Spiritual Warfare (9 page)

Let’s retrace our steps. Jesus is on His way into Jerusalem when He passes by the fig tree and curses it. Then, he goes into the city of Jerusalem and overturns the moneychangers’ tables in the temple. He leaves the temple and stays overnight outside the city. The next morning, Jesus and His disciples pass the fig tree again. What do they see? They see the fig tree dried up from the roots.

What did Jesus do between the cursing and withering of the fig tree? He cleansed the temple and restored it as a house of prayer. My friend, what Jesus is showing us is that after we have prayed over a situation, while waiting for the manifestation of our miracle, we should stay in prayer. If you don’t see anything happening, don’t worry. Just keep praying in the Spirit. Make your body a house of prayer, and you will eventually see the whole problem wither and die!

Keep praying in the Spirit, and the more strength, health, vigour and life will abound in you.

If you are experiencing a sickness in your body, know that once prayer is offered, your infirmity is destroyed at the roots. It is like using weed killer in your garden. The weed killer doesn’t make the weeds go all brown and dead immediately. But the moment it is poured, the problem is dealt with at the roots. Though it might take a while for the weeds to turn brown and die completely, death actually sets in the moment the weed killer is poured. The moment we curse the disease or tumour, it dies at the roots. But the manifestation of complete healing may be seen only later.

Drive Out The Thieves From Your Temple

So between the cursing of the fig tree and the visible manifestation of the curse the next day, Jesus cleansed the temple in Jerusalem. In John 2:19, Jesus referred to His body as the temple by saying,
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Today, what or who is the body of Christ? We, the church, are His body. And our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 6:19, the apostle Paul says that
“your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you”
.

So as you pray in the Spirit while waiting for the manifestation of your miracle, God is removing “thieves” from your temple. What are these thieves doing? They are stealing health, vigour and life from your body. These thieves have been stealing from many of us because many of us don’t see our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. And when we fail to realise that, we also fail to keep our bodies as houses of prayer. But if we will wake up, and start treating our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit and houses of prayer, our bodies cannot remain as or become dens for thieves.

My friend, if you allow the devil to camp around your body, he will rob you of health and strength. In John 10:10, Jesus says,
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy…”
He will steal your health by destroying your organs or limbs with disease. You have a choice. Either your body is a house of prayer or it becomes a den of thieves. Choose to make it a house of prayer, praying at all times in the Spirit!

When you pray in the Spirit, it is like fumigating your body. It drives away all the thieves from your body. In the Old Testament, incense was used in the temple of God. The incense supposedly drove away snakes, scorpions and reptiles. In the same way, allow the incense of the Holy Spirit to drive away the thieves in your body as you pray in tongues. That is how you manifest your healing.

The less you pray in the Spirit, the more your body becomes a den of thieves. They may begin to come in small numbers, some here and some there, but soon, they may be everywhere and you will be in trouble. Now, other Christians can lay hands on you in faith to drive out the thieves, but a better way is prevention. Just keep praying in the Spirit to keep your body free of thieves, and the more strength, health, vigour and life will abound in you.

Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6:18–20 that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit:

¹⁸
Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
¹⁹
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?
²⁰
For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s
.

If you really believe that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, would you want to commit adultery? Would you allow thieves to camp there? Believe 1 Corinthians 6:18–20 and recognise that your body
is
the temple of the Holy Spirit, and you will treat your body the way it is supposed to be treated. Your body is not your own, it is the Holy Spirit’s.

While waiting for your healing to manifest, while continuing to believe God for the manifestation of your miracle, you cannot afford not to be praying in the Spirit. Some of you may still ask, “What has this got to do with praying in the Spirit, Pastor Prince?” Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. His prayer language is a spiritual language. In Romans 8:26, we see that the Holy Spirit helps us pray:

²⁶
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered
.

What is our weakness here? It is that
“we do not know what we should pray for as we ought”.
For example, you may be going through a trial and you don’t know how or what you should pray for. But the Spirit helps by praying through you. He prays through you with groanings, with tongues — that is His language and His prayers are perfect prayers. Praise God that the Holy Spirit has come to help us with that weakness! So praying in the Spirit is His way of helping us overcome that weakness and manifest what has been prayed for.

Some of you have been robbed. You have had this revelation before, but somewhere along the way, the devil stopped your flow of praying in the Spirit. And life has stopped flowing for you. At this point, you may ask, “Pastor Prince, what is the best way to start flowing in life and peace again?” The best way to start the rivers of life or rivers of living water flowing again is to pray in the Spirit. In John 7:38–39, Jesus connects the rivers of living water flowing from our innermost being with the Holy Spirit. So praying in the Spirit activates this flow of living waters in your life.

If you come to a place where you cannot sense God any more, even though He is still there, one of the best things to do is to start praying in tongues. When you start to pray in the Spirit, it may feel like there is only a little stream inside you, but if you press on, that stream will grow into mighty, roaring, life-producing rivers that not only bless you, but others too!

King Hezekiah Cleansed The Temple

In the Old Testament, we see another example of someone cleansing the temple. 2 Chronicles 29 tells us that King Hezekiah cleansed the temple. By the way, King Hezekiah was a good king, a righteous king, a godly king. Verse 3 says,
“In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them.”
Why did he do that? Well, in 2 Chronicles 28:22–24, we see that the previous king, Ahaz, had shut the doors of the temple:

²²
Now in the time of his distress King Ahaz became increasingly unfaithful to the Lord. This is that King Ahaz.
²³
For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus which had defeated him, saying, “Because the gods of the kings of Syria help them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.” But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.
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So Ahaz gathered the articles of the house of God, cut in pieces the articles of the house of God, shut up the doors of the house of the Lord, and made for himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem
.

Let’s go forward to chapter 29 again where we see that the first thing King Hezekiah did was that he opened the doors of the temple. Here, I want to give you an illustration of how prayer can repair your body. 2 Chronicles 29:16 says:

¹⁶
Then the priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and brought out all the debris that they found in the temple of the Lord to the court of the house of the Lord…

Verse 17 continues:

¹⁷
Now they began to sanctify on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month they came to the vestibule of the Lord. So they sanctified the house of the Lord in eight days, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished
.

In the same way, the repair of your body, which is the house of the Lord today, begins when the “door” is opened. What is the “door” of your body? It is your mouth. David said in Psalm 141:3,
“Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.”

So when you open your mouth and pray in the Spirit, your body begins to be repaired from the inside out. Inside the “house”, the lamps will be lit. Within a few days, there will be life throughout the whole house. And it will reach the vestibule of the house, that is, the porch, which means the outer part of your body. When that happens, you will see visible signs of repair to your body, the manifestation of your healing!

King Hezekiah’s men began repairing and cleansing the temple from the inside out. How do you cleanse things? You do it with water. Water is a wonderful cleanser. How do you cleanse the temple of the Holy Spirit or the house of the Lord, which is your body? You do it with the rivers of living water. The more you pray in tongues, the more you give vent to the rivers of living water on the inside of you. The more you pray in the Spirit, the more the living waters will push out all the debris, cleaning out your house.

Now, the cleansing may not be accomplished overnight, but it will be finished if you persevere. It begins on the inside of you and extends outwards until you see visible signs of your miracle. You know, when they started cleansing the temple from the inside out, no one outside could see what was happening inside. It took a while before they could see cleansing on the outside. It took a while before the temple was cleansed both inside and outside.

Don’t Let The Devil Shut Your Mouth

What does this teach us about our own lives? It shows us that the first thing we are to do is open the doors of our temples. We learnt that the door is our lips or our mouth. Psalm 141:3 says, “Keep watch over the door of my lips.” In all the devil’s attacks against you, has he managed to shut your door? Is the door to your temple shut?

You may be in a situation in which the rivers have stopped flowing in your life. This may have let the thieves in and they may be stealing from you. You may feel that you have no power to resist them. Looking back, you may remember that there was a time when you let the rivers loose inside you. You walked in power. If you were sick, you knew that you were getting better. But somewhere along the way, the devil managed to shut your mouth. He managed to shut your door.

I don’t care what the reasons were, but your mouth was jammed. A spiritual demon called Ahaz closed the door. But like King Hezekiah, you are to open the door again! You are to flush out all the debris and thieves with the rivers of living water by praying continuously in the Spirit!

He who speaks in tongues builds and repairs himself.

No wonder on the day of Pentecost, the first thing God did was to open the doors. Acts 2:4 states,
“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
Once the Holy Spirit made them living temples, God made them houses of prayer and power. Peter preached a powerful sermon and 3,000 people were saved.

Also, in 1 Corinthians 14:2, we see that
“he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries”.
No wonder the devil wants to stop you from opening your door. No wonder the devil wants to stop you from speaking in tongues. Because you are not speaking to men, you are speaking to God! Man does not understand what you are saying. You yourself, a man, do not understand either. But it is not for your intellectual stimulation. It is for God.

Now, some of you who love to rely on your minds to make decisions and to analyse things may not see the value of praying in tongues because the language doesn’t make any sense to you. For you, the biggest problem is your mind — you need to understand with your mind before you will accept it. But 1 Corinthians 14:14 says,
“For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.”
So you have to realise that when it comes to communicating with God in the Spirit, your understanding or mind cannot help you. It will be unfruitful. That is just God’s way and you have to do it His way.

Speak In Tongues And Repair Your Body

1 Corinthians 14:4 states,
“He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.”
Now, there is no way you can edify the church without first edifying yourself. The word “edify” in the Greek is
oikodomeo,
which means “to build a house”. So he who speaks in a tongue builds a house.
Thayer’s And Smith’s Bible Dictionary
also describes the word “edify” as “repair”. This means that you are building and repairing the house whenever you speak in tongues. In other words, whenever you pray in the Spirit, you are building yourself up and repairing yourself!