Spiritual Warfare Scriptures- What is the Difference Between the Spiritual Realm and Physical Realm?

Welcome to episode 17. In episode 17, I'm gonna dig into some definitions. Specifically, I'm going to define the spirit realm and the physical realm. And when I talk about those things, what exactly am I talking about, so we can kind of be on the same page, or at least you get on my page. Before we get started, we have to go to the Gospel of John chapter 1, verse 1.

In the beginning was the Word, And the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 17. I'm going to dig right into the scripture that I want to read to you. I, I've kind of sort of mesmerized this, but I don't have it as good as I should. It's in 2 Corinthians 10, and it's 3 through 5. I've already talked about this in a different episode. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. And if you remember, or if you don't, if this is your first time tuning in, I talked about using the tail end of that scripture, bringing every thought into captivity, and I, I found myself taking my thoughts and taking them down to Jesus. It's using your imagination, and, and if you've got to If it's one thing about this episode, I'm gonna require you to kind of use your imagination a little bit because we're gonna talk about the spirit realm and the physical realm. And what I mean when I say spiritual realm, because Paul in this, in the beginning of this scripture, it says, "Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh." So right there, I'm picturing, now wait a minute, I'm walking around in my body, but I'm fighting somewhere else. And so then that, that kind of put me on a, a little bit of a journey. So I, I'm trying to think, how does that work? Well, I want to tell you, if you have not read— I think his name is Frank Peretti— if you haven't read his This Present Darkness book, I'm going to put a link to that book in the description here on the podcast. But I'm telling you, if you have not read that book, that book did wonders of fleshing up the spirit realm for me. Now, and I was a baby Christian. Someone suggested that to me, and you know, I didn't know what I was doing, and I was a— they knew I was a reader. And so that I picked up that book and started reading it, and I couldn't put the book down. And it was— and if you haven't read it recently, if you've read it before, I would encourage you. I, I read it about once every 3 or 4 years just to kind of get my mind back, because when I say we're in a battle We are, we're fighting against evil. We're not fighting against flesh and blood, as Paul just said. We're fighting against principalities, against powers. And, and we are, and that's in a different scripture, but we are gonna, we're gonna take the kind of sort of take the curtain back and take a look at this spirit realm. And, and in the next couple of episodes, I'm going to talk about maybe some definitions and that sort of thing, but I kind of wanted to set the table we are dealing with two different realms. And if you can't picture that, then that's part of— or a big, a major part of your struggle right now is that you're trying to fight a spiritual battle in this physical realm. And I want to, I want to at least get you to the place where, you know, there might be something to this. Well, I'm telling you, I did not write one word of this Bible. And I promise you, there's something to this because it would not be in the Bible if it wasn't true. Now, while I talk about this, uh, Frank Peretti book, I want to emphasize that this is not— this is a fiction— this is a fictional book. So don't go out there and start creating a— some kind of movement, some kind of This Present Darkness movement. I, I think Frank has got a wonderful— I mean, he's a great writer. And he has got a wonderful way of picturing things. And it— what the one thing it did for me, and I'll just tell you, when, when I got into this 28-some years ago, I didn't know anything. So I had absolutely no idea. And that's— I'm going to kind of talk about some of the things in the next couple episodes, but some of the definitions. And, and when I walked into church, you know, people— I don't know if you, if you figured it out, but y'all talk in a different language. Everybody does. Like Engineers, if you're in a group of engineers, they're going to talk different than, say, realtors. And realtors are going to talk different than, say, title attorneys. And maybe some of the same verbiage, but you know, when they— when we communicate with ourselves inside the— for lack of a better word— the, the— our group or community, we use words. But when an outsider comes in, these words— and I'm telling you, some of these words that they were speaking when I got saved I mean, I see myself as a— if you've ever seen a dog looking at a new bowl, I mean, that was me. I kind of turned my head, got— what does that mean? Because I, I mean, I was trying to understand. I was fired up. I love Jesus. But, you know, I was so— I wasn't filthy, but I had a lot of sin. 29 years, I got pretty good at sin and, you know, covering it up. We never even— you know, in 29 years, because I wasn't in church, no one talked about sin. So that was a— that's another thing we're going to talk about in another episode. But I want to get back to Peretti, what he did for me, because with the sovereignty of God, you know, if God controls everything, why should I even pray? I mean, I didn't even touch on that before, but prayer is one of your most powerful weapons in the spirit realm. If you've come to the conclusion that God controls everything, then you've got to take that next step to say, well, what difference does it make if I pray? At least that's where I was. It was like, Why pray? Well, I mean, if God controls everything and he's above everything and he's God and he's got his whole universe in his— I mean, what do I mean? I'm just here. I'm a little pawn or a little puppet, and there ain't no reason for me to pray. Well, in walks this Peretti book, and as you're reading this, I want it— I want you to— and I'm going to take you into some of this book, and I've recently finished it, probably about 6 months ago. It's on my mind enough to where I can take you into where I was way back then when I first picked it up. I was trying to figure out, you know, why I would even pray. And this book talked about angels and demons. You would see two different scenes, like you would see the one guy walking and then it would show the scene from the other side with what the demon was hooking his talons into this person and making him do something. It was— it's a really good book, but what One of the things, and the point that I want to make— I know you're thinking, come on, make the point— but the point that I want to make is there was, there was a pastor in this book that they, the demons called the Praying Man. And that kind of, that kind of made me go, oh, the Praying Man, that would be pretty cool to be called that in the spirit realm. But then they had other angels like the Captain of the, the Host. I think his name was Tal, T-A-L. But anyway, this guy He kind of stayed behind the scenes because he didn't want anybody to know he was there. And I don't want to tell you the whole book, but this guy, the point I want to say is he pulled out his sword just enough out of the sheath and he pulled it out and he said, "I can feel the prayers of the saints." And so that to me right there, it fleshed up, wow, if that truly is it, you know, and again, this is fiction, What it did for me was that, hey, I, you know, I've got a part in this spiritual battle, even if it's a small part. But if we all kind of get together and we all kind of start praying— and why? And I, I pray a lot. And so when I, back in the episode, I don't even know, 14, where I talked about the bumper sticker that lit me up that says nothing fails like prayer, one of my former pastors stood up at pulpit one time and said 'You know, you throw a rock into a pack of dogs and the one that yelps the loudest is probably the one that got hit.' I saw that bumper sticker and I was like, 'Wow, that is— there's something wrong with that bumper sticker.' And instead of— my first reaction was to blame the people that put it on their car, and then the second reaction that I had was to blame me. And you know, there, there must be some, some form of truth in that if This person really thinks that prayer doesn't work. Well, I'm here to tell you that prayer really does work. Well, this episode is going just a tad bit longer, and I can't really bring this thing into a landing. So instead of trying to just ramble on and tell you a whole nother topic or a whole nother lesson, I'm going to go to the next episode tomorrow, and I'm going to pick up where I left off here. But I want you to know, and it kind of trying to tie this thing in with the sovereignty of God and with definitions in the spirit realm and the physical realm. There is a physical realm with our 5 senses, and there's a spirit realm, and that's where God is. Those that worship me must worship me in spirit and in truth. And I kind of want to get you thinking that if Satan— Satan's in the spirit realm as well, but what he wants to do is he wants to pull us into the physical realm to fight with us there because he knows he cannot beat us in the spirit realm. Because if he drags us— if we drag him in the spirit realm, that's where, that's where Father God is, that's where the Holy Spirit is, and that's where Jesus— that he cannot win that battle. So he is constantly going to try to pull you in and make you see something with your eyes or hear something with your ears or taste something. You know, he's going to use our 5 senses to try to win the war. And if we will in our mind and in our Christian walk, if we will consciously— and that's why I'm, I'm having this little discussion right now— is if we will go into and on purpose pray. And that's why the 5 prayers in episode 5, that's why the 5 prayers are so important. You start your day cognitive— I think that might be the wrong word— but you start your, you start your day thinking about God. In the spirit realm, and it makes the rest of the day— kind of sets the pattern. You realize that you're in a war, you're in a battle, you've got your armor on, and now it's time. You know, you can feel yourself being pulled into a— where you don't want to be, and so you can bring out some of the weapons that God has given us. But you have to fight your enemy in the spirit realm, but you got to at least know The spirit realm is there. It's different from what you can see and what you can touch and what you can taste and hear. It's, it's just different. So I'm going to stop right there. I appreciate you listening, and I look forward to picking this back up on episode 18.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.