Strategies To Defeat

“Strategies To Defeat”

Ephesians 6:10-11 NLT

A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.

We all have experience with putting together different strategies for various things we’ve been involved with through our years of life.  There are many different situations and activities in which we put much effort into strategizing. 

In school, we may develop certain strategies to accomplish things in our classes or extra-curricular activities. 

At our job, we may come up with certain strategies to do the work better and build up to more promotions. 

We become involved with various sports and develop strategies to not only work together as a team, but to defeat our opponents during games.

In different hobbies we have, we can develop certain strategies to learn more and get better at what we learn.

When we buy a home, we can develop strategies to make the house better and build equity.

There are so many different ways in life that we become involved with developing strategies to do different tasks for various reasons, whether professionally or personally.  The list could be endless!

As we consider different strategies that we put our time and energy into through the years, I cannot help but to think how much more effort we often put into the strategies of earthly matters and how much less we focus on the strategies of growing in our relationship with God by defeating our enemy, Satan.  How much time and energy do we invest each day by reading God’s Word and developing mental and spiritual strategies to defeat the flaming arrows of what Satan throws at us? 

I so often find myself becoming defeated because I have put so much time and effort into other worldly things in my life and much less time and effort being smart about how the enemy might attack me.  I don’t build my spiritual ammo up to defeat Satan. 

What would our spiritual lives look like if we put much more effort into being prepared daily for spiritual battle?  Paul meant it when he told us to be prepared.  We should heed that encouragement and always be prepared for the strategies the enemy throws at us.