Category: Devotionals

I once sat next to a soldier on a plane who had served in multiple combat zones. When I asked him what the single most important piece of his gear was, he did not hesitate for even a moment. “My vest,” he said. “That thing has saved my life more than once. You cannot fight well if your heart is exposed.”
You cannot fight well if your heart is exposed. That sentence has stayed with me because it is as true in the spiritual realm as it is on a physical battlefield.
The breastplate in ancient armor was designed for one purpose: to protect the chest, and specifically the heart, from a strike that would be immediately and fatally decisive. A soldier could lose an arm and survive. He could take a blow to the leg and keep fighting. But a wound to the heart ends the battle instantly. So the breastplate was not optional equipment. It was, alongside the belt, one of the two pieces no soldier went to war without.

I want to tell you a story about a pair of jeans and a youth camp that I will never forget.
I was preaching at a youth retreat many years ago. The Spirit was moving. The young people were engaged. I was fully in the moment, arms lifted, feet moving with the worship, completely absorbed in what God was doing. And then gravity did what it does when you have worn a pair of jeans with a waist two sizes too large and have no belt on. Let me simply say that the next few seconds produced more laughter than any illustration I had planned. And from that day forward, I have never underestimated the importance of a belt.
In the Roman soldier’s armor, the belt was the foundational piece. Not the most impressive-looking, but the most essential. Every other piece of armor depended on it. The sword hung from the belt. The breastplate was secured to it. The tunic was tucked into it to allow free movement in combat. Without the belt, everything else was loose, unstable, and ineffective. A soldier who had the most impressive armor but no belt would fall apart the moment the battle started.

David did not reach into the brook and grab the first stones his hand found. He selected them. Deliberately. Carefully. With the eye of someone who understood what the mission required.
Five smooth stones. Not rough ones. Not large ones. Not the most impressive-looking ones. Smooth ones. And when you understand why smoothness mattered, you begin to understand why God invests so much time and attention in the formation of the believer before He releases them into strategic spiritual warfare.
A rough stone does not fly straight. The jagged edges create drag as it moves through the air. It spins unevenly. It catches resistance and veers off course. In a moment that requires precision, a rough stone is a liability. Accuracy matters more than enthusiasm. A stone launched with tremendous force in the wrong direction is worse than no stone at all.

We spend a great deal of time in spiritual warfare conversations talking about what God has given us. His armor. His authority. His name. His word. These things are real and essential. But we rarely pause long enough to ask the prior question: what kind of vessel is God placing all of this in?
Jeremiah 51:20 is one of the most arresting verses in the Bible when you really look at it. God is not saying: I have given you a battle axe. He is saying: You are my battle axe. Not what you carry. Not what you say. Not what you wield. You. The instrument is not separate from the person. The weapon is the person.
This changes everything about how we think about preparation for spiritual warfare.

Standing is not the same as advancing. And understanding the difference is crucial to fighting well.
In Ephesians 6, after establishing that the believer is seated with Christ and after urging the believer to walk worthy of that position, Paul turns to the final posture: stand. And what is striking about the command is what it is not. It is not a call to charge the enemy’s territory. It is not a battle cry to take new ground. The repeated emphasis in this passage, “stand,” “withstand,” “having done all, stand,” is about holding what has already been won, not conquering new territory.
Why? Because the enemy’s primary goal is not to win the war outright. He cannot. Christ’s victory at the cross is final. The enemy’s realistic goal is to cause the believer to relinquish what has already been secured, to make you drop your weapons, lower your guard, accept a compromise, or simply walk away from ground you were supposed to be holding. He cannot possess you in Christ, but he will do everything possible to make you act as though he can.

There is a kind of spiritual authority that cannot be performed. It has to be lived.
Paul spends the first three chapters of Ephesians establishing the most glorious theology in all of scripture: the believer seated with Christ, chosen before the foundation of the world, sealed with the Holy Spirit, united in one body. And then in chapter four, without apology and without transition, he lands with both feet on the practical: “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
The language shifts from what God has done to how you must walk. Not to earn God’s favour, Paul is clear about that. But because the seated position must be expressed in a walking life. Your authority in battle is only as strong as your consistency in obedience. Power flows through purity. This is not a popular message in an era that has rightly emphasised grace, but it is a biblical one.

In 2019, I had the privilege of visiting the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. At street level, the city had felt chaotic. Cars everywhere. Swarms of people. Noise pressing in from every direction. I was tense without quite knowing why. But as I stepped onto the upper observation floor and looked out over the city, something remarkable happened. The same city. The same streets. The same movement below. But from up there, I was not anxious. I was calm. Still. Above it all. The chaos had not changed. My position had.
That is the picture Paul is painting in Ephesians 2:6. The believer is not fighting from street level, frantic and reactive, ducking and weaving through a battle whose outcome is uncertain. The believer is seated with Christ in heavenly places. The believer’s primary position is not on the ground looking up at the enemy. It is at the highest possible vantage point, looking down at a battle that has already been decided.

I once fell for a scam. I am not proud of it, but I tell it because it taught me more about spiritual warfare than most sermons I have heard on the subject.
It started with a phone call from someone claiming to be from my previous telephone provider. The voice was calm, professional, and warm. They knew just enough about my account to sound credible. They were offering me a better deal if I would simply verify a code they had sent. I had recently changed networks, so on the surface the call made sense. I had moved before because of a similar offer. I verified the code. Two days later, I started receiving email notifications of debit transactions I had not authorised. My account had been drained.

He works the night shift.
That is one of the most chilling details in Revelation 12:10. The accuser of the brethren accuses them before God day and night. He does not clock out. He does not take weekends. He is relentless, methodical, and personal. Memory by memory. Wound by wound. Failure by failure.
And here is his most sophisticated tactic: he disguises accusation as conviction. He knows that a believer who is genuinely sensitive to God’s voice will pay attention to a sense of conviction about sin. So he mimics it. He takes a past failure, an old wound, a moment of compromise, and replays it with enough spiritual weight that it feels like the Holy Spirit is drawing your attention to something important. But unlike genuine conviction, which draws you toward grace, accusation drives you into hiding. Conviction says “come back to the Father.” Accusation says “He doesn’t want you anymore.”

Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.” — James 1:14 (NIV) The enemy does not send generic temptation. He sends bespoke temptation, tailor-made for your specific weaknesses, your particular history, your…