Sermon quotes on spititual battles/warfare
Jennie Allen
The greatest spiritual battle of our generation is being fought between our ears.
Jennie Allen, Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts, WaterBrook, 2020.
Mark Batterson
Praying hard is not the past of least resistance; it’s usually the path of most resistance because we engage in spiritual warfare. In fact, when we begin interceding for others, we better make sure that others are interceding for us. We need a prayer circle that provides a prayer covering.”
Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge
Mark Batterson
Prayer is picking a fight with the Enemy. It’s spiritual warfare. Intercession transports us from the sidelines to the front lines without going anywhere. And that is where the battle is won or lost. Prayer is the difference between us fighting for God and God fighting for us. But we can’t just hit our knees. We also have to take a step, take a stand. And when we do, we never know what God will do next.”
All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life
Asheritah Ciuciu
The truth is that there is an enemy and he’s out to destroy us. And if he can’t destroy us because we’re eternally secure in the arms of God, then he will seek to debilitate us, rendering us useless for God’s kingdom work here on earth. This is a real battle, and it’s raging all around us even in this moment.”
Louie Giglio
The battle for your life is fought and won in your mind. God wants you to take control of your mind, in Jesus’ name, through the power of His Holy Spirit. You can think your way into changing your life for good.”
Carolyn Custis James
Paul tells the bride in Ephesians 6:10-12 that her enemies are ‘not…flesh and blood,’ but the unseen spiritual forces of evil and darkness. She is called to arm herself for battle, to ‘be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power,’ and to ‘stand firm’–all of which convery ‘unflinching courage like that possessed by soldiers who determinedly refuse to leave their posts irrespective of how severely the battle rages.’ Both brides represent an unmistakable call to action. They give us powerful feminine images of strong, open-throttled living for God’s kingdom, which makes it difficult to imagine that God wants his daughters to sit on the sidelines while our brothers do kingdom work without us.
Nicki Koziarz
The strongest people in my life are the ones who know how to win battles behind closed doors that no one knows about. They know how to rise above the hard and pursue the holy. And they know bad days do not equal a bad life.
Timothy R. Jennings
The battlefield on which the war between Christ and Satan is fought is the mind.
Taken from The God-Shaped Brain by Timothy R. Jennings. ©2017 by Timothy R. Jennings. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
Studdert Kennedy
It is not finished, Lord,
There is not one thing done,
There is no battle of my life
That I have really won.
And now I come to tell thee
How I fought to fail,
My human, all too human, tale
Of weakness and futility.
Martin Luther
Christ lay in death’s bonds
given over for our sins,
He has risen again
and brought us life . . .
It was a strange battle,
that death and life waged,
life claimed the victory,
it devoured death.
The scripture had prophesied this,
how one death gobbled up the other,
a mockery has been made out of death.
Hallelujah!,
Christ Lag In Todesbanden
Justin Martyr
But since the adversary does not cease to resist many, and uses many and diverse arts to ensnare them, that he may seduce the faithful from their faith, and that he may prevent the faithless from believing, it seems to me necessary that we also, being armed with the invulnerable doctrines of the faith, do battle against him in behalf of the weak.”
Fragments of the Lost Work of Justin on the Resurrection
Philo of Alexandria
Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Let me be on my guard when the world puts on a loving face, for it will, if possible, betray me as it did my Master, with a kiss.”
Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks)
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”
A League of Their Own
John of Kronstadt
Our faith, trust, and love are proved and revealed in adversities.
A Treasury of Russian Spirituality, p. 391
Mildred Witte Struven
A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.
Bits and Pieces, September 19, 1991, p. 6.
Abraham Lincoln
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
William Shakespeare
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
As You Like It (Act 2, Scene 1, 12-17)
William Shakespeare
A person that never climbs will never fall.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.
Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi
These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being. By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual.
Haruki Murakami
When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person that walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.
Oswald Chambers
The battle is won in the secret places of the will before God, never first in the external world… Nothing has power over the [person] who has fought out the battle before God and won there.
Quoted in Francis Chan, Bill Hybels, and Eugene Peterson, The Road We Must Travel: A Personal Guide For Your Journey (Worthy, 2014)
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