Tony Evans - Heaven's Help On Earth
Our series is called "Reclaiming Your Spiritual Authority". The reason why we call it your spiritual authority is because part of our goal through this series, I want you to get a handle on up there and how it affects down here so that you can exercise your authority that's been delegated to you as a believer in Jesus Christ within the context of his will. In the context of our time together... actually, beginning next week we're gonna go to court, because what you're gonna discover is that most of your battles spiritually are won and lost in court, 'cause there's a courtroom in heaven. But if you're not familiar with order in the court, and you don't understand how the courtroom works and how verdicts are decided and how lawsuits are distributed, lawsuits against you, seeking to take away your rights as kingdom citizens, you may not even show up at court and therefore be in contempt of court.
When you understand that Satan claims legal rights over your life and my life, over the things that are involved, when you come to understand as we will look at that there is a book, a private, personal book with your life written on it, and he's seeking to erase things out of it, therefore taking what is legitimately yours. But see, if you don't, if I don't, if we don't understand how it works up there, then you're gonna be fighting the wrong foe in the wrong way. You're gonna be fighting people, you'll be fighting children, you'll be fighting mates, you know, people racially, you'll be fighting the wrong war. Everything visible and physical is preceded by that which is invisible and spiritual. Therefore, if something needs to be addressed, corrected, reclaimed in the visible physical, you must address the invisible spiritual.
If you do not address the invisible and spiritual, then you will be asking the physical to take care of the physical. But since it didn't start there, it started in the invisible spiritual realm, you will be addressing a symptom and not a root cause. But if I can ever get me, you, us ( I'm talking to us all) to understand that that's how the world works, it works from there to here. When the apostle Paul wanted to explain the realm from which everything that you and I partake of emanates, he introduced a phrase. This is not the central scripture, but I do want you to understand the phrase. The phrase Paul uses in the book of Ephesians is the phrase "Heavenly places". Heavenly places. That means the spiritual realm.
So, heavenly places is the spiritual realm that affects. It's the Washington DC of our existence that affects you down here, me down here. He says in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3, "All of your blessings are in heavenly places". He says in chapter 1 verse 20 and 21 that Jesus was raised and seated in heavenly places. It says in chapter 2 verse 6 that you and I have been raised with him in heavenly places. It says in Ephesians 3 verse 10 that the angels operate and the church operates in heavenly places. It says in chapter 6 verse 12 of Ephesians that there is spiritual warfare in heavenly places. So heavenly places is where it's at, which is the spiritual realm. Because everything visible and physical is preceded by that which is invisible and spiritual, so if you want to address the physical visible fruit, you must understand and address the invisible spiritual root.
What God has given you and me is the opportunity to participate in the process. In Daniel chapter 10, Daniel been praying. He's prayed in chapter 9. I invite you to read all of chapter 9 during your week together prior to next week. That's his prayer in light of what was happening in the world in which he lived. He started off in Babylon, he's now in Persia, he's trying to figure things out. As he tries to figure things out, he goes to God for help. As you must, as I must do in the crises that you and I and we collectively face.
Let me begin with verse 10 and read down to verse 14. "Then behold, a hand touched me", this is after he prayed, "And set me trembling on my hands and knees. He said to me, 'O Daniel, man of high esteem, understand the words that I am about to tell you and stand upright, for I have now been sent to you.' And when he had spoken these words to me, I stood up trembling. Then he said to me, 'Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard. And I have come to respond to your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days. Then behold Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia. Now I come to give you an understanding of what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision pertains to the days yet future.'"
Daniel has been praying to God. He wanted to get clarity of the circumstances, and I know you know what it is to have things go awry in your life, in my life. And the question is, What's going on? 'Cause it doesn't make sense. You don't understand it, you don't want it, you don't like it, and he is seeking for clarity. Because when you are confused, when you don't know what to do, you need clarity on what to think and what to do, how to act, how to react. Interesting, we're told, "On the day you prayed, the answer was sent".
Don't miss that. On the day you cried out to God, bam, God responded. But he says there was a delay for 21 days. And he says, the reason why your prayer was not answered is that the Prince of Persia intersected the correspondence. Now, who in the world is the Prince of Persia? Well, we know who the Prince of Persia is, 'cause we know who Michael is, and Michael is called the prince. Michael is an archangel. Michael is a lead angel in charge in heaven, that's who Michael is, but he's called the prince. Heaven said, "We had to send Michael to help a brother out. Because the Prince of Persia was blocking the answer from getting to you, Daniel".
If Michael is a prince, and he's an angel, then the Prince of Persia is an angel. But the only angels that would seek to thwart the purposes of God are demons. Demons are angels who have rebelled against God. Their job is to block heaven's answers to your legitimate request. You and I have prayer requests hanging up there in the heavenly places, not because God hasn't answered, but because they have been interfered with and therefore unreceived. But what you need to know is you can affect how quickly the message and the email gets through. 'Cause if you don't know that, if nobody tells you that, then you gonna just be fiddling with your phone not knowing that it's your problem on your end that's keeping you from getting an answer to the prayer that you need clarity about.
So, in order for you to understand this blockage that occurs in the spiritual realm, even though Daniel is in the physical realm, 'cause he needs physical help with physical understanding about a physical people in a physical incarceration. He needs practical answers, but there's a spiritual delay. That means we gotta go back. Now, I could spend hours on this. We don't have hours for this, but I do wanna summarize it for those of you who may not be as familiar with the angelic conflict, 'cause we got a battle between angels. You got the Prince of Persia, and you got Michael the Prince, and Michael the Prince is trying to dislodge the answer from the Prince of Persia that's blocking the answer. So you got angels fighting that you don't see about something you ask about. But if you don't know how up there works, and you don't care about how up there works, all you know is you're not getting the email and a text on your spiritual life.
Another comment before I explain and summarize the angelic conflict is this, he's called the Prince of Persia. The demon is called the Prince of Persia, which means he has a sphere of operating. He's got a realm of what he's been put in charge of. The Bible says that every believer has an angel assigned to them, okay? Every believer has a angel assigned to him. So you don't see your Michael, you don't see your angel, but every believer has an angel. Well, every realm has a demon. There are demons that hover over the United States of America, and there are demons that hover over your family, and there are demons that hover over your life.
Now, you do have an angel whose job it is to fight the demon, if you're cooperating with your angel. So let's understand the angelic conflict so that we understand the root and the fruit of this battle that you and I are engaged in. According to Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, first 12 verses of Isaiah 14, Satan rebels against God. He establishes a coup de'tat. He rebels against God, and he rebels against the rule of God, and as he says, "I want to be like the most high," meaning, I wanna establish my own kingdom, okay? I don't wanna be part of God's kingdom, and he takes one-third of the angels with him. Scripture says one-third of all the angels. There's millions and millions of angels went with the coup. He is taken to court. It's hard to have a coup against an omniscient being, okay? How're you gonna have a coup against somebody who knows everything? But he tries. So he has this coup, and he is taken to court.
Now, I'll explain court next week, but he's taken to court, and he's found guilty. Matthew chapter 25 verse 41, he's found guilty, and hell is prepared for Satan and his angels. So the reason you have hell was the judgment in the court by God against Satan's rebellion with the one-third of his angels. According to Luke chapter 10 verse 18, Jesus says, "I was there when Satan was cast from heaven like lightning". Now, the reason why Luke 10:18 is so important is 'cause Jesus says he was there, which means he existed before his birth, so you know his deity. "I was there, I was in court, and Satan fell from heaven like lightning," boom. But he didn't fall from heaven to hell, he fell from heaven to earth then hell. Hell is yet future for him and those angels, most of those angels. Some were already sent but not Satan. Because what God decided to do was to create a lesser creature, a lower creature.
Psalm 8 says, "And he made man and crowned him and made him lower than the angels". He created a lesser creature. Now, the question is why? He created a lesser creature to demonstrate what he could do with less when less obeyed him than he could do with more angels when they were in rebellion against him. So you and I were put on planet earth to demonstrate to hell, Satan, and his angels the power of God over him when we were in link with God, which is why Satan had to get rid of man in the Garden of Eden. He had to get rid of this person or persons who were put on earth to interfere with his establishment of his kingdom. But what God decided to do (now, this is critical) is he would not deliver men until and unless the men were operating on his program. If they chose to operate (eat the fruit), if they chose to operate with Satan, he would let 'em go, because he created us with agencies of free choice. But if we chose to operate with him, he would back us up.
So one of the reasons that many of our prayers are still hung out there in space is 'cause we're operating with the wrong angel, and therefore, God is not free to ignite Michael to interfere in our affairs, because while we talk to God, we hang out with the demon of Persia. He says you've been blocked, because there is a conflict of there. Democrats and Republicans, there is a conflict in the seat of power that is interfacing and interfering with getting the word that was sent right away, to you right away. So a lot of us are being blocked because of this battle of there that involves us. Notice something. When Daniel prayed, he inserted himself into the conflict, okay? It wasn't until he prayed that the battle is being identified. Now, I'll explain it in a moment, but he sitting fine until he prays, but the reason he has to pray is things are not fine, okay?
So, Daniel has prayed. Prayer inserts him into the angelic conflict, 'cause now we got angels fighting, but we got angels fighting over an earth problem. And there are angels fighting over your issues. You see people, but you gotta see angels. You gotta see what's behind the scenes in the spiritual realm if you're gonna be able to deal with what's in the physical realm that you don't like, don't want, and that the angel has robbed you of, so he inserts himself. So look at the insertion. He's on his knees, he prays, that's all, chapter 9 is the prayer. He gets on his knees, and he prays. Heaven, the very word that the very time you opened your mouth, God responded. So there was heaven's response at the prayer and hell's response at the prayer, 'cause the Prince of Persia is sent when he prays.
Prayer is God's divinely authorized methodology to access heaven's authority for earthly intervention. The goal of prayer... here it is, here's the goal, is to release God's will on earth. It is to draw heaven down. "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". It is to draw down the will of God. Now, that's where your book comes in when we get to that sermon. You have a book that outlines your life with God's purpose, okay? You draw that down so that you wind up living out that purpose. Satan wants to block that so you don't get to your purpose, so that you're all tangled, I'm all tangled, we're all tangled into all the chaos that is surrounding us. And so it gives God legal permission to interfere in earthly affairs.
Notice the word legal. Remember I told you we're gonna talk about court? There must be legal authorization for divine intervention, okay? That's why the Bible says, "You have not because you ask not". You have not authorized it. Now, certain things God's gonna do 'cause he's God, and he can do what he chooses to do, but there's a whole bunch of stuff he won't do until given okay to do it. He has to legally be engaged in the process, because he gave it over to man. So it allows him to invoke heaven's influence on this planet. It's like a passport that you use to go to another country. You use the passport to give you legal access to that environment. Prayer gives you legal access to God's environment to intervene on your behalf in history, okay?
Now, that leads to one final thing that I wanna bring up for today. He says in verse 11, "O Daniel, man of high esteem, understand the words I'm about to tell you and stand upright". Okay. "O Daniel, man of high esteem". In other words, we think highly up here about you. We think well of you up here. When your name comes up in heaven, we pause, 'cause Daniel's not an ordinary man, he is extraordinary man, he's held highly. When you go to buy a house, what they wanna know is what's your credit score. They wanna know what's your credit score. 'Cause like, if you're below 600, you probably not getting that loan. He said, "Daniel, when we look at your credit score, you're over 800. Daniel, when we look at your credit score, you got clout up here. You got some clout up here, 'cause when your name comes up, we pause and pay attention. Michael, your assigned angel is ready for instruction".
One of the reasons why Satan can steal from us and we don't get to reclaim it is 'cause when we pray and God looked at the credit score, he sees we don't pay our bills, we don't worship properly, we don't serve, we aren't committed, we just a pew member, we aren't engaged in the will of God and the work of God, we're not disciples, we just attend church, we're just Christians on our way to heaven, but he can't do anything with us on earth. So God knows, "If I give you your blessing, if I give you the stuff you're asking for, if I come alongside and help you, you gonna hide it. You ain't gonna use it for my glory and for my kingdom. You gonna hide it".
In other words, we've checked your score, and we don't trust you. The reason he got an answer in heaven is because he says, "We trust you, Daniel. You held highly up here". If you wanna reclaim what the enemy has stolen for you, you better up your credit score. You better demonstrate to God that I'm not just here to go to church, I'm here to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I'm not gonna be ashamed to be a Christian, I'm not gonna be ashamed to be identified with the Savior, I'm not gonna be ashamed to serve the body of Christ and to be a witness in the community. I am not gonna be ashamed. Raise my credit score.