The Weapons of our Warfare

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

2 Corinthians 10:4

The Christian is the only one who is adequate to deal with strongholds of evil. Therefore, let us not waste our time with things that proved their inadequacy long ago. We have adequate weapons. There are four weapons of the Christian by which we can face the battles of life. With these, not only will he win in his individual life, but he will also be a tremendously powerful factor to solve them in society.

First, truth is the chief weapon of the Christian. The glory of Christianity is that it reveals reality. Jesus Christ let people know the facts about life. He unveiled reality and tore away the illusions and delusions under which men labor. You can watch him exposing the faulty thinking of the Pharisees, and all the other groups with which he came in contact, including his own disciples. Here, in the Word of God, in the truth as it is in Jesus, we have a powerful weapon.

The second weapon is love. I am not talking about the Hollywood slush that passes for love, nor of the bleeding heart tolerance of anything that comes along. I am talking about biblical love, the kind that requires no return from the individual loved. We must begin to show acceptance, courtesy, and concern without partiality or merit, without regard to the background or the color of skin or anything else about an individual, except that he or she is a man or woman loved by God for whom Christ died. That is love, and it is a mighty weapon. That is the way the early church won their way against kings and edicts. They won it by the demonstration of a warmth of acceptance that made their meetings such glorious occasions of fellowship that the whole world hung around, drooling, wanting to get in.

The third weapon is righteousness. It is what we call integrity. It is the refusal to yield to expediency. Paul writes to the Ephesians, You must no longer live as the Gentiles do (Ephesians 4:17b). You cannot go on excusing your weaknesses. You have all that it takes to be all that is needed. You must stop lying, stealing, cursing, and being harsh toward one another. But in its place, because righteousness is never just negative, you must show tenderheartedness, acceptance and forgiveness for Christ's sake.

The fourth weapon is a compound one: Faith-prayer. I put these together because they are almost indistinguishable. Faith is reliance on the direct activity of God in human life and Prayer is the request for that activity. These two things link together. Faith is the expectation that God has not dismissed society, nor does he exist remote from it, but he is involved in it, and is active in it. He is moving; he does things; he changes; he arrests; he thwarts; he overthrows; he builds up and exalts; and he does all this in answer and through the medium of prayer. What a mighty weapon is put in our hands in these days through this means!

Lord, I believe that you answer prayer, and that you alone are the One who is able to demolish strongholds and conquer the evil that is so insidious in our world and in my own heart. Help me fight the battle tirelessly, utterly depending on you.