This powerful passage from Revelation 12:11 outlines God's word on and for our victory. What the verse does not say is as powerful in
its influence on our lives as what it does say.

The passage says to us that to overcome the devil we must stand in
the authority of the shed blood of Jesus. We operate from a position
of restoration. The blood of Jesus means victory over death and the
curse of separation that came in the first Adam's fall.

The blood of Jesus cleanses those who receive it "from all un-
righteousness". If I am cleansed from "all unrighteousness" then
I am righteous. I have been restored in Adam the second, back to
the place the first Adam was before the fall. It is as if man had
never fallen. Genesis 1:26,28 belong to the righteous. Daily
fellowship with God belongs to the restored. Restored from the fall,
I walk in complete dominion and I have the power, authority, and
responsibilty to keep the "serpents" out of my garden.

I am restored to "pre-fall" position with God. I have a clean slate
and He has created me to triumph in every situation of life, to rule
and reign with Christ Jesus, to exercise dominion over everything.
To allow Him to walk in me, talk in me and manifest His will, plan
and purpose to the world, over the world and in spite of the world,
through me.

Religion and religious practices have blinded the Church. Most of
the Church world is in a state of powerlessness. They have a form
of godliness but deny the power of God, the word spoken in dominion,
command anointing and authority.

Religion attempts to prevent you from taking dominion. Prevent you
from taking authority. Prevent you from seizing the reigns of rule.
Religion inhibits you from rising to the fullness of the stature of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Religion is the opposite of what God has
called you to be.

What this description of how to overcome the devil does not include
is startling:

Fasting
We do not overcome Satan with fasting. Fasting is not a weapon to
fight demons, the devil, or problems of life. Fasting is for
relationship development with God. We fast to hear clearly what
He is saying. "Not that our voice be heard on high, but that His
voice be heard down here."

Prayer
Prayer is not a weapon to overcome neither the devil nor his devices.
Prayer is to develop our relationship with God. The most powerful
form of prayer is performed with our intellect and understanding
on hold. Romans 8: 26,27 inform us that the Holy Spirit can pray
through us when we are unable to produce the desired result. He does
it not with our prayer, but with groanings and intercessions that
cannot be uttered in articulate speech.
* Our prayers develop our walk with, reliance on, and strength
in God. Prayer is not a weapon to defeat the devil. Yet so
many religious people will fight for their right to pray
against things they've been praying against for years with
no results.
* Hebrews 10:11 is a picture of this religious mindset. Priest
offering the same sacrifices year in and year out, even
though it has not and does not work. They keep repeating
the process but the failed result never changes.
* If you want something you've never had, you will have to do
something you've never done. For what you have is a direct
result of what you've been doing.

Spiritual Warfare
Here is an arena that would amuse me were it not so sad. There are
warfare clinics' citywide attacks on the devil's strongholds,
people on tall buildings, in airplanes and helicopters trying to
engage the princes and powers of darkness in spiritual warfare.
After years of this, dozens of books written, and thousands of
tapes sold there is no significant change anywhere their spiritual
warfare activities have taken place.

You are beginning to catch my flow, I am sure. God, the author of
all and His Messiah who brings our faith to fullness and the Holy
Spirit who equips us must be, were it possible, at a point of
frustration over all the extra-biblical junk that has permeated
the Church community, and yet religion fails to take God at His
word.

To see such junk as "warring tongues" clinics, (which, if that
method worked might have set its founder free from his homosexual
problems) being swallowed hook, line and sinker by Christians, who
should know better, I am amazed.

There are people building prayer mountains and holding large prayer
gatherings with big name Christian leaders making great display of
Prayer Power, while the crime rates keep growing in the area
surrounding where all this prayer is being offered up.

One must look back at some pivtal passages to gain proper insight.
To realign our Christian walk with whom it is we are to follow, we
must see the answer His way.

Jesus never prayed for the sick. He commanded the answer or He
touched them. There is also no biblical direction to pray for the
sick. It says heal the sick, and also, "hands you shall lay well
they shall be" (Mark 16:18).

Jesus prayed to put Himself in line with the Father's will. He
prayed to develop Their relationship. He prayed to build Himself
up to do the work of ministry. He did'nt use prayer to do ministry.

Jesus did'nt use fasting to change things. He allowed fasting to
change Him. He did not fast in the face of problems; He fasted so
He could face problems. Romans 8:19 informs us that all of creattion
(all the things of this world which were created by our God and
which were tainted by the first Adam's fall) are awaiting in
anxious expectation for the Sons of God (that is we who have been
washed by the blood of Jesus) to awake to the knowledge of who we
are as Sons of God and rise up to reverse the curse and the bondage
of the fall. We must set creation free!

This will only occur when we begin to seize the truth of how we are
to overcome, put down, stop, silence and spoil the plunder of the
devil. It is done by taking account of what the blood bought for
every believer, individually and corporately. Letting this testimony
of total triumph, restoration, atonement and reinstatement in the
Anointed Redeemer become ours.

When we comprehend His work as a work of substitution credited to
our account, we will rise up and decree the work of the blood is
our work, our victory, our liberation, and our eternal triumph
over all the work of the wicked one. We will proudly trumphet that
His testimony now belongs to us. We can boldly say what He would say
when faced by anything that was defeated in His resurrection.

Now can you grasp what Paul was laying out for us in Philippians
3:10-11? Paul wanted to know, have personal and intimate knowledge
of the Lord Jesus, and to understand the power that was released in His resurrection. He wanted to understand what the suffering Jesus
allowed bought and paid for that was deposited to Paul's account.
He wanted to so abandon his will that he could identify with the
mind set of Jesus, which allowed Him to submit to a thing He so
loathed and despised. That, being in tune with Jesus in His
submission to death (Philippians 2:8), Paul would also be able to
take on and walk in the fullness of the resurrected life. A life
that is a complete victory ober the fall, a receiving of the
dominion walk, and relationship with God on the level Adam
possessed before the fall. In Paul's own words, "it is no longer I
that lives but the anointing is living in me and manifesting through
me" (Galatians 2:20). www.theuncommontruth.com