The year 2025 is coming to a close, and with that are going to be some significant changes with Worldview Warriors and what is being done. For those who have been following Jason’s “return” to the scene, it seems the ministry is firing back up, but my role in the ministry is going to change. For 12 years, I have been a blogger for the ministry, and at the end of this month, I will publish my final blog post for the time being. I will still be involved and will continue writing, and I will share more of that at the close of the month, but as I close out my weekly blog, I want to leave you all with two critical messages for our day and age.
Those who follow me know that I am not one who readily minces words. I just say it just as I see it and don’t have much of a filter in a very “over-sensitive” culture that has trained people to believe that their emotions are their literal identity and anything that would make them feel bad is an attack on their person. I cannot tell you how many times I will address the tactics and actions people are doing, and they think I am attacking them personally. It gets comical at times, but it’s also frustrating.
Making emotions our identity has led to some excessively weak people who completely crumble just at the word “no,” and it’s been supported by taking the Christian command of hospitality, love, and gentleness and twisting it on its head into what some have called “The 11th Commandment.” What is this unwritten commandment that seems to hold all precedence above any other command? “Thou shalt be nice.” Let’s define this by how it is practiced and used.
Being “nice” today is very much like being “tolerant.” You have to be open-minded to all opinions, treating anyone’s ideas with equal weight, except for any ideas that come from God. Because that, by definition, is not “nice.” You cannot say anything that would dare hurt anyone’s feelings or say they are wrong. Everything must not be merely sugar-coated but made of nothing but sugar. If someone actually wants to kill you and hates absolutely everything you stand for, you cannot stand your ground, but you must love and accept them and let them into your circles and home, and you must not speak against their beliefs or lifestyles. That is what being “nice” means in how it is being applied. No matter what anyone else says or does, the Christian is to be the doormat, a softie, a pansy.
C.T. Studd wrote an excellent essay to counter this: “The Chocolate Soldier.” This whole 11th Commandment of “thou shalt be nice” and “tolerant” is telling us that we need to be made of chocolate – a dandy, a lollipop, taste good, feel good, always hospitable, but never sour, rough, challenging, firm. This is a chocolate soldier. A weak, effeminate man who melts with the slightest amount of heat. We are in a battle, the greatest battle that has been going on for millennia. A battle for truth, a battle for souls, and God does not build his men with chocolate.
Studd went on to describe several men who were made of chocolate. Reuben and Meroz were rebuked in Deborah’s song for their lack of support in the war against Sisera. Balaam sought the wealth of the world and taught Israel to sin because he didn’t have the guts to do it himself. Demas left the faith to seek his own pleasure. Mark quit on Paul early in his ministry but then chose to quit being a chocolate, became Peter’s primary translator, and then a good friend of Paul’s. An old prophet deceived a man of God who rebuked Jeroboam for his idols. The ten spies melted like chocolate before the giants of Canaan and drove the rest of Israel to melt with them. Jonah ran away from God to avoid the task given to him.
Each of these men and tribes showcased at least one time of cowardice, weakness, or softness, and the end result was sin. Disobedience, defiance, worldliness, and frankly, an easy trophy for the enemy. Satan and this world LOVE chocolate soldiers; they’re so easy to devour. There is another key characteristic in this description: cowardice. The “chocolate soldier” is a coward, afraid, weak, pathetic, and caves and surrenders to the opinions and pressures of men and this world easily. And the coward is the first in the list of those who will not enter the kingdom of heaven in Revelation 21:8.
But we are not called to be “nice.” We are called to be men of actual substance. Studd describes what a real man of God looks like with many examples: Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Nathan, Daniel, John the Baptist, and Paul, not to mention Jesus of Christ. There was no sugar or chocolate in them. And when there was, that was when sin came out (except for Jesus, of course). But there was no softness, no sugar, no “niceness,” no “tolerance” as this world wants of us. Instead, there is the rock-hard, firm resolve that changes this world. There is a refusal to back down without any regard to how it is received, and the only care is to be obedient to what God said to say and to do. Now, in this, there is the warning to be innocent as doves, so we are to do all we do without sin. But beware, our culture and many in the church consider standing your ground to be “toxic,” and to say “That does not belong in the church” to be “inhospitable” and “unloving.” And how dare we actually tell a professing Christian they are in error, let alone in heresy and outside the faith, when they have denied, directly or indirectly, Christ, the work of Christ, or even the necessity for Christ. It’s one thing to pursue Christ and be wrong. But when someone is intentionally teaching something in error and has no regard for correction, regardless of which “tone” is used, that must be called out.
Now, to be clear, every one of us has chocolate in us. Every one of us has those moments where we put our guard down and join the “chocolate brigade.” David did, Jonah did, Mark did, but they hated it and repented and rejoined God’s army properly. As for me, it doesn’t take long to see that I am not easily made of chocolate when it comes to truth, but I also know myself in other areas where I certainly have too much chocolate in me. We are to be kind and loving and draw people to Christ, but NEVER are we to be “nice” and cowardly. We must make a stand and not back down, telling this world, “We aren’t going anywhere.” And that is what we are seeking to do with Worldview Warriors. Even as I step down from blogging soon, it only means my job description is changing, not my position or my resolve. I’ll explain more on that in the upcoming couple of weeks.
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This will likely be my last post on this short series on spiritual warfare. I have exposed several tactics of the enemy and told of the battle we have before us, but how can we actually engage in this battle? The easy answer (and the only answer) is prayer, but in prayer, we can engage tactfully. One of the most inspirational biographies I have read is that of Rees Howells. During World War II, he turned his Bible college into a “war room.” With maps and figures representing army positions, he would pray like a soldier on the battlefield. He would pray over battles and tactics, and he was very specific about what he was aiming at in his prayer life. In this post, I want to hit several tactics we can use in our prayer life to engage in the battle over souls and against the principalities, teachings, and even demonic forces that we face.
Charles Spurgeon described the prayer life as shooting the enemy in battle. He described that many people’s prayer lives take a “shotgun” approach. The whole idea is to get a broad scope in prayer and just pray in generalities, but that’s like shooting with a shotgun. While a few parts of the bullets may hit, most of it will not. Instead, prayer needs to be more like a sniper where you are dealing with accuracy and precision. You know precisely what you want to pray for, and you target that thing specifically. Again, we aren’t talking about praying for desires or wishes here to fulfill dreams. We are talking about tactics here. We are talking about military strategy. We are talking about praying specifically against enemy moves and praying specifically to uplift and support specific allies in the battle. In fencing, Epee is a very precise, finesse weapon. Point control is everything. While the entire body is a target, the better you get, the more precise targets you want to practice hitting. If your point is everywhere and chasing the opponent’s blade, you will more likely miss the target than hit. You will give your opponent a free chance to get the point in a sport where millimeters and milliseconds make the difference between a touch for, a double touch, or a touch against.
One of Howell’s tactics was to pray for confusion in enemy ranks. He would pray that Hitler would make blunders in his decision-making that he would normally not make, and that is precisely what happened. The normal brilliant tactics Hitler used suddenly became really stupid, like not having his panzers in position to aid at Normandy. When we are dealing with plots to overthrow Christianity, we can pray for enemy confusion that their organization will not be well set up, that they will have infighting among their ranks, so that their efforts to stop the church will be thwarted.
Did you know that the Bible has such an account of this as well? When Absalom’s coup began, David fled, and one of his very wise advisors, Ahithophel, defected to Absalom. David sent Hushai to confound Absalom, and Hushai’s advice saved David’s life because it bought David time to regroup. Perhaps Howells got his idea to pray for enemy confusion from this passage. We need to pray that the enemy will not be able to read us or see what our tactics are. Sometimes, to answer that prayer, God may need to put us into a fog where we cannot see what is going on; if you cannot see through a fog, often, the enemy cannot see you either.
We need to pray for the enemy to be blind, for God to not let them see our movements, and to not connect the dots with what they are seeing. I grew up on the mission field, crossing the border into Mexico regularly. We would regularly pray that the guards would not see all the things we were carrying on the bus. We are talking about things like boxes of apples, water, clothing, Bibles, and even wheelchairs and insulation. We spread them out on the bus so they would not be concentrated in one place and be obvious, but it was truly backed by prayer that a guard on a bad day would see the food and kick us back. Another missionary, Brother Andrew, would smuggle Bibles through the Iron Curtain of the Communist East. He would frequently pray that the guards would be blind to all the Bibles that were being carried through, which would certainly get him arrested and killed if caught. What about today? Can we pray for blindness and deafness to eyes and ears that hate the Gospel in our workplace so we can share the Gospel?
What about support for our allies? Paul asked for specific prayers from his church support, and in one case, to the Ephesians, he prayed for utterance. Did you know that Paul was terrified of speaking in public? After all, what did that get him? Jail time, the whip 5 times, stoned twice, shipwrecked, thrown into the cold, and he very likely had some severe physical limps and ailments from such treatment. Yet he prayed for the courage to speak, that he may proclaim boldly the message he had been given. So when we ask for prayer, let’s be specific so our allies know how to pray for us, and when we pray for others, let’s also be specific. Jesus asked his people, “What do you want me to do?” When we present our needs to God, let us be specific about them.
But when we are praying for those out there, let’s also be more specific. Sometimes, we may not know what to pray for, and in that case, a general cover may work, but let’s not use that as an excuse for lazy generic prayers. We have allies in the battle, and they need our support for wisdom, protection, and especially for those who are out there and their loved ones at home. Remember, the enemy plays dirty, and he loves going after the wives and children of pastors and missionaries when they are away.
This is just a quick snapshot of a few tactics that we can start incorporating into our prayer lives. Pray tactically. The battles that we fight are fought and won on our knees, not in political rallies or in conferences (though conferences can help equip us). Let us pray and learn how to pray once more. Let us be ambitious enough that when Satan has his “planning parties,” our names are the ones that have his attention. It makes his job easier without us to focus on – one fewer soldier for him to deal with. But it means we have to get up and fight and be ready for the pushback. We are called to fight, we are called to contend for the faith, and we are called to fight until the battle is won. Let us rise up and fight for the glory of our God so the flag of Zion, the flag of Jesus Christ, may fly on every hilltop and tower. It will be done on our knees, and then God will send us into action. It will not be done through political means but by spiritual means. Let’s answer the call.
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As I closed with last week’s post, the Church has quit fighting the spiritual battle on many fronts quite some time ago, and that is why we are so weak, so pathetic, and so easily manipulated. There is an arising, however, it is primarily confronting the politics and not actually addressing the real battles that we need to engage in. Like cleaning a house, you can do the ongoing repetitive light cleaning, or you can wait for it to build up, and then you have a heavier-duty cleaning job that is much harder to do than had you kept on top of it before.
There is a huge battle before us if we want the Church to be a force with power once again. And I am not talking about politics or to keep our rights and comforts. I am talking about having the Holy Spirit’s power to actually change lives and DO something for the Kingdom of God. The most sound preachers we have today are good, solid preachers who have the truth, but look around them. Is the government asking them what they are allowed to do or telling them what to do? Are schools asking the Church what they have going so they know what to schedule or plan? Do the wicked people plot and plan what they are doing based on what the Church will say about them? I think we all know the answer to that.
We have no power because we have all turned toward the flesh for our power. Even good churches do this. I am not talking about immorality here; I am talking about turning to man’s ideas, man’s methodologies, and especially, man’s intellect. I arrived at my current church about four years ago, in February or March 2021. At the time, we were about sound doctrine, and there is an absolute need for it. I felt there were people there who could actually challenge me and help make me stronger in my faith. And then we had a church split due to an Absalom spirit.
After we recovered, we have been seeking true power and for the Holy Spirit to truly come and let us experience proper evangelism and the seeking of souls once again. We just came back from our church retreat, and this was the second in four years in which the theme was spiritual warfare. The first time was right before that split happened. Two years ago, we spoke about Communion with God, last year was about Holiness, and this year was again about Spiritual Warfare. I summarized the previous three years as this: first year: going into battle, second year: recovering from battle, third year: recharging and building, and this year: a new approach to battle.
We need power. When my church’s teaching elder is on his rotation for preaching, he is going through the book of Acts. A recent sermon of his was on Pentecost. He made some extremely valuable points. First, we cannot explain Christianity in our naturalistic minds. The carnal mind cannot understand our message. Yet we have a wave of apologists who have created an industry of trying to explain Christianity in mundane language, logic, and reasoning. Now, God did not leave us without evidence. Not at all. However, Christianity is not a mere religion, a mere lifestyle, or even a mere relationship. It has the power to do the supernatural: to do things that normal humans cannot do.
While 1 Peter 3:15 is correctly cited to be ready to give an answer for what we believe, it is not correctly cited in that we give an eloquent speech that makes the carnal mind make sense of it. Instead, the actual context is about a suffering church, where people are getting killed for their faith, having joy and hope to the level where James’ executioner chose to be executed with him because he saw so much hope and joy in James that he did not want James to die alone. That’s 1 Peter 3:15. When Paul preached, he did not come with a grand speech that can wow an audience, but with a demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit. Where is that today? I’m asking myself too.
We are unique in that in no other time of history has a nation actually been trained with Christian thinking as the foundation. However, if we want to see changes happen, it has got to start with us, and it’s not going to change with the White House or Congress. It will start with the Church. We have to get ready for battle, but our battle is not against the politicians but against the spiritual forces that puppeteer them. It’s against the false teachings that they follow. And it has to start in the Church – cleaning out the false teachings IN the Church, even while all the false teachings out there remain prominent.
Before we can fight the battle “out there,” we first have to clean up the battles we are fighting within the Church. Our walls are broken down, the enemy has easy access to us, and we have to fight the enemy WITHIN our walls before we can really start marching outward. That is what my church is seeking to do: continuing healing within, protecting our walls, and strengthening our core, all with the mindset of preparing to go out and do battle and win souls and remind our city and our nation that there still is a God here in El Paso and in the U.S. We may not get that power until persecution hits us full force, but we are tired of playing games. We are tired of playing church. We are tired of religion. We are tired of theory.
And let me tell you, we at Worldview Warriors are saying the same thing. In one of our recent meetings, our president, Jason DeZurik, was sharing his vision about this. It resonated so well with what my church is going after that words cannot describe. Are we going to save the U.S.? No. I don’t believe that even a nationwide genuine revival can do that anymore. The sins of this nation are too great for that, but one thing I can say: I want the Church cleansed and ready for action. I want to see the Church with power again, the power to be seen as a threat by this evil world system that they have to make active moves to try to stop us. I want the Church to be a spiritual force enough that society MUST recognize us once again and that they cannot go about and sin as they please.
The Church is weak and frail right now, but it’s not dead. Every time society thinks it finally put the Church down into the grave, as is being believed in the U.S. right now, we keep coming back. My local congregation is seeking that life and that power to evangelize and to start seeing souls set free once again. It is only with the power that is backed by prayer that this can happen, and when souls are set free, society begins to change because sinners will stop sinning and stop engaging with the businesses that make their money in sin. That’s what happened in Phillipi and Ephesus, and the cities were never the same again. May we unleash a spiritual bomb that so disrupts the status quo that the world will never be able to function the same again and instead be forced to function with a Church to reckon with. Let’s prepare for battle, let’s put on the armor of God, let’s train on how to use it, and let’s go to battle with the King of Kings, our true Commander-in-Chief at our head.
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When this blog post is published, I will be out of town at a church retreat that has a theme of spiritual warfare. My pastor is planning on having me do a session during the retreat in which I will use my fencing equipment to showcase the Armor of God. Then with a sparring partner, I’ll demonstrate several of the moves and tactics that we use in the sport as a visual aid to help us see the spiritual battles that we engage in. With that in mind, I want to do a short series on spiritual warfare again. It won’t be a big one, but I’m drawn to this topic for my blog posts at this time.
We need to be prepared for battle, and there are only a few of us who are awake and aware of the battle that is going on. I know I have spoken about spiritual warfare a number of times, however, too often I still treat it in the theoretical and do not fully engage in it practically as often as I want. I’ve tasted battle, I’ve fought, I’ve won, and I’ve lost. But what I want to focus on in this series are some of the tactics that have been used against us.
For today’s post, I want to look at one of the fallouts of modern evangelistic methods. Historically, when missionaries were sent out, they were people who were armed, equipped, prepared, and ready to go, and often they went out with those who had been there before. However, back home the veterans remained, who knew the battles and were actively training the newbies and regulars. Today, usually the ones who are most willing are those sent, regardless of preparation (and a reason why so many return home to quit after just a few years), but also they seem to be the best ones we have. Today, there is such mediocrity in the church that when anyone rises out of the “normal,” they are summoned to go, serve, preach, and be a missionary with that “title” so the average church member can still be mediocre. This is an issue Voddie Baucham emphasizes. When I did a study through 1 Timothy and came across the requirements for a church elder/bishop, I realized that Paul was actually teaching that everyone should be aspiring to such qualifications. That is not happening today.
So here is the tactic I want to expose. When we keep sending out our best young men to go be youth pastors, missionaries, preachers, worship leaders, etc. just because they are starting to take their faith more seriously than the average congregant, they are being sent out elsewhere for training (nothing wrong with that by itself), but it is leaving the church defenseless. Those who are left are the mediocre ones, and church leadership has to feed them milk instead of meat.
What does this mean? It opens the door for the enemy to go after the mediocre to keep their level down. When the church is not being protected, because their best soldiers and men are out “preaching the Gospel,” eventually the church will get weaker. The quality of the best soldier gets weaker and weaker.
Now don’t read what I am not saying. I am not saying that we should send out only newbies. What I am saying is that in our zeal of going out and preaching the Gospel, we need to be building our home base to be stronger so we can build up more saints to go out into the battle and to train them for battle. We still need to be outward-focused, but we need to launch from a position of strength with the whole body focused on the mission, not just a few individuals. Instead, we are sending our soldiers to do the battle “out there” and not actually training the core to be there to protect the sheep, to be in position to take in those rescued from the darkness, so they can heal and then be trained and ready to go out and engage in the battle themselves.
I believe there need to be three primary positions in evangelism: those who go into the pit, those who hold the rope for those going in, and those who take care of and equip and train those who come out of the pit. All three positions are focused on the same mission. But with that, we need our fortresses, the bastions of truth, the pillars of truth that Paul told Timothy we are to be, to be strong, so we have a place to retreat to and rest and recharge, but also a place by which we can build our strength and go out and fight. But instead of being a stronghold anymore, the church has chosen to send its best fighters “out there” almost on their own, while the rest sit back and enjoy a life of comfort and ease. As a result, our good spiritual military leaders eventually get replaced by weak leaders who will not be a threat to the forces of darkness and then all that matters is comfort status quo, and any young voice that says that there must be more is shunned.
I helped get a local “Creation Network” going here in El Paso, with the goal and vision of getting church pastors and leaders connected to arm and equip their congregations on the topic of origins, which has been a front-line battlefield for 200 years. One thing we have noticed is that many pastors will think we are doing a good thing, but they don’t want to get in the fray themselves. They will say “Good luck” and “I’ll be praying for you,” but as long as we are doing the work, they can rest comfortably away from that battlefront. This is what I am talking about here. We are called to contend for the faith, and that includes every believer, but that involves actually getting out into the field and getting your hands dirty.
We are in a war, a war in which our enemy wants one thing: our destruction. He’ll settle with our surrender, but he wants every believer to be removed or neutralized so they are useless on the battlefield. And he’ll gladly allow some losses by individual missionaries if it comes at the cost of leaving the church home undefended. We need strong churches again, and that starts by keeping some of our best men around to guard the walls of the church from the wolves that seek to devour and from enemy plants. There are two particular types of persons that we must be watchful for, identified in 3 John as Diotrephes and in 2 Samuel as Absalom, whom I will address next week. But we need our best men in the church, arming and equipping the saints, but also ready to lead by example and go out to battle as well. One general told another officer, “Never give a soldier a command you are unwilling to do yourself.”
War is upon us. Newsflash: our kids are the primary targets this time around. I’ll deal with Diotrephes and Absalom next week, but then I’ll hit how the enemy fights and he fights dirty.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
