Satan and bad angels are not all-powerful, but they can influence a person's thinking and emotions until we learn the enemy's schemes and the authority God has given us. Since his fall, Satan now peddles his merchandise of sin and rebellion to the unsuspecting and ignorant. He works through fear and self-will, pushing us to our "own" devices instead of the power and authority that comes from submitting to God and His Word.

There are good and bad angels. Today, we are going to talk about the origin and goals of bad angels. Satan himself is an angel who fell from God's presence in heaven. Bad angels are spirit beings that don't have a physical body, but that doesn't make them any less real. We must recognize the enemy's schemes. If we remain ignorant, we will fall prey to his tactics. 

Proverbs 21:2 says. "Every way of a man is right in his own eyes; but Jehovah weighs the heart." When we don't intentionally seek God, we end up justifying our own actions. David justified not going to war in the Old Testament, just as many times we justify not doing spiritual warfare under the New Covenant. God wants to show us the things we don't see about ourselves. If we cry to God and have a heart that is after Him, He will show us our blind spots so we can repent and turn completely from them. 

How do we partner with God to bring His Word and will into reality? Sickness came on the earth by man's choice to sin. God created everything perfect in the Garden of Eden, and He now desires our lives to be completely redeemed, but it is not automatic. Through the blood of Jesus every part of our redemption has to be accepted and fully received. God is never sending the sickness or tragedy. He is always working to redeem us from it. 

Healing is a part of our covenant with God. We must be intentional in taking in the promises in the Word on healing. In Matthew 8:2-3, Jesus sets a precedent in the Word regarding healing. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately, he was cleansed of his leprosy. Because of Jesus' word, we know biblically that God wants and is willing to heal us.  

What does the Word say on healing? For starters, the word Salvation means: health, healing, deliverance, protection, and provision. God's salvation offers us everything we will need in this life and in the life to come. The Word of God can be either a preventive medicine or a cure, depending on what we need at the time. When we need to work with God for the Word of God to become part of who we are. 

When we were born again, our old sin nature died and was buried with Christ. Baptism is a picture of us being resurrected into newness in  Christ. So when we are born again, we are resurrected in Christ. We are no longer a singular person. We are put in Jesus. So every good thing in Christ has been made available to us. We need to come to the place where we believe we are a new creation in Christ Jesus to truly be able to overcome sin. 

How do we turn loose of fear and the world's thinking, and securely grab hold of God's promises? We must become like a child. We cannot approach Psalm 91 or the promises of God from adulthood. We are not to become childish but childlike. As adults, we wrestle with the knowledge of good and evil because of Adam and Eve's choice to sin, but to receive only from the Tree of Life, we must again become like children.

One of our priorities as Believers is to destroy the works of the devil. In 1 John 3:8 it says, "The Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil," and then in 1 John 4:17, it says, "In this world we are to be like Jesus." Now we cannot destroy the devil in our own reasoning or strength.  We must remember we are in a spiritual battle, and it takes the spiritual weapons Jesus has given us to overcome. When the battle is won in the spirit, circumstances will change in the natural. 

The world believes that intellectual knowledge is power, but that is part of Satan's plan to get us to worship our mind and intellect. Satanism, the New Age, and even "normal" worldly thinking teach some form of mind control. But it is not God's way. The Holy Spirit is meant to be in charge of our lives and our mind.