We will be in Second Corinthians. But quick question to start our time together. How many people in the room would say that they're fascinated by World War II? Raise your hand if you're fascinated by World War II. Okay. Less than the 8:30 service, there is more. Much more people. And I felt not as old in the 8:30 service because there's more young people raising their hands during the 8:30 service. But this is something Michaela and I recently. Mikayla, for longer than I have just gotten recently fascinated by World War II. She's been reading the Hiding Place and the Bonhoeffer biography. I mainly just watch the shows, to be honest. But it's an amazing point in history. It is full of these incredible stories that both just wow you and haunt you at the same time. Whether it's just the epitome of evil as expressed in the Nazi regime or the brutality in the Axis forces and how they fought in Japan and elsewhere, and then the bravery of the Allied forces and how the whole world. I mean, a world war, right, was up in conflict, and it was intense, and it's just full of these different stories. And one of the stories from World War II will set us up well for our time in Second Corinthians this morning. And it is known as the counterintelligence operation, Operation Mincemeat. And here's what happened. At a critical point in the war, British forces realized, hey, we need to invade Sicily. This is a strategic position. We need to break ground, and we need to invade. Problem was, there was a lot of troops on Sicily's shores defending it. And so for an invasion to be successful, they needed to divert troops away from Sicily. So the plan was we need to make a fake invasion, essentially, and convince the Germans to move their troops elsewhere. The plan was, hey, let's prepare a dead body with some fake invasion plans, drop it in Spanish waters and hope the Germans believe it. Okay, a little far fetched. A little far fetched, but this is how they did it. They had to make the lie of this body believable. They had to dress this body up so that it looked like a British royal officer. So what they did is they took the body of a homeless man and they gave him a new identity, named him William Martin, a Royal Marine officer. And then this couldn't just look like just any Marine. There had to be a story behind it to really make it believable. So they took this photo of a girl to be a supposed fiance and stuck it in his pocket. They got a receipt for an engagement ring, put that in his pocket. And then a ticket stub to be like a memory piece of a date, a supposed date that this William Martin would have gone on. And so they filled this body up with these things to make it look believable, put them on dry ice because the body couldn't look too dead. Had to be the right kind of deadness to be found, and then put it in a submarine to be dropped in submarine waters in Spanish waters in hopes for Spanish fishermen to happen upon it as an accident, right? Like, oh, they weren't supposed to find this for then the fishermen to take it to Spanish authorities and say, hey, this is something you should check out for. Then Germans to see the same thing and wonder, like, oh, is this real? And long story short, it worked. And these false invasion plans went all the way up to Hitler himself. And 100,000 troops were removed from Sicily to Greece and Sardinia. 100,000 troops, which paved the way for Operation Husky, which, can we just agree that's a great name for a war, Operation Operation Husky to come in and take Sicily as shores. And it changed the war dramatically. It changed the scene in Europe dramatically. It was incredible. The deception of a fake battle led to the loss of a real battle. And here's what we need to see as we get our time started this morning. If this kind of deception is possible in an earthly war of submarines and guns, how much more possible is it in a spiritual war for souls? If this kind of deception is possible, it's not hard for us to look around the world and see, like man, there's conflict, there's battles going on, there's wars being fought. We find ourselves in the middle of a spiritual war, which Paul describes in this way to the Ephesians, Ephesians 6:12. He says, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood against people, but against rulers, against authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And we feel this in the world, but we feel it mostly around people. Whether it's relational conflict at home, at work or at school, whether it's the internal battle of anxiety and depression, or it's the social media war of politics and opinions. Like we're all too familiar with fighting and conflict. But are we fighting the right battles or are we being deceived by a well dressed up lie that's pointing us away from the real battle at hand? How do we know we are fighting the right battle the right way? That's the question. We need to wrestle with this morning as we open our text. So go ahead, turn your Bibles to Second Corinthians 10. We'll be in the first six verses. And while you're. While you're turning there, I'll kind of set us up. We've been the last several weeks, if you've been with us, you know, we've been talking a lot about money. And Paul in chapters eight and nine has had a lot to say about God. Focused gospel feud, generosity. And now he's transitioning to appealing to a certain group of people in Corinthian Church. And the rest of the letter will be kind of full of this appeal, this plea to the people in Corinth. There's this small, rebellious minority in the Corinthian church that has been led away by false teachers. These false teachers have basically said, hey, stop trusting Paul, okay? He's inconsistent. He's weak. He's not worth your time. His message is a sham. Don't trust Paul. Don't listen to him because he's poor. He suffers a lot. And this group in Corinth, they believed it. They bit it. They said, yeah, no, I agree with you. I don't trust Paul because of all these things that you've been pointing out in his ministry and in his message, the way that he lives his life. Like, he's just weak and he's not respectable. And this would be heartbreaking for Paul because Paul is the one who delivered the Gospel of Jesus to the Corinthians. He's their spiritual father who loves them and has sacrificed so much for them. So you can imagine it as a father's love being doubted by their child like that, weightiness and sadness and frustration. And so we're gonna see the source of this conflict. Part of why the Corinthians are doubting Paul here in the first two verses to set the stage of this war that we're getting into. So read with me verses 1 and 2. Second Corinthians 10 says this. I, Paul, myself, entreat you. I come to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. I, who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I'm away. I beg of you that when I am present, when I come back to you, I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. Okay, so we get a little bit more clarity about what the conflict is here between the Corinthians that don't trust Paul and Paul. And it's because Paul is supposedly inconsistent. He's supposedly acting one way through letter. He's bold and he's calling the Corinthians to change. And then when he shows up in person, it's like he doesn't have any guts. It's like he's weak and he doesn't follow through with the power that he says and the Corinthians feel about Paul, how we can feel about those folks that we see on Facebook that just comment and post with vigor, that when you show up in person, it's like you just don't have the same power. Like what's going there's inconsistency in who you are here. But the difference between Paul and that sort of thing is that Paul isn't hiding behind a screen. He's not trying to act one way cowardly and then show up and be different. But he's, he's trying to be patient with the Corinthians. He's giving them a chance to change. Because if he shows up the way that they want him to, with this power and this presence, it's going to look like judgment for the Corinthians. And that's not what Paul wants. He understands how his supposed inconsistency looks to the Corinthians, but he's not trying to fight the way they think he should fight. He's trying to model who Jesus is. Gentleness and meekness takes you back if you know Matthew 11:28, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. Paul is coming to the Corinthians with the patience Jesus. So instead of coming to them in judgment, he's coming to them in patience. And he's pleading with his rebellious spiritual children, like, listen to me, trust me, accept the message of the Gospel again, come back home. And he's going to address why they are doubting him in a really particular way. How he addresses this, how he describes the war going on, will help us see how we fight war. So in our text, we're going to see three things for you note takers. We're going to see what the right war is. We're going to how to see the way to fight it rightly, how to fight the right way and what are the right weapons to use, the right war, the right way and the right weapons to use. So with that, let's read the rest of our text from this morning. Second Corinthians 10, starting verse three. For though we walk in the flesh, though we live in a way that has weakness and marked by suffering. Paul is saying, 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. We destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete. So first thing that we see is what the right war is for and what it is against. Paul is fighting for something and he's fighting against something else. In verse five we see he's fighting for the knowledge of God. Fighting for the knowledge of God and obedience to Christ. And the knowledge of God we saw in second Corinthians 4 last fall is seen in the face of Jesus. Knowing God is possible through the gospel, through Jesus, man, God becoming man to live the life we should have lived, die the death we deserve to die. And rising from the dead, that's how you know God, it's through the gospel. So that's the knowledge of God. And when you believe that you obey God, you obey Jesus. So simply put, Paul is fighting for the Corinthians active faith in Jesus for them to know and obey Jesus. He's fighting for their faith in Jesus. And he's fighting against anything that gets in the way of that, anything that would imply impede the knowledge of God and the obedience to Jesus. Anything that gets in the way of the Corinthians active faith in Jesus. And that's where he describes the strongholds, the arguments, lofty opinions. These are tools that the false teachers have used against the Corinthians to steer them away from Paul and the Gospel. You can picture a stronghold is like an enemy castle fort. So you would see a stronghold when you would go to Europe and see the beautiful castles there. But this isn't a worldly, physical stronghold. This is something spiritual, something mental. It's a mindset or a value system that's worldly that follows the patterns and the desires of this world. And it's built up in a way that gets in the way of your faith in Jesus, that gets in the way of your obedience to Jesus. It's a dressed up lie of the flesh that turns us in on ourselves, in on our sin, instead of upward to God. So for the Corinthians, this looked like their just fascination with anyone who could speak eloquently, powerfully, that had these, these platforms of privilege and presence. Like if you had that the Corinthians, this minority was like, yeah, I'm gonna listen to you, you you're smart, you're winsome, like you deserve. For me to listen to you and to follow you. Which then led them to believe a different gospel than the one that Paul presented to them, the Corinthians. Excitement of sex, self exaltation and self confidence got in the way of their faith of Jesus. Their desire to be self confident got in the way of their faith in Jesus. And our culture has a similar problem, doesn't it? Because our culture heavily values self confidence. I saw a billboard on the way to Michigan this week and it was one of those like fun phrases that are supposed to be a feel good, you read it and you feel happier. Had pass it on in it and said you do you confidence. Pass it on. And at first brush it's like, yeah, sure, like everyone needs a little bit more confidence, like there's no problem in that. But when you look beneath what that statement is saying, you find the truth it's trying to present is you will have confidence if you can live the life you feel you should live. Like whatever you have inside of you that you believe is right is good and true, that you should be, that you should become. If you do that, you can be confident. You do. You find confidence within yourself, become who you feel you should be and you will be happy. And this is a well dressed up lie that is an incredible stronghold in our culture that leads us to be thinking inward and not about God. Because what it does is it puts us in the place of God. It makes us the ones that tell us who we are, what is our identity, and that we can build it up through us doing what we want, from us performing the best that we could, from us being as smart as we are, from us performing well with our abilities, which makes us feel awesome when we're succeeding, like when we're achieving you do you. It feels amazing, like we're being someone, we're being recognized, we're achieving something. But then it drags us into a pit of anxiety when we're failing or when we're behind or when what we desire to do becomes impossible. It's a stronghold, it's a dressed up lie that points us in on ourselves and not up to God. It's raised up in front of the knowledge of God. And so we see this impact our lives when we're an employee and we believe that, man, if I could just get my work done, just be left alone to just do things my way, then I would be an achiever. I would be able to work hard and work well or even if that's not the case, if people would just listen to my ideas, if I could just be heard, then I would be something. And so then we fight for that. We fight to be heard. We fight for our way in our workplaces. Cause we need to be us. We need it. You do you. As a parent, we believe that if we can capture this image of the perfect family that is presented through whatever means, whether it's online or in our community, if we can capture that picture of a perfect family, if people can see my kids are well behaved, they're achieving that I'm that gracious but firm parent, if I can be seen as that, then I can be confident in my parenting, I can be confident in who I am. And so we fight for behavior modification. We fight for our kids being able to do whatever they want to do. Because that's what good parents do, right? We fight for those things. And as kids and teenagers, we believe that, man, if I can achieve in that sport or in that area of music or in that field to get that degree, if I can achieve in whatever I care about most, if I can be recognized for doing good, for being strong, for being able, then I can be confident, then I will be secure. And you can just see how each of these are mindsets. They're value systems that they just. They turn us inward, inward on ourselves. And they get in the way of us looking to God. They deceive us into fighting the wrong battles. And these lies, they're powerful because we want to believe them. We want to believe we can make ourselves good enough, that we can make ourselves something. And the stronghold you can see it is there are lies of the flesh, there are lies of the world that just point us to think about ourselves and making much of ourselves. So here's the point. The right war is against the flesh, against the worldly system, the worldly mindset, that stronghold. And it's for faith in Jesus. It's for knowing Jesus, loving Jesus, obeying Jesus. That's the right war. The right war is against the flesh and for faith in Jesus. So how do you fight it? How do you fight it? We're gonna look at three different things and boil it down into one here. But first with me, look back at verse five. And I need some audience participation here. Eight, 30. We love when they were a little slow to this, I think they got a little scared. But simple answer here, really quick verse 5. There's a verb, verses 4 and 5. There's a very strong verb that Paul uses to describe how he Fights, strongholds, arguments, and lofty opinions. What is the verb? Anybody got it? Destroy. Thank you. Let's go. That's it. I set you guys up way better for it, too, to give 830 a break, but I sure did. And so when I see destroy, when I think about it, I think about, like, when my toddler, Adeline, she builds up her wood block tower, and her little brother Solomon just comes in and bam, like, wrecking ball takes it out. And then Adeline's sad. But we. This is the point when we recognize there's a mindset, that it's tempting to turn us inward and to make us about ourselves and away from God. We need to tear it down. We have to wreck it. We have to destroy it. We need to destroy these things that get in the way of us knowing and loving God. But this is the struggle. It can be hard to want to destroy a stronghold that you like when you have a belief system, a mindset, a value system that it's got your heart, you know, you really do believe you can be someone that way. We don't want to believe the truth when we like the lie. That's the reality. You can think of it this way. Let's say you've got this picture of remodeling a home. You've got, you know, fixer, upper hgtv. You're locked and loaded. You've seen the transformations happen. You're like, I'm ready. I can do this. And you love the idea that you can fix up a home. And so then you go and you find that home. It's 100 years old. It's super cheap. And you're like, yeah, it's got a lot of work to do, but it's got good bones, right? It's got good bones. We can do this. And then you have a handy friend, or your father comes over and takes a look at the house, and he's like, this is junk. Do not buy the house. Just leave. And in the moment, you're like, no, no. Like, I can do this. We can do this. You just telling me it's wrong doesn't make me believe that this. That the truth that is good for me isn't real. Like, I believe this is good for me. But then if that friend was patient enough to say, like, okay, let me tell you why this house is junk. Okay, let me just break it down for you brick by brick. The foundation is BOEING. Need, like, 20, 30,000 grand to reinforce it. There's Orangeburg in the piping. So if you were ever to sell the house, you're gonna have to get that fixed. Asbestos is still somehow in the insulation. I don't know how, but it is. And there's termites. Okay. No, seriously, stay away from this house. It's absolute junk. If someone were to do that, the reality would set in and it would help you love the house less. You see that? Like, oh, no, there's actually any idea that I had about this home being amazing and good is wrong. I see it clearer now and would help you see the truth, that it's not good for you. We need to do the same thing with these strongholds that we've just clung to, these worldly value systems that tell us that we can be whoever we want to be. So let's take the stronghold of you do you, and take it down brick by brick. Your heart's desires, if you're just about like me fulfilling my heart's desires, they're tainted by sin. Like they're not trustworthy. So they're just gonna bend you inward in fighting for your own purpose and goodness instead of pointing you upward to look at God. So that's the first reason why it's not good. And then the reality is, it's like it only works as if you can actually achieve what you desire to achieve. If you were in control of every circumstance and situation to make happen what you want to make happen, then, then you could do you. But you're not in control. God's in control. And the reality is that if you fail to live this out, to achieve what you desire to achieve, it's gonna lead to insecurity, anxiety, and just being self absorbed, just being in on yourself. And we all know in this room that those things are not good for us. They're not good for our families, and they're not good for our culture. So the reality is we need a better house. We need a better foundation for our identity and purpose. So first we gotta break down the lies in our hearts, and then we need to build back up with truth. Because if we just break down the lies of the house that we've been living in the stronghold, we're homeless, okay? We don't have purpose, we don't have identity. We need the house, the safe house of faith in Jesus to be built back up. So let's think of it this way. Instead of the stronghold of you, do you. How about the safe house of Be who God made you to be. Be who God made you to be, Where God is your loving creator who has intentionally made you in his image, which we know from Genesis 126, where Paul in Ephesians 2 tells us, yeah, no, here's the deal. You are a sinner, but Jesus came and saved you by grace, through faith. You've been made new, been redeemed, and have been brought into the people of God. To which Paul says this in Ephesians 2. 10. We are his workmanship. That's who you are created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should work. Walk in them, talk about that. For identity and purpose. Right? God has remade you in the people of God, and he's given you good works to go and do. Ultimately, you are loved by God because of what Jesus has done, not because of what you do. That's your foundation. Jesus is your confidence. He's the source of your identity. So now you can live for him and experience this much better life that's so much better for our hearts than you do you. Amen. It's so much better. So step one, break down the lies. Step two, break, build up with truth. And then thirdly, we need to take every thought captive to obey Christ. The first two had to do more with our hearts. This one has to do with our mind, because our mind is a critical battlefield that we can often neglect and is always under attack. Audience participation here. Raise your hand if you think this statement is true. The Average person thinks 50,000 thoughts a day. Raise your hand if you think that statement's true. If you're raising your hand, it's good. And it's mostly the kids. Good work, kids. You might have heard of this study. A study by this guy named Dr. Fred Luskin from Stanford found that an Average person experiences 60,000 thoughts a day, on average. That's a lot of thoughts, people. Man, if I had a dollar for every thought, I wouldn't have that many. I don't think, though. I don't think I think that much. Honestly, I don't. But every thought we have is either for faith in Jesus or for the flesh. That's the reality. 60,000 thoughts for faith in Jesus or for the flesh. Paul says it this way in Romans 8, 6. For to set the mind on the flesh is death. But to set the mind on the spirit, on the word of God, the truths of Scripture. Who God is is life and peace. And in Ephesians, in chapter six, he describes the enemy lobbing flaming darts at us to be extinguished by this shield of faith. There's this battle going on in our minds, and the reality is we don't fight on this battlefield very well. We get overwhelmed by so many thoughts, so many arrows that have grown, made us grow numb to the danger of what's going on. If you've watched any war movie with, like, sustained fighting action, there's those moments and those lulls where there's shots being fired, but there's two guys talking and just, like, walking as if nothing's going on. Why they've grown numb to the gunfire, the sounds and shots around them is like, no big deal. When if us in this room heard a gunshot, we'd be like, whoa. The problem is, like soldiers growing numb to the sound of gunfire. We have grown numb to the lies of our world, the enemy, and our sinful desires. We get in trouble in this way when a thought comes in that says, hey, you've been wronged at work. You have a right to be angry and to act out in anger, whether it be gossip, whether it be cussing a person out, whether it be just grumbling inside. But that makes sense under the you do you stronghold, right? You're being authentic. You're being real about who. What's going on in your heart. But when you're in the safe house of be who God made you to be, you need to tell yourself, no, God has made me new. God is patient. So I can be patient to be like God. That's how I need to respond. Or as a student, when you get a grade back on a project or an assignment or a test and you're just saying, thinking that's not what I wanted, I feel dumb. I feel like a failure. I'm so far behind. We need to catch those thoughts and tell ourselves a test score. A grade doesn't tell me who I am. Jesus does. He's my creator. He's the one who tells me who I am. So break down the lies brick by brick. Build up with truth. Take thought captives. Let's just boil that down into one idea. We need to replace lies with truth. Whether it's in our hearts, whether it's in our minds. We need to replace lies with truth. The right way to fight is to replace lies with truth in our hearts and in our minds. That's how the battle's won. And lastly, to fight the right war the right way, we need the right weapons, the right weapons to fight the right war. The reality is that our culture fights with earthly weapons of swaying opinions, emotional manipulation, outworking the other guy, posturing ourselves above others. And that's an earthly way of fighting. But the weapons of our Warfare have divine power. Look back at verse four with me when Paul says this, says the weapons of our warfare have divine power. He's referring to the spiritual resources that lead to a life of active faith in Jesus. And the two most critical spiritual resources for us to wield as weapons in this war are God's word through the Bible and God's power through prayer. Those are the two most critical for us. And we see that if we go to Ephesians 6 real quickly, Ephesians 6:17, where Paul says this, he says, take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. It's an offensive weapon. Praying 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. See, we wield the sword of the Spirit. We go to the Word of God to fill our minds with the truth of Scripture. So we have ammunition, we have power to replace the lies with truth. Because how else do we combat the lies of the world that say you, do you be who you want to be, do whatever your heart desires. We need the truths of Scripture to come under us to fight against those. And then we pray to ask God to move in power in our hearts because it's hard for us to believe truth is good. Sometimes when we like the lie, it's hard to want to believe the truth. So we need God to move in power in our hearts to make us believe these truths, to take the thought captive, thoughts captive, and to grow in our faith in Jesus where God takes the truth that we've read and helps us believe it and live it. So the right weapons in this warfare are God's word and God's power through prayer. The right weapons are God's word and God's power through prayer. So I want to combine this together in kind of a clunky sentence, so bear with me. But here's the idea for us to walk away with this morning. We must wage the war for faith in Jesus by replacing lies with truth equipped by God's word and power. We must wage the war for faith in Jesus by replacing lies with truth equipped by God's word and power. Now, in a world full of conflict, this might not sound like enough. I don't know every battle on this earth that you are facing and experiencing right now and how dark or discouraging that might feel. And this might not feel like enough to wage the war, but this is how Jesus fought when he was on earth. Consider this moment in Jesus life, just before he was baptized by John the Baptist and just before his earthly ministry, Jesus was sent into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to fast for 40 days. Okay, there are two things that happen if someone tries to fast for 40 days. Who can tell me what the most likely thing to happen is? They'll die. They'll die. That's exactly right. Yeah. We need food, Right? So if you're fasting for 40 days, it's likely you're gonna die. Jesus didn't die. Instead, he was extremely hungry. Like his stomach would have been reeling. He's weak, all these things. And the tempter comes in and attacks Jesus with this lie. Hey, Jesus, he knows he's hungry. If you are the son of God, turn these stones into bread. Like Jesus is the son of God. Could he turn those stones into bread? Absolutely Satan. But Jesus, he sees behind what Satan is trying to do. He knows he's trying to manipulate Jesus hunger. And instead he responds with the word of God. He quotes Deuteronomy 8, verse 3 that says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. How powerful when you have it eaten for 40 days to say, I need God's word more than I need food? See, Jesus was equipped with the word of God to wage the spiritual war. How much more do we need it to? How much more do we need God's word to fight and then God's power through prayer? Early on in Jesus ministry, he had finished preaching in Capernaum and he had healed Simon Peter's mom. And it's been a full day of ministry and they're hanging out at the house. And what happens at the end of the night is the whole city ends up at the door and says, hey, we have sick people and we have demon possessed people and you need to heal them. And if it's been a full day of work, we wanna rest and sleep. Right? That's what we wanna do. But Jesus, no, he spends the night healing and freeing people. And if you've had a night where you've worked late and you've worked hard, what are you gonna wanna do the next morning? Sleep. Right? You wanna sleep in. But what does Jesus do? This is what Mark 1:35 says. And rising very early in the morning while it was still dark. Did you even sleep? He departed and went out to a desolate place. And there he prayed. Jesus prayed. He sought God in the morning. He said, no, I'm not gonna sleep. I need to pray with my Father, more. God in the flesh chose to pray. That's amazing. If Jesus, God in the flesh, pursues God in prayer in this way, for God to work, how much more do we need to pursue God's power through prayer? Amen. How much more do we need to pursue God's power through prayer to fight in this spiritual war? And this was just the pattern of Jesus relying on the Father, relying on what is true all the way to him, being crucified on the cross perfectly living the life we should have lived, dying the death we deserved to die. And you can just imagine him being mocked at and jeered out on the cross. Hey, Jesus, you healed others, you saved others. Save yourself. But Jesus knows I'm not here to win this battle. I'm not here to prove to this Roman soldier that I'm the son of God. I'm here to free souls from sin. I'm here to. To free the world from death and corruption. I'm here to die and to rise again. Jesus was not distracted by the earthly battles around him. He came to win the spiritual war for eternity. And he won. And he won. And so we get this hope that when we wage the right war, the right way, with the right weapons, we are fighting in the battle Jesus has already won. When we're fighting against the sin in our hearts, when we're seeing the impact of sin in our neighbors, in our co workers, in our family members, and we want to share the truth of who God is to them, we are fighting in a battle that Jesus has already won. So the question now is, how do we live in this battle? How do we wage war in this battle Jesus has already won? And the first thing we need to do is to recognize the war you're fighting in. Cause there's wars and there's battles that you're fighting in that they're not the right ones. Where you're fighting for yourself, you're fighting for your own desires, your own reputation, your own recognition. And those are distractions. Those aren't the right battles. They're turning you inward instead of upward to God. And there's a right war that you should be fighting. And it's for the faith. It's for faith in Jesus, for yourself, for your kids, parents. Ask yourselves, what do my kids see me fighting for? And are they seeing me fight for their souls? Do I care most about their love for Jesus or not? It's a convicting thing for me to wrestle with. For our neighbors, our co workers, for our own heart, we need to recognize the war we're fighting and fight the right one, then we need to ready our weapons. Are we filling ourselves with God's word? Are we taking time regularly to be in his word to see his truth change our hearts? And are you spending time speaking to God, prayer, asking him to move in power? Because we need him to move. We can't do it on our own. We need him to impact and apply his truth to our lives. We need to prepare the right weapons. So then lastly, we can replace lies with truth so we can be ready and waiting when a thought that is out of the character and nature of God comes into our minds, telling us to believe something, to think something, to act some way and say, no, that's not true. And for us to live more like Jesus. So we need to ask ourselves the questions, what lies am I believing? And what truths do I need to believe in place? How do I need to replace these lies with truth? And the reality is we might not know the answer to those two questions, which is what the family of God is for, which is what the church is for. To look at our lives, to help us see, hey, this is a battle you've been fighting and it's not the right one. This is a stronghold in your life and it's getting in the way of your faith in Jesus. Here's truth from God's word that you need to believe. It's not just do better, it's not just do more. It's believe. Believe the truths that God's scripture has. And were these things to take root, we wouldn't be deceived by false battles. We wouldn't be led astray like the Nazis were to move their troops to Greece and Sardinia. We would wage the right war, the right way with the right weapons. We would stay grounded, fighting for our own soul, for the souls around us, knowing that Jesus, he's won the war he's already won. And we get to be a part of people joining the winning side until he comes back one day. Let us pray to that end. Father, we look at the world around us and we do see so much conflict. We see arguments and opinions and there's things that we want to believe that we shouldn't believe. And there's battles that we want to fight that we don't need to fight. Father, by the power of your spirit, would you help us to stay focused on your mission, to stay focused on us seeing what Jesus has done on the cross and through rising again, that more and more people in our lives would know him and worship him and follow him. Would that be the greatest war that we fight? Would we fight for faith in Jesus, for ourselves and for everyone around us? We trust that by your word we will be equipped with your truth. And that by your power, you will. You will move. We trust you and we love you. We pray in Jesus holy and mighty name, Amen.