How To Fight The Spiritual War Ahead

Charlie Kirk's assassination made me realize that it's time for all of us to seriously prepare our minds, bodies, and spirits for what's coming.

Yesterday, when I heard about Charlie Kirk's murder, deep sadness filled my heart.

Questions immediately raced through my mind: Who would do this?

Was it Chinese intelligence? Mossad? The CIA? An angry leftist? A Muslim anti-Christian activist? Someone programmed through MKUltra?

My mind then went to all the different types of people that may have hated Charlie so much, and what he stood for, that they would wish death upon him and maybe even orchestrate his assassination. I started thinking about the issues I had with these different groups, and I felt anger filling my heart.

I caught myself directing suspicion toward entire groups of people. And I realized:

This is exactly what Satan wants me to do. Satan wants me to hate my fellow man. And he wants me to forget that this is a spiritual war.

We're not mainly fighting a war against flesh and blood—we're mainly fighting a war against spirits and principalities (Ephesians 6:12). And the nature of this war calls us to fight in a way that defies our own instincts and speaks to our higher angels.

I wrote this piece because I needed to get clear for myself about how to fight this spiritual war right. I wanted to honestly assess what's happening, remember why it matters that we're facing spiritual warfare, and give concrete guidance for myself and anyone else wondering what to do when we're feeling fearful and under attack.

This is especially urgent as we near the 250th anniversary of the United States next year. There will be intense political battles and likely violence over what the future of the country should be—making spiritual preparation more critical than ever.

How Satan Wants You To React

Before we dive into the right way to fight this spiritual war, I want to talk about the wrong way to fight, which is the way that Satan wants us to fight.

Satan wants us to hate our neighbors.

He wants us to see them as our enemies.

He wants us to give ourselves the most satisfying excuses to dehumanize all members of a particular political party. To dehumanize all people of a particular skin color. To dehumanize all believers of a particular faith tradition.

The more we dehumanize other people, the more we accept excuses for committing atrocities against them.

We are swimming in a sea of deceptions and subterfuge. And this should not surprise us. Earth is Satan’s kingdom. He is “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

And we know that Satan is the “father of lies” (John 8:44).

Humans everywhere—especially those not grounded in Christ and the Most High God—are being used as his tools to manipulate our emotions and engineer false blame. When there's a fog of confusion and zero trust in institutions, we default to our animal instincts—assuming the bad things that happen are caused by the people we already suspected.

We turn blind eyes to evil in our own communities while brewing hatred toward fellow humans based on nothing but our darkened assumptions.

The Real War is for Your Soul

Satan is inciting material conflicts in the physical realm, but he orchestrates them from the spiritual realm.

The heroes of different groups—those are his number one targets. Because when someone you love is brutally murdered, you become emotionally unable to respond the way Jesus would want you to respond.

Make no mistake: there will be physical wars. They're already happening. I wouldn't be surprised if conflicts continue breaking out across the Middle East and around the world. But the most important war Satan cares about is the war for each of our souls.

That includes you.

Yes, Satan wants your soul.

Don't let your heart blacken because of what transpires in the coming days, months, and years. Your soul is a battlefront for the war that matters most.

Satan loves to target American souls because he knows the power of American Christianity if it were truly alive and awake. While Christians in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia face much more physical persecution, American Christians face psychological warfare designed to confuse them, neuter them, and even advance the agenda of evil.

Christ's Most Radical Teaching

What does Christ want us to do in response to violence against those we love? His most radical teaching gives us the answer: love your enemies.

This is difficult because every instinct we have says to hate our enemies. But it's timeless and brilliant because the enemy knows that hatred is how we become vessels of his evil.

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." — Matthew 5:43-45

When Christians celebrate violence against their opponents, when we join the mob in wishing death on those who oppose us, we reveal we've never actually died to ourselves. We're still operating from the flesh, not the Spirit.

So here's my commitment, I will:

• Love the false teachers of Christianity. I'm going to pray that they learn to see the errors in their ways.

• Love the people who hate Christians—including the person in the crowd who joyfully cheered for the assassination, and the Jezebel writers who paid to purchase curses on top of Charlie. I pray for them.

• Love the intelligence agency representatives that are sowing confusion and hatred between Americans. I pray for them.

• Love all the people working tirelessly to discredit the Truth of Christ in different ways. I pray for them.

• Love the young activists that think they are supporting good causes, but they're really just weapons of Satan. I pray for them too.

Why It Requires Heroic Discipline to Keep Your Soul

The level of discipline required to keep your soul from becoming blackened, cynical, and spiritually unwell—and to maintain enough faith and hope to even consider starting a family and raising children in this environment—is genuinely heroic.

I've had to cut out most people and activities from my life. Almost every social group, almost every content creator, almost every business opportunity—because they're not aligned with helping me in my walk with Christ. The narrow path is shockingly narrow, and it costs you almost everything you thought you wanted.

The economic reality in America is brutal. We're forced to participate in systems that fund what we oppose. Your morning coffee might be empowering a private equity company owned by a billionaire who is funding activism that corrupts American Christianity. Your investment portfolio likely includes shares in companies profiting on the next unjust war. Every dollar you spend votes for a world that either grows or actively works against Christ's kingdom.

And the culture we live in is poison. When you wake up as a follower of Christ—you realize we've built a civilization where the infrastructure of daily life is designed to make you fall or barely survive spiritually. It's almost impossible to live and participate in American society without regularly sinning. Most pop and rap music, for example, promotes values that no Christian man or woman should seek to embody.

The spiritual warfare in this hyper-technological age is relentless. Every screen, every swipe can disconnect you from God instantly. Virtually every app and streaming service is full of messaging that undermines the Christian worldview. Social media algorithms reward outrage and tribal hatred. And I’ve heard very few Christians talk about the foundational problem of AI like ChatGPT being grounded in moral relativism (in essence, that every worldview should be taken seriously). ChatGPT will make millions go insane.

ChatGPT needs Jesus

What's more is the culture that Silicon Valley has pushed is soulless and psychopathic. Tech billionaires claim to champion rationality and intellect, but actually prioritize pride and power over both heart and truth. They don't care about truth if it gets in the way of the bottom line or protection of power—we can easily see this in how our government handles the Jeffrey Epstein files. As C.S. Lewis warned: "We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

With all this said about how fallen our society has become, God hasn't lowered His standards for you.

The calling remains: be spiritually mature enough to model character that others will absorb. Disciplined enough to create calm stability where love can grow. Wise enough to navigate a hostile culture while protecting innocent hearts—including your own. Strong enough in faith to believe that raising children in righteousness is still possible, even when everything around you suggests otherwise.

How to Prepare Yourself for Spiritual War

So, we’ve addressed why it’s so hard to keep your soul during these times. Now, what are we gonna do about it?

Well, before you enter battle, you have to get prepared. Here’s how:

Come to Christ if you haven't already. There is no neutrality in spiritual warfare. You're either His or you're not.

"He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad." — Matthew 12:30

I'm not going to argue for the Truth of Christ in this post—there are plenty of people making that case. I myself have been exploring and documenting my turning toward Truth in what I call my FaithWalk OS.

I strongly suspect that other worldviews and lived faiths you could adopt are nothing like what is needed for this moment—and for eternity—because I believe the Bible is True.

Make God your best friend. Not just someone you talk about to other people, but someone you talk to about other people and everything else. Pray unceasingly. I have mentors who listen and talk to Him all day—on drives, during work, constantly communing with the Most High. I know I need to be more like them. Also know that the Holy Spirit aka the Comforter is here for a reason. Take his advice on how to navigate these treacherous times with wisdom, courage, and supernatural energy.

Study His will intensively. The Bible isn't a book of nice suggestions—it's your field manual for spiritual combat. The Bible helps you know what God loves and hates, so you can love what He loves and hate what He hates.

Build a powerful prayer life around what's needed:

• Wisdom to discern truth from deception

• Courage to stand for righteousness when it costs you

• Energy to do what God calls you to do

• Divine protection for yourself and those you love

• Clarity to recognize when your religion (and any group you have loyalty to) is being weaponized against you

• Humility to respond with grace when people and things you love are attacked

• Strength to prepare for material hardship while trusting God's provision

Look into William Seymour, John Knox, and Saint John of Kronstadt as examples of prayer warriors who changed the world.

Condition your heart to love your neighbors, and even your enemies. Love your neighbors even when they disappoint you. Even when they betray you. Even when they celebrate violence. Practice loving them before you need to. Love your enemies, especially when everything in you wants revenge. Train yourself to pray for their salvation, not their destruction. This is how you make Satan struggle. This is how you prove whose kingdom you belong to.

Prepare your temple and train yourself to stay alert. "Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour" (1 Peter 5:8). Don't be naive about the reality of spiritual warfare. Build habits now that will help you recognize patterns of deception, manipulation, and division. When your body and mind are not on point, you are easy to manipulate. Prioritize good sleep, proper nutrition, regular exercise, and limit digital stimulation. "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" (1 Corinthians 6:19). Prepare your physical health as part of your spiritual armor.

Prepare yourself for tragedy to be used as justification for far greater casualties. Today is September 11th—a day when we remember how the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent lives was used to justify an unjust "war on terror" that destroyed millions of lives across multiple countries and destabilized the world. We now know how US intelligence's previous funding of militant networks in the region contributed to the rise of the very groups that attacked us, which makes it devastating that the response was hatred against Muslims, the erection of a domestic surveillance state, and endless wars. Meanwhile, we still have not prosecuted almost any of the people who were actually responsible for starting these wars, including those who lied about Iraq having WMDs. As Christians called to be truth seekers, we must demand accountability for those who weaponize tragedy. When you're rightfully angry and sad about loss of life, don't let that grief be weaponized to justify more death and destruction.

Remember: loving enemies and sinners doesn't mean you can't hate sin. You are called to hate sin. Hate the lies, the deception, the corruption, the systems that destroy human flourishing. Hate what destroys souls. But love the people trapped in those systems and pray for their liberation through the Truth of Christ. "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good." — Romans 12:9

The Coming Tests During This Wartime

In the days and years ahead:

• Satan will work to harm or kill many people who are widely loved

• You'll be mass manipulated continually through memes, narratives, influencers, media organizations, and algorithms

• The temptation for retribution will be overwhelming

• Your tribe(s) will call for violence and revenge

• You'll be pressured to hate entire groups based on the actions of individuals

• Your faith, your family, your values will be weaponized against you

These are spiritual tests.

Will you follow Christ's Way or the world's way? Will you make prayer, fasting, and obedience your main weapons in this war? Or will you find any excuse to pick up weapons of flesh and become the blackened-heart agent that Satan wants you to become?

How to Fight the Right Way

Let me elaborate on how I see Christ calling us to fight this spiritual battle.

We fight not with guns. Not with violence. Not with hatred. But with the full armor of God:

• Truth as your belt — Know God's word so well that lies can't take root

• Righteousness as your breastplate — Live so clean that aspersions slide off

• The gospel of peace on your feet — Be ready to bring reconciliation, not division

• Faith as your shield — Trust God's sovereignty even when evil seems to win

• Salvation as your helmet — Remember your identity is in Christ, not your ethnic group or nationality

• The Word of God as your sword — Use Scripture to cut through deception

Beyond these universals, different people are called to fight this spiritual war in different ways.

Some are called to bring people to Christ through authentic interpretations of the Word—pastors, teachers, evangelists who help others understand what it means to follow Jesus in practice.

Others are called to be journalists, shining light on evil to mass audiences. If some group engineered Charlie's assassination—if there was a deep conspiracy to engineer chaos within America by, say, a foreign intelligence agency—we need people with the calling and skills to investigate and expose this. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Others are called to be fathers and mothers, raising children who can withstand the spiritual warfare of their generation. Some are called to business, creating economic structures that serve human flourishing.

Some are called to create educational programs for kids and adults to understand their spiritual authority through Christ. Others are called to create modern schools that do not shy away from educating people on spiritual matters.

God has great plans for you to fight in this spiritual war in your unique way. The key is discerning your specific calling and fighting in your lane—without letting the war poison your heart with hatred toward entire groups of people. We fight the spiritual forces behind the humans doing evil, not the humans themselves.

Be On The Side Of The Ultimate Victory

Stay close to God. Be an agent of God's love—not weak, tolerate-everything, morally-relativistic love, but God's love that is synonymous with God's Truth. Love that goes hand-in-hand with justice—most of which we leave to God to handle. Love that shines light on agents of evil while praying for their redemption.

We are called to unlock pockets of heaven on earth where people can flourish as God intended. Where men can become worthy fathers despite a culture designed to prevent it. Where families can be formed and children raised in righteousness despite every force working against them.

In these Last Days, persecution against followers of Christ will ramp up. But we serve the God who, through Christ, gave us power to cast out demons, heal the sick, and commune with the Most High through the Holy Spirit.

The victory is already won through Christ. But the battle for your soul—for how you respond in these dark days—that battle is being fought right now.

Don't let your heart blacken. Don't become a tool of the enemy. Don't hate the people who have become tools of the devil when you should be praying for their deliverance and salvation.

It’s important that kids have you as an example of righteousness in this fallen society. As CS Lewis said: “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”

Prepare your spirit.

The war is here.

And we fight it by walking the Way of Christ, in obedience to the Most High God.

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." — Ephesians 6:12