Violent Faith

All right, hello everyone. I hope you're having a great evening. My name is John Humenik and I'll be your host tonight, and I'm glad you're able to join me as I talk to you about violent faith. If you're new to my channel, take the time to subscribe and click on the notification bell to get channel updates. We post daily content and have many teachings on your identity in Christ and the prophetic. As with all my videos, please pray over the topics and scriptures. Your walk with Christ is going to be unique. Jesus has you exactly where you need to be. Make sure you take back all these items into your prayer closet for Jesus to minister to you in this season. Test the Spirit and all that you receive and validate the scriptures. Yourself in your study time. So what is violent faith? Let's start off with how can you pair these 2 words, violent and faith? At first, it sounds really strange. Faith is all about trust, believing in what's unseen, and standing on the Word of God. Hebrews 11:1 talks about this. It says, from the NLT version, faith shows the reality of what we hope for. It is the evidence of things we can't see. Doesn't sound anything like violence. Looking up the definition of violent, you'll see it's taking or using— basically using and involving physical force intending to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. It has synonyms with brutal, Vicious, savage, harsh, and rough. But when you dig deeper, you can find a second definition, and this is where we're gonna go. And that is, it's about being very strong and powerful, a natural force similar to intense, strong, forceful, great, and vehement. Now we're getting somewhere. So let's start with the keynote scriptures that set the stage for what this teaching is all about. Mark chapter 3, verses 27. All the scriptures in this teaching are from the NLT. Who is powerful enough to enter the house of a strong man and plunder his goods? Only someone who's stronger, someone who can tie him up and then plunder his house. Go ahead and further into Luke chapter 11, verses 21 through verses 22. We see The Lord talking about, for when a strong man is fully armed and guards his palace, his possessions are safe until someone even stronger attacks and overpowers him, strips him of his weapons, and carries off his belongings. So what we start to see is, is the context of these scriptures occur when Jesus was casting out demons. And then what happened was, is the religious elite, the teachers of the religious law, came and started to challenge Jesus's authority to do such a thing. They were saying Jesus was in league with Satan, in which that's how he was kicking the demons out. Now, I do want to make sure that we take a little side tangent here while we have a moment, and this is actually the, the scriptures that's known as the unforgivable sin. Basically what that means is, is you give credit to Satan when in fact the Holy Spirit's doing the work. And let me just make sure I'm super clear on this topic. If you're fearful at this moment that you've committed the unforgivable sin, you haven't, because those who've committed the unforgivable sin don't care that they did, and they're condemned anyway. So at that point, don't get caught up in any type of religious or overthinking. You've lost your salvation. None of that. That's all about, uh, that's all about the fact that if you walk down that path, you're doing it intentionally. So what Jesus was saying in this scripture was, is he was claiming he was greater than Satan, that his Father, the Holy Spirit, was greater than Satan. And so now you start to understand the broader context of what violent faith means. So let's go ahead a little deeper. And this is one of the most famous settings in the Bible for violent faith, and it comes from 1 Samuel Uh, chapter 17, starting in verse 45. David replied to the Philistine, you come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Heaven's Armies, the God of armies of Israel, whom you have defiled. Today the Lord will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head, and then I will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. And everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescued his people, but not with sword and spear. This is the Lord's battle, and he will give it to us. So let's start to frame this in the context of what David brought. He brought Uh, a faith into battle that was overwhelmingly powerful. If we go back to the definition that we're talking about, what we're seeing is, is that we're looking at that second definition because it's— let's go back over those. It was very strong, powerful. There was a natural force. It was intense, strong, forceful, great, and vehement. He was really overwhelmingly confident in God, not himself, because he said the battle belongs to God. And so that's how he approached Goliath. He said, "Goliath, you have defiled the God of Heaven's armies, the God of Israel, the God of the universe." And what he was saying here was that Goliath wasn't attacking Israel; he was actually attacking God. And so, by doing that, what he'd done is he put himself in opposition with God. And David continues. He said that God himself. Not David. That's if you go back to the scripture, he says God will defeat you. Okay, that's what it says in the scriptures. God will win this battle for me, and I would bring the final blow. And the reality is, is David explains how he's going to do it. He says he's not going to do it through normal means. He's going to do it through God's means. And so what he's doing is, is he's bringing this whole battle that's physical into the spiritual realm. And I want you to start to understand that this is the core cornerstone, the capstone, the foundation in which when you understand what violent faith is, it's when you take the battle from the physical world and take all of the things that are going on in this world and move it to the spiritual world. That's where you're more powerful. That's where victory always happens. So let's talk a little bit about David's background a little bit and start to understand why this scripture is so powerful. Because David was a shepherd and he was one that would tend to his flock. And in the scriptures that led up to this encounter with Goliath, one of the things that we see here is David convinces Saul To allow him to go into battle because that he defeated the bear and the lion. Now remember, David's a young boy, probably you know young man. I'm guessing most people think he was in his teens, and given Saul's reaction to David, we would assume that he probably wasn't a man of big stature. He was probably he looked like a kid, and so what you have this situation is is you have David. who is being battle trained while watching his father's flock. That's what God does. God will show you the how and have you walk through life understanding how you're doing something long before you understand what you're doing. So what God was doing by having him tend this flock, he was showing David the ability to win battles in the real world. And so that's the how and the what. So When a lion would come and take one of his dad's animals, David would go and knock it out of its mouth. And he said if they turned on him, he would take it out too. And if a bear came— now I want you to understand is, is that we have to understand in this case we're talking about a big size differential between a lion and a bear and David. David most likely at this time was probably, give or take, 5 foot tall, maybe 100 pounds. That was probably the size that he was at that time. People in this age were not big at all. And so even with the Middle Eastern lions, which ultimately really aren't as big as the African cousins, you're still going to have probably a 2-to-1, 3-to-1 size differential. Then not including the bear, because the bear I'm sure was probably closer to 400, 500 pounds. Right. So what you see here is David understands that God is the one that wins the battle, that while David is the one that participates in it, God is the one that wins it. And David obviously never lost one because here he is standing before Saul explaining the situation. They're like, hey, I fought things that would have normally killed a normal man, but yet God triumphed, and so therefore I'm here. So what you start to see is, is that it really starts to posture how God would actually conquer Goliath, because God is the one that fights the battles. So then we start to flip the coin a little bit, and this is where the story gets really interesting, because this is the part when you really study this situation, you start to know, oh, Goliath was really in big trouble in this fight because Goliath was huge. We know that. We was— it sounds like, I think if I remember correctly, all of the studies talk about him being about 9 foot tall. And we know he was slow because his armor weighed like hundreds and hundreds of pounds. And so no matter how big or strong an individual is, when you have that much armor on you, you can't move quickly. And we also know he was legally blind. And how do we know that? Because every time Goliath came out from the Philistine camp, he had his armor bearer lead him out because he couldn't see. And then when you further— to further confirm this, when Goliath and David are exchanging words, what When David is holding his sling in his hand, Goliath calls it a twig or a stick. And so he thinks David is going to basically fight him with a stick, and he's like, you're— you have no chance against me. But David had a sling. And so when you see this and you start to understand, oh, he had some form of most likely a pituitary gland or some kind of hormone in his brain that allowed him to grow big. And in those people in modern days, a lot of them, what that doesn't get caught and addressed medically, they start to have issues because they actually can't see. And so this is what's happened is you've got this big, slow, basically blind brute, you know, spewing venom at David. And guess what? David's a sniper. So now you think about this. If you understand anything about ancient sling people, people that would sling the rocks, You know that that is a very, very lethal weapon. So when you look at it from the physical world, you're like, wow, this battle is going to go to Goliath 100% of the time. But the reality is, is that Goliath is just a loud, obnoxious, slow-moving, blind enemy that can't defend himself. And when you look at it in a modern term, when you look at like a military sniper, if you have someone who's trained, And you have a slow-moving big target that's blind, the sniper is going to get it every single time. And so it's, it's, it's actually completely tilted towards David. And what we start to see is, is that when people look at this story— and this is really a core theme in this teaching— is don't look at the physical, look at the spiritual. You start to see, as people look at David, he's a young man, probably a teenager. Goliath is a battle-hardened warrior, clearly, because he's still alive, which means he's undefeated in some capacity, at least, you know, and that from a perspective of yielding, he's still there. And David goes into this battle without any armor. That's the thing that's lost in all of this, is that David doesn't take Saul's armor. David goes out just as he is. And so when you look at it from God's perspective, the spiritual perspective, now what you have is complete completely different because David's got on God's spiritual armor, no different than what we'll talk about later in Ephesians 6. And David's sling is equivalent to a modern-day .45 caliber bullet. And if you understand anything about calibers, the, the police and a lot of people that operate— the FBI and a lot of the people in the military— they operate with smaller bullets, 9mm, .40 calibers, Uh, in different ones for rifles and automatic weapons. A .45 caliber bullet is a heavy bullet and it does a lot of damage. So David's sling was so powerful that when he struck Goliath and he fell, he was done instantly at that moment. And then obviously, you know, the scripture talks about that David does win that battle. So what you start to see is, is that violent faith. is a faith so powerful, intense, and strong that even Satan and whatever his kingdom of darkness throws at you, you can't— it can't stand in your way. You will always overcome it because God is greater than the enemy. So let's talk about another verse that actually pivots a little bit and goes into a little bit detail on which— what we're kind of going into this topic a little more, and that's Matthew Chapter 11, verse 12. And again, reading from the NLT: And from that time John the Baptist began preaching until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing and the violent people are attacking it. Now, if you go ahead and read this verse in the NIV, the ESV, any other translations, it's going to describe it in a different way. But what happens is, is when you actually study this verse and you take the Greek Translated to the Hebrew, what happens is it actually links itself directly with Micah chapter 12, verses 12 through 13. Now that verse really starts to explain what's going on here, and it says, someday, O Israel, I will gather you. I will gather the remnant who are left, and I will bring you together again like sheep in a pen, like a flock in its pasture. Yes, Your land will again be filled with noisy crowds. Your leader will break out and lead you out of exile, out through the gates of your enemy cities, back into your own land. Your king will lead you. The Lord himself will guide you. So now it starts to beg the question: What does that mean? What's the context of which is talking about? When you start to understand how the kingdom of God actually advances— so what does that mean? Like, you're trying to understand, okay, what is that moving forward? How does that operate? What does that look like? Well, you start to understand that this unlocks violent faith. And so here we are. The most important aspect of the advancement of the kingdom of God is you're winning souls back to the kingdom of God. That is what all evangelism, all salvation revolves around, because what you're doing Very straightforwardly is you're subtracting from the kingdom of darkness and you're adding to the kingdom of light. That's what Jesus was talking about because he says, "I would bring. I'm a light to the world." So he's advancing, winning souls back to his Father. And what happens is is all of the attacks were coming at him to stop this advancement. It is the primary battleground between God's forces and the evil one. It's the space where all the fighting, both on the spiritual level and to a degree on the physical, occurs. That's the battle between people for souls. Now what you start to see is, is but the advancement of the kingdom doesn't stop there. And I want to make sure people start to understand the context of what I'm about to cover because it really starts to unlock all the things around violent faith because that's how you move your faith in action when you move it to a point where it's so strong where you you do not concede to the enemy. This is the area that it happens because you're going to do that within the context of salvation because you want to win those souls back to the kingdom of God. But it doesn't end there because once the soul is saved, you move from salvation to discipleship. And what is included in discipleship starts with physical and spiritual healing. This is really important because a lot of people that come out of the kingdom of darkness has something that they're struggling with, something that he or she may be addicted to, a sin that's crippling them, a physical problem. Maybe they're physically crippled, maybe they're blind, maybe they have back issues, maybe they're suffering from cancer or heart disease. There is a litany of things that they're dealing with that become part of who they are that they need to shed as they move into the kingdom of God. And that's part of that, that That healing takes place, whether it's miraculously, instantly, or not, you know, in the context of healing, which is a little over time. God will bring all people back to full restoration in order to operate the way they need to operate in the kingdom. That doesn't mean you get healed 100% of the way. We know that there are plenty of people that have lived their lives in some form of infirmity until they've died, but God is greater. He gives you grace for that and allows you to become a living witness. So we— I'm not saying in any way, shape, or form that you get 100% healing, but I can assure you that there are people, including myself, who have received 100% healing. So it absolutely does happen, but it doesn't happen 100% of the time. We also see as a part of this journey, as a part of this violent faith journey, is that you get inner healing where you're now— your emotions and your mental state, the daily renewing of your mind and heart, the strengthening of that becomes stronger. You bury the old person, the old man or woman, and they stay buried. So what you're doing is, is you're starting to understand how to live correctly. You understand the principles of the kingdom of God, how it's supposed to operate, how it's supposed to apply, apply to you and your family. And you start to walk in that and you start to see that through. And you have to do that through faith. And you have to do that with this strong, powerful, violent faith, because what you're doing is, is you're overcoming the past. Because you're trying to renew your mind and trust in God and allow the Holy Spirit to do what he— only he can do. It's continued. This discipleship process doesn't stop at healing. It continues where miracles, signs, and wonders follow those who are operating in the fruit of the Spirit. If you wanna understand who's a godly man or a woman, ultimately over a day, a week, or a month, you should see— Miracle signs and wonders. Because when they're walking in the Holy Spirit, it's impossible for the Holy Spirit not to operate that way. It's impossible because of how powerful he is. When you are with a true man, a woman of God who is walking in the fruit of the Spirit— and there are a lot of men and women of God who are just completely depowered and defeated, but we're talking about those who are operating in this violent faith where they're conquering and they're moving forward— you're going to see miracle signs and wonders. And the last part that you're also going to see is you're going to see them being prosperous and blessings flow in their life. And so right now, before I continue, I want to kind of make sure I set the stage for the rest of the teaching, because at this point, anytime you talk about prosperity, you're going to start to see the religious spirits running wild in the background. You're going to have the Christians who do not understand biblical finances saying, oh, this is a prosperity gospel message. I'm tuning him out. No, prosperity is talked about more in the Bible than any other topic, more than heaven or hell. Think about that. It's talked more about than salvation. That's how important it is to God. It's more than healing and miracles. If you don't believe me, then why did Jesus walk around with a banker, his treasurer, all the time? That's how wealthy Jesus was on the earth, that he had his own treasurer go with him everywhere he went. That is a powerful statement. Look back at every single righteous person in the Bible. Every single one was wealthy. David, Solomon, you see that Abraham, Moses, they never had lack at any point in time throughout their walk. Look at the first century church. It talks about it. It was the one of the 2 points in history where there was no lack. There was no one without a home, no one that's suffering, because everyone shared their wealth. God is a God of righteousness, and prosperity is a part of that. Because it's not a gospel— because the thing about it, when you say about prosperity gospel, the prosperity gospel is a false gospel that says you are going to be blessed because of God. It's really not how it works. There is an aspect of faith and walking out in obedience because you have to be at the place God wants you to at the time that God wants you to it in faith in order to receive blessings. That's how it works. And so when you start to understand the persons that we're talking about are already saved and now they're moving into a discipleship, prosperity is a core part of that. So you can't cross from discipleship teachings all the way back to salvation because they're already saved. And so at this point, any conversation about prosperity primarily is about the blessings of God, and those are all biblical. And so when you start to understand those concepts, you understand that wealth is a key part of that, because we have to kind of understand this foreground, because prosperity is one of the areas in which violent faith is needed in order for you to be successful. And we see that because we start In Haggai chapter two, verse eight, and God makes a very bold statement. He says the silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of Heaven's Armies. And so when you start to correlate that with Luke chapter twelve, verses thirty-two, and everything that God has belongs to his children, he says so don't be afraid, little flock. This is Jesus talking, for it gives your Father. Great happiness to give you the kingdom. Now think about this. The kingdom is the silver. This kingdom is the gold. You know, God says, I own the cattle on every hill. It all belongs to him. He created it all. It all— ultimately, every single person on this planet is a steward. We don't own anything. The— if anything, even our bodies, it talks about we don't even own that anymore. So there is nothing on this earth that's owned by a human being. It's all being stewarded by them for God. And so why do you hear about all these, all the hubbub and all the things going around in the context of prosperity? Because what happens is, is that people want to believe the lie told a long time ago that poverty is piety. And that's a lie, because not only is it a lie, what happened was is that That lie started, I think, around 1525, so basically almost 500 years ago. And what happened was, is the Christians had complete control over tons of businesses, shipping lanes, and they were just in control of everything because they were flourishing in their kingdom. And what happened was, is the devil saw, wow, these— this— if this continues, this is going to spiral out of control. So what he did is he, he planted this lie that it's okay to be poor, 'cause that's actually good. And then what happened was, is you even see this today in movies and television shows, that the rich person is always the bad guy. Very rarely, maybe outside of Batman and Green Arrow and some of the other folks within the comic books, which you see a very small percentage of the wealthy being the good guy, they're almost always vilified in movies because the devil wants to associate wealth with the one lie, which is money is the root of all evil. But we know the scripture is the love of money is the root of all evil. So when you start to understand prosperity in the place that you're supposed to operate in the kingdom of God, you have to have faith to reclaim what God has and back into you. And that's key because that's starting to understand that prosperity is God's gift And our birthright as a child of God, period. And if you really want to study this topic further, I'm going to give you 4 scriptures because I'm going to move on, continue on to other sections where you can study and understand how the blessings flow into you as a child of God. And I'll repeat these. I'll go ahead and read them twice. It starts with Genesis chapter 1, verses 27 through 28. That's Genesis chapter 1 Verses 27 through 28, and that talks about how the blessing enters the world. We know that in Genesis 3, the blessing was lost when Adam and Eve sinned— technically Adam, but I'll just loop it in together. And then the second verse is Genesis 22, verse 15. That's Genesis 22, verse 15. And that's where Abraham re-establishes the blessing in the world. This occurs When he goes to sacrifice his son Isaac and the angel of the Lord stops him. It continues into Jesus because Paul talks about this in Galatians. It's, it's in Galatians chapter 3, verses 16. That's Galatians chapter 3, verses 16. And so now the blessing gets applied to Jesus, who is the righteous one. And then what we start to see is, is then that attachment returns To those who are in faith in Galatians chapter 3, verses 7 through 9. And so that's Galatians chapter 3, verses 7 through 9, because we— because we're of the faith— are the sons of Abraham. And so when you follow that, study those 4 verses, you will understand how the prosperity and all the aspects of the blessings come back to you. So why is this happening? Why is prosperity such a difficult topic for Christians to talk about? It's because the spirit of poverty— um, sorry, the spirit of poverty comes to steal our ability to reclaim the lost children of God because Christians take their eyes off the mission. Remember what we talked about earlier: the kingdom of God is advancing and the violent attack it. Well, how is it advancing? It's advancing because it's winning souls and discipling them to go out and win more souls. Well, guess what? If you understand anything about ministry, it's no different than business. And how could you be about— how can you be about your Father's business, as Jesus said, if you're broke? It's very easy. You can't. And so what we see is, is that Matthew chapter 6, verse 33, it says, seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. So what, what does that mean? It means you are supposed to be about your Father's business. You are supposed to be focusing on the things that are kingdom-minded. And the primary aspect of that is the Great Commission, is winning souls. And winning souls applies to everyone, whether you have an apostolic anointing or you have a teacher anointing. It doesn't matter. Your job is to win souls. Your job is to share the gospel of Christ, share your testimony, because you overcome By the blood of the Lamb and the words of your testimony. But what happens is the spirit of poverty comes in and, and screams prosperity gospel, screams poverty is piety, screams you don't need money. Because that's what happens when you're poor. You now have to live paycheck to paycheck, and you're now unable to advance God's kingdom. So anytime there's an economic downturn, anytime you lose your job, You're incapable of advancing God's kingdom because you're focusing on trying to get a job to pay your bills, maybe support your family. This is the essence of why the prosperity folks that are so against prosperity—they don't understand they're actually doing the devil's work. Because the spirit of poverty is the is the demonic spirits that work and operate and spread these lies toward the kingdom of God. Because now, if they're broke. they can't be focused on God's work because it does— it costs money to win back people, whether it's advertising, having people work for you, building businesses, being able to travel places, you know, holding crusades. All of those things cost money because that's the way it works. And so what happens in violent faith, in all of this, it breaks those lies and returns you to the rightful place so that you now understand that you are ultimately battling Satan and the religious saved who believe that they are— that what they believe is correct, or ultimately they're wolves in sheep's clothing. So what happens is, is your faith pits you against the kingdom of darkness and those that align themselves with the kingdom of darkness unknowingly. And so we start to see how this starts to manifest in all of our life. Because now you're like, okay, I kind of understand how this works. I kind of understand the angles and the things like that. But so Paul talks to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 12, and he's extorting him. He's, he's telling him, go fight the good fight for the true faith. Now when you link that verse with what Jesus said in Matthew 10, verse 34, and he said, don't imagine that I came to bring peace To the earth. I came not to bring peace, but a sword. So what we're seeing here is Paul is clearly saying that the battleground in which we operate, where our violent faith is going to be utilized by God, is a righteous battle. But it has to be done on God's terms, because what happens in order for us to operate in God's terms, that's when we're operating God's will. And so when you start to understand that, what you understand is when Jesus was saying, when he said a sword, you— if you're familiar with it, the sword is the word of God, and the word of God is truth. And so what Paul is saying is you must remain faithfully in the word of God, standing faithfully on the promises that God has. And now you start to understand, okay, now we can tie that to Ephesians 6, the legendary chapter on spiritual warfare, because that's where everything becomes— that's where everything comes together in order to operate in violent faith. And so how do you actually operate in violent faith? Well, it's actually quite easy. It's— he talks about this. He says, put on all God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil, for we're not fighting against flesh and blood Enemies. Remember, the battle in this world isn't with your neighbor. It isn't even with the heathen wicked men. It's not against them. It's against the kingdom of darkness, which is Satan. But against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in the dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Notice they're not operating in hell. They're operating in the second heaven. So don't believe that Satan operates in hell. He operates on earth and in the second heaven, which is the space between earth and heaven. Therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle, you will be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth, the body armor of God's righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes with the good news. so that you'll be fully prepared. In addition to all these, hold up the shield of faith to try to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. Put on the salvation as your helmet and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God— tying back to Jesus's statement— and pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. That's 7 pieces, including the prayer. And stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere. So notice, how do you actually implement Violent faith. Faith that's strong and going to overpower the wickedness of this world, because that's what it's doing. Violent faith is the, the vehement faith where you stand and you say, enough is enough, I'm drawing a line in the sand and I'm not going to concede. Well, what is it? It's talking about standing and resisting. Paul talks about that in that— those verses 4 times. Not once did Paul say to engage the enemy. Not once. He never said to go after the devil. He didn't say go after the agents of the devil. He didn't say to go after the people that are working with the devil. Not once. What he said is he's basically saying put on Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ are all those things, and then you'll know that the battle is the Lord's. And so where did we hear that? Well, we have to go back to the first verses we talked about in 1 Samuel Chapter 17, verse 47, where David talked about that the battle is the Lord's. And so when you start to understand violent faith, it's an expression of trusting God with a determination that he will win the battle. Because ultimately, when you operate in the heavenlies, in the spiritual realm, and you do not operate in the physical world, where you don't focus on what's going on, which you can see, but you opt in the spiritual world, that's when the battle's fought and it's undefeated. In fact, it's fixed. You'll win 100% of the time. And so where do you have to battle with violent faith in your life? There's so many different areas. We're going to cover a lot of them here. So let's start with your marriage. If— for those who are married, this is a very critical part of your walk with Christ. For those who are not married, this is something that's really important that'll apply to your relationships, with your parents, with your siblings, uh, if you're engaged and you have a fiancé, however that works, even your best friend. This is key because it ultimately is the same concept, which is the devil does not like marriages. The devil wants to destroy them. He does it. And what we see is the divorce rate in America is so high that it's incredible. Even the— it's even the fact that, that once you get married a second time, the divorce rate is even higher. So he truly wants to destroy marriages. Because he understands the spiritual covering that the man of God does for the woman of God. That's what happens. So how does violent faith work in the marriage? Well, firstly, it all starts with understanding the roles in a marriage and understanding your relationship with Jesus Christ, because ultimately, when you prioritize Jesus first, your marriage will succeed no matter what. And the devil can't touch it. The devil has no authority over your marriage. When a man of God and a woman of God prioritize Jesus over each other, that's the key part, is Jesus is number one in your marriage. And when you do that, it transforms everything. Because when Jesus is number one, what happens is it starts to align all the biblical principles that are applying to marriage, because now you will then start to apply the word of God in your marriage. The husband will honor the wife. The wife will honor the husband. They will understand what it means to have a biblical marriage, which is you have a Proverbs 31 woman and you have an Ephesians 5 husband. You understand the aspects of how all these beautiful scriptures come to play because you know that the man in the marriage is representative of Christ. That's how it represents that the Christ is the head of the household. So the man is the head of household. He brings the spiritual covering. And you can see this— any woman of God who has been divorced will totally relate to what I'm saying, because the spiritual warfare that comes on her and her family is great because she doesn't have a spiritual covering in a husband. That's how it's supposed to work. The devil knows this. This is the lies that people talk about, where women are better off by themselves, or men are better off than by themselves. Paul talks about that in the scriptures, but what, you know, we're not trying to focus on that piece, but what we're trying to say is he's saying that when you're married, there is a union there. The wife is praying for the husband, the husband is praying for the wife. Solomon talks about this, that when you have a cord that has 2 or 3 strings or knots, that it's not easily broken. And so now what happens is, is you start to see is that there's actually a Trinity here. You see Jesus, the husband, and the wife. And so as the devil is operating in this space, these are the truth. I have to start with the truth so you understand how the devil will come and try to undermine marriages because he wants to. He'll want to destroy a marriage in so many different ways. He'll understand. One example is he'll understand how the man wants to receive love. However that is, there's so many different ways. The 5 Love Languages, if you haven't read it, is a great book. I would highly recommend you and your spouse reading it. And understanding it, and then he'll understand how the woman wants to feel loved—the wife—and what'll happen is is that he will literally get the man to overcompensate, which is why you see men getting caught up in pornography, adultery, prostitution—all these things. He'll get them to overcompensate, overcompensate, content. He'll overcompensate for their ability to receive love, and then have the wife. Actually not give it to the husband. An example is, let's say a husband loves to spend time with his wife. Well, guess what happens? Satan will continually speak into the woman, don't spend time with him, don't spend time with him. Ultimately, what you start to see is it's actually not even a sin, but what she sees is she's taking her eyes off of God and she doesn't understand her husband's love language. So what happens is, is she'll start to pull away. Now imagine if that husband's love language is physical touch. Now imagine that. So now what Satan is going to do is going to tell the wife, don't let him— don't let the husband touch you. Just brush him off. Just push him away. Yell at him. Imagine if that is the woman's love language. It's especially, you know, gifts or, you know, quality time or words of affirmation. Imagine what that's like. So now Satan can turn around and tell the husband, oh, you know what? Valentine's Day just passed. Guess what? Don't get her anything. You know, it's her birthday. She doesn't need anything. She got everything she wants. Or use these condemning words like, why are you, you know, not doing well? Or why are you struggling? Why do you look always tired? Those things is how the devil will destroy a marriage, because he will take what one person needs and take the other person, and they'll go in opposite directions. And so what happens is, is when that— when those spouses aren't aligned with Jesus and they don't understand the biblical principles of how a marriage works, what happens then is, is then they start to split. And so now they start to look for that love elsewhere. And so now all of a sudden, that's when it leads to sin. And so now you start to see the adulterous relationships, where you start to see all kinds of things where they're starting to peruse social media and they're starting to chase after people that they don't have any right to chase. Where violent faith comes into play is drawing a line in the sand to tell Satan, you can't touch my marriage. In fact, I'm not going to come into agreement with any of those things. I know my wife's love language. I know my husband's love language. I understand what they need, and I'm willing to basically humble myself to give it to them because I know that's what they need. Because if I don't provide it, Guess what's going to happen ultimately in time? That person's going to concede and look for it somewhere else, and it almost always, always leads to sin. There's very few situations where that doesn't— that's not the case. So violent faith takes a stand and allows you to stand and resist the devil. Remember Ephesians 6: stand, resist 4 times, put on Christ, understand who he is, understand how you're supposed to operate in your marriage. And move forward. We see this happening again. What's another area of your life where you need violent faith? Well, you need it with your children. If there is ever a time where there is the, the devil is trying to destroy the children, it's this time. Now, historically, we've seen some pretty horrible things. If you, if you don't understand, just go read 1 Kings, 2 Kings, go read through Chronicles, go read the prophets. They were doing some horrible things to children back then. There was, there was a reason why when Israel came out of Egypt, they had to destroy the 7 nations of Canaan. They, they had to because they were so evil they could not live anymore. We, we don't understand that because there's reality is as bad as the dictators are in this world, they're not as bad as those people. They were beyond evil. Wicked is— doesn't— isn't even a term that accurately describes the evil. So what he's doing today, look at how he's attacking children. In every way with their identity. It's incredible. Try to destroy— how do you destroy a person's personality and their future? Disassociate them from God, who gives them their identity, and then let them create their own, whatever that is. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter what the things you see in the world. Just change their identity. Look at how they chase after the, the school systems and the lies that they pour into them, the toxic nature of social media, the toxic nature of news. What happens is, is the children gets inundated at a very young age with all of this information, and now all of a sudden they start to consume content that's really for adults and they don't even realize it. I happen to have got a chance to watch one of the most demonic movies I've ever seen in my entire life. Guess what it was? It was a cartoon. It was a cartoon that made evil look really good. And good really bad, and we know that because we talked about that in scripture. We know we're in the end times when evil becomes evil is perceived as good. It doesn't become good; it perceived as good, and good is perceived as bad. And so, as a parent, you have to draw the line. You have to have faith. You have to be praying over your children before they go to work, go to school, or if they're working, if a little older and they're working, you have to pray over them because the warfare out there is. So great. They're going to go into school, they're going to be accused of things. It's amazing how many times my children have been accused of things that they didn't do. It's amazing how many times their friends will turn against them. It's incredible. They are attacked from every single angle because they're the future generations. And no matter your opinion on the Rapture and when that's going to occur, we're living— we're living as if the Rapture is in the future. And we know that it can happen tomorrow, it can happen 100 years. And we know that God is the one that's going to bring it to pass, but you can't compromise your children's future because you're not standing in faith praying over them and drawing a line in the sand that if the devil comes to touch them, you got to make them pay. And so that is a huge battleground where your faith has to stand firm, and it has to be firm, if not firmer, when they leave the house, when they've gone to college, when they've left and gotten married, and now they start to have children of their own. You have to be in a posture of faith and willing to go to battle in the realm that God allows you to operate in. Ephesians 6, that's what the realm is— standing in faith for your children. Because if you don't, then who will? Because remember, they're under your spiritual coverages. So what's another area that this occurs? What occurs in your finances? This is an area that's attacked relentlessly And it's amazing how often that's attacked by Christians attacking other Christians. I'm going to give you a really cool story that I heard very recently from a very successful man of God, and he had an opportunity to go up to New York City and see the, the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade from a hotel room with a big room that overlooked This, this parade. And you know, whenever you're gonna go up to New York City at an event that has a view like that, it's going to be expensive. And so this room that he rented cost that multiple thousands of dollars to, to rent per night. But he went up there, enjoyed it with his family, and got an opportunity to meet a very famous celebrity. And in the process, brought that celebrity to salvation. Now you would say, oh, that's a really cool story. But the reality is, is that there are certain people in this world that ultimately you can't access because you don't have the finances to do that. But because God gave him the capability— because remember, if I remember correctly, this is Deuteronomy 8:18, where God gives you the ability to make wealth— he had the capacity to go to a place, saw an opening, ministered the gospel, and brought a celebrity to the Lord. who would otherwise would never probably had that opportunity from, you know, outside of other interactions. Because at the end of the day, you have to have means in order to get in front of those people. How many people get a chance to meet Jeff Bezos? How many people get a chance to meet Elon Musk? How many people get a chance to meet Bill Gates or Warren Buffett? Those people live in a world where they have to be protected because of their wealth. And so therefore, because of their wealth and their, and their, uh, they're distributing it and managing it, they're not interacting with a lot of people. And so, and primarily they're interacting it from a business perspective. So those opportunities to be able to minister to those people, because remember, they're sons of God, all of them, whether or not, whether they're lost or saved, they're still God's children. And so you have to have finances to get to those people to minister the gospel. You can't run a crusade in Africa on a shoestring budget. It's not how it works. It costs money to do those things. If you look at like Samaritan's Purse and all the things that Franklin Graham is doing, Billy Graham's son's doing, they bring in massive jets to move in equipment and people to areas that are devastated. If you understand what it costs to buy a 737 or like a 747, we're talking like a quarter of a billion dollars. Like, those planes are incredibly expensive, and they've got a bunch of them. You need kingdom wealth in order to operate in the kingdom. That's how it works. And so what you'll see is violent faith is required in this area, is important because in order to reclaim it, you have to be able to take back ground that the devil is controlling, whether that's in real estate, whether that's in stocks or corporations, whether that's in people. It doesn't matter. He does not want Christians to operate in finances because he knows that's the area— if you have an on-fire, Holy Ghost-filled Christian that's got access to income, they will wreck his kingdom far worse than any leader of any country. That's the reality, because they have the means to do things that other people don't. So you need violent faith to stand in the gap to say, look, I'm going to start this business. And I'm going to trust God that this is going to be able to manage it. I'm going to be able to stand in the gap and apply Ecclesiastes 11:2 in my life and, you know, sacrificially give and diversify both my giving to ministries as well as my income streams. Because it's key, because we know it says in the Bible that there will be downturns. We saw the famine during Abraham's time, the famine during Isaac's time. The famous one during Jacob's time. There will always be a time in your life where there will be some form of economic downturn. It's just the way it is. It's the way the world operates. It doesn't operate on kingdom principles, so it's going to go up and down. So at that point, you have to have diverse income streams to be able to weather these storms. While the world blows up, you can have kingdom wealth because that's where the exchange occurs. If you want to understand where the exchange from the wicked to the righteous occurs, occurs, it occurs in those moments. It occurs when the wicked, which base their life on fear, have— are panicked because interest rates have skyrocketed. Well, guess what? A righteous person with opportunity to cash in their seed can claim property at a discounted rate and basically, by violent faith, take it back into the kingdom. That's how that works. You see this further in your community. You can see it. I, I live in a big community A master plan community. It's amazing. But you would be surprised how many people complain relentlessly on the social media sites about every single thing. Now, it's fair if there's— if they're justified, but what they do is that it becomes their soapbox and it becomes their gossip box. And so what God wants to do is establish a community of love and of hope, but the devil wants to destroy that anytime he sees an opportunity to destroy community. He's going to do it because he wants neighbors talking about each other. He wants neighbors doing things with neighbors they're not supposed to do. All the things— he wants to destroy community because he understands community is key to long-term success of the church. Because if your community is in shambles, then you feel unsafe. If your community is in shambles, your schools won't thrive. If a community is in shambles, that's your home, that's a part of where you're at. It's going to constantly cause A level of consternation. So violent faith stands in the gap of prayer and prays for your neighbors, prays for the communities, prays for these people, and allows you to operate in a victory mindset that although there might be some current storms going on in your community, God is greater and he will be victorious. That's key. That's what violent faith brings is you're not going to allow Satan in inch of ground in your community, that every part I step— this is Joshua chapter 1— everywhere I step becomes my land. And when you understand that in the New Testament terms, it becomes my spiritual authority. I operate in my community, so therefore the devil has no right to it, and it's time to kick him out whenever he tries to come into it. Violent faith applies to the global church. Where do you see the most division then in Christianity? Think about it. Look at all the other religions in the world. And although you would think like the Hindus and a lot of the other areas, there is more division in the Christian church than any other religion. It's incredible because Satan wants to destroy the very, the very essence that can destroy his kingdom. So what does he do? He splits the Catholics off from the Orthodox, and then he continues with the Protestants, and he continues with the Methodists and the Presbyterians and the Baptists and all of these religions. And so what happens is, is that you start to fragment Christianity. And if you understand and study the New Testament, the back half of the New Testament was the primary warning that all the church leaders were saying. That was what they were preaching against, was Don't let the church get split up. That was the theme. And yet we see it happen all over the place because people start to get into these doctrines, and because their doctrine wasn't with theirs, they had to branch off and create a new church, or they were being oppressed. And so what you start to see is all these fragmentations of the church, and you see their doctrines. What happens is ultimately, in many of the religions, if not all of them outside of non-denominational is the Holy Ghost isn't present. The Holy Ghost is the core of the church. It's— he's the power behind it. We see that in Acts 2. And so when you start to stand in the gap and you're— and you have this violent faith, you're interceding, you're praying, and you're standing in belief that the global church, not just your local church, but the global church, will be unified and strengthened and edified by the Holy Spirit Who is the power behind the whole church, because that's what God said. It's not by strength, it's not by might, but by my Spirit. So violent faith allows you to stand in these places and displace Satan out of them. That's the key thing, is to understand that it's important. It applies to your country, whether that's the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, wherever you're living, because we have so many people across the world that watch this broadcast. It's standing in the gap and praying and believing faithfully that your country is going to be safe from the wares and the attacks of the enemy. And so we've, we've kind of started to talk about all these different aspects. We've kind of laid the foundation where violent faith is and, and the stance you have to take and how you do it through the armor of God and how in the areas But now, how do you rate? How do you actually wage the battle? Like ultimately, you're probably asking, okay, we've covered all these different areas where violent faith applies, what it means, how it's done. But ultimately, now I've got to execute. So how do you actually do the steps in order to implement violent faith? So let's go ahead and cover those. The number one place where violent faith starts. Is prayer. Super important. This is so key because in prayer, this is the highest form of how the priestly nature of a Christian operates. It's done through listening to God and understanding what he wants in his— in your kingdom, in his kingdom— to operate, and then praying that back to him. It's so important. He'll put burdens on your heart, like, man, I really have a burden for this cause. And so now God wants you to pray it back to him, because you have to understand, we are the ruling authority on earth. That's how it operates. I talked about that, how the blessing operates. We're the ruling authority on earth. So in order for God to operate on earth outside of his, you know, overall will is, is through us. We have to invite him in, or we then have to declare it. And we'll cover the declarations here soon. So the key aspect is understand is prayer is so important. You don't— if you don't pray every single day, multiple times a day, you are missing out on opportunity to one, build a relationship with your Father and your Brother in Heaven, and understand how you operate. Because it's by your words in which you operate in this kingdom, which is why you start to see powerful principalities taking over major cities is because he can— they convince the people in authority to speak the things that allow them to come into control. That's how all of this works. That's how spiritual warfare works. It's all done by words. So Satan doesn't want you to use your words to pray to God, because if you do, you will pray with God's will and bring his kingdom to earth. Prayer gives you the authority to release blessings on this earth. Prayer gives you the power to release God's authority and bring heavenly hosts. Remember, Jesus talked about, I can call on my Father and ask for legions of angels to come. If Jesus could do it, that means we can do it. Are you praying to pull down a legion of angels to put a hedge of protection around your house so that when you sleep at night you don't have nightmares and you don't have night terrors? Are you putting a hedge of protection around your children when they're not in your home? Are you putting a hedge of protection around your finances? Are you pleading the blood of Jesus over your finances, over your work, over their school? That's what prayer does. It's so important. That's violent faith. It's standing in the gap and being able to say, I am not going to allow anything to come and touch these things because they're mine. I'm stewarding them, and I'm standing in a place of faith And I'm resisting the devil. I'm resisting his temptations on me and my family's life. It's so important. It's the cornerstone of the Christian faith. Prayer is that important. A prayerless Christian is a completely powerless Christian. I'm not sure if you've heard that before, but that's reality. If you do not pray, you have zero power, and you, your family, your finances, everything that you care about is at the whims of the devil. It's simple as that. It's— that's how it is, because God is not going to do things for you that he has already empowered you. And I can tell you, I can attest to that myself. If there's things that I'm responsible for, I can pray to God and say, God, do it, and he's just going to turn around and say, no, I gave you the authority, you need to do it. And so that's really key. Number 2, and how you implement violent faith going forward is you must have a worship life. I can't tell you the importance of this until you've done it for yourself. If you understand worship, you will ultimately know that while there is an aspect that goes to God and edifies God, and clearly he loves it, is ultimately— and I'm just going to be bold in this next statement— worship really ultimately benefits you more than it benefits God. And I know that's a harsh statement for some people to— even for me to make, but when you start to understand all the blessings that God pours out in worship, you'll start to understand that you, by worshiping God, end up on the— you get more stuff out of it. You get the peace that passes understanding. You get that through prayer, but you get that through worship. You get to understand that God inhabits the praises of his people. God comes and inhabits that. And when you understand God's presence, you want God's presence All the time, because that's where all of the problems of this world get completely obliterated. You get become the joy, which is your strength. All of the things that become what you need in order to operate in a day and to completely break off all the things that the world is trying to put on you occurs in worship. And when you if you don't believe me, do this. Take I challenge you right now. Take thirty minutes. Block it out for 10 days, maybe 2 weeks straight. Worship God that same 30 minutes for 2 weeks straight or 10 days, whatever it is. You'll start to see the effect about 7 days in, and you will never stop. You will never stop. You will want to go into your place of worship no matter how you can, because you'll, you'll understand the benefits of prayer in your prayer closet, and you understand worship. Because when you understand worship, what happens is It transforms atmospheres. Worship allows you to be in a place of great love within God, and what it does is it—it, as I said, it transforms you. It allows God to pour into you the things He wants to pour into you because you're glorifying in Him and giving Him the credit for the things that the world is trying to take. And in that place, that's where your violent faith becomes. Overwhelmingly powerful. It's no different than praying in tongues and all of the aspects of reading the word of God. Worship is an aspect that becomes a core part of your life, and your Father loves it and blesses you through it, and it transforms it and allows you to operate on a spiritual plane, because that's where we operate. We operate from the heavens because we're all seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, hidden in Christ Jesus. So When you worship, you are giving back the glory. You were deflecting all of these things and saying, Father, everything that comes into my life that's good came from you. Everything that I have, my giftings, my talents, the ability to learn, all of these finances, these are just gifts from you. I'm going to glorify you. It's a tremendous, powerful way of ensuring and growing your violent faith and establishing things. And when you understand, when you apply worship in situations where there may be confrontation, where there's things that are going wrong at your church, it ultimately becomes a battleground. And if you don't believe me, just go read how the walls of Jericho fell down. They fell down because of worship. And so that's the essence of the power of worship. That's the strength of being able to establish and implement it. The 3rd area in which you would implement violent faith is decrees. You're drawing a line in the sand. So remember, we have the priestly nature, which is listening to God and praying back God's requests back to him and anything he puts on our heart. But decrees are the kingly nature. And this is so important because every son of God— and believe it or not, it applies to the lost children too— your word becomes decreed law. That's what— that's the essence Of how spiritual warfare is won by the enemy is he gets the people in positions of power and authority, whether through government or even in the house, to declare things that he wants to declare so that he can move in and control regions and homes and places, businesses and governments. That's how it works. It's through decree, because decree is written law. And so when you start to understand the kingly nature or the queenly nature, Of who you are, your words. You're never going to speak over yourself. I can't do this, or I never could do that, or I that's impossible, or I don't believe those things because those words don't exist in the vocabulary in heaven. In heaven, everything is perfect. Everything is mature. There is nothing impossible. So when we see the word nothing is impossible with God, where is God seated? In heaven. So when you're operating as a decree, you're in violent faith. You are decreeing with violent faith that I am the head and not the tail. I am a blessing to bless others. Okay, God is the God who gives me everything that I want and everything that I need. He is the God that heals me because Isaiah 53 says that he bore all my curses, all my iniquities, all my sins in his body. That it's impossible. It's impossible for me to be sick. It's impossible for me to be broke because my Father owns all the cattle on every hill. The silver is His. The gold is His. That's what decrees do. But decrees go a step further because decrees shift atmospheres. They change it. I'll give you a personal testimony. I'm on a plane last week and we're flying and the announcer comes on. The flight attendant says, Look, everyone's got to be seated, everyone's got to be buckled up. And all the flight attendants were already buckled up. They didn't even do drink service. And they said, we're about to experience moderate to severe turbulence. I've never heard that. I've flown a ton of times. I've never heard them say severe turbulence. I've been in planes that have dropped altitude where your stomach goes into your throat, the whole bit. I've been in some pretty hairy situations, but I've never heard them say that. And I said, no, This is not going to happen. It's impossible. It's impossible. So I decreed that there will be no turbulence, that whatever force is causing that turbulence, whether it was spiritual or physical in the world, has no authority to do that because I'm, I'm the spiritual authority in that space. Joshua 1 describes that, and I declare it. There was no turbulence. It happened on the way back home, on the trip back, same thing. We're going to have turbulence. I'm like, no, that's impossible. No turbulence. Whatever is causing it must flee now. No turbulence on the flight back. That's the stance that you have to take. You have to be empowered. You have to be in. You have to say, "I'm drawing a line in the sand. This is not possible. When my children go to school, it's impossible for them to be teased. It's impossible for them to be picked on. It's impossible for the devil to touch them." These are the things. That's the power of decree because when you decree it, it becomes written law. And now all the spiritual authorities operating around you. Have to obey it because you are the authority. That's what the verses I gave you earlier, the 4 verses from Genesis into Galatians, it talks about that. That becomes the spiritual authority. Decrees are that powerful because they establish the things that prayers don't. Jesus didn't say pray to the mountain for it to be uprooted and thrown into the sea. Jesus said speak to the mountain. That's a decree. He understood When Peter healed, Peter healed by speaking. He didn't pray. That's the thing— healing is done by spoken. If you are looking to be healed and you've been praying to God, God's like, I've already released the blessing into you. You have to declare your healing. Declare Isaiah 53 over your life, that I am healed by Jesus's stripes. I am healed from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. Declare it. If someone is not well, declare their healing. Speak it. Speak it as if it is, even though you can't see it. That's what faith is. And so that's key. That's a core aspect of violent faith. Another aspect of violent faith is you have to know the word of God, and you got to stand on it. And you might have heard this term warring with the word, and that's a key point, and we're going to cover that here right now. What does it mean to war with the word? Well, warring with the word is saying I'm in a situation. I might be in a storm of my life. Let's use an example: you've lost your job, and so you're now running up on your bills, and you're like, "Look, I'm I may have made some bad choices. I'm am in debt, and I have I can't pay my bills." You have to go and declare to God, "I am standing on these principles. I'm standing on Matthew 6:33 that says I am chasing." You and your righteousness. I'm chasing you and your kingdom. You said in that verse that all of these things— all, there's nothing outside of all— all of these things will be added unto me. Even if you, even if you're religious and say, oh, that's only in the context of the 3 things that he mentions before, fine. But when you even grasp those aspects, that encapsulates everything. So you start to understand that you start to war with God, because what you're doing is you're not warring against God, you're warring With God. And so what happens is, is you're praying the word of God, which cannot return void. That's the key part in all of this. He says, when my word goes out, it's impossible for it not to return to me. No one is greater than the word of God. No one is greater than the Holy Spirit. It's impossible for the word of God to return void to you. So you pray for healing, you pray for miracles and breakthroughs, you pray for the rain to come when it hasn't rained, or the rain to stop when it has— it hasn't stopped raining for weeks and you want to see the sun again. You declare and decree those things and you war with the word. You take scripture and you pray over it and you declare it over and over again. If you sin greatly, use Psalm 51. What a great— what a great psalm for those who are struggling with sin. If you're in spiritual warfare, declare Psalm 2, because guess what? We're God's anointed along with Jesus because we're hidden in Jesus. All the promises that apply to Jesus apply to us because we're in him. So you can declare Psalm 2 if you're in a battle of your life. You can declare Psalm 2. These are the things that you do. That's how you war with the word. When you have violent faith, you're not going to concede any aspect of your life to the evil one. You're just not going to do it. So you're going to take these promises that said all these things, that I am the head and not the tail, that I have the authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, which means the devil's army. They're not real snakes and scorpions. Those are actually the metaphors and symbols for his army. That you can say those things, that I— that I— Jesus came to give me life and give it life abundantly. That's warring with the word. When you constantly declare it, get it into your into your spirit, into your soul, and you just keep continually declaring it over, and you align yourself with God and saying, God, your word is true. I might be in the fight of my life, but I believe you because this is what your word said, and you've never failed. God doesn't know how to fail because he's undefeated. Ultimately, what happens in all of these spiritual battles is God wants you to be at the right level of faith and at the right place through obedience In order at his timing. It's not the right place at the right time. It's about his, his word and aligning you in your mind to be oriented in order to receive the blessing. And warring with the word does that. That's the key aspect. And so really, the last aspect here to close this out, number 5, is righteously battling. Is you got to live righteously, and you've got to live a sin— you got to live to the degree that you can a sinless life. You've got to live a life of being unoffendable. You have to be a forgiving person. You have to be in a position where that sin that so easily ensnared you is dead. Like, that's where you have to be. You have to walk in righteousness. Now, the key aspect of righteousness ultimately boils down to obedience, because we understand we can't be perfect. Okay, although Jesus talks about that— be perfect like your Father is perfect— what he means by that is, is you living a righteous life. You're living a life that God looks at and says, yes, that he is doing— he or she is doing the things that they're supposed to be doing, focusing on my kingdom, focusing on loving people. Because everything comes from that. When you love God and you love others, the 2 core commandments which everything is built on top of When you anchor yourself in those 2 places, you will allow yourself the best opportunity to live a righteous life. And when you do that, you no longer look at sin the way it used to look at— because when you are living a righteous life, this is how you know you're living a righteous life: because the sin that used to get you excited because your flesh is like, oh yes, this is still heaven for me, I can't go to heaven No flesh makes it to heaven. Okay, so heaven for the flesh is the earth. That's why it gets excited when sin comes. And I'm hoping that liberates some people because that's how it works. But when you live a righteous life, the sin that used to get you excited will turn your stomach. And guess what happens? You're going to make the devil pay because he tried to bring that sin in your life. That's when you know you've arrived, when you can go and punish The spirits that come against you. Remember, this is not warring in the second heaven. I'm not talking about going on the offensive. This is purely counter-offensive. It's basically when you have someone, when you have the devil come and bring you temptation, and you go back and you smash him. Okay, and it's very straightforward. You basically bind the spirits in the kingdom that's operating it with it, and you cast it before the feet of Jesus. So whenever you're getting tempted by a demon to, to go into sin, you can bind that demon and the whole kingdom it's operating with, including the strongman that sent it, which is basically its manager, and you cast it before the feet of Jesus. Because whatever is bound in heaven is bound on earth, and whatever is loosed in heaven is loosed on earth. So you can loose blessings to yourself, and you can bind evil forces. When you do that, it will cause such a spiritual earthquake in the area The devil's going to think twice because ultimately what violent faith brings is, is that, that it's a war. You're trying to win a war with Christ. The battle's won, but there's this aspect that you have to walk out. And when you're declaring these things and you make the devil pay by losing troops, because remember, every battle, ultimately there's losses on both sides. We get that. That's how war works. But the devil doesn't want you to know that you can cause casualties on His side. When you start to understand that these sins that used to so easily ensnare you become weapons for you, that basically you can weaponize and use against him, and not in the sense of how I described it. You now can take that sin when they come to tempt you, and you say, "Look, oh, you're trying to tempt me. I'm going to cast you before the feet of Jesus." Now the troops of the enemy has to think twice before they attack you, because now those troops are gone, because those troops are bound. They don't get unbound; they get cast in the lake of fire. With judgment at Jesus. And so now he's losing troops. And now as he continues to operate, your violent faith shakes the spiritual world in a way that he's like, okay, guess what? If I have to move troops from over here to here, that person over there is no longer going to be affected because they're not going to be tempted. And I might risk losing these troops because they might bind them and send them to Jesus. And so now This is how you win the war. This is how you win the aspects of how God says, stand, resist the devil, and he will flee. This is how it works, because you must— if you want, if you read that verse, what do you have to do? You have to submit yourself to God first. That's the essence of violent faith. That's the essence of standing your ground and saying, I'm no longer going to tolerate any aspect across any part of my life and everything that I'm with Anyone that operates in my sphere of influence, anyone that operates above me, I'm in their sphere of influence, because you can pray in both directions. And you tolerate that— zero tolerance across those boards— and you follow those principles, you will live a, a completely victorious life where God will pour out blessings on you, on everyone around you. You will live in total love. joy and peace at all times, because nothing will be able to rattle you. Sure, the storms will come, but remember, Jesus slept through those storms. It didn't bother him because he knew he was going to go to the other side. And so I pray that this teaching blessed you, and I hope that you understand and conceptualize all these aspects. Again, take these scriptures back in prayer. Understand where you are in your walk. Not a lot of people are going to be able to conceptualize all these pieces. So just take those into your prayer closet. If you're one of those, pray through it and understand how God wants to apply them in your life, because he may have you apply them differently. But these principles are biblical, and so you can stand on them and ultimately war with the word. And if you have— if you enjoy these kinds of teachings, I want to invite you now to partner with me in this ministry, because we're here. We have a very bold vision for 2024. Is we're here to raise up a thousand churches and ministries to preach the gospel, to reach every single person with the gospel before the rapture. That's our mission, and you can do that by coming a monthly partner or submitting a one-time donation to our website, and that is www.humenik.com/give. And that website spelled H-U-M-E-N-I-K. .com/give. That's where you can set up a monthly donation or send a one-time donation. All the proceeds in the— that go into the ministry go back out into the ministry to support those, uh, in as a part of the work and spreading the gospel. God bless, and I pray that this message, uh, blessed you in an amazing way.