American Sniper: Lessons in Spiritual Warfare

This is an except from my latest book American Sniper: Lessons in Spiritual Warfare.

The main character of American Sniper is a Texas-born redneck named Chris Kyle. The film opens with a scene of Kyle perched on a rooftop in the city of Fallujah, Iraq. U.S. troops have been told that the city was ordered to be evacuated and any military-aged men they find are assumed to be enemy combatants, until proven otherwise. Kyle is checking out the path of a U.S. military convoy through the scope of his sniper rifle. He sees a man on a rooftop in the distance talking on a cell phone. The man appears to be watching the convoy, which Kyle reports to his command through his headset. The man then disappears from the rooftop and a few moments later, a woman and a young boy exit the doorway of the same building and begin walking toward the convoy. Kyle reports the woman and boy to command, and notes that the woman is not swinging her arms as she walks and that she appears to be carrying something. Kyle watches through the scope as the woman removes something from her cloak and hands it to the boy and he realizes it’s a grenade. He reports what he sees and again gets the green light to shoot, but his marine guard warns him that he’ll be sent to prison for shooting a child if he's wrong. The film then cuts away and the next 20 minutes are vignettes of Kyle growing up as the son of a religious father who stressed the ever-present threat of evil, the virtues of aggression, and the supremacy of the hunt.

As a child, Chris learned to watch over his younger brother, Jeff. When someone picked on him, Chris came to his defense and in one scene, he gave the bully a beating he wouldn’t forget. As an adult, he spent most of his time riding bulls, drinking beer, chasing pretty girls and getting into fights.  In the same way that Chris drifted from one misadventure to another, many Christians find themselves drifting, spiritually. We go to church on Sunday, read our Bibles, and try to avoid getting into trouble, but inevitably, trouble seems to find us. We wrestle with various problems and seem to make little progress, no matter what measures we try.

The first seven years of my life as a Christian I traveled down a dozen different paths leading nowhere. Though I felt at the time I was a passionate believer, I had very few victories over the enemy. I lost more spiritual battles than I won. And perhaps more importantly, I never felt a great sense of significance; I felt like I was just another believer. In many ways I was drifting spiritually, with no real course or destination in mind, other than getting into heaven when I died.

No child dreams of growing up to be insignificant. We all want to do something great. God doesn’t create us to be ordinary. He’s placed a desire for significance in our hearts—a desire to do something to change the world for the better. It’s apparent early in the film that Chris Kyle knew he was destined to do something extraordinary.

The film cuts away to a scene of Chris and his brother watching TV. They saw the news of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Chris was infuriated that U.S. citizens were being attacked and felt compelled to do something about it. His anger over the attacks compelled him to visit a Navy recruiter’s office. The recruiter suggested he might be interested in the SEAL program and handed him a pamphlet, but Kyle remarked that he wasn’t much of a swimmer. The recruiter took the pamphlet out of his hand and said it wasn’t for most men. Kyle grabbed the pamphlet back and proudly replied “I’m not most men.” He didn’t envision himself in a routine job as a sailor. That would be too safe. He set his aim high and endured the brutality of Navy SEAL training.

A new Christian has very little that they bring to the spiritual battlefield from the world. We learn all kinds of ways to defend ourselves and attack our enemies as we go through life, but the Apostle Paul taught that the weapons of the believer’s warfare are not like the weapons and tactics of the physical world. Spiritual weapons are spiritual in nature and it’s only these weapons that can be used effectively against spiritual strongholds. Because spiritual weapons are so different from the weapons we’re familiar with, they require special training and practice before they can be used effectively. My introduction to spiritual weapons was illustrated by the following dream:

Dream
In the dream, I drove my car to a pawn shop with my children. I took some old things that I owned into the pawn shop and traded them in for a strange type of handgun. My kids waited a long time for me to come out. I left the shop with my new gun, but didn’t want my kids to see it, so I walked around behind my car, then took it out and examined it. The gun had a laser sight built into it. It was wide, with a round bulge that seemed to be for the ammunition, though it wasn’t a revolver and it didn’t have a magazine. I didn’t know how the ammunition was loaded. I began trying to figure out how it worked and decided to aim it across the street at a vacant lot. The gun fired two rounds, which I wouldn’t have known, except that I saw puffs of dust rise from the ground where I pointed the gun. It made no sound and didn’t seem to have a trigger, but seemed to fire by my thoughts. I put it in the trunk of my car and that was the end of the dream.

InterpretationIn the dream, I traded in a bunch of things I had obtained from the world for a new, spiritual weapon. I believe this speaks of acquiring a new way of thinking and living. I had to leave behind the way of thinking I had acquired from the world and learn the way of thinking used in the kingdom of God. I also had to learn how to defend myself and wage an offensive attack differently. I had no idea how my new gun fired. I didn’t yet understand how spiritual weapons operate, though I had obtained one that could be used effectively, once I was trained to use it.

You can read more by clicking the link to American Sniper: Lessons in Spiritual Warfare, or click on the image below.

My guest blogger today is Steve Harmon.

My sister had Neuroblastoma as an infant. There were 13 lumps on her body. My mom was a new believer at the time. The church she was going to didn't believe in healing. My dad's brother talked to her and said that his church believed that God heals today. His pastor prayed for her and the baby over the phone. When she hung up the phone, my mom felt the sensation of heat going over her head and down her torso. From that point on, she knew the baby would be healed. She told her mother over the phone that Jesus was going to heal her daughter. There was this silence on the other end. She said to my mom, "Cynthia, can you put your husband on the phone?" My dad got on the phone and she said, "You need to watch Cynthia, she's losing it."

One day, at LA children's hospital, my mother told the doctor that the baby would be healed by Jesus. The doctor said, "Mrs. Harmon, you don't understand how serious this is." My mother was praising God down the hospital hallways. When they left the hospital, they parked their car in a parking structure far away from the hospital. They were leaving the structure and came to the arm gate that requires a token to leave. As they were pulling up, a black man was sitting on the wall right next to the arm. My dad is thinking he is going to ask for money. As they pull up, instantly, the guy asks my dad, "How's your kid?"

My dad looked at him puzzled. And said, "Huh?"

The guy replies, "Well, you don't have to worry about a thing because the Lord is going to heal your baby." My mom's heart skipped a beat,  and my dad blanked out because he really wasn't a believer.

My mom said to herself when they left, "I think that was an angel."

A few days after, my grandmother noticed the lumps were getting smaller. Within two weeks they were completely gone. There was no trace left. They did every test to check. It was so healed, it looked like it never existed. My dad asked the doctor what happened. The doctor replied, "I guess you just call it a miracle" and shrugged his shoulders. On the paperwork, the final note said, "Unexplained."

My Interview With Mark Rayner

Mark Rayner interviews me on the first episode of the new SBNR Show. We begin with a discussion about my early years as an atheist, how I became a believer and how God called me to healing the sick. Next we talk about keys to success in healing, and what it means to operate in the supernatural from a place of rest. We move on to a discussion about why anyone can see in the spirit and I share a few of the craziest things I've seen God do. We wrap up with a look at some future book projects me and my friends are working on. The SBNR Show is hosted here.

Lee Stoneking - My Resurrection

Lee Stoneking addresses the UN General Assembly and, after sharing his resurrection testimony, proposes that Jesus is the solution to world violence.

Can Everyone See in the Spirit?

This is an excerpt from my latest book Seeing in the Spirit Made Simple.

Although many good teachers have taught that seeing in the spirit is a gift that is only given to a few people, the thesis of my book is that seeing in the spirit is really an innate ability that we all possess, which for many of us simply needs to be developed through exercise. (I realize that some people are born with a fully-developed ability to see in the spirit, while others are not. I explain why this is so in the book.)

Visions, dreams and trances are but a few of the ways in which God speaks to us. Although  some of us find it hard to recognize His voice as He speaks through visual language, the problem isn't that God is not speaking. The problem is that He is a Spirit, who speaks in a spiritual language that is received by our spirit, and many of us have not developed our ability to perceive this spiritual language yet. Most of us have had our spiritual senses dulled by sensory input from the physical world, which makes it difficult to recognize input from the spiritual world. The key to perceiving and understanding spiritual communication is having our spiritual senses trained and refocused.

I believe everyone receives revelation from God, including revelation in the form of visions, but many of us are not aware that what we’re  seeing is from Him. We tend to attribute it to our imagination, or we pay no attention to it at all. The problem for many of us is our awareness and sensitivity to God's voice.

Just as our physical body is aware of things happening in the physical world continually, our spirit perceives things happening in the spiritual world continually. Any spirit being can interact with any other spirit being at any time, and these interactions never cease, even though we are often unaware of them. And it is our awareness, or where our mind is focused, that determines our perception of what is happening in both the physical and spiritual worlds.

When the physical body dies, the spirit and soul interact with other spirits and see things in the spirit world with ease. It is not as if at death, our spirit is suddenly empowered with abilities it never had before. It is simply that at the point when our physical body dies, its shell is removed, revealing the true nature of our spirit and soul as they always were. The spiritual body has no difficulty seeing in the spiritual world, and communicating with spiritual beings, but when the physical body is out of the way, it's easier for the soul to focus on the realities of the spiritual world. Every spiritual being has the ability to see in the spiritual world.

If we are spirit beings that are created with spiritual eyes that can see in the spiritual world, then the problem with seeing in the spirit is not that we don’t have the visual apparatus to do it, or that we lack the proper anointing or a spiritual gift. The problem is that our soul has not been conditioned to correctly perceive what our spiritual eyes are already able to see. The goal of this book is to help believers become more aware of what is happening in the spiritual world.

For more information, check out the book Seeing in the Spirit Made Simple.