(Ep14) The Basics of a Strong Defense, Part 2

We are continuing our discussion about the basic characteristics of a strong defense with disruption, response, and mass effect.  Spiritually, these are love, surrendering to God, and pursuing His holiness in our lives.  With these elements present, we can create any type of strong defense against the enemy we face.

Transcript

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Hey guys, welcome back. Get comfortable and settle in as we jump into episode 14 of Joining the Fight. I'm Kyle Clark from Standing Word Ministries, a Christ-centered ministry dedicated to equipping believers with solid biblical truth and practical training. We create scripture-based curriculum and resources like our workbook, Joining the Fight, to strengthen discipleship, deepen our understanding of the battle that we face, and help every one of us live with real purpose as we stand firm in truth and carry the message of Christ forward in a world that desperately needs it. If you want to explore more teachings or grab the workbook, head over to standingword.com anytime. Now, last episode we talked about building the framework of a strong spiritual defense together. We looked at preparation, knowing our vulnerabilities and our priorities, and security, guarding our hearts and minds with everything we've got. Those two form a solid foundation. But a strong defense does more than just protect what we have. It pushes back, it creates a bubble of resistance. And that resistance counteracts the enemy's influence in our lives and the lives of those around us. It actually changes the direction of the fight. It gives us a space that is strong and stable and allows us to launch our offensive operations from it. Today we're going to finish that framework by looking at the three final characteristics that turn our defense into something powerful. And those three are disruption, response, and mass effect. These three move us from simply holding our ground to actively weakening the enemy's grip on our lives, our families, and our churches so that we can begin taking strongholds away from him. So let's begin with disruption. An obstacle the enemy struggles to overcome. Disruption for us is love. Collective love as a church body, as a community, is a barrier to the enemy. One of the ways that I like to picture this is if I'm assigning all of these attributes to an ancient medieval castle, to a medieval castle, I think of love as the drawbridge, as the gate. Now the Gape love is truly the only way that we can enter into that safe space, that castle, that church. God's love is what binds us together. And so God's love as disruption becomes that barrier the enemy can't get through because he doesn't know how to speak that language. We've discussed love earlier when it comes to our uniform and the way we communicate. But love collectively creates a barrier the enemy can't pass through. The enemy understands fear, he understands anger, pride, and division. He's been using those tools for a very long time. But there's one force he simply can't counteract or even comprehend, and that's God's love. Real, active, Jesus shaped love always will throw him off balance when we use it. It's like throwing sand in the gears of his entire operation. It's like making his full steam charge ahead towards us come to a grinding halt because there is an obstacle he cannot pass. Listen to what first John four sixteen through eighteen says about this. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whomever lives in love lives in God. In God in them. This is how love is made complete amongst us, so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment. In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. Love does something spiritually that is disruptive to the enemy. It breaks cycles of bitterness that the enemy loves to feed on for years. It shuts down division before it can spread like wildfire through our church and our family. It removes fear that keeps us paralyzed and isolated. When love is active, the enemy cannot operate freely, because his favorite stronghold crumbles, his favorite entrance into our lives is gone, the door is shut. And Peter puts an even better understanding on this when he says in 1 Peter 4 8, above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Love acts like a barrier. It prevents the enemy from exploiting offense, hurt, misunderstanding, or those little weaknesses that pop up between us. When love is present, division has far less room to grow. I seen this play out in my own life during deployments. When the unit sticks together in genuine care for each other instead of frustration, the enemy's attempts to attack us are met with a more rapid response, with a more dedicated outlook from our unit because of the genuine care we have for each other. Here's where it gets really practical for us. When Paul writes in Galatians 5, 13 through 14, he says, You, my brothers and sisters, are called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Rather serve one another humbly in love, for the entire law can be fulfilled in keeping this one commandment. Love your neighbor as yourself. When we choose to serve one another in love, even when it's costly, even when we'd rather protect our own comfort, we frustrate the enemy's plans. Love shifts the momentum. Love slams the front door on the enemy's advances. It doesn't eliminate every opposition completely, but it changes the environment. It creates that safe space that he cannot penetrate. It makes it harder for the darkness to gain a foothold in general in our entire lives. Love disrupts that darkness because it reflects God's very nature right into the middle of the fight. I've learned in my own walk and the battles that I've faced that the moment I have chosen love over reaction, something in the spiritual atmosphere has shifted. The enemy visibly loses ground that he thought he already owned. And it's not a passive niceness, it's an active, deliberate love that says, Not today, enemy, we are covering this with the love of Christ. We are opening the door to our shepherd, not to you. And here's a simple way we can put this into practice this week. Identify one relationship where offense or hurt has been lingering. Maybe a family member, a friend at church, or even someone that you work with. Decide today that love will be your first response instead of defense or withdrawal. Speak one covering word of love out loud this week, something like, Lord, let your love cover this situation and shut down any division right now that I may have in my heart. Watch how the enemy's schemes lose their power. Try it once and you'll feel that shift, but do it continually so it becomes a habit. And love is on the forefront of your mind. Disruption helps us weaken the enemy's plans, helps us disrupt that full frontal charge he is making at our defenses. But defense becomes truly effective when our response is aligned with God, and our response is a surrender to God's commands. A defense is only as strong as our willingness to rise up and defend it and follow the commander's plan. If a soldier ignores orders, even the strongest position falls. The way I have described this to others is our response is like the reaction force inside the castle. Now, when a castle is under attack, you have all these men that are lining the walls and they're defending the walls of the castle, and the enemy is trying to climb it and throw boulders at it and breach it one way or another. But there's also another force, a reserve force, inside the castle, waiting to respond when they see the enemy gain a foothold anywhere along the wall, or if the front gate is about to be breached. That reaction force rushes forward and plugs that gap. They provide more strength for when our defenses get weak. And this is our response. Spiritually, our defense works best when our response is surrender to God. When we feel our defenses being attacked, when we feel weaknesses coming our way, when we see parts of the wall getting ready to be overcome by the enemy's advances, our response force is to surrender to God, not to control, not to seek independence, but fullhearted surrender to Jesus. That is our quick reaction force. This is where we move from trying to hold everything together on our own to letting God's strategy take over. Remember Gideon in Judges 7. His battle plan made zero human sense. A tiny army of 300, torches and jars instead of swords, trumpets instead of weapons. But victory came because Gideon obeyed God. He surrendered his ideas and trust to God's strategy completely. The same pattern plays out for us every single day in our marriages, in our workplace, and our churches. When we stop negotiating with God and simply say yes, the defense we have becomes unstoppable. Our quick reaction force responds quickly to those breaches and plugs them up. Think about the centurion in Matthew 8, 5 through 15. He understood authority. He told Jesus, just say the word and my servant will be healed. That faith, that submission that he had, brought immediate results. Victory often comes through trust and surrender more than through our own strength or clever plans. The centurion didn't need to see the miracle first, he trusted the commander's word. James 14 through 17 drives this point home for us. He says, Now listen, you whom say today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. When you don't even know what will happen tomorrow, instead you ought to say, If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that. A strong defense requires humility to be able to do that surrendering act of response. It means recognizing that our plans are not the ultimate plans, but God's will is. Surrender keeps us aligned with His protection and keeps the enemy from exploiting our pride or self-reliance. And Colossians 3 2 reminds us that we are to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things. When our minds are fixed on Christ, we respond with clarity instead of panic. We know exactly where to go. We stay steady even when everything else around us feels shaky. Surrender creates that stability that we need. I've felt this in my own life during hard seasons. The moment I stopped gripping on to things and white knuckling everything into control, and I surrendered the outcome to Jesus, peace and solutions flooded in and the enemy's pressure on me lost its grips. This is a hard won wisdom for us to understand that the strongest defenses aren't built on our own willpower. They are built on our willingness to lay everything down at the feet of Jesus. We don't have to figure it all out. We just have to follow the commander's plan. Let's make this a little more real for us this week by picking one area where you've been holding on to control. Maybe a worry about the future, a relationship you're trying to fix on your own, or a decision you're afraid to surrender. Name it out loud to God and pray a simple surrendering prayer every morning this week about it. Say, Lord, I lay this down, your will not mine, and watch how peace and strength replace your anxiety. And if you don't see results that first week, continue to do this. Do it for seven days straight or more, and you'll see a difference and how you stand on that subject, on that worry, on that decision. When love disrupts and surrender aligns us with God's commands, something even more powerful begins to happen. The very presence of God's holiness enters in and changes the entire battlefield. In modern defense, we have something called mass effect. It is an overwhelming force that affects the entire battlefield like an atomic bomb, like an airstrike on the enemy. In military terms, this is an overwhelming force that dominates. Spiritually, that force for us is God's holiness. Not just personal purity for its own sake, but God's very nature flowing through his people. It's the mass effect that makes the enemy retreat because he simply cannot stand in the light of who God is. Hebrews 12 14 tells us that we should make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Holiness is essential. It shapes how we live, it shapes how we stand, it carries real authority that the enemy cannot match. A mass effect is so important because it is something the enemy cannot defend against. They have to deal with it, they have to get around it, they have to contend with it. It affects the entire battlefield. And medieval times, around a castle, a mass effect would have been a moat. There's no way around it. You have to come up with a solution because there's no way to approach the castle without first going through the moat. There's no way to attack a US force today without having to deal with our air support, with the bombs that we drop. It is simple as that. Luke 4, 31 through 44 talks about Jesus entering a place and demons fleeing, not because of noise or numbers, but because his holiness and authority is present. Darkness simply cannot remain where Christ's presence is strong. The same power is available to us through the Holy Spirit. When we walk in holiness, the atmosphere changes. Paul describes this in 2 Corinthians 6 7. He calls righteousness, weapons of righteousness, in our right hand and in our left. Holiness becomes an environment the enemy struggles to penetrate because he cannot come up with a solution that overcomes God's holiness. It covers the entire battlefield and it makes everything steady. It makes us resilient. It allows us to push back the darkness. It's not about being perfect, it's about being set apart and surrendering all to Christ's holiness. So it can shine through everyday choices that we make. Jude 1 twenty five closes this out with worship to the only God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, power, authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all the ages, now and forever. Amen. Christ's holiness recounsels us to God, and when we live close to Him, that same holiness strengthens our defenses and radiates out to everyone around us. It becomes a mass effect that protects not just us, but the people around us that we love. Holiness is our mass effect. I've watched it in the lives of believers who choose integrity when no one was looking. Their quiet obedience becomes a fortress that the enemy cannot breach. When we walk in it, the enemy doesn't just get blocked. He is overwhelmed. And some practical steps for us with this this week is to choose one small area of your daily life, your words, your entertainment, your thoughts, or even how you treat your family, and ask the Lord to make it holy. Place it in front of him upon the altar. Replace that one habit, that one action with something that honors God. And pray this daily. We are a strong fortress that he will not even approach because of these characteristics. Because he knows it's going to be impossible to breach. Now let's close out in prayer as we wrap up. Father, thank you for teaching us how to build strong defenses that don't just protect, but help us advance your kingdom. Fill us with your love so that it disrupts the enemy's plans before they can take root. Teach us to surrender quickly to your commands and trust your authority in every situation. Make our lives holy, steady, and strong so that your presence flows through us and pushes darkness back wherever we go. Help us stand firm together in every battle we face. We love you, we trust you, and we fight under your command. In Jesus' powerful name we pray, amen. So as we close, here's one simple daily rhythm moving forward. Love that disrupts, surrender that aligns us with God, and holiness that overwhelms. Don't wait for the perfect day to start building these defenses. Start today, start right where you are. We're not improvising, we're following the commander who already has won the war. We fight from a place of victory. These characteristics turn our defense into strength, our strength into steady, lasting victory. As we close out, I would like to issue this challenge to you. Ask yourself in quiet moments throughout this week, where can love disrupt division in your life this week? Where do you need to surrender control and trust God's will? And where is God calling you to greater holiness in your life? These are the places where our defenses become real strengths. Write them down, pray over them, and watch what God does. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Keep pressing forward, keep building those strong defenses. And remember, we're in this fight together. See you next time on joining the fight. God bless.