6. War
I was so naïve. I thought that as long as I was theologically knowledgeable, biblically literate, and called and positioned by God as a leader in his church, I would be okay. I entered ministry with a peacetime mentality. I had no concept of the temptations I would face. I had little awareness of the attacks that would be made against my character, my gifts, my vision, and my methodologies. I was unprepared for the battle, so at moments I gave way to things I should’ve resisted. I listened to people I should not have granted influence. I came to the point where I felt discouraged and beaten down, so discouraged at one point that nothing seemed more attractive than leaving the ministry leadership position I had once felt joyfully honored to be called to. Leaders unaware of the spiritual war that is ministry begin to minister with kidnapped hearts, distorted vision, and misguided motivations. They may have changed quite significantly, casualties of spiritual war, but be blind to the degree to which they are different.
Leadership in the church of Jesus Christ is not just a battle for theological faithfulness, gospel purity, and methodological integrity; it is also always a war for the heart of every leader. Many more leaders fail because they have lost the battle for their heart than because of shifts in their theology or view of the gospel. In fact, it is often the case that theological wandering is but a visible symptom of a heart that has already wandered. I want to think with you about what it looks like for a leadership community to prepare for spiritual war and to do the work that God has called them to do with a wartime mentality.
Life between the “Already” and the “Not Yet” Is War
It is splashed across almost every page of Scripture, and because it is, it is a sobering warning to each one of us. Life, right here, right now, really is a moment-by-moment spiritual war. Scripture handles spiritual warfare differently from the way many of us do. We often speak of it as something unusual, weird, scary, and dramatic. We think of demon-possessed bodies flailing on the floor, people frothing at the mouth—you know, the stuff movies are made of. Now, I don’t want to negate the fact that there are dramatic and physical moments of spiritual warfare, but I want to emphasize that the Bible normalizes rather than dramatizes spiritual warfare. Because we live in a fallen world, because there really is an enemy, Satan, because there is evil and temptation around us all the time, and because remaining sin still leaves us susceptible to attack, we live every day in a war zone. Take time to read the passages below that speak in a variety of ways of the presence and normalcy of that war. This is not an exhaustive list of passages on the topic but enough to give you a sense of the sobering warning of Scripture to each of us.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Eph. 6:12)
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. (2 Cor. 10:3–4)
The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Rom. 13:12–14)
For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Gal. 5:17)
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Pet. 2:11)
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. (Luke 22:31–32)
I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (Rom. 7:23)
Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (2 Tim. 3:12)
In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Heb. 12:4)
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)
Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake. (Phil. 1:27–29)
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. (1 Pet. 4:12–13)
Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. (Eph. 6:13–15)
Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. (2 Tim. 2:3)
Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Heb. 3:13)
I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.” (Rev. 12:10)
Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. (1 Cor. 16:13)
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. (Josh. 1:9)
Joshua said to them, “Do not be afraid or dismayed; be strong and courageous. For thus the Lord will do to all your enemies against whom you fight.” (Josh. 10:25)
Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (1 Tim. 6:12)
Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. (2 Thess. 1:4)
Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (1 Pet. 5:9–10)
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Pet. 5:8)
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. (Gal. 6:1)
[Pray] at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. (Eph. 6:18)
Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. (Matt. 6:13)
Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matt. 26:41; Mark 14:38)
So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. (Acts 12:5)
Pray for us . . . that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men. For not all have faith. (2 Thess. 3:1–2)
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. (Eph. 6:10)
You equipped me with strength for battle;
you made those who rise against me sink under me. (2 Sam. 22:40)
God . . . equipped me with strength
and made my way blameless.
He made my feet like the feet of a deer
and set me secure on the heights.
He trains my hands for war,
so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. (Ps. 18:32–34)
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being. (Eph. 3:14–16)
No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. (2 Tim. 2:4)
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. (Jude 3)
So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. (1 Thess. 5:6)
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
When evildoers assail me
to eat up my flesh,
my adversaries and foes,
it is they who stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me,
yet I will be confident. (Ps. 27:1–3)
[Pray] at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. (Eph. 6:18)
Now, if what these passages portray—that it is true of every believer and that we live in a daily state of spiritual war and must therefore live with eyes open, heart engaged, mind alert, and protective gear in place—how much more is it true of those leaders our Lord has raised up to stand at the forefront of the battle to give warning and direction? No leadership community should be naïve. No leadership community should do its work with a comfortable peacetime mentality. We should be realistic, aware, and alert. We are not to be depressingly paranoid, because our captain has already fought the battle and won the ultimate victory on our behalf, and he is in us, with us, and for us. But we must not forget the environment in which we do our work and the susceptibility that still lives inside each one of us.
We’re not just leaders, building the household of faith; we are also soldiers under attack on the battlefield of faith. How many more casualties of war are we going to lose before we begin to take seriously the war that rages around us and inside us? As God’s appointed leaders, we need to strategically plan for evangelism, discipleship, church growth, church planting, and church revitalization, but we must at the same time also strategize together for the inescapable battle that will rage in us and around us as we do this work.
Strategizing for Battle
How do we strategize together as leadership communities for the battle? Let me suggest three ways.
1. Each leader must humbly accept and be growingly aware of his susceptibilities.
I have seen in my own life and witnessed in the lives of other leaders that spiritual pride leaves you exposed to spiritual attack. No leader is safe thinking he is impervious to attack. A spiritually healthy leadership community is always watchful and alert to the spiritual dangers of life in a fallen world and life as a church or ministry leader. Perhaps there is no better defense against spiritual attack than humility; that is, a sense of constant need for protective and empowering grace that then motivates us to watch for danger and cry out for God’s help and the loving help of fellow leaders.
The danger here is that theological knowledge, powerful gifts, ministry experience, and success can distort the way a leader views himself. Until we are on the other side, these things make us susceptible to spiritual attack. The things I have listed here not only don’t protect us from attack but may actually be indicators that we are in even greater danger. Of course the enemy wants to damage the church of Jesus Christ and the reputation of the Christ of the church. What better way to do this than to capture and morally wound one of the leaders of the church? Theological arrogance makes us vulnerable to spiritual warfare.
Pride in ministry achievements puts you in battle danger. Lack of openness to the pastoral care and concern of fellow leaders exposes you to danger. Surrounding yourself with leaders who are no longer willing or are too fearful to challenge and confront you is to leave yourself exposed. Failure to cry out again and again that God will not only protect you from the enemy but will protect you from you leaves you exposed to attack. Leaders who forget that they are not just preachers, pastors, and planners but also soldiers in an ongoing war leaves them vulnerable to danger. Any failure in a leader to live in a way that is humble and alert leads that leader nowhere good.
Fellow leaders, we must remember who we are, we must keep mindful of where we live, and we must stay alert to the wiles of the enemy. None of this should be depressingly pessimistic or darkly introspective; it should not be motivationally paralyzing, and it can never be God forgetful. Remember, God’s warnings are always loving tools of his protecting grace. Remember too that we have been called to lead by a victorious Savior, who suffered for our victory and who cares more about the health, safety, and success of his church than we ever will. He knows who we are at heart level, he knows the nature of the world we live in, and he knows the kinds of attacks we face, because he faced them.
If your leadership community functions as a gospel community, then your humble confession of personal areas of susceptibility won’t be dangerous because it will be greeted with mercy-infused understanding, intercessory prayer, and strategies for help—all fueled by confidence in the presence and grace of the Savior. What is dangerous are naïve assumptions of peacetime safety and proud assessments of personal invulnerability that silence a conversation that every leader needs to have regularly with those in his leadership community. The gospel welcomes us to be honest because it offers divine aid for everything we would need to be honest about. And, finally, we must not let our desire to be respected by fellow leaders keep us from confessing where we are under attack and where we tend to succumb.
2. As a leadership community, personal and corporate spiritual war must be a regular part of our ongoing conversation with one another and a central focus of our prayer together.
I love when ministry communities think carefully and plan strategically for the ministries that God has ordained to occupy his church. I have a deep respect for gospel dissatisfaction, by which I mean that we’re not satisfied with a certain level of spiritual growth in the people God has called us to lead, that we keep longing for more people to come into the kingdom, and that we work to see more churches planted. I love when the gospel vision and energy of a leadership community don’t wane but grow and grow. I love when new blood comes into a leadership community that has grown a bit passive and respectfully disrupts, producing new insight and new zeal. God calls his people to be on the march, not ever resting, until we hear the words, “Come, for everything is now ready, enter into your final home” (see Luke 14:17). I am thankful for the experts who have studied the history of the church, the lives of leaders who have gone before us, how successful ministries have strategized and planned. I am heartened by leaders who never stop listening, examining, and learning.
But I am very concerned when a leadership community has no time for and gives no place to honest and protective conversations about the spiritual war, inside us and outside us, that is the regular life of every leader in every church and ministry everywhere. We need to talk humbly and honestly; we need to listen carefully and with sympathy; and we need to speak with wisdom, comfort, encouragement, and warning.
There are moments when, because of what we have heard and learned, we need to lovingly stand against a leader whom we have regularly stood with. With the goal of protection, we must stand in his way, refusing to endorse or support something that is either spiritually dangerous or evidence that the enemy has already won a victory in this leader’s heart. These conversations and actions are hard; they are most often tense and awkward—the thing of things in most relationships you want to avoid—but you really can’t be a leadership community, fueled by gospel love, and avoid them. (For a New Testament example, see Galatians 2.)
We cannot allow ourselves to deny evidence that a leader is under spiritual siege or has been deceived into stepping over God’s boundaries because we are afraid of uncomfortable relational moments, questions about our motives, or pushback we may receive. We cannot let ministry busyness excuse the fact that we are not keeping one another alert and safe. Spiritual warfare, if it’s as normal as the Bible presents it, must always be on our ministry agenda. The battle is ongoing; we will either recognize it in and around us and respond appropriately as a leadership community, or, whatever our confessional position is with regard to spiritual warfare, we will function as if it does not exist, and in so doing, expose our leadership community to danger. When it comes to the great spiritual war, the victory of our captain welcomes us to be humbly honest and functionally courageous. May we live and lead together with that victory in view.
3. We must examine and defend ourselves against Satan’s devices.
It is so important to understand that the primary tool the enemy uses to attack, disable, defeat, and set aside ministry leaders is ministry. Ministry itself is fraught with temptations that play to the complicated loyalties, desires, and motivations of the heart of every leader. Desires for good things morph to become dangerous things because they have become ruling things. Things that are okay to want become things that now control. Along with this is the fact that our sense of identity is always in a state of flux, that is, we are always thinking about who we are and defining and redefining ourselves. Ministry failure can redefine a leader in ways that make him vulnerable to attack. Ministry success can also redefine a leader and expose him to new deceptions and seductions. Public acclaim can alter the way we think about who we are and what we need. Leaders who once led with a servant mentality assess their track record and become comfortable acting entitled and demanding. The trust and respect of fellow leaders tempt us to give way to fear of man, becoming, as a result, less than candid about spiritual attack and our spiritual health.
Ministry leadership is not a fortress against spiritual attack; it’s the front line. Theological expertise doesn’t shelter you from attack, but the pride of knowledge may be one of the things that makes you susceptible. Powerful gifts don’t alleviate your vulnerability, because the deceitfulness of sin can mean that you’re better at preaching the gospel to others than to yourself. A strong sense of ministry calling doesn’t free you from attack; rather, the feelings of being different, special, and set aside may, in reality, be what the enemy uses to get at your heart, causing you to let down your guard. The desire to achieve, which itself is not wrong, may devolve into leader competitiveness, leader jealousy, and leader disunity, exposing leaders to subtle or not so subtle anger and bitterness. The closeness and intensity of day-by-day ministry may tempt leaders to step over God’s protective relational boundaries, making a leader vulnerable to romantic and sexual temptations. Even the handling of ministry funds can tempt a leader to begin to use what has been dedicated for gospel productivity for personal ease and luxury.
The war I have just described takes place in the heart and life of a ministry leader and within a leadership community without any of those leaders moving an inch or abandoning the ministry work that they regularly do. So we do need to study, discuss, and strategize how to protect ourselves from the particular devices that Satan may use to harm the leadership community of which we are a part or to destroy our life and ministry or that of a fellow leader.
Our Savior is alert, possessing every tool necessary for the battle. My prayer is that we would be alert too, ready to use divine tools to defeat what we could never defeat on our own, before the enemy has established a stronghold.