When we think about picking up a sword, we often think about attacking; however, scripture says to pick up the sword so we can stand. The Sword of the Spirit is the word of God. It is the right-now word that meets us where we are. When we’re under attack, the word of God is there to strengthen us.

Often we feel our spiritual fight is unfair; that we are always in the position of defending ourselves against the attack of the enemy. The enemy isn’t fair; he attacks every area of our life. But be encouraged that we are strong in the Lord, and he has given us spiritual weapons to fight back. We have the shield of faith that extinguishes the flaming arrows of the evil one. Faith in this context means trusting God when we don’t have answers. Often we focus on why we’re fighting the fight, but faith means trusting God in the fight when we don’t have answers.

In Joshua 3, the children of Israel are in a great battle. They are in a spiritual fight. God was with them and had delivered them from Egypt. But, they could not get delivered from Egypt within them. They couldn’t defeat the attitude, the mindset of fear, anxiety, and idolatry that were in Egypt. There was an entire generation that did not experience the promises of God because they could not defeat the spiritual battle.

There is nothing wrong with owning possessions, just as long as our possessions do not own us. The second guest, who recently purchased five yokes of oxen, let busyness get in the way of attending the banquet. There is nothing wrong with being busy, unless busyness steals what God wants to do in our lives. Finally, the third person blames their spouse as the reason why they cannot come. There is nothing wrong with relationships, but we don’t want relationships to stand in the way of everything that God has for us.

We are commanded to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, and mind. We must do so in order to live a life fully surrendered to the Lord. The word of God, his plans, and purposes will change the way we live. Our heart is essential in our faith and when it comes to our salvation. We are made righteous through our faith, through a believing heart. That’s why the enemy is working to take ground in our heart, to deceive or mislead us to harden our heart, to hurt our heart, to break our heart so that he can have our heart for his purposes.

Many of us may feel like we’ve been in exile this year. We may have thought we’d be in a better place by October 2020, just like the children of Israel who felt discouraged in this scripture. Psalm 85 was likely written after the Israelites returned from exile back to Jerusalem after 70 years. They thought that they could return to a pre-exilic state, but there was no going back. Nothing was going to be normal. Similar to the Israelites, we too may be facing disappointment.

Ephesians 6 tells us to be spiritually strong and put on the full armor of God because our struggle is against the authorities of darkness and not of this world. If we are to be victorious, we have to put on this armor. In Ephesians 6, Paul provides wisdom about how we can be spiritually strong.

If we can stay together and stay committed to the faith and to our spiritual practices, then what the enemy has meant for evil, God will turn around for good. We can come out on the other side of this pandemic, this trial, this year, spiritually strong. There is nothing our God can’t do. Let’s be spiritually strong and do what God has asked us to do: let’s walk in obedience, speak words of faith and stay in a place where our hearts are drawing near to God, then we will become spiritually strong.