Last week, we talked about how Nebuchadnezzar missed the point.
He witnessed a miracle—
undeniable, unexplainable—
and still used it to build a new threat.
He didn’t convert. He co-opted.
He saw power and tried to control it.
He didn’t get rid of the furnace. He just pointed it in a new direction.
And honestly? We do the same thing sometimes.
You can read that post here.
You can read the Biblical account here.
We’re so used to fighting for God that we forget He never asked us to.
At least—not the way we usually fight.
There’s a verse I can’t stop thinking about lately:
“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
We’re in a fight.
That much is clear.
But the fight isn’t what we think it is.
And we keep grabbing the wrong weapons.
We keep reaching for the world’s tools.
When we feel pressure—
cultural,
political,
relational—
we start to panic.
We reach for what we can control.
We get louder.
We shame.
We post.
We demand that people vote—
like us.
We argue.
We try to win.
But Paul reminds us:
That’s not the way.
The weapons of the world are power, fear, force, and dominance.
The Kingdom doesn’t use those.
Not because the Kingdom isn’t powerful—
but because it’s a different kind of power.
Jesus didn’t win by overpowering Rome.
He won by laying His life down.
And then walking out of the grave.
That's power.
But it doesn’t look like what the world calls strong.
Jesus turned every paradigm of his day on its head.
Sat with the weak.
Ate with outcasts.
Friend to sinners.
He lived differently than the “influencers” of His day.
We read Paul’s admonition to Timothy to “endure hardships,” and we run with that metaphor.
We take it and build weird things around it.
Youth “ministries” that look a lot like military training.
Men’s ministries that have military unit names.
Mostly as an excuse to play with things that go boom.
While missing out on teaching men to fight for their marriages and families.
We seem to overlook the fact that a metaphor is intended to teach us something.
It’s supposed to use something we know and understand,
to teach us how to live something else.
Paul’s point wasn’t that we needed to make the church look military-like.
He wasn’t telling us to fight as soldiers for our faith—
with weapons of war.
The good news is that he does actually tell us what our weapons are.
So what are the right weapons?
Paul tells us, in Ephesians 6.
The armor of God isn’t just a cute metaphor for church kids and coloring books.
It’s a spiritual survival kit.
It’s the counter-formation we need in a culture addicted to control.
Let’s walk through it.
“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”
Stand.
Not charge.
Not dominate.
Stand.
Put on the Belt of truth.
Not spin.
Not manipulation.
Not slogans.
Truth.
The kind that costs you something.
The kind that isn’t always convenient.
The kind that sets people free.
Too much of our “evangelism” is built around bait and switch.
I often wonder about that when I read this verse.
I’m always amazed at how often Christians are willing to share lies in order to further their message.
Facebook anyone?
How many times have Christians shared lies about…
Starbucks?
The political party they disagree with?
A retail store banning “Merry Christmas”?
How many of these lies have been shared in person?
Not because the story furthers the gospel but,
because it fits the person’s narrative about some persecution?
While ignoring the fifth gin and tonic in their hand—
and all the things the Bible says about not being drunk?
Breastplate of righteousness.
Not moral superiority.
Not performative religion.
Righteousness—
the kind born out of grace,
not guilt.
You don’t earn this armor.
You wear it because you’ve been rescued.
Righteous living that doesn’t demand how others live.
But focuses on how we live.
How I love God.
How I love people.
It’s about alignment.
Living like your insides and outsides match.
Choosing integrity over image.
Conviction over convenience.
Obedience over adrenaline.
Righteousness isn’t performance.
It’s presence.
Showing up with humility.
Owning your mess.
Staying tethered to truth—
even when it costs.
Sometimes, it looks like boldness.
Other times?
Quiet actions no one sees but God.
It’s not about proving you’re good.
It’s about staying open to being formed.
Shoes of peace.
Not aggression.
Not anxiety.
Peace.
Feet fitted with a readiness to move toward, not away.
To bring good news, not just good arguments.
Peace doesn’t come from avoiding conflict.
It doesn’t come from pretending that bad things aren’t going on.
It doesn’t come from burying our heads.
It comes from telling the truth.
Living righteously in truth.
Paul’s building something here.
A sequence.
A progression.
Truth.
Righteousness.
Peace.
Faith.
Salvation.
Word.
That’s not random.
That’s formation.
Peace that anchors.
Peace that walks into chaos without absorbing it.
Peace that doesn’t flinch when lies fly or storms hit.
Peace that still behaves in a way that honors God—
by loving Him and others when these things abound.
Because it’s rooted—
not in comfort,
but in confidence.
Shoes of peace aren’t for pacing the sanctuary.
They’re for marching into real life—
Messy life.
Painful life.
Ordinary Tuesday-afternoon kind of life.
They’re designed to bring food to the hungry.
Clothe those who need it.
Defend the helpless.
And they remind you:
You don’t fight like the world fights.
You stand firm.
And you stay grounded.
Because peace walked in first.
Shield of faith.
Not control.
Not certainty dressed up as faith.
Actual trust.
Faith that lets you stand even when you don’t have all the answers.
Faith that absorbs flaming arrows without needing to fire back.
Faith that says,
“Even If…”
Faith moves us to do the right thing,
regardless of how we feel.
Faith that moves us to stand up to power.
Even if standing isn’t popular.
Faith isn’t about the feeling you get when the music hits right.
It’s not about the rush when someone gets you jumping up and down.
It’s not about the excitement of something going right.
I get the heart behind the energy. I really do.
But energy without truth is just noise.
And when we teach people to equate emotion with presence, we’re building fragile faith.
Faith that often crumbles when the hard things of life come.
One of the greatest dangers of our current “Feelings mean God was here” church services?
We lose the fact that shields were meant to take blows.
Those blows?
They don’t feel good.
They often involve hurt.
Pain.
Paul knew hard times.
He wanted us to expect them.
To know they would come.
We’ve moved into some sort of weird place where our faith must have certainty.
Doubt is somehow seen as either wrong or
the result of not enough hype.
Just play four chords a little louder.
Maybe a little longer.
Jump up and down.
Scream about Jesus being invited to the room.
Can you tell I hate that phrase?
That’s not faith.
That’s theater.
The Shield of Faith is understanding what it means to stand,
when we want to run away.
Helmet of salvation.
A mind rooted in rescue.
Protected by the knowledge that you are already safe.
Not striving.
Not panicking.
Not scrambling.
Anchored.
Many have speculated that it’s not a coincidence that Paul used a helmet to illustrate salvation.
It protects our minds.
So much of our battles will be in our minds.
Fear.
Shame.
Doubt.
The lies that whisper—
You’re on your own.
God’s done with you.
The helmet reminds us that the Bible says:
You’re covered.
You belong.
Your identity is secure, not because of your strength,
because of His work.
We can stand.
You don’t fight to earn salvation.
You fight because you already have it.
A friend of mine recently preached,
“We fight not for victory but from victory.”
(You can watch that sermon here. )
And that knowledge protects your mind like armor.
The enemy doesn’t need to take your life if he can take your clarity.
If he can flood your head with fear,
with lies,
with endless questions about whether you’re good enough, strong enough, faithful enough.
It doesn’t mean the arrows won’t fly.
It means when they hit, they don’t own you.
You can get knocked down and still know who you are.
You can face chaos and still know whose you are.
You can stand.
So when doubt creeps in,
when the noise is loud,
when every voice tells you you’re losing—
tighten the strap,
put on the helmet.
Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
Not weaponized verses.
Not proof-texting.
The real Word.
Living.
Active.
Sharp enough to cut through noise.
Bring healing.
I worry that in the modern church we don’t truly appreciate the Bible.
Our sermons too often sound like self-help talks.
Or they feed the ego of the person preaching.
A TED Talk with a Coldplay outro.
They’re heavy on the speaker’s favorite author.
Light on actual Bible verses.
A lot of Jesus Calling.
Not so much actual Jesus.
Why?
The Bible provides us with what we actually need to stand.
I get it, there’s a lot of debate about what things mean.
How do we read it?
How do we interpret it?
But we’re literally told that this is the tool that we need to grasp.
Firmly.
We need to be teaching the Bible.
Not the latest author.
Not the latest Instagram influencer.
The Bible.
We don’t need to dress it up.
Don’t need to make it palatable.
We just need to immerse ourselves in it.
Talk about it.
Admit what we don’t understand.
Do the things we know it tells us to do.
Overcome evil with good.
Make disciples.
Take care of orphans and widows.
Be generous givers.
In our modern church, we chase hype more than the “boring”, consistent actions it calls us to.
We place heavy emphasis on something that someone on stage tells us “they heard” God say.
Rather than just taking the Word in our hands and doing the plain things it tells us to do.
The right weapons are strange weapons.
They don’t make headlines.
They don’t trend.
They don’t feel powerful in the moment.
Because they don’t win the way the world wins.
But they do win.
They demolish strongholds.
Not by kicking doors down,
but by tearing down lies.
They don’t destroy people—
they expose what’s false,
and free what’s real.
They bring healing.
And that’s what makes this so hard.
Because our minds will always tell us,
“If we don’t fight like them, we’ll lose.”
But the gospel says,
“If you fight like them, you’ve already lost.
And I’ve already won for you.”
A pastor friend of mine once told me about a couple in his church—
parents of a daughter who had completely walked away from the faith.
They tried everything.
Books.
Counseling.
They even brought her to conferences they thought might “spark something.”
It didn’t.
In fact, the more they pushed, the more she became antagonistic.
She rejected not just their methods.
She rejected the faith behind them.
She called the methods manipulation.
She wasn’t all wrong.
And one day, in a moment of desperation, the dad broke down in tears.
“I’ve quoted Scripture at her.
I’ve debated her.
I’ve even threatened to cut her off financially.
And none of it has worked.”
My friend said something that stuck with me:
“You’re swinging a sword God never gave you.
You’re trying to force something that only the Spirit can grow.”
He told me that it crushed the father
But it also freed him.
He stopped debating.
He stopped pushing.
He started listening.
He started praying.
He started modeling what grace actually looks like.
We’re not fighting people.
“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood...”
—Ephesians 6:12
That’s another part we forget.
The person arguing with you online?
Not your enemy.
The neighbor who thinks differently from you?
Not your enemy.
The politician,
the activist,
the critic?
Still not the enemy.
They are literally the people we are called to love.
We don’t fight flesh and blood.
We fight lies.
Strongholds.
Patterns.
Systems that keep people enslaved—
often inside the church, too.
And the only way to tear those down is with divine power.
Not brute force.
So what now?
If you feel weary from the fight—
maybe it’s time to put down the weapons that were never yours to carry.
You don’t need to be the loudest voice.
You don’t need to win every argument.
You don’t need to make everyone agree with you.
You need to stand.
Strapped in truth.
Guarded by grace.
Moving in peace.
Covered in faith.
Rooted in salvation.
And ready with the Word—
not to harm, but to heal.
Because the Kingdom doesn’t advance through control.
It advances through love.
And love wields different weapons.
May you put down every weapon that was never yours to carry.
May you let go of control, fear, and force—
and take up truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Word.
May your armor not be for show, but for standing.
Not for crushing others, but for withstanding evil.
May the Spirit form you into someone who fights quietly, loves relentlessly, and stands firmly—
even when the furnace is still burning.
And may the world see your hope and get curious.
Go in truth.
Stand in grace.
Live with weapons that heal.
Even if.
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