#59 Spiritual Warfare and Business

A particular subject that’s been on my heart for the past couple of months is Spiritual Warfare and how it affects businesses, especially with the way the world is going it’s putting Christian’s under pressure to whether they pick love or truth in certain situations.

In this podcast, I share what Paul teaches us in the Bible about this, what we’ve had to face in CWIB in regard to the New Age stuff, how it’s affected us and what we’ve done about it. Finally, some tips about what you can do as a Christian business owner to protect yourself and your business against the devil’s schemes.

SJ’s notes… (these are just notes from her book and we ask that you’re gracious with them)

Now one thing you should know about me as a person, I am not always going to tell you what you want to hear, I don’t sugar coat stuff, I am very down to earth and very real.

Everything I do and say is from the goodness of my heart and what I am about share with you I ask for grace as this is something that needs to be addressed.

As I put on my big girl pants and share this message with you today, I want you to have an open heart and know that this isn’t coming from a judgemental place and to take what I say to the Word of God and ask Him to open your eyes to the truth.

When I first started CWIB I thought I was quite spiritually mature, but after this year and especially these past couple of months, God has made me realise how I am still a baby feeding on milk! I’ve realised how much I don’t know and I’m having to grow up very quickly.

Learning about spiritual stuff and stuff that not everyone wants to talk about. Yet, it’s soooo important and often overlooked because people are scared to talk about it, because of what might happen. But what might happen if we don’t talk about it.

The girls know in our community that something had been going on, we called for a community fast in March as we began to tackle (with God’s help) and certain something in the spiritual realm.

After having a number of ladies contact me just recently about the subject wanting to learn about it and having questions and then this other question pop up, God has prompted me to make this podcast to share our understanding and what we see as truth.

We’re going to take todays teachings from Apostle Paul…

1 Corinthians 3

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. ² I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. ³ You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? ⁴ For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?

⁵ What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. ⁶ I planted the seed,Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. ⁷ So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.⁸ The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. ⁹ For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

¹⁰ By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. ¹¹ For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹² If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, ¹³ their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. ¹⁴ If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

¹⁶ Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? ¹⁷ If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

¹⁸ Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. ¹⁹ For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”^[a]; ²⁰ and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”^[b] 21 So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, ²² whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas^[c] or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, ²³ and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

I feel this chapter is very fitting to what we’re going to talk about today because Paul is talking to a church that is predominately full with gentiles who are getting lost in the worldly things and like you and I, they need guidance and grace from God.

3:1-2

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. ² I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.

What does this mean to you? I didn’t really quite understand the meaning of it until now having gone through what we have in CWIB over the past few months.

(Please listen to the podcast to get the story)

We had basically had some weird things happening in our community from a result of some New Age stuff leaking in. We had set boundaries from the beginning of our business but a gate had been made open that needed to be shut as a result of (and through no fault of their own) members having some new age stuff as part of their life and we needed to establish our boundaries and close the gate that shouldn’t have been open.

Now lets look at 10-15…

¹⁰ By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. ¹¹ For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹² If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, ¹³ their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. ¹⁴ If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

Question for you… Are you building a business on the foundations of Jesus? Or something that isn’t of God.

Finally Verse 16-17

¹⁶ Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? ¹⁷ If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

Lady, being a Christian woman in business and being God’s temple is an amazing thing. It’s something that should be guarded with everything because unfortunately there is a devil out there who wants to destroy you and who you are.

As business owners and the having the amazing mission that God has given us we need to be really vigilant about this stuff and how it can affect our businesses and know who we are in Christ and the authority we have having Him as our saviour.

I believe God has created CWIB to be a Holy place, He’s given us boundaries to protect our community from things that are not welcome and I want you to know that we take this stuff really seriously.

In the business space, there is a lot of woo-woo stuff. I know a lot of our members have been part of business groups where they have brought out crystals and started to do New Age stuff and have felt really uncomfortable about it and left the group. They know it goes against their values and have put good boundaries in place to protect themselves.

From having that gate come open in CWIB from passing things of what members where opening up to (not actually practised in the community), it caused a lot of weird things to happen in our community. Our members felt very lost in the beginning of the year, there was confusion, I had members contacting me saying how they weren’t quite feeling themselves and I felt that there was something going on that didn’t quite feel right, I knew it was a fight and so I asked God to open my eyes and show me what it was and what we needed to do to get back on track.

It was revealed to me through a prophet, who gave me a word from God about what had been happening in regard to the gate and the new age stuff and so I went into a lot of research and asked God to show me what it was so I knew what we were tackling and how we needed to go about handling it.

Just to confirm, no one has been seriously hurt. Everyone is ok, there was just something a little off.

God surely opened my eyes and what He showed me alright. I listened to testimonials from women who I know who gracefully shared with me their testimonies of how Jesus has delivered them from really bad things after being sucked into the new age. How deceitful it is and yet it’s disguised as good. Just because things are good doesn’t mean they are always from God.

So many people are searching for spirituality but they’re looking in the wrong places and stumbling into what they think is harmless stuff and suffering from it.

Why am I sharing this with you today?

Because I want you to be aware of what’s going on around you and so you can see things from Kingdom eyes, not worldly ones. So that you can protect yourself and keep your eyes on Jesus in your business.

If we’re going to build Kingdom businesses we need to be so switched on with this stuff, we need to create boundaries to protect ourselves from it and know that it’s ok to stand up for truth, your values and to cut yourself away from the stuff that isn’t from God.

How do we tackle this as Christian business owners without looking like a crazy person?

1. Know what it is… What are some of these new age stuff that we need to look out for and create boundaries from?

Yoga, NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), tarot and oracle card reading, crystals, reiki, mediation of the Hindu kind, any kind of black magic, moon watching, weird fire burning rituals, the list goes on.

Some of you may have completed courses in NLP and be asking yourself what’s wrong with it. Let me share with you and this is my opinion from the research I’ve done.

God invented the brain, He knows how it works. The founder of NPL is in fact part of a new age movement and is into hypnosis which in our books is not cool. We don’t believe that the mind should be manipulated at any time. The bible verses the people often refer to say that this stuff is ok is from Romans 12:2 but they take out one tiny section and miss the whole context that the scripture is written.

“but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” and say that it’s ok to do it.

Let’s take a look at the whole scripture…

12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Paul here is speaking about God renewing your mind so that you see things from a Godly, Kingdom prospective, it’s got nothing to do with what NLP is teaching. So then when you do come across things of the new age you can spot it a mile away and place protection and focus of God’s will.

We’re praying that God will open your eyes to what is truth and of God and come to your own understanding.

2. Ask God to show you what you need to cut off from your life that isn’t of His will.

These are some of the things I have done in CWIB and in my life to cut those things off to help us set boundaries….

+ We have updated what type of businesses we let into our CWIB Membership, updated our statement of faith and are completing detailed checks of membership applications.

+ On SM if people post stuff related to any of the above new age list I unfollow them and leave groups where I need to.

+ I make sure our marketing material has nothing representing crystals and new age things (which we’ve tried to do from the very beginning).

+ When people who do apply who are involved in some way of the list above. We try not to judge them but we try to educate and politely explain why they might be involved with the stuff so we can empower and mentor.

3. We make sure we pray over everything that we do in our businesses and place the authority Jesus has given us on every situation so the devil has no way of tripping us.

Ephesians 6:10-18

¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

¹⁸ And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

Pray over your marketing, meetings, finances, staff and team, website and everything you sent out. Place on your armour of God.

Now we’re not saying we’re perfect by any means, we are still learning every day, we still make mistakes, but know that it’s what we do once the mistakes have happened and how we deal with them.

We strongly encourage you to get into the Word, the true source, pray and ask our loving father to show you what He needs you to learn.

He knows what’s going on in your life and your business and know that we are here as your sisters to help empower and educate you in the best way we can.

Submit to Him, trust in Him and He will make your paths straight.