Worship as Warfare!

Again, worship.  Yes, God has had this theme and topic on my heart for some time, over a year now.  I am learning the power of worship as prayer and intercession. I have experienced it in years past. In India during times of intense spiritual warfare and in America during the days when I was really sick and my doctor told me that I was dying, I learned the crushing victory over the enemy that comes through worship.

Some of the stories I could share only reinforce in me the effective power of worship. Worship focuses our attention on God. It moves the atmosphere around us. It breaks the chains of the enemy. Worship drives away fear. Worship leaves no room for any one, but God to be exalted. Worship positions us to hear from the Lord.

I believe that sometimes God uses worship to sift our minds of the things we are focusing on instead of Him. As we give Him worship, our focus becomes directed back towards God, and here with our eyes set on HIM, we are drawn to His presence. In His presence, we can abide IN Him, and KNOW Him.  In His presence is fullness of joy. In His presence we find peace and direction and help.  This is where Christ wants us to abide with Him.  This is also the place the enemy tries to keep us from.  He knows the danger that abiding can bring against the spiritual forces of wickedness.

Every new year, I start with a time of focused prayer and fasting. This year, the Lord challenged me to do something a bit different. He said, “instead of food, I challenge you to give your time and your worship.”  He challenged me to worship continually for 2 hours a day on top of my normal quiet time with him, and to use this time to pray for the lost and the American church.  Each day it was a battle to get the time away with the Lord.  I would plan my time and something would come up, something would change. Distractions and crazy things would try to steal my time. At times, complete exhaustion would fall over me as I tried to pray and worship so strongly that I would have to stand and move to stay awake.  It was clear the Lord was moving powerfully in me and through those times of prayer and worship and the enemy hated it. 

It was also through those times that I gleaned a better understanding of HOW to pray for this world, for America, for the church at large, even to see my own wandering heart and need for the sweet blood of Jesus and the work of the Savior at the cross.  I am in desperate need for Jesus, every day, every hour.  Without Him, we are so lost.

Over a year ago, my family went through a situation that was devastating. God told me in the midst of the trial to praise him.  Like Job, “though you slay me, yet I will praise you”.  I choose to worship God daily.  There were no words many days, some days the emotions were too heavy, but as I worshiped I was reminded of my hope in a God who is able to move the mountains and do impossible things. God reminded me that as my focus is on Him, I am trusting in Him, and giving Him glory, He will do it.  He will be glorified. He fills our lips with the words that are needed and stir our heart to be aligned with his faith and overcoming victory.

My strength can be found in His sanctuary as I abide in Him.  As I worship Him, I enter afresh into that safe place of His presence and my eyes are fixed once again upon the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

I believe God is calling us back to a heart of worship- to worship in spirit and in truth. To be readied for the battle in His presence and in His strength. 

Ephesians 6:12- For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

2 Corinthians 10:3-4 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.

I believe firmly that we cannot fight a spiritual enemy with natural weapons. We must use spiritual weapons of war to combat our spiritual enemy. Praise is just one of those weapons. It is a spiritual weapon of war that binds and breaks the powers of darkness.

Once again I am in a season where God is asking me to spend extended time worshiping him and interceding for the nations.  There are lost and dying people all around us. What am I doing about it? There is need for intercession. I find it so hard to make the time, to set it aside, to focus when I am in that time.  The battle is real, but I am reminded the battle belongs to the Lord.  Like King Jehoshaphat, (2 Chronicles 20) I worship the Lord, in full confidence that the Lord is with me. I need not be discouraged, but trust in a God that can destroy all that is raised up against me. And I find when I make the time and press in POWERFUL things are happening. Prayer and worship are powerful things.

John 4:23- Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.