Trying to figure out why we are so stressed with fear and anxiety can be difficult, especially when we have been battling it so long that we even forget where it all began. Our message this week uses a number of scriptures that help us to figure out that if fear, worry, and anxiety isn’t a physical issue with someone or something then chances are we have a spiritual battle going on in our lives. Let’s look at one of those scriptures.

2 Corinthians 10:3-4 (EASY) It is true that we live in this world as humans. But we do not use our human ideas to fight against what is wrong. 4 It is like we are fighting in a war, but we do not use human weapons. Instead we use God’s weapons. Those weapons are powerful enough to destroy the enemy’s strong places. We use those weapons to destroy people’s wrong ideas.

Many of our spiritual battles don’t have a physical cause but they are the result of a common enemy we all battle as believers and his name is satan. He is a defeated enemy that Jesus took down when he went to the cross and died a criminal’s death for you and me so we wouldn’t have to be subjected to satan’s schemes. As a child of God, we are natural enemies of him and though we are protected by God – satan still wages war with us in various ways. But we haven’t been left without weapons to defeat satan in our everyday lives and God wants us to draw on Him in order to win the victory over the enemies schemes.  

Fear, worry, and anxiety are just one of many ways satan looks to cause disruptions in our life. They can be troubling annoyances to us because we needlessly become paralyzed by the effects of these mental battles. Last week we talked about two things we need to do when we are up against some form of fear, worry and anxious thoughts that cycle themselves over and over. We said that we first pray a prayer of faith asking God to help us overcome whatever the issue is in Jesus’ name and then secondly, we thank God for the results no matter what we are feeling at the time.

That combination brings us to the cross asking for his grace for our needs and then acknowledges that we are grateful for his goodness and mercy. Those are God honoring places for us to be when life gets difficult.

Today we are going to be looking at a more proactive way at battling satan through the armor God has supplied to us in the descriptions we read in Ephesians 6. The armor has five primary pieces that points us to a spiritual description of how they represent God’s provisions for us when we battle satan.

1. Belt of truth – represents our trustworthiness in speaking truth to others as a part of our Godly testimony.
2. Shoes of peace – represents our sure footed strength in God which brings peace in the midst of temptations to be fearful, worrisome, or anxious.
3. Shield of faith – represents our need to use our faith as a shield to protect us against satan’s fiery arrows of doubts and fears. Our shield of faith also bolsters our confidence in God’s provisions and starve all doubts and fears of life.
4. Helmet of salvation – represents every believer need to guard his mind against the enemy who uses doubt, despair, and discouragement to bring on the fear and anxiety we see everywhere today.
5. The sword or word of God – represents the believer’s best offensive weapon. Jesus himself used this when at the physically weakest moment of his life, after fasting for 40 days and nights, he rebuked satan with the word of God. The sword of the Spirit for us is the Bible and we use the powerful scriptures found within to defeat Satan’s lies and attacks.

These are just some of the places we’ll be visiting in our discussion at Able Church this week but remember for each of us, our starting point in being equipped to do battle is to know who our commander and chief is and his name is Jesus.