Bible,  Christian Life,  Discipleship,  Personal Growth,  Spiritual Disciplines,  Spiritual Warfare,  Truth

Spiritual Victory – Our Spiritual Sword

I receive a lot of emails every day. Fortunately, my email service filters out a lot of them and deposits them in the spam folder. I rarely look at this folder, but I just opened it to see what came in recently.

I won’t mention some of them, but the most recent offers me a $1000 gift card to Walmart. I almost laughed out loud. Scammers used to offer $100, but I guess they figured people weren’t taking the bait anymore. That one, along with about fifty more that’s come in over the last twenty-four hours were easy to spot—instant spam folder material, no doubt. In my normal inbox, I found another email urging me to take control of my credit. Obviously spam folder material, but it slipped past the Google sentry into my inbox.

I find most spiritual attacks deserve to be in a spiritual spam folder but somehow end up confronting me face-to-face. Satan is aware of how easy it would be to spot a spiritual threat if it looks like a spiritual threat. He is sneakier than that.

Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). Sin often looks good, innocent, or at least easily concealed from the outset. Ephesians 6:11 speaks of the craftiness of our spiritual enemy. God led Paul to use the Greek word methodia, often translated as schemes. It means a scheme intending to deceive. If we want to overcome Satan’s attacks, we must have security set up in our minds, so nothing slips by.

One aspect of that security must be the Word of God. We often fall to Satan’s schemes because we do not know the Scripture. Deception may be our enemy’s number one weapon in his arsenal, and if we’re not equipped, we’ll be easily sucked in.

One secret to spiritual victory is to know the Bible so well that when anything confronts you that’s not truth, you’ll recognize it instantly. Paul called the Bible the sword of the Spirit for a reason. Jesus used Scripture to defeat Satan in the wilderness, and so can we.

Consider these suggestions:

  • Find time each day where you spend a few minutes reading the Bible.
  • Consider putting a Bible app on your phone so Scripture is always easily accessible.
  • Find a good Bible reading program that will work for you. You might find one here: Top 11 Best Bible Reading Plans.
  • Memorize at least one Bible verse per week. I found a useful article about recommended Bible Memory apps. I’ll give some thought to my top list of verses Christians should memorize and share it in a future blog.
  • Listen to Bible reading while driving in your car or at other times when you might have “mental down times” (like standing in line at the grocery store, waiting on Sunday service to begin, cutting your grass, or waiting at the DMV – you might get through the whole Bible).

What will you do this week to begin consistently hiding God’s Word in your heart?

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