How do you prepare for spiritual warfare?

Warfare is inevitable, especially if you are serving God in any way. We must be prepared for it. How do you prepare?

When I was twenty years old, I became a missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators. The first thing I had to do was prepare. There were a series of steps to prepare to be a missionary including finish college, study linguistics at Wycliffe’s training school in Dallas, go to Jungle Camp in southern Mexico for survival training, live in a tiny village in Guatemala to practice living in a remote area with a total language barrier and then raise support to leave for the mission field.

During preparation time, my husband and I learned many practical strategies for learning an unwritten language and how to analyze it. We also learned how to act, dress and live in a completely foreign culture.

Once the training and preparation was done, we went to Guatemala to learn Spanish and then to work with a Mayan people group. Before we could begin translating the Bible, we had to learn their dialect so we could give them a written language.

Just as becoming a missionary had many steps for preparation, we must also prepare for spiritual warfare. In the same way, we need practical, proven strategies to use. Just as I didn’t have to discover everything on my own about living and working with Mayan people, we also don’t need to learn warfare on our own.

You can go into warfare with “trial and error,” learning as you go, but that’s the hard way to do it. Or you can use strategies God gave us in the Bible that have been proven by many believers over the years.

We must always be prepared for whatever comes our way. The enemy will strike at times when we are least prepared. Before you enter into spiritual warfare for yourself and your family, you must make sure a foundation is firmly laid in your life.

One way to prepare for warfare is through fasting. Throughout the Bible, the people who were sincere about serving the Lord spoke of and practiced fasting. Fasting doesn’t mean you have to completely go without food. You can fast certain foods or even fast from television or something else.

What do the following verses tell you about being prepared?

As you read each verse, ask the Lord to show you what you can learn from it and apply to your life.

• 1 Peter 1:13 (ESV): “Preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
• Isaiah 21:5 (NLT) reminds us to always be prepared, no matter what we are doing: “Look! They are preparing a great feast. They are spreading rugs for people to sit on. Everyone is eating and drinking. But quick! Grab your shields and prepare for battle. You are being attacked!”
• Jeremiah 1:17 (NLT): “Get up and prepare for action.”
• Jeremiah 46:3–4 (NIV): “Prepare your shields, both large and small, and march out for battle! Harness the horses, and mount the steeds. Take your positions with helmets on. Polish your spears, put on your armor.”
• 2 Timothy 3:16–17 (NLT): “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.”

The enemy has a strategy all laid out. We must also have a plan for how to resist and fight him. Thankfully, we don’t have to figure it out on our own. The Lord has given us strategies to win against the enemy. This whole book is filled with proven biblical strategies.

Before we went into the Kaqchikel (pronounced kakh-chee-kél) village in Guatemala to learn their language, we had to come up with a strategy that would make us most successful. Part of that strategy was choosing to act like we didn’t understand or speak Spanish, even though we had just become fluent in it. We knew if we spoke Spanish to them, they would want to practice their Spanish with us and we wouldn’t be able to learn their language.

I remember hearing the people talk about us saying in Kaqchikel, “These people are really stupid. They can’t speak our language and they can’t speak Spanish.” Even though we couldn’t speak much of the language, we could understand!

God’s strategies may at times seem as crazy as our plan as missionaries. However, we knew it was tested and proven by other missionaries, so we chose to follow it. If it worked for others, we knew it should work for us. In the same way, we need to choose to follow God’s strategies, even when they don’t make sense.

We should never put God into a box, thinking He only uses one or two strategies. Some of His ways are very unexpected and may seem crazy to us. Isaiah 55:8 (NKJV) says, “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord.”

Excerpted from Battlefield Strategies for Every Believer, a practical guide to spiritual warfare.

Learn more and get a free sample of it by clicking the above link.

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