Hi, my name is Pete Scazzaro. I want to welcome you today to the emotionally healthy leader

podcast. So great to be with you. The title of today's podcast is being transformed in the fires

of spiritual warfare. Being transformed in the fires of spiritual warfare. This actually comes out of a message, actually a series I did on the Gospel of Mark,

which was written to Christians who were in a crisis under intense pressure living in Rome under Nero,

who had unleashed a horrific persecution against the church there. And so this text from which I'm going to share this sermon with you

comes from Jesus Parable in Mark chapter 3 about him tying up the strongman, Satan,

so that people can be set free.

Now, what makes this such an important message is I address the discernment question of,

how can we discern if what we are

experiencing is a direct frontal assault from the evil one, or is this a spiritual formation

maturity that God is working in us? In my early years of pastoring in Queens, I got really

deep into spiritual warfare because in the first

few months of our church plant, I encountered demons screaming in the services that we had started

while I was preaching or ending the service. And it was such a disruption. And I wasn't sure

what to do at the time. I ended up diving deeply

into the issue of deliverance and spiritual warfare. And I spent for a number of years driving a lot of

time, driving out demons from people. And there was some good fruit, but there was also some

mixed fruit. It was clear that some people were not growing

or maturing, and I realized there were deeper issues of discipleship going on and that God was trying

to get their attention on some issues, and everything was getting blamed on Satan himself,

demons. And the question was, how do you discern the two? And so, you know, what does it look like to do emotionally healthy deliverance or spiritual warfare?

So I spent a lot of years wrestling with this issue.

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