Sword Fighting

Sometimes, I feel like I am weak and defenseless against Satan’s lies. It’s hard to control thoughts that pop into my head, and even worse are bad dreams (or good dreams that are bad in the sense of removing my focus off of Christ). It can seem like a constant, exhausting fight to “set your mind on things above,” like we are commanded to do in Colossians 3. Paul also writes in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “… we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ,” but that is not always so easy to do.

One of the things that I have found helps me keep my thoughts in check is to take offense against Satan’s lies, refuting his whispers in my ear with Scripture. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joint and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” In Ephesians, when Paul is describing the armor of God, he refers to the Word of God as the “sword of the spirit.” A sword is an offensive weapon – it’s not like a shield that you use to reflect the enemy’s blows, but it is the way that you fight Satan back. In sports, a coach will say that defense wins games, but in battle offense is the way to defeat the enemy.

The ultimate example for how we should live our lives is Christ, and He modeled this when being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. The account is found in Matthew 4, where we see that Satan tried to tempt Jesus three times. Each time, Jesus responded with Scripture and was able to silence Satan – there is nothing that the devil can say against God’s Word.

Notice, though, that Satan didn’t go away the first time Jesus quoted the Word. It wasn’t a quick fix; although Satan has no power over Scripture, he might be persistent. In our lives, it might take more than one verse to conquer the lie that we are dealing with. It is important to remember, though, God’s promise in Isaiah 55: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” This is one of the most encouraging promises to me – the Word of God is powerful, not useless, and even if I can’t see its effectiveness I have full faith that it will have an impact, whether it is use in respect to a situation in someone else’s life or in my own personal life.

Like any other powerful weapon, though, you have to know how to use this Sword in order for it to be effective. One of the most basic answers is to actually read the Word. Even though this is something that kids start learning in Sunday School when they are three, there are a lot of people who don’t regularly practice this. I have been amazed by the number of college-aged people that I interact with who haven’t read the Bible; they only pick it up for Sunday mornings and maybe during the week to take it to a Bible study. One of the verses that Jesus quoted when he was tempted was Deuteronomy 8:3, which refers the hunger of the Israelites in the wilderness then the provision of manna as a teaching moment so that God could show the Israelites that “people do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” You should daily spend time in the Word; it should be something that, when you aren’t “filled up” on Scripture, you notice a change.

I am competitive by nature… about almost anything. I grew up playing every sport offered at my school, but it goes beyond athletic competitions to review games at school and even the “alphabet game” on road trips. Once, during my freshman year of college, we were playing Monopoly in a friend’s dorm room. My friend Amy beat me so badly that I began to get upset and unsociable. I had to leave the room to go down the hall to my own room, lock the door, turn on worship music, and read the Bible for twenty or thirty minutes until I could come back out. I hadn’t gotten my daily fill of Scripture, and I definitely felt the effects of it. Although this is a funny story (that my friends tease me about), and I wish that I wasn’t such a sore loser, it is cool in another way because I can see evidence of my reliance on the Word. I feel drained and more easily irritated when I haven’t been spending time in the Word, but at the same time I feel encouraged because it reveals the effect that the Word does have on me as well as my need for it.

There are many reasons we should read the Word. Joshua 1:8 says, “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” The Bible should be our foundation, our source of life. It’s important to know how God wants us to live and what He says about daily issues (friendships, relationships, politics, and so on). Also, it is a source of encouragement. The Word tells us what God has done in the past, and we can see His faithfulness through these things and know that He will continue that faithfulness in our own lives. The Bible is full of God’s promises to His people, as well, and He will fulfill these promises.

Besides just reading the Bible and just knowing that there is good stuff in there somewhere, we should know the Word by heart. Memorizing Scripture has been one of the most effective methods of taking control of my thoughts and defeating Satan in my own life. Instead of just knowing that the Bible says something about God creating me the way I am, I can quote Psalm 139:13-14 (“For You created me in my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”) and Isaiah 29:16 (“You turn things upside down, as if the powtter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘You did not make me’? Can the pot say of the potter, ‘You know nothing’?”). When there is a specific issue that I am dealing with in my life, I search Scripture to see what God says about it and I commit it to memory so that when Satan’s lies pop into my head, I am able to immediately put them down and remind myself what God says, which brings life instead of death.

When we studied using the Bible as a spiritual weapon in my Christian high school Bible class, my teacher compared our knowledge of Scripture to the sharpness of our weapon. He pointed out that Jesus quoted Scripture word-for-word, and his sword was sharp. In order to sharpen your blade, you should not only know basically what the verse or passage says, but know exactly what it says and where it comes from in order for your sword to cut even deeper. This is one of the hardest things for me. I grew up memorizing Scripture not only for church and school but also in Awanas, but I have forgotten some of it as the years have gone by. I have a knowledge of what the Bible says but I don’t always know the exact phrasing and the reference; my goal over the past couple of years has been to rememorize those passages so that they have even more power in my life. And I encourage you to speak it out loud and to quote Scripture in your prayers. Not only does it reinforce the truths in your mind, but it is a blow that Satan cannot return.

We are not defenseless against Satan’s lies! Our thoughts are not out of our control! Whether you are dealing with self-image or impure thoughts or ungodly habits, these issues can be conquered through Christ. Ephesians 1:19-20 says that the power from God for us who believe “is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.” There is freedom, and that freedom can be found in God and in His Word.