When I used to be a child, my mom led my sister and me in a special morning ritual day-after-day before we headed off to highschool. We’d pretend to placed on our spiritual shoes-equipped with the readiness of the gospel of peace. We’d strap on an invisible belt of truth, a breastplate of righteousness, and an imaginary helmet of salvation, all before grabbing our sword of truth and our shield of religion.
Sometimes, truthfully, we’d roll our eyes on the routine. But looking back, this each day practice instilled inside me a deep sense of how I used to be meant to enter the world every day — prepared, equipped, ready, and guarded by God.
All of us have real spiritual armor from God to fight our very real spiritual enemy. The Apostle Paul points to this fact when he says, “Be strong within the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you’ll give you the chance to face firm against all of the strategies of the devil” (Ephesians 6:10-11).
This is the important thing to spiritual battle — it’s not our strength and it’s not our armor. The armor belongs to God. We are invited in Jesus Christ, through the ability of the Holy Spirit, and the love of the Father, to placed on God’s Mighty Strength — the identical strength that raised Jesus from the dead.
Most battle strategists will let you know that to experience victory, knowing who you’re fighting against is half the battle. The problem is, so often, we don’t know who Satan (or spiritual enemy) is, and subsequently we don’t recognize his attempts to thwart us. Often, we don’t even imagine we now have a spiritual enemy. Let’s have a look at what Scripture tells us:
1. The Enemy Is a Tempter
In Matthew 4, Jesus finds himself in a desert for 40 days. As you’ll be able to imagine, he was experiencing a wide selection of human emotions: hunger, exhaustion, and isolation.
At a time when Jesus was at his lowest, Satan tempted the Son of God to distrust the guarantees of God, the availability of God, and the ability of God.
Satan’s battle plan hasn’t modified much prior to now few thousand years because the identical temptations are dangled in front of us every day.
He tempts us to doubt God’s guarantees, power, and provision, and entices us to go after unhealthy or sinful means, to satisfy our souls’ longings. But we will stand firm, knowing that God is faithful.
2. The Enemy Is an Accuser
Revelation 12:10 offers an image of what’s to come back when the ultimate battle involves pass. It says, “Now have come the salvation and the ability and the dominion of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.”
This concept that the enemy of our soul is an accuser is a crucial one because, as others have said, there isn’t any activity at which he’s more expert. Satan likes to whisper his opinions about our weakness, our brokenness, our “not-enoughness,” or our “too-muchness.”
The enemy rigorously crafts his accusations to trigger our shame, in order that we don’t live freely, because the holy and blameless children of God we’re in Christ. But we will cling to this truth: those that look to God are radiant; their never covered in shame (Psalm 34:5).
3. The Enemy Is a Liar
One of essentially the most fitting descriptions of the enemy is that of a liar (John 8:44). His lies have especially been targeted to divide the body of Christ.
Satan spins false narratives that misrepresent the character of sisters and brothers in Christ to destroy our unity in Christ and undermine the image of God in each other.
The enemy knows that keeping us from unity can keep us disconnected from our purpose to make disciples of Jesus and love each other. But we will stay strong and unified and gracious to one another through the blood of Jesus.
4. The Enemy Is an Oppressor
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a parable of a farmer who plants seeds only to have weeds choke out the great and flourishing ones. The enemy uses various types of oppression to choke out the flourishing of God’s people.
In fact, any structure or system that subjugates, abuses, starves, traffics, and/or commodifies image-bearers, well, that’s all the time the enemy’s work. But in Jesus’ mighty name, we stand against the oppressive powers of darkness on this world.
It isn’t any coincidence that Ephesians six, where Paul tells us to placed on our spiritual armor, bookends Ephesians one, where Paul roots our identity in Christ:
“Even before he made the world, God loved us and selected us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided prematurely to adopt us into his family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. That is what he desired to do and provides gave him great pleasure.” (Ephesians 1:4-5).
That’s the muse of who you’re in Christ. You are chosen. You are dearly loved. You have been made holy. You are seen as blameless in Christ and thru Christ.
You haven’t any reason to fear the enemy’s tactics for this reason profound truth: you fight from and with God’s unmitigated love for you.
As you prepare for what’s ahead today, placed on your spiritual armor, God’s armor. You have been given every part it’s worthwhile to withstand the enemy’s attacks.
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