Have you ever felt like the more you do for Christ, the more you suffer in other areas of your life? The enemy is most annoyed when we live a righteous life and he will do anything in his power to stop us in our tracks.
Thankfully for us, he doesn’t have any power over us when we know how to fight back the right way.
Here are four ways to fight your way through a spiritual battle…
The Shield of Faith
In preparing the Ephesian church for a spiritual battle, Paul wrote, “In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16).
Why would Paul describe faith as a shield? It might be because if the believer rightly understood their standing in Christ and that they are held firmly in the grasp of Jesus and the Father’s hands (John 10:28-29), then they might understand their faith is only as strong as the object of their Faith, and that is Jesus Christ.
Every believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1).
The Breastplate of Righteousness
This “bulletproof” vest is the shield of righteousness and a shield that the enemy cannot penetrate.
Maybe you don’t even know you have one, but the fact is that 2 Corinthians 5:21 states we have the very righteousness of Christ: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
If God is for you, what do you have to worry about if anyone is against you (Rom. 8:31)?
The Sword of the Word
Satan and his minions most likely know the Word of God better than we do, as Satan quoted Scripture quite easily when He tempted Christ in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11).
Actually, Satan misquoted the Bible or took verses out of context, and today the subtle enemy is still doing it, even from behind a few pulpits.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to the Christian since “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). Therefore, we need to take up “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17).
If you memorize or hide God’s Word in your heart, it can help you resist temptation and possibly not sin, as the psalmist wrote, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).
The Helmet of Salvation
We Christians must use caution with what is allowed into the “eye gate” or into our minds because it can cause us to stumble into sin, which is why God gave us the armor of God (Eph. 6:10-18).
We want to protect what goes into our minds, so we must “take the helmet of salvation” and then put it on (Eph. 6:17), “for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-5).
Overcoming your spiritual battles
I haven’t written anything new because the Bible gives us all we will need to prepare for and then engage the invisible enemy.
Ephesians chapter six equips the believer, but it is up to the believer to take up the full armor of God and to do it before the enemy attacks.
God will not put it on for us. “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm” (Eph. 6:13).
