Why Discipleship Matters in Spiritual Warfare

Over the past nine weeks, we’ve studied spiritual warfare together in this article series. I’ve been looking at this topic for more than thirty years now. From this study, I'm convinced that doing the work of discipleship is critical to winning the battles of warfare. Here’s why – and how you might strengthen your church’s strategy:   

1. Believers cannot defeat the enemy unless we’re wearing the full armor of God. That’s just basic Bible – Ephesians 6:10-17. Paul was quite clear that we must put on the whole armor of God if we want to stand against the principalities and powers. We simply cannot win this battle on our own. That expectation has not changed since Paul first wrote those words.

2. Wearing the armor is both positional and behavioral. The outline of the book of Ephesians helps us to understand this direction. Ephesians 1-3 talks about our identity in Christ, and Ephesians 4-6 discusses our walk with Christ. The armor, then, reflects both arenas. For example, we wear the breastplate of righteousness because God gives us His righteousness. Out of that righteousness, though, we must decide to make righteous choices. Wearing the armor cannot be separated from how we live.

3. Believers know how to wear the full armor of God only when we teach them. Despite what churches seem to imply when we don’t disciple believers, believers don’t grow by osmosis. God’s plan is that older believers will invest in younger believers, teaching them to walk faithfully with God. Regarding the armor of God specifically, somebody must teach us how to wear it and live it out practically – or we will lose the battles.

4. Disciplemakers must themselves be wearing the full armor of God. Believers who live in secret sin or operate by their own power aren’t good disciplemakers simply because they’re losing their own battles. If you want to be a disciplemaker, biblical discipleship means that you live in such a way that you can challenge others to imitate Christ by imitating you (1 Cor 11:1).

5. When we don’t teach believers how to wear God’s armor, they will lose spiritual conflicts. That’s inevitable, as I have written elsewhere: “If we don’t disciple new believers to wear the armor of God, we send them into the war unarmed—and they will lose.” They will get shot down in a battle they likely didn’t even know exists. Meanwhile, the church will wonder what happened to those young believers, seldom realizing our fault in the matter.

6. No believer is intended to fight these battles alone. From the Garden of Eden, this truth has been the case; God never created us to be alone (Gen 2:18). He designed us needing other people in our walk with Him. If we reach new believers but then don’t immediately walk with them, we set them up for defeat. Any gap between their conversion and our teaching them is an open door for the enemy’s arrows. 

7. Discipleship must thus begin one-on-one. Larger group studies are great – and needed – but they are not enough. All new believers need a mentor who will walk beside them, teach them, challenge them, and pick them up if the enemy temporarily wins. Most churches, though, reach people, baptize them, but then do very little to intentionally teach them in one-to-one mentoring.

8. Discipleship is teaching believers to wear the armor as they, too, evangelize others. Part of wearing the armor is speaking the gospel of peace to others. That means discipleship and evangelism can’t be separated. Each part of the Great Commission should continually feed the other – which also means we cannot just send new believers out to do evangelism. We do send them out, but we ideally go with them as they are learning to wear the full armor of God along the way.

9. This kind of discipleship doesn’t happen by accident. That is, we must have a strategy to accomplish our goals. The enemy, who is a schemer (Eph 6:11), often wins against us because he operates with more strategy than our churches do. Instead, churches need an intentional discipleship pathway to lead new believers to become mature believers—and that effort requires planning, implementation, and evaluation over time. Congregations that function only from Sunday to Sunday don’t usually threaten the enemy. 

10. Discipleship that takes on the enemy can begin in your church TODAY. Take this challenge: begin investing in one newer believer and one longer-term believer over the next week. Help each other wear the full armor of God by learning what it means to be “in Christ” and to walk “with Christ.” Pray for each other. Hold each other accountable to growth. Push each other when needed. Start somewhere in growing disciples who honor God and stand against the enemy.

My personal mission statement is as follows: “to love Christ and live and speak for Him in such a way that God is glorified and Satan is threatened.” This statement is based on Acts 19:11-15, where a demon spoke back to the sons of Sceva as they tried to cast out that demon: “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?” (Acts 19:15). The demon knew Jesus because He is the Son of God, and he knew Paul because the apostle walked with God.

Of the other exorcists, though, the demon essentially said, “You don’t scare me. There’s nothing in your life that threatens me.”  My prayer is that this article series on spiritual warfare has challenged you to so walk with God that the devil knows you by name – and that you will want to disciple others to do the same.