Episode 102
Standing Firm: How the Armor of God Equips Christian Leaders for Spiritual Warfare
Every leader faces battles they can’t always see, discouragement, division, and confusion. In this episode of Equipped for Purpose, we’re looking into Ephesians 6 and unpacking the Armor of God, not as a Sunday school metaphor, but as an everyday leadership necessity. I’ll walk through each piece of armor, connect it to leadership vulnerabilities, and share practical rhythms for making this more than a theory. You’ll also hear a simple Spot • Shield • Speak framework you can teach your team so they can stand firm in truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Word.
Key Takeaways:
- The Armor of God is God’s provision for spiritual resilience, not our performance.
- Each piece of armor addresses a specific leadership vulnerability.
- Spiritual authority is rooted in alignment with God, not charisma.
- Prayer is the atmosphere that makes the armor effective.
- Spot • Shield • Speak is a simple framework for equipping teams to discern and respond to spiritual battles.
Reflection Questions:
- Which piece of God’s armor do you most naturally wear—and which do you most often neglect? Why?
- Where did you experience opposition in the past two weeks—discouragement, confusion, conflict? Which armor piece—and which Scripture—will you lean into this week?
- Picture victorious spiritual leadership in your context: what would your team’s culture look and feel like if you consistently wore the armor—truthful, righteous, peace-filled, faith-anchored, secure in Christ, and Scripture-saturated?
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Transcript
Welcome to Equipped for Purpose. I'm your host, Vincent Ream, and this is the podcast
Speaker:where discipleship meets impactful leadership. Whether you're new to faith or a seasoned
Speaker:follower of Christ, this podcast is designed to help you deepen your relationship with
Speaker:Jesus, grow as a leader, and make a difference in every area of your life. Together we'll
Speaker:explore practical tools, biblical insights, and real-life strategies to equip you for
Speaker:the purpose God has called you to. Let's dive in.
Speaker:Every day there are battles you and I can't see, but we feel their weight.
Speaker:Tension in a meeting that shouldn't be tense. Discouragement that lands out of nowhere.
Speaker:Confusion that clouds good decisions. If you lead and if you disciple others,
Speaker:you are on the front lines. In this episode, we're getting practical about the armor of God,
Speaker:what it is, how it protects leaders, and how we can train ourselves and our teams to wear it
Speaker:daily with prayerful dependence. Some years ago I led a project I was
Speaker:genuinely excited about. Great team, clear plan, and strong momentum. Then strangely small
Speaker:conflicts started multiplying. Misunderstandings, fatigues, doubts. It wasn't just bad luck or
Speaker:normal stress. It really felt like opposition. Ephesians 6 says our struggle isn't ultimately
Speaker:against people but against spiritual powers. That lens changed how I prayed, how I led, and
Speaker:how we stayed aligned. So let's ground ourselves in Scripture.
Speaker:Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God.
Speaker:This is talked about in Ephesians 6, 10-13. We're not called to be impressive. We are called
Speaker:to be equipped. So why does Paul use military imagery? Why does that matter for us as leaders?
Speaker:Well, Paul's original audience of Jesus followers in Ephesus knew Roman soldiers.
Speaker:Military imagery spoke to discipline, readiness, and cohesion under command. All themes leaders
Speaker:understand. More than that, Paul echoes Isaiah 59-17 where God is portrayed as the divine warrior.
Speaker:Paul's focus is the armor is God's provision, not our performance. Leaders don't conjure up strength.
Speaker:We receive it. Spiritual warfare is not just moral self-help or human conflict.
Speaker:It's a supernatural contest that spills into everyday leadership and discipleship.
Speaker:Notice that throughout this section of Scripture, Paul emphasizes standing firm
Speaker:more than charging the hill. Leaders are to be grounded, not grandstanding.
Speaker:Think about Augustine wrestling with pride or Luther riding a mighty fortress. Their battles
Speaker:weren't stagecrafted. They were spiritual, driving them deeper into Scripture and prayer.
Speaker:Now with the battle clarified, let's walk piece by piece through the equipment God has given us.
Speaker:Each piece of armor addresses a leadership vulnerability, the belt of truth.
Speaker:Truth stabilizes us against deception and spin. As leaders, we must love truth even when it costs
Speaker:influence. Then there's the breastplate of righteousness. This is where integrity protects
Speaker:the heart. Compromise, as we've talked about before in past episodes, erodes credibility
Speaker:faster than any external attack. And just going back over that path quickly of compromise,
Speaker:it starts with tolerance and moves to affirming and then acceptance and then adoption. This is
Speaker:where we're looking at any type of compromise where you tolerate it in others, then affirm that
Speaker:behavior is okay in them, and then accept it is okay for yourself, and then adopt it as a practice
Speaker:in your own life. This is where we need that breastplate of righteousness to protect against
Speaker:that. Then there's the shoes or otherwise known as the gospel of peace. We carry in this a
Speaker:reconciling posture. When conflict rises, we move toward peace, not away from it.
Speaker:Then there's the shield of faith. Faith extinguishes discouragement and doubt,
Speaker:especially when those fiery darts are subtle, the cynicism, the comparison, or even fear.
Speaker:Then we have the helmet of salvation. This is where we see assurance in Christ
Speaker:secures your identity. You lead from security, not for it.
Speaker:And finally, there's the sword of the spirit or the word of God.
Speaker:Scripture doesn't just defend, it discerns and even confronts deception.
Speaker:Now, after going through those leaders might ask, which piece do I overlook? For many, it's the sword.
Speaker:We quote verses, but we don't train with the word. Others might underestimate the shoes of
Speaker:peace, allowing unresolved conflict and tensions to become spiritual footholds.
Speaker:My invitation for you today is to both wear and wield, not just to understand.
Speaker:Knowing is not enough. Let's talk about practices that make the armor real.
Speaker:Paul ties the armor directly to prayer, praying at all times in the spirit, Ephesians 6, 18.
Speaker:When we neglect prayer, the armor feels like theory.
Speaker:Persevere in prayer and you'll experience its protection.
Speaker:Resilience, then, it grows from daily scripture meditation, reflective prayer, and accountability
Speaker:with others who will ask better questions than you ask yourself.
Speaker:Some practice ideas, there's a couple of them here, and the first one is the 10-10-10 rhythm.
Speaker:It's just 10 minutes in the word, 10 minutes in prayer, and 10 in journaling,
Speaker:and targeting to one piece of armor that you'll wear that day.
Speaker:The second practice idea is weekly community check.
Speaker:Ask those you're in community with, where did you sense spiritual resistance and how did you
Speaker:respond? There is an organization called the Navigators, and they are an international
Speaker:non-denominational organization that focuses on discipleship, helping people grow in their
Speaker:Christian faith, and they have specific methods for teaching and encouraging spiritual growth and
Speaker:others. In the Navigators model, these practice ideas with scripture memory and prayer list and
Speaker:some reproducible tools that are not only simple, but they are consistent and transferable.
Speaker:Okay, let's connect the armor to authority, authenticity, and prayerful dependence, which is
Speaker:really at the heart of spiritual leadership. Spiritual authority isn't volume or charisma,
Speaker:it's alignment with God. The armor shapes that alignment, truthful leaders, righteous leaders,
Speaker:peace-bringing leaders, the people whose lives authenticate their message.
Speaker:Wearing the armor is an act of submission, a daily confession that states,
Speaker:Lord, I rely on your strength, not mine. That dependence is expressed in persistent prayer.
Speaker:When leaders live this way, cultures change, and you see trust grow, fear shrink, and clarity return.
Speaker:Consider organizations that prioritize integrity over expedience. Cultures like that become
Speaker:resilient to ethical compromise. So how do we build systems so our teams also wear the armor and learn
Speaker:to discern real opposition from mere distraction? Well, here's a simple
Speaker:framework you can teach and repeat. It's called Spot Shield Speak.
Speaker:Number one spot, discern the battle. Is this spiritual opposition a normal conflict or
Speaker:my own immaturity? Number two is shield. Choose the piece of armor needed for
Speaker:the attack. If it's deception, you're choosing truth. Compromise, righteousness. If it's
Speaker:disunity, you're choosing peace. If it's doubt, you have faith. If it's insecurity,
Speaker:you have salvation's assurance. If it's confusion, you have the word.
Speaker:And number three is speak. We wield the sword here. We read, recite, and apply specific scripture
Speaker:to the issue. Don't just quote. Train with it. Understand the context, its meaning, and
Speaker:its application. It has a team practice and exercise. It could look like this. You open with
Speaker:prayer, praying, Ephesians 6, 10 through 18 over the team. Then you could look at a case study.
Speaker:You walk through a real scenario. It could be something like gossip creating division.
Speaker:You would map the attack, look at the armor piece, look at scripture, and what response you would
Speaker:have. Following that, it's memory and share. This involves everyone memorizing one verse for the
Speaker:week. Then there's accountability. This wraps up this little team practice. You set check-in
Speaker:questions and a next meeting date. This just allows you to follow up.
Speaker:The leaders will often neglect the pieces of armor that they feel the least urgent,
Speaker:such as peace and the sword. Naming those gaps as a team prevents chronic vulnerabilities.
Speaker:Okay, let's reflect for a minute. If you can, jot these three questions down in a notebook.
Speaker:If you aren't able to right now, they will be in the show notes. Number one, which piece of
Speaker:God's armor do you most naturally wear and which do you most often neglect and why?
Speaker:Number two, where have you experienced opposition in the past two weeks? Is it discouragement,
Speaker:confusion, conflict? Which piece of armor and which scripture will you lean into this week?
Speaker:Number three, picture victorious spiritual leadership in your context.
Speaker:What would your team's culture look and feel like if you consistently wore the armor, truthful,
Speaker:righteous, peace-filled, faith-anchored, secure in Christ, and scripture-saturated?
Speaker:If you are listening with a team, take a couple of minutes and briefly share your
Speaker:neglected piece and one action you'll take this week. Remember, this isn't heroic individualism.
Speaker:It's God's armor for God's mission worn by God's people together.
Speaker:Here's where this lands. The battles we face are real, but so is God's provision. In Christ,
Speaker:we don't perform our way to strength. We receive it and stand. As leaders and disciple-makers,
Speaker:we choose truth over spin, righteousness over convenience, peace over division, faith over
Speaker:cynicism, assurance in salvation over insecurity, and the word over the world's noise.
Speaker:With prayer as the atmosphere, we learn to discern the fight, lift the right shield,
Speaker:and speak God's word. Keep in mind your training of spot, shield, and speak.
Speaker:Then as we do this together, not as lone heroes, but as people under Jesus' authority,
Speaker:our teams grow steady. Our culture becomes courageous and clean, and the kingdom advances
Speaker:right where we live and lead. Your next steps this week is to pray Ephesians 6
Speaker:verses 10-18 daily. Pick one armor piece to practice each day.
Speaker:Also memorize one verse that speaks to your most vulnerable area.
Speaker:Finally, train your team using the spot, shield, speak framework and the simple practice block
Speaker:we outlined. My prayer for you this week is to be filled with grace and strength as you stand firm.
Speaker:Thank you for tuning into Equipped for Purpose. I hope today's episode gave you tools and
Speaker:inspiration to deepen your discipleship and strengthen your leadership.
Speaker:Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and if you found value in today's content,
Speaker:share it with someone who could benefit. Let's connect on social media and through my website,
Speaker:and remember, you are being equipped for a purpose. Go make an impact.
