This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.

Hey everybody, welcome to Prairie Lakes Church this weekend. I'm delighted that you're here no matter what campus you're joining us from. Welcome, uh, we're one church on many corners and I wanna start this weekend with a point of celebration.

So last week we had baptisms across our campuses and uh, awesome, awesome thing across all of our campuses. 28 people got baptized last weekend. Amen. Yeah, it was really, really cool. And I just gotta tell you, if you've not gone to social media and looked at the pictures of those baptisms, do it because it's gonna give you a really cool snapshot of what God's doing all across Prairie Lake Church and all across Iowa.

And I just wanna say friends, thank you for praying. Thanks for inviting and serving and giving 'cause man, it's making a difference in your little Iowa, all across the great state of Iowa. God is good, my friends. Alright, hey, let's, uh, let's dive in today.

This is the fifth and final week of our 2024 kickoff series called Everything is Different. And we've been walking through the book of Ephesians, which is a letter written by an evangelist and a church planter named Paul. And he wrote from prison about 60 ad.

And uh, this letter is written to the churches in and around a large Roman city called Ephesus, where Paul had actually lived some years before. And as Paul closes this letter, he instructs the Ephesians to fight a battle and it's quite a change in tone from the rest of his letter.

So we're gonna talk about how to fight the battle as a follower of Jesus today. The topic is fight, topic is fight. So here's what I need you to do right now across all of our campuses. Grab your Bible if you got one, there may be one under around your seats there at your campus, or, um, grab your phone if you got the Bible app on your phone.

We're gonna be in Ephesians chapter six. We're gonna start in verse 10. And uh, Ephesians is a small little book in the New Testaments after some of the bigger books like Romans and first and second Corinthians and this Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.

And you can remember that by go eat popcorn or Gentiles eat pork constantly. So we will be in the eat, we'll be in Ephesians and uh, that's where we're gonna be. So navigate there. Now, before we dive into the Bible, uh, I wanna talk about the topic for today.

Conflict and fighting. That sounds like fun, doesn't it? Let's talk about fight fighting today. Uh, some of your blood pressure's already rising, just talking about fighting. Uh, but here's what I know to be true in American culture today.

We love fighting. We love fighting. If there's not an enemy, we will create one. And part of why we love fighting and conflict is that we're obsessed with winning in our culture today. So think about how much culture, honors and values fighting and how much of fighting is baked into our culture.

Fighting is baked into our entertainment. Uh, the Bachelor or the Bachelorette fighting over a man, fighting over a woman. Oh, the drama, right? Sporting events, there's fights and sporting events.

I love UFC fighting, it's one of my favorite sports, literally. The point of it is to win a fight in an octagon. Uh, hockey, a lot of people use the phrase, I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out. If you've ever been to a hockey game before, uh, they cheer as loud for the fighting as they do for the goals.

And every superhero movie ever is about a conflict between good and evil, a battle between characters. Even animated movies like Frozen or Moana or Shrek have good versus evil. There's a fight for every Shrek and Fiona. There's an evil Lord Fark word out there.

But fighting is just entertainment. It's in our relationship. So we know this, it's in our conversations with our spouse in our marriage. It's our daily arguments with our children over getting them out the door into school in the morning.

It's an extended family dynamics. It's with people we work with or our neighbors. But fighting is also the foundation of politics. You know, Democrat versus Republican versus independent versus libertarian. And the political ads and the rhetoric, it's us versus them.

And we are right and they're stupid, whoever they are out there. And I think my mailbox hinges are broke from all the political ads that got over the last three or four months. But fighting isn't just in culture, it's also in the church. As much as we don't like to admit it, Christians fight within each other and within the church and outside the church as well.

We love to fight cultural wars. We love to boycott this corporation or this company or s shown this group over here. Or we get obsessed with watching YouTube videos from people that agree with us theologically or politically. And it can radicalize us against people around us where we stop loving people and we start putting people in categories and boxes.

And we love as Christians to fight for being right. We love to be right, we love to argue about all kinds of things and we can get really proud and really smug in our approach to other people. And inside the church we love to fight for our preferred methods of doing church.

Well, this is the way we've always done it, or this is the only way to do this in the church, or the church shouldn't do blank, whatever that is. And listen, while these fights are sometimes good and necessary, the tension that we face is Christians today in a culture that is obsessed with fighting is this, Christians can often fight the wrong enemy with the wrong weapons and with the wrong victory in mind.

If we're not careful as followers of Jesus, this is where we land. We fight the wrong enemy with the wrong weapons and the wrong victory in mind. Which is why Paul ends this letter of Ephesians in chapter six by talking about the spiritual battle we fight.

It's why, because he wants us to know. He wants us to be clear on who the enemy is, the weapons we fight with, and what the goal of fighting today as a follower of Jesus should be. And so as we start to dive into scripture now I want to ask you a question.

The question is this, who or what do you spend the most energy fighting against in your life today? If you think about your life today, who or what do you spend the most energy fighting against in your life today?

And is that a fight that God wants you to take up? See, Christians are called to fight differently than the world does. And we're gonna look at how now in Ephesians chapter six, verse 10. So look at these words with me.

He says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. So Paul says, finally, because in his letter he covered a lot of ground so far in the five chapters before this, he's talked about our identity in Christ, how everyone and everything is unified under Christ, talked about how we've moved from death to life and we've got a purpose to glorify God and live for him.

We talked about the massive vision for the church today and imagine what the church could be like. And we've talked about how every relationship looks different through the lens of Christ. So, so Paul's talked about all those things and he says finally, finally, you can't do that on your own strength and power.

You need God's help to fight. You need God's help to get you through. You need God's help to be obedient to him. And it's not about your ability to fight well, it's about God's ability and strength through you because you are not capable on your own.

So the question is, how do we be strong in the Lord's mighty power? How do we fight Well as a follower of Jesus, verse 11, he says this, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. And he says, full armor, because listen, it would be foolish or silly for us to go into battle partially armed because if you only have part of your armor on, there's gaps and you're vulnerable and there's parts that are exposed and you're not gonna be at full strength.

So he says, put on all the armor of God. And here Paul uses analogy of weapons and protection and armor in battle, which 2000 years ago in Ephesus, there were Roman centurion, Roman soldiers all over the place. So Paul borrows that analogy and says that putting on the full armor of God fighting the spiritual battle is like a centurion, a Roman centurion.

And because we don't have those running around today, we have to cross the cultural gap. And so I wanna show you what a Roman centurion probably looked like 2000 years ago. So you can see they're all decked out. Got a helmet, got a breastplate spear in one hand, shield in the other belt with a sword on it.

They are ready to roll. That is what a Roman centurion looked like 2000 years ago. So when Paul starts talking about the armor of God, these Ephesians would've gone, oh, that's exactly what Paul's talking about. And they would've seen something like that.

But here's what Paul does in verse 11, he identifies the enemy and he talks about the nature of the battle we fight today as followers of Jesus because he uses the words devil's schemes. He says, you gotta put on armor because the devil is scheming against you because you have a spiritual enemy.

We're fighting a spiritual battle, not just a physical battle, that we have a spiritual enemy called the devil. And so I'm gonna do a quick primer on that because sometimes things get weird. We start talking about a spiritual battle and spiritual warfare and the devil, but here's who the devil is.

He's also known as Lucifer or Satan or the evil one. And he's a created being. He is a fallen angel. He was created good like all the angels, but an eternity past. He chose to rebel against God. And he took a third of the other angels with him who rebelled against God.

We know them as demons and they were cast out of heaven and eternity past. But here's what we know about the devil. The devil opposes God's character and his purposes in the world. And it's important to know this.

The devil is not equal to God and authority or power. The devil is created. He's a created being. And the only power that the devil has on this earth today is what God allows him to have. The devil is like a pit bull on a leash. He can bite you, but he's tied up and his power is limited.

That's the enemy. So the question is, well, well how does the devil scheme, if we have to put on the armor of God to protect ourselves against the devil's schemes? How does the devil scheme in our world today? Well, here's a verse from Jesus in John 8 44 about this. He's, he's talking to the Pharisees and look what he says, really kind words from Jesus.

He says, you belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He meaning the devil was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth for there's no truth in him. And when he lies, he speaks his native language for he is a liar.

And the father of lies, you say, how does the devil scheme more than anything? He lies and he deceives. That's his goal. If you remember in Genesis chapter three, in the fall of man, Adam and Eve in the garden, the very first temptation from the enemy from Satan is this, did God really say, did God really say you can't eat that He, he causes Adam and Eve to doubt and to question not just God's command, but God's goodness.

God's goodness. And in Matthew chapter four, we're not gonna turn there. I just wanna put that up on the screen. So you see this reference in Matthew four, Jesus had just been baptized and he's in the wilderness and he's fasting for 40 days.

And Satan comes and tempts him directly and Satan tempts him in some very specific ways. And here's the ways the devil tempted Jesus and the ways he often schemes against us today. There are these right here. The devil schemes always, always include attempts to deceive us and lie to us about God's goodness and God's love for us.

And here's three specific schemes spiritually that Satan throws at us through these, the lust of the eyes, which is this, you can have anything your heart desires. So fight for the stuff you want. That's the lust of the eyes. The lust of the flesh is, hey, it's gonna feel great if you do this.

So don't restrict yourself and fight to feel good. And then the pride of life, you can be grayed apart from God. So fight to define your reality and be right. How does the devil scheme against us? He lies, he twists, he distorts and he deceives by the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life.

Those are the devil's schemes. That's what we have to protect ourselves against. And in verse 12, here's what Paul says, he takes it a step further. He says four, our struggle. And that Greek word literally means to wrestle hand and foot combat.

And we're good Iowans. We know a lot about wrestling in Iowa. He says, we're wrestling not against flesh and blood, not against people, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil and the heavenly realms.

Paul says, that's our fight. That's our enemy. Not flesh and blood, not people not inside the church, not outside the church. It's a spiritual battle against spiritual forces that require spiritual armor and weapons. You know, a lot of times we use the phrase, Hey, the struggle's real.

And with this spiritual fight, the struggle is very real, but it's not against other people. It's a spiritual battle against spiritual forces. Our fight is against the devil, against demons, against temptation and against sin. And our fight, which can seem invisible to others, is a very real spiritual battle.

And here's the thing, friends, once you see this, once your heart and mind begin to wrap around this, you can't unsee this. Once you realize we're fighting a spiritual battle, it changes the way that you view things and people and opportunity and temptation and sin.

Now, to be sure, some take passages like this and they begin to see a demon around every corner or every flat tire. Like they get a flat tire and they're like, not today, Satan. It's like probably not what Paul meant by the spiritual battle.

But then other people swing the pendulum too far and they say, well, we're not in a spiritual battle and Satan's not real. And Satan doesn't really tempt. It's just kind of stuff inside of me. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. We have a spiritual enemy.

We fight a spiritual battle. And Paul wants us to know this and he wants us to know how to fight. And so in verse 13, he starts to give some specific instructions about how to fight this battle.

He says this, therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes or the day of temptation comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you've done everything to stand again, Paul says, look, it's not your ability, it's not your strength.

It's God's strength, God's power, God's spiritual weapons for this spiritual fight. And the word stand in the here means stand your ground. And it's the Greek word and thi demi and anime means to resist, to stand against, to defy or oppose.

Paul says, this is how you fight. You stand opposed to Satan, opposed to the enemy, opposed to sin and opposed to temptation you stand against. And that same word. And this demi is used in James four seven. 'cause in James four, seven, he says, resist the devil and he'll flee from you.

Stand against the devil, oppose him and he will flee. And at the end of verse 13 here, that word stand at the very end is a little bit different. It's the word histamine. So it's a little bit different than an, and that word literally means to stand upright, victorious 'cause on a battlefield.

Those who stand are victors. Those who flee have lost the battle. And Paul says, after you put on the armor of God, after you fought the spiritual battle, your job is to stand victorious in Christ. No matter how difficult the battle is, our job is not to defeat and crush the enemy.

That's God's job. Our job is to stand, to stand victorious through temptation and trial. Victors on the battlefield are the ones standing at the end. And here's a reality you need to know about this battle. Jesus has already won the war. He, he's won the war. He's defeated death and sin and temptation and the devil, he's already won.

Our job is not to win the war. Our job is to fight the good fight and not give any ground to the devil in our lives. Our job is to stand victorious in Christ. Our job on the battlefield is to get back up every time we slip and every time we fall because we're gonna fall in the battlefield.

We may sin, we're gonna struggle, but our job is to get back up in the battle and stand up one more time every time as a wounded victor in Christ to stand. That is our job in the battle, the spiritual battle that we fight.

And here's what Paul does in verse 14, he starts talking about specific ways to guard yourself and to fight back. He says in verse 14, stand again. That's that word to stand upright, stand firm then with a belt of truth buckled around your waist and the breastplate of righteousness in place.

Here's what a belt does. A belt holds everything together. When you start moving around and you're active, you need a belt to hold everything together. And for Roman centurion in 2000 years ago, the belt held everything in place.

It held the sword and its sheath. It connected to the breastplate so it held it in place so it didn't flop around everywhere. And when it, when, when Paul says that truth is our belt, here's what he means. Truth is knowing who you are in Christ.

Truth helps us stand in the midst of the lies of the devil. And temptation whisper to us, God's truth is what holds all of our spiritual armor together. It helps us stand by not allowing us to be deceived or misled in the battle. And it also attaches to the breastplate of righteousness.

Now, the picture I showed you just a little bit ago of a Roman centura and you just see metal all over their midsection and a breastplate full of metal protected the vital organs and it was really, really important. And Paul says that our breastplate is righteousness.

And righteousness means good deeds, doing good things, saying good things, honoring God. But here's the thing about the armor of God. Our spiritual breastplate is not our own good deeds. It's the good deeds of Jesus. We have the righteousness of Christ.

One Corinthians one 30 says, we have the righteousness of Christ that Jesus has stamped or imputed his righteousness on us like a breastplate. And we wear it around and we are protected, not because we're good or do a lot of good things, but because Jesus was good for us, the breastplate of righteousness and the belt of truth.

Look at verse 15. He continues, he says, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, Paul says, good shoes are a big part of the armor of God. So lace 'em up, put on your good shoes, good footwear for the battle.

Because Paul wants us to know that the good news of Jesus Christ brings peace. And some of you're wondering what's the good news? Here's the good news. The good news is that though you and I are sinners and we deserve condemnation, God loved us so much.

He sent his son to this earth to put on human flesh. Then Jesus lived the perfect life that we failed to live every single day. And then he died on the cross in our place bearing the guilt and condemnation that we deserve. And in so doing, God demonstrates He's a God of love and he's a God who cares for us deeply.

That's good news. And Paul says that good news is like wearing good shoes in the spiritual battle. Because here's what that means. Having the peace of God covering you, knowing who you are, trusting the good news of Jesus means this, I can go anywhere in the battlefield of life and God is with me.

I can go anywhere in the battlefield of life and I have God's peace because I know he loves me. He saved me. I'm his son, I'm his daughter. And nothing can change that. And that changes the way that we walk. It changes where we go and it changes how we fight the battle.

Even when the battle rages, even when we feel like the fight is impossible, even when we're so tired and worn out, a fighting the spiritual battle, Paul says, the good news of Jesus Christ is like peace. And that peace allows your feet to stand and to go wherever you need to go in the battle knowing Jesus loves you and nothing can separate you from God's love.

And he continues to look at verse 16. He says, in addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 2000 years ago, Roman soldiers had large shields. They were about two feet wide and four feet tall.

And they were big enough so that when Archer archers were shooting arrows at you, you could hide behind the shield completely and be protected. And not only that, but often they would put leather on the outside of their shields or they dip 'em in water because the enemies would often take arrows.

They would take arrows, they'd dip 'em in oil, light 'em on fire, and then shoot a flaming arrow at you. So you had to have a good shield. And Paul says that our shield in the spiritual battle is faith. It's faith in Jesus Christ.

It's trust and belief in what Jesus has done for us, just like a giant shield. It protects us in the battle. Hebrews 11, one says this, faith is the confidence about what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see that is faith.

And faith allows us to be confident and have assurance even when, even when the battle looks bleak, even when we fall down, even when we don't see the outcomes or the progress in our life that we hope to see. Faith protects us from the flaming arrows of the evil one.

He said, what are the flaming arrows of the evil one in the spiritual battle? Well, that's fancy language for temptation. The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, the lies of the enemy. When those arrows of temptation come to us, Paul says, they can be extinguished and we can be kept safe with the shield of faith.

Holding onto it, faith and trust in Jesus is the shield that protects us. And look at verse 17. He finally gets to an offensive weapon. He says, take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

He says, salvation, being saved by Jesus will guard your mind and guard your will because a helmet was put on your head. It protects your mind, which is the center of your thoughts and your will. Because believing that you are saved and that you are loved, protects you from believing lies.

It protects your mind. It protects you from doubts and fears on the battlefield. And 2000 years ago, Roman soldiers had specific helmets with specific decorations that identified them as Roman soldiers. It was a part of their identity that way they knew who each other was and they knew who the enemy was.

The same thing is true for followers of Jesus. When we put on the helmet of salvation, when we say, I am a son of God, I am a daughter of God, I'm a child of the king. And we wear that around, it protects our mind in the battlefield.

It gives us strength and helmet of salvation, gives us protection. And then Paul finally gets to an offensive weapon in the battle. A sword. Because the spiritual battle that we fight is not just defensive, it's not just protecting ourselves, it's also fighting back.

And he says, the first offensive weapon we have is God's word, the sword of the Holy Spirit, the Bible. We fight back against Satan and demonic forces and temptation, not with earthly power, but with God's truth. I I referenced Matthew four earlier when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness.

And each time Jesus was tempted by Satan, Satan twisted and distorted the word of God, the truth of God. And each time Jesus responded to those temptations by saying this, it is written, it is written. And then he quoted Deuteronomy each time because he knew the word of God was powerful and he was gonna combat the lies of the enemy with the truth of God's word.

Which is why reading the Bible is so important, being able to combat lies that are thrown at us with truth. It's why one of the most powerful things you can do in times of temptation, it's except some specific Bible verses that you've got either with you or memorized that you can say out loud or that you can quote, or that you can read when you're tempted.

Because when you resist the devil in that way, he flees. When you resist temptation in that way, it flees. It's such a powerful thing to quote scripture. When you've fallen down in the spiritual battle, you've sinned and you struggle and you need to get back up. You need to be reminded that God loves you still.

That nothing can separate you from God's love. It's so powerful. God's word is the sword that helps us go on the offensive against the devil, against lies and against temptation. But there is one more offensive weapon, as Paul concludes this section.

You, for a lot of us, we've heard the armor of God. There's only one offensive weapon. And that's not true. There's two, there's the sword of the Word of the God. And here's what he says in verse 18, the last verse we're gonna look at, he says this, and pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.

And with this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. So he says, there's two offensive weapons. There's the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, and there's the spirit of prayer. Two offensive weapons, God's word and prayer.

He says, pray in the Spirit, which means you don't just pray human words, you pray because the Holy Spirit is inside of you praying in you and through you. You allow the Holy Spirit to guide your prayers. And prayer is simply a conversation with God.

And every time we pray, friends, it's an act of faith. 'cause when we pray, we believe that God hears and God is going to answer and respond. And Paul says that our offensive weapon in the spiritual battle, the spear of prayer should be utilized against the devil, against temptation and against sin.

That we are called to pray for ourselves and pray for others. And he says, be alert, which means on the battlefield, you need to be aware of how to pray, of what's going on, of where temptation is coming from and be able to lift that up in prayer.

And he says, pray on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests, which is a fancy way of saying pray all the time for everyone about everything. Keep praying. The word of God is our sword. Prayer is our spirit, our offensive weapons to fight back against the devil and temptation and sin.

That is the armor of God. Now I'm gonna summarize all of it right now in a Christian Battle plan. So if you're asking what's the Christian Battle plan, here it is. The enemies we battle are the devil.

Demonic forces, temptation and sin. That's who we fight against. Notice what that doesn't say. It doesn't say people, it doesn't say other Christians. It doesn't say politicians. It says the devil. Demonic forces, temptation and sin. And here's the next part of the battle plan, the Christian Battle plan.

The weapons we use to defend and fight are the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit, which is God's word and the spear of prayer. Now notice what's not on here.

Politics, money, manipulation, convincing arguments, those things Paul says aren't on the list of, of things that we defend ourselves with or that we fight with. And then he says this, the the another part of the Christian Battle plan. The next part is this. The goal of the battle is this.

To stand victorious, to oppose evil, to oppose temptation and sin to get up one more time than you get knocked down on the battle to stand. Because here's the last part of the battle plan. Jesus has already won the war. We simply need to fight the battles until he returns.

Jesus has already won. And my friends, that changes the way that we fight in this Christian Battle that we're in the spiritual battle that we're in. That is the Christian Battle plan. Now there's one more part that I need to talk about today that's really important.

One more piece of the battle that you can't lose sight of. And it's this, you cannot fight the battle alone. You can't fight the spiritual battle on your own. We were meant to fight together, shoulder to shoulder, side by side as followers of Jesus. When Paul wrote this letter of Ephesians 2000 years ago, it would've been read out loud in churches because most people even in Ephesus 2000 years ago weren't literate.

So someone would grab the scroll that Paul wrote and he'd read Ephesians out loud and all the people would've instinctively known. Paul is talking about us fighting together. 'cause we, we live in an American culture that is very individualistic.

So we read this passage and go, okay, I need to put on my spiritual armor. I need the sword and the spear. I need to fight my battle against Satan and demons and temptation and sin. But it's not just a me battle, it's a we battle.

We're called to fight together. Uh, put back that, that picture we saw the first time. Okay, so roman centurions, notice they're not alone. They're they're side by side fighting together. And notice that almost all the armor they're wearing is forward facing.

Meaning their rear is exposed if they're by themselves. If they're alone in the military, there's a term watch your six, which means watch your back because it's the most vulnerable place. Centurion knew that. Romans knew that Paul knows that that's why he's writing these words.

That's why he's saying you cannot fight alone. So here's a second picture of Romans in the battle. Um, this is honestly called tortoise mode. So what they would do is Roman centurion and fighters, when they were under heavy archery fire would clump together all their shields on top, in front, on the sides and behind so that they were not vulnerable.

So they were not exposed because there was strength in numbers. There's strength in community, there's strength in being together. It's a lot harder for the enemy attack to attack when they're in this mode.

And it's really easy for them to move their shields forwards backwards side to side on top as the archer shot from whatever direction they were protected from harm and that scudo or tortoise mode, their Roman soldiers and centurions fought with when they turtled up and they got together and they packed together.

That is a beautiful picture of what it should look like in the church today. That we as Christians are called to fight together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder shield to shield with faith, covering all of us, protecting us, us encouraging and helping and loving and supporting one another in the spiritual battle that we fight, fighting with one another, not against one another, fighting for one another, not against one another, which is such a significant part of the Christian Battle plan.

You cannot fight the battle alone. You need community, you need help. We need one another to fight side by side, shoulder to shoulder. That is a huge part of the Christian Battle plan. And Paul wants us to know that today.

And Jesus wants to fight that way today. And I wanna return back to the question I asked at the very beginning of this message right now. And the question is this, who or what do you spend the most energy fighting against in your life today?

Who or what do you spend most of your time and energy fighting against today? Is that in line with how God wants you to fight today? 'cause my friends, Jesus has won the war. He's defeated our enemies, the devil and temptation and sin. Our job is to fight the battles until he returns to stand opposed to evil, opposed to temptation.

And stand our ground to get up one more time than we get knocked down by God's grace. And so right now, let's pray to that end and ask for God's help right now. Hey Lord, you know we're in the midst of a spiritual battle constantly.

One that we sometimes see, but often we only perceive or feel, but this battle against the enemies of the devil and temptation and sin God, you provide the armor and the weapons we need to fight and to stand. So God, give us wisdom, give us courage, and give us grace as we fight.

Help us to spend our energy fighting the right enemies and not misdirect it. Help us to remember your love for us and power in us as we stand. Help us to fight for each other Lord and not against each other in the church side by side shield the shield unified against our common enemies.

So Lord Jesus, help us to stand. It's in your holy and precious name we pray. Amen.