PortiaSamantha

Hello everyone Just outside our religious discussions - I'm interested in hearing what you all think about Africa. What comes to your mind when Africa is mentioned and what unanswered questions do you have about this continent? Go wild and feel free to answer my question. Like i said - this does not relate to religion but its just a general question

Very interesting NGKnightfell I’m now getting to understand the different dimensions we identify with in terms of spiritual warfare There are EXTERNAL battles in the natural realm – This is the battle we constantly engage in battles originating from certain behaviors and perceptions coming from friends, family and our communities; like in the example that NGKnightfell makes where the family doesn’t take kindly to the truth about our Lord Jesus. We also identifying FOREIGN battles in the spiritual realm - and it appear this fight is against the Angels of God and the Angels of darkness, of which sometimes we cross barriers and desire to fight from this realm but does subjects such as evil possession and demons etc. fall under this category? Some people would beg to differ because the angels of God don’t necessarily have to minister deliverance to mankind. One that I don’t hear much about is INTERNAL battle – where we should war to conquer battles that spring from within us, that hinder us individually from progression, that limit our abilities etc. Maybe the subject of warfare is progressive in a sense that it should start from a certain realm and progress to a more advanced realm. How do I fight external battles if I have not conquered internal battles? This is probably why the sons of sceva were beaten up by the evil spirits because they tried engaging in an external/foreign battle yet they had not even made an effort to fight and conquer their internal battles (Identity in Christ). I hope someone will catch where I’m going with this. The church has identified big problems, foreign problems if I may say that points everything to SATAN whoever that is and all we are doing by magnifying the problem is denying what Jesus said in the cross of Calvary; “It is finished” he said and secondly; we are making the problem too big to solve hence we are pushing it to God and say we must not lean on our own understanding but rather trusting in God God was not joking when he said “Have dominion”, he really meant it but what chances do we have of dominating the earth as Christians when we cannot even take responsibility of the ill that has befallen the world but rather choose to push it back to say “God will take care of it”. Yes God will take care of it but wait a minute; He has already taken care of it by creating you and me in his image and likeness and with the ability to function the creator. Truly God’s dominion is heaven/eternity but mankind has been given the earth to dominate and several times God had to come down and solve our issues because we had fallen but shouldn’t it make any difference now that Christ has restored us and the Holy Spirit is shed abroad in our hearts? Our forefathers of faith fought to possess their land of promise; we can look at Canaan not only from the eye of economic prosperity but also health and spiritual prosperity, where our inheritance has been divided among us and each one is sincerely functioning in his or her own little corner –shinning our lights for the world to see. I initially asked Who or What are we fighting and y’all gave me correct answers but I’ll leave another rhetorical question; WHY must we fight? The question is as important as the others – reply Amen if you think it’s time believers took a stand and has dominion on the earth

As an African, the manifestation of him that we call "Enemy" I have seen in different forms; to most people is witchcraft and to others is being possessed by evil spirits and so forth so having grown up under such beliefs I have had at some stage had to scrutinize it all and I have come to greater conviction that the greatest enemy/enemies we have as believers are as follows; Fear Pride Lack of vision Carnality Belittling others and ourselves Lack of faith There may be more but these are the ones I could link to the spirits of the cities found in Deuteronomy 20 - Of which our forefathers of faith (the Israelites) had to conquer before they could enter into the promised land I have also come to view the Christian walk as being about that purpose; Entering into the land that God has promised us - Returning to Eden. The spiritual mapping is thus similar to their deliverance from Egypt and their entire journey until they finally entered Canaan. The warfare is no so much about some external enemy that exists outside ourselves, its about traits and attributes that govern our daily decision making which ends up deviating us from the will of God

I like the direction the topic is taking and thanks Willamina for the wise outlook on the denominations subject. I hear the mention of "THE ENEMY" several times and scriptures is being quoted which is good but do you all feel we have identified who the enemy is; Is it Satan perhaps and if So who on earth is He? imagine an army going to war and when asked "Who are you fighting against" and their reply says "Against a country", to fight a good fight of faith we must first identify who exactly are we fighting against, what are the characters of our enemy, what is our enemy's strength and weakness and lastly; what is our strategy. I love Deuteronomy 20 when it comes to Spiritual warfare

Finally to the crux of the subject; "principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" So this is who we are fighting but exactly what is it that we mean by principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness and spiritual wickedness? Does these clearly identify the enemy for us and allow us to appropriately use our offensive weapon {the word of God} because unless we know for sure who we are fighting then the hope to win the battle has already been lost. And could it be that until we identify what is meant by this scripture we will continue to "fight against flesh and blood"; the condemnation in the body of Christ, the quarrellings and general divisions? I agree with most of you who say "The battle is the Lord's" but at the same time I understand there's God's part and Our Part in everything. The Israelites had to fight some cities before they could possess Canaan so from there we can clearly agree that in our battles God is with us [as the ark of covenant was with them] but there's to an extent a need for some art of warfare

Paul seemed to have believed that warfare is part of our spiritual walk, I say this because to him it was necessary to identify "Weapons of our warfare" of which you might agree to an extent that we wouldn't need weapons unless we were going to use them? Ninhao seems to be of the same school of thought as you Wignut; He says it happens whether we are aware or not. Beyond interceding, what is then the purpose of the night vigils we still facilitate as believers?

Ok, so the subject of warfare is very popular amongst us as believers but what exactly does it mean; Who or what are we fighting? The bible only mentions it 5 times in the scriptures below but what does it mean for you personally? 1 Samuel 28:1 Isaiah 40:2 1 Corinthians 9:7 2 Corinthians 10:4 1 Timothy 1:18 I'm interested in hearing your views on the subject

Hi 6strings The Holy Spirit is the one that reveals or speaks about Christ, scripture calls him a "Teacher" who will lead us into all truths so Galatians 5:22 reveals the nature of this spirit that teaches Christ as follows;love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness and temperance. Whatever doctrine promotes these then it is of Christ and true; The fruit of the spirit at hand is actually all we truly have as guide to discernment

Indeed it means "It means dying to self and being reborn in Christ through repentance and faith" as Tinky and others state The purpose behind it all is this; If something has to be born again then it simply implies that it was born before and in our case we were born in the order of Adam hence scripture says "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" and all that qualified us as fallen short of glory is simply being BEING, no works nothing. To be restored we also get BORN but again, this time around in the order of Christ where we cry Abba Father or God is our father. To be born again means to be restored or renewed hence scripture says we are new creatures in Christ

The commandments of Moses were there to prove that man has fallen as compared to them being a guide to righteousness. One had to get all of them correct to be regarded righteous so even if you got 9 and failed one, you'd still be regarded a sinner. Jesus on the other hand introduces LOVE as the only commandment to righteousness because who steals from someone they love, who kills the ones they love and so on Unless there was a law, mankind would probably have not woken up to his weaknesses and realised he needed Christ as saviour

Both Luke and Matthew say the same thing but it's a matter of wording; Christ of God and Christ the son of the living God means the same thing. Now to the actual meaning; there are three elements to this verse of scripture, Jesus being "Christ/Messiah/Savior", Jesus being the "Son" and God being "Living" The element of Jesus being saviour calls one to enquire; what are we being saved from and what are we being restored to because we cannot just be saved and not restored to anything, The second element addresses the enquiry of the first element; He saves from our fallen state into "Sonship", this we find in John 1:12 "But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (Christ/Savior)". The third element of "Living God", transcends the mere distinguishing of the most high God from the dead Idols that were worship, it goes further to revealing God as the source of life and remember what Jesus said "I have come so you may have life and have it abundantly" so we are saved and restored to sonship but it proceeds further so us acknowledging that God is the source of the abundant life we are journeying towards