Archive for March 22, 2011


Mar 22

Sermon Follow-up: “Prepare for Battle”

2011 | by Trent Hunter | Category: Sermon Follow-Up

In Sunday’s sermon, “Prepare for Battle,” Carlos Griego preached from Ephesians 6:10-20, where Paul issues his familiar exhortation for believers to “put on the whole armor of God” (6:11). But it is significant that this is not how Paul begins this section on spiritual warfare. He begins with the command for believers to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (6:10).

In his sermon, Carlos quoted from a helpful article on Ephesians 6 by Sam Storms to draw out the importance this initial command:

The simple exhortation “Be strong!” is both dangerous and useless. Self-reliance in spiritual warfare is suicidal. Believers do not strengthen themselves. Our strength must come from an external source, namely, the Lord. The strength of an earthly general is in his troops. But in the Christian life, the strength of the troops is in their general.

By way of reminder, you can search DSC’s sermon database by topic at the Messages portion of the site. In addition to Carlos’ sermon from Sunday, several other messages are available there on the topic of spiritual warfare.

The simple exhortation “Be strong!” is both dangerous and useless. Self-reliance in spiritual warfare
is suicidal. Believers do not strengthen themselves. Our strength must come from an external source,
namely, the Lord. The strength of an earthly general is in his troops. But in the Christian life, the strength
of the troops is in their general (Sam