Many Christians, including Pentecostals, talk about spiritual warfare.

This phrase may sound odd. It may sound even a little bit threatening to the people who aren't familiar with Christian terminology.

With us today is Dr. David K. Bernard, and he's going to explain what the scriptures

mean about spiritual warfare and how we can engage in it. Dr. Bernard, we as Pentecostals, we use this

term a lot. If people go to one of our churches, they may hear our pastors, our service leaders,

talk about this phrase, spiritual warfare. And I have to, if I put myself in the shoes of

somebody who's not a Christian, and I'm hearing this term, that may sound really strange,

it may sound really threatening. What exactly do we mean by this phrase, spiritual warfare,

and how do we engage in spiritual warfare? That's an important question because sometimes even as

Christians we see people getting way off track and what it means. So let me start with the basics.

So we are human beings that we have what's called the flesh, which means human nature. It could

refer to just our body, but more commonly in scripture, it also refers to our inward human nature, it could refer to just our body, but more commonly in Scripture,

it also refers to our inward human nature, which has been tainted by sin. So often we're

talking about the spiritual human nature, or the sinful human nature. But when we receive the

Holy Spirit, we receive the Spirit of God, which gives us power over the sinful human nature. So as Christians, we actually have the Holy Spirit within us, but we still have

our own flesh, not only the physical body, but sinful inclinations and desires, which 1st John

2 talks about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,

the pride of life. So there is an internal warfare between the spirit and the flesh,

our old desires and our new nature given by God. Now that is an inner spiritual struggle.

We can also say there are external forces. We are also

tempted externally by the world, that is our culture around us that would pull us away from God,

and by the devil himself or his emissary. So we have these three opponents, the flesh, which is internal, the world, which is external, and the devil,

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