i'm not in a war with my old man ephesians 6 our struggle is not against flesh and blood i'm not in a war with my old man but i am in a war and here's how it looks like speculations lofty thing and thoughts that paul calls fortresses what's a fortress well it's a thought that actually becomes fortified and how do i know if the thought is mine or the devils well let's start with this what's a speculation a speculation is a what if have you ever had a what if that was positive i mean if you're like your wife comes home late and you're like what if the boss kept her after and made her ceo of the company i never have thoughts like that you're like what if she got in the accident what if you know your kids are you know they're an hour late coming home from school you don't think i bet the principal gave them an award have you ever noticed that what ifs are never positive you know why because of the realm they're coming from there's speculations what's a lofty thing you know a lofty thing is it's a problem bigger than god oh i've never had one of those yeah you ever worried if you worried you have a problem bigger than god because worries irrational if you know who god is if you worry about your rent then then your rent is a lofty thing because you're saying when you worry i have faith i'm not going to pay it and god says he provides but i choose to worry therefore i said that problem that 1500 is bigger than you see a lofty thing is is when the devil takes a mohill and he makes a mountain out of it and you believe it and a thought i think i gave a good definition of thought that i got from the radio a thought is a thought is a devil thought actually creates an urge to do whatever the thought is for instance have you ever been driving down the road and you have this thought with an unction to drive your car into the pillar or crash your car how many have ever had that happen almost every student i asked this yesterday 11 15 1300 students in first year all but about 20 of them raised their hand they had all had that experience what is that that's the spirit of suicide what does the spirit of suicide do it gives you a thought but how do you know it's a spirit because it gives you the desire to do what isn't your nature and isn't your history i remember some several years ago we um we used to do two services i'm sorry three services but we did it in two buildings so we um we preach at bethel and then we then we well the preaching was going on so we do worship and then we preach about the while the preachings going on at bethel at simpson college they would begin to do worship so you'd get done preaching and they would just finish worship at simpson then you would preach there and while you're preaching there back at bethel they would be doing worship and then you would get done preaching there and you'd come right back and preach again so three times seven minutes apart it was a long day so we had we always had a staff driver who would drive you back and forth so you could just take the seven minutes it took to get from uh from college street you know college avenue uh college view to simpson which is about a seven minute drive so we always had a staff person so you could just sit in the car and kind of like okay gather your thoughts so this this guy who's driving me back and forth staff guy a really great guy been a believer forever one of our leaders i get in this car and they're instructed like don't talk to the speaker just allow them to have seven minutes of preparing their mind for the next preach i get in the car i sit there and as soon as i get in the car i have this overwhelming thought i want to kill myself and i'm like you know the message wasn't that bad i've had days like that but this wasn't one of them and you know and and it was so like obviously i'm not suicidal but it was so not in my realm of thinking i mean i wasn't discouraged i wasn't i was just i had just finished preaching and i was actually thinking about my next preach so it wasn't anything on my mind i sat there and instantly i had this overwhelming urge to kill myself and i'm like well that's weird and i'm trying to like i'm just trying to like get that out of my mind and think about the next preach i got seven minutes to be ready i don't have time to even figure out what the heck this thing is so i close my eyes to try to get focused and i see the guy driving me in a vision hanging from a chimney i'm like okay so i turned to him he's a good friend i'll call him john his name isn't john i killed john i said and he's driving i said john i said i have this this overwhelming sense that i wanted to kill myself and i said john do you want to kill yourself and he looks over at me doesn't say anything his eyes are that big i said i don't know what this means but i saw you hanging from a chimney he breaks out in tears this is not him at all and he says i've had this thing on me for six months every waking moment i am over have this overwhelming felt a thought and feeling that i should kill myself last night i crawled up on top of my roof i put a rope around my chimney i wrapped it around my neck and right before i jumped jesus said don't jump i'm freeing you tomorrow he said to me on this guy if i if if i told you his name some of you would know him he's very stable man not mentally and unstable in any way a very great brain big brain and a man you would deeply respect in other words if i told you if you knew him and i told you the story you would not you would you would go that's the last person i would ever expect that from a happy guy so he's crying and he's driving and i'm like oh okay what are we gonna do now i closed my eyes again and i saw myself hitting him in the chest and saying in jesus name you spirit of suicide leave and i'm like listen i don't recommend hitting people unless you should so i turned him i said john and like we're like halfway there like we have four minutes before we get there and he's driving and i'm like i wonder how this delivers thing works while he's driving so i said i had this picture that i was to hit you in the chest and tell the evil spirit to leave well he is bawling he goes hit me anywhere you want i said okay hang on the steering wheel with both hands see he's driving i hit him way harder than almost like the whole thing was so dramatic at the time i hit him so hard oh in the name of jesus leave now and he goes oh and he's the silence all the way the rest of the way just tears running down his eyes as i get out of the car i looked over at him and he goes it's gone i said are you sure he said i'm telling you i haven't had one second of peace in six months it's gone so a week later he he i'm in my office the office door is open he's standing he comes in he stands in my office door tears rushing down his face he said i owe you my life i'd be dead today if it wasn't for you and i want to serve you the rest of my life i'm like it's all good just send money i didn't tell him the money part of course he's my close friend to this day he's never had an incident again and my point is is that if someone didn't understand the spirit world that man be hanging from a chimney today a man with a young family three children and what i'm getting at is that if you don't understand the spirit world you can be as a believer the victim of the invisible man and the truth is i'm supposed to be done at 4 30 is that right but right was that the time you gave me the truth is there's a demon influencing you right now sorry i was just being totally funny the truth is you have power over all the power of the enemy this is the truth but listen in order for you to apply the power you have sometimes you have to actually do something sometimes you have to say hey hey he he get off of my cloud hey get past only old people know that song these people over here they got to be close to their 60s right there i'm gonna take five more minutes i'm your boss [Laughter] [Applause] i feel like i got to give you a solution like i don't want to leave you with a problem and it just feels really like let's crash the plane in the ground go home and just try to figure out if you got demons or not yeah i know i'm just being funny the greatest gift in my mind that the church needs today is the gift of distinguishing of spirits now there's two reasons for that and the first one i'll give you very quickly because i wanna i'm gonna i normally the first one i usually spend the most time on but because of the subject i'll spend more time on the second the first reason is is because the discerning gift of discerning of spirits or distinguishing the spirits is not the distinguishing of evil spirits it's the distinguishing of spirit and the reason why that gift's important it really helps you in hiring and staff and all that because you get to know people not just after the flesh but after the spirit so in other words you get to interview them try dimensionally if you have the gift of distinguishing of spirits and i have a whole two-hour teaching on distinguishing the spirit but let me tell you the other part this is the part that is more commonly taught and that is the distinguishing of spirits is also the distinguishing of evil spirits the way the gift practically works in most people's life that have it is that if you have the gift of distinguishing the spirits when you get in someone's metron if they are troubled by an evil spirit whatever's troubling them will trouble you now most believers have actually experienced this for instance i'll talk mostly to the ladies for a minute have you ever went into a store you're going shopping you're kind of excited about it you walk in the store you're there for two minutes and you feel exhausted you're like i am so exhausted i'm just gonna grab what i need and go home how many of you have had that experience that is actually a spirit of fainting going to give you isaiah 61. i'm going to give you a mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting or we would call it fatigue and then you get in your car you drive five miles you feel fine you're like huh i got a second win no no no you came under a spirit that either the manager or the owner was under that spirit why do i say that because your metron follow me your metron means your sphere of influence are you with me it could be the size of you or it could be the size of this room or it could be the size of a country in other words if you're a king how many understand that your metron is the size of a country and whatever affects you is affecting them this is why kings in the old testament remember when israel had a righteous king it says in all of israel followed god it doesn't say they faked it it says they did when they had a wicked king it says in all of israel went astray all of israel why because whatever the king brought in didn't just affect him it affected them that's why one believing parrot sanctifies a home are you with me okay here's where i'm going one way the most common way that the discerning spirits works is that for instance if you're sitting in church and somebody that has a spirit of pornography sits next to you i said a spirit how many understand you can have a problem with pornography and not have the devil involved at all do you understand the devil's not your biggest problem in fact i'd rather have the devil because then you could just cast him out instead of grow up but if it is a spirit in other words if someone has a problem with pornography and it actually is a spirit of pornography when they sit next to you it's not uncommon if you have the distinguishing of spirits to actually start to have visions of pornographic visions if you don't understand this this gift of discernment you think you have a problem you don't understand you're discerning the person next to you you just slipped into their metron and you're sensing what's going on in them i used to use it when we counseled the first three years here i would tell my secretary don't tell me what the person's in my office for and i would say to every person when they come in hey you know uh harry just sit down and let's pray and when we pray i would grab their hands now i have a pat prayer lord i just pray you give us wisdom you know the kind of prayer you can pray without thinking because what i'm actually doing is trying to figure out if i feel anything on him that's on me because if john sits down and he's got a problem with pornography and i grab his hands and that and i don't start having pornographic thoughts and i so i then i would get down praying and say so john what are you in here for i got this problem pornography i know that john needs skills disciplines and accountability but if i grab john's hands and i start having pornographic thoughts i know that skills is not going to solve john's problem because john has a problem coming from in the second heaven and john's got first heaven effects from a second heaven are you with me i gotta teach john how to close the door but i have to make sure the spirit leaves before john leaves my office or john's gonna have the same problem and he's gonna have a bunch of theology with no experience are you with me sometimes you walk into your business and things you feel things and you're like ah just having some bad day i didn't sleep enough i'm like no no probably the lord's activating your gift of discernment so you can activate your heavenly third heaven place to take care of it instead of be under for three months and make no profit sometimes a spirit of poverty slips into your business and you can't make money if your life depended on it and you don't know why and you're trying to get better skills and i and better this better that you know let's do it this way and by the way i'm i'm the business guy here so i'm totally into that but i can tell you that if you have a demonic problem that's against you you can't make a prophet do you remember joshua and moses moses raises his hand joshua's winning moses drops his hands josh was losing if you're joshua you're building a bigger battle plan and you're not realizing that what the that what you really need to do is hold up the hands of your leaders so you can win that you're not losing because of skills or weapons or anything else you're losing because moe dropped his hands but you don't understand the spirit world so you're losing a battle building bigger armies spending a ton of money and you're still losing and all you need to do is lift up your leader's hands and you're like oh this was a lot easier and this actually works i want to connect you with the spirit world and say why don't you sit in your heavenly seat why don't you look from up here discern what's going on down there and take authority over it and one of your unsaved employees comes in and whatever they're doing you say to the spirit before he walks in the door what's on steve can't come in here this place is sanctified by the king stay outside funny pretty soon steve comes in and he's he loves his job because it's the only place he feels peace you see two people fighting and you're like you're trying to work it out and you're like wait a second maybe this is not about flesh and blood maybe this has nothing to do with personality i wonder if there's another thing going on in my workplace that has nothing to do with people and pretty soon you start taking authority over that thing right here right now i proclaim the prince of peace will work in my employees and i start to i start to exact my authority from the third heaven i said i don't care you guys may not live in this in the you guys may live evilly but when you step in my metron you will have the metron you will have the thoughts of why metron which are thoughts for not for calamity to give you a future and a hope and i begin to say these things will not be in my this is a no-fly zone here we've got a no-fly zone here angels only in here anyway would you stand let me pray for you i've got to stop somewhere how many of you would like to have the gift of discerning of spirits how many of you have it you wish you could get rid of it some of you like how many of you feel like bipolar at times it's like i don't know what's happening i don't want this gift anymore i've actually met with three bipolar people diagnosed as bipolar that were just very discerning and did not know how to use their gift and they'd have mood swings from metron the metron because they didn't realize they were discerning someone else's stuff when i taught them how to learn to discern the spirit it cured them not every bipolar person three of them so lord i just pray right now that you will release the gift of distinguishing of spirits over every single person in this room and you wouldn't just give them the ability you would give them the wisdom to actually use this gift in a positive way to affect the king and his kingdom and to push back darkness and to bring light everywhere we go because everywhere we go is an open heaven in jesus name amen thank you for listening god bless you

Channel: Kris Vallotton

Views: 364,285

Rating: 4.8471251 out of 5

Keywords: kris vallotton, bethel church, spirit wars, bethel, kris vallotton sermon, heaven in business, bethel sermon, kris vallotton bethel, kris vallotton spirit wars, battle against sin, spiritual warfare, battle against satan, how to battle against sin, cast out demons, winning the invisible battle, bssm, bethel school of supernatural ministry, kingdom lifestyle, winning the war within, battle against anxiety, battle against depression

Id: XKSyBAjgChU

Length: 62min 13sec (3733 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2017