Stacey Wrote: The enemy's Weapons

This is day #11 of a 21 Daniel Fast that Paul and I have been doing together.  We have been contending for open eyes and open ears to hear God more clearly.  He is really answering our prayers.  This morning Paul and I were praying through some things and the Lord was really giving me some powerful words to minister to Paul more effectively and accurately.

While this was going on, I found myself thinking about the weapons of the enemy (spiritual enemy - the demonic).  In what seemed to me a flash, God revealed to me a mystery of the weapons of the enemy.  This is the best I could do at describing what was revealed to me that I wrote in my journal:

The story of David and Goliath (1 Sam 17) was a prophetic story of the battle on the cross.  Goliath was the Philistines' biggest weapon.  He stood before the Israelites challenging them day after day to come against him.  The Philistines sat smugly behind their ultimate weapon as the Israelites hid in fear.  When David was anointed, scripture says in 1 Sam 16:13 that the spirit of the lord came powerfully upon David from that day on.  David saw this scene and boldly came up against Goliath.  He took 5 stones (represents the 5-fold ministry maybe? just an idea... why was there 5 stones David pulled out) and with the first one nailed Goliath between the eyes and killed him, cut his head off.  Just like that, their ultimate weapon was defeated in a humiliating fashion by a boy... as if it were nothing.

Jesus Christ comes on the scene to a world that was dead in sin and slaves to it.  He came because He loved us while we were yet sinners... while we were yet slaves to sin and living in darkness (Romans 5:8).  (Love is God's ultimate weapon by the way).  On the cross, Jesus died in our place, and then 3 days later, the Holy Spirit raised Christ from the dead (Romans 8:11)!  Now Jesus offers us eternal life through his victory.  Jesus went up against the ultimate weapon of the enemy, death, and defeated it.  "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross" (Col 2:15).  Jesus completely disarmed the enemy as if it were nothing.  He took their ultimate weapon, death, and turned it into a gain for us through Christ.  "To live is Christ, to die is gain" (Phil 1:21).  Look at Stephen the martyr.  The church grew like wild after his death because they were scattered because of the persecution that broke out over his death. (Acts 8:1)  Fear not the one who can kill the body but has no power over the spirit. (Mat 10:28)  Oh death where is your victory?  Death where is your sting? (1 Cor 15:55)  Christ made a public spectacle of their ultimate weapon.  Had they known what Christ's death was going to accomplish, they never would have killed Jesus (1 Cor 2:8).  They thought they had won!  The joke was on them that while Jesus was hanging on the cross dying, which was foolishness and a stumbling block to the enemy (1 Cor 1:23), he was disarming them and humiliating them by His loving obedience.  Death no longer has mastery over him (Romans 6:9) or us.

This is huge for me this morning.  What do I have to fear?  Think about it: What does the enemy have that can have any effect on me now that Christ has completely disarmed the enemy and taken their ultimate weapon, death, from them?  The answer is: nothing.  Thank you Jesus!  I am going to be meditating on these scriptures and asking God for understanding about the authority that we carry now through Christ against the powerless enemy.