Thank you, Lord. I'll ask you to turn, if you will, over to the book of Ephesians chapter number 6. Ephesians chapter number 6. I was thinking as the choir was singing, what a blessing it is to be in this atmosphere. You look at the news, and you see Israel's in war. War with Lebanon. Iran is firing all their missiles over on Israel. Israel will retaliate. War's fixing to break out in the Middle East, and we don't know how all that'll wind up. We know how it'll ultimately wind up, but right now, there's a great difficulty there. Then also, the workers that unload all of our ships from Maine to Texas are gonna strike at midnight tonight, and that's gonna stop the imports into America and shut down supply lines. In Western Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, we've got horrendous floods like we've never had before. They're still uncovering bodies, and they don't really know where over a thousand people are at. They've just been swallowed up by the rivers and all that. And you think about the political landscape and all that's going on. And I'll tell you, it's a blessing to leave that outside, come to the house of God, Sit down in this building, gather our hearts together, lift our voices, get our mind on Him, and worship Him, and know that He is God, and besides Him there is none else. And know He hath promised, fear thou not. For I am with thee. He said, I will strengthen thee, I will help thee, yea, I will give you the right hand of my righteousness, and I'm going to uphold you. I'm glad, thank God, we have His Word, we have His promise, and we have His presence, and His God's people. He gives us a little shelter and a little reprieve during the day. When we come here to the house of God and worship, I fear for folk that stay at home that never gather with the assembly of God's people, because God does some precious things with His children. And many are just like Thomas who didn't show up that Sunday. And Jesus came and He said, well, I don't believe it. But next Sunday, Jesus in mercy came and He said, Thomas, reach hither. And He said, my Lord and my God. And old Thomas worshiped there. Thank God for the privilege to worship tonight. Amen. I'll ask you to stand if you will. We'll reverence God's Word together in His reading. In chapter number 6 of the book of Ephesians, verse number 10. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand, stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod by the preparation of the gospel of peace, Above all, taking the shield of faith, where witness shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, And watching therein too with all perseverance and supplication, for all saints, if for me that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel. Lord, we thank You for the established Word of God. Thank You for the truths contained therein. And as we look into Your Word, I pray that You would touch every heart. May ears be opened. Give us ears to hear. Lord, help us to have hearts to receive and then wills to do what thus saith the Lord. God, I plead the blood over this service, but the Holy Ghost would accompany the Word as it goes out. Lord, we'll praise You for what You do in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Preaching tonight on the thought of the gospel armor. The gospel armor. Ephesians has been likened unto the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. Joshua had been in the wilderness wandering for 40 years. All of his generation had died off except his friend Caleb. Because they were the two that came back and gave a godly report on how they believed they could take Canaan, but Moses put it to a vote. And all that crowd voted to stay there, and God said, I'll bury your carcass in the wilderness, and you'll never enter into that land. And so for 40 years, they had the longest funeral march in history. All of that generation died off. But then there came a day when God took Moses home and turned it over to Joshua, and He said, now it's time to go in and possess the Canaan land. There you have little Israel, and they're going to attack seven nations that are mightier than themselves. And it's going to take God and His hand to conquer. Sure enough, Joshua believed God, God parted the Jordan River, they went over, conquered Jericho, got a lesson there at Ai, and then conquered that, and then went into the other parts of the Canaan land, and they conquered and went from victory unto victory. Well, when we come to the New Testament, we look in the book of Ephesians, and it is like the book of Joshua. As they were to conquer the Canaan land, you and I are to be conquering believers, enjoying the spiritual Canaan land of our God. Now, as you look through the book of Ephesians, in chapter number 1, we see the enlistment of the army. This is not a volunteer army. You have been drafted. If you are saved by the grace of God, God chose you to be a soldier. even in Israel right now. And they've had this policy through the years that if you're an Israeli citizen, you go into the army. The young ladies go in at 18, the young men go in at 17, they stay four years, the girls stay three years, and then every year, they come back and re-up on different things that the army's doing. And so they have actually a nation that is a mobilized military nation right now. So it is, when God saves you, He chose you, Timothy says, to be a soldier. Now whether you're 5 years old or 95 years old, you are a soldier in the army of God. My friend, God wants us to be fighting people. My Granny Bishop, she died in her late 90s, and she read the Bible through hundreds of times, literally. And I asked her one time what was one of her favorite Bible verses. Granny wouldn't weigh 90 pounds soaking wet, but she looked at me, and she balled that little fist up, and she said, I guess I'd have to say like Paul, I fought a good fight. And when she said that, I laughed. She wouldn't squash a fly. She raised stray cats and took in every stray young'un in the country. She's just that kind of person. But she knew something about spiritual warfare. And you know, when me and my Uncle Clarence Bishop buried her and we preached her funeral, Uncle Clarence, a lot older than I was, he said, I saw faith in Granny Bishop when I didn't see faith in any of the rest of the bishop clan. He said, she prayed us in one by one. And I thought, there's a little old lady that knew something about being in the army of God, fighting the good fight of faith. You too can be a spiritual warrior in the kingdom of God. Those children you've got about you, mama, be a warrior for them. Daddy, that family you're raising up, be a warrior. Ask God to help you to fight the good fight. The pastors, the preachers, the Sunday school teachers, singers, deacons, all of us, we join together as a mobilized armed force in the kingdom of our God. We see in chapter number 1, there is the enlistment of the soldier. Then there is the education of the soldier. In chapter 2 and chapter number 3, he talks about the mysteries of God. And when a soldier goes in, he's educated about some things. When we fight desert warfare, they teach us about the terrain. And fight jungle warfare, they teach that you go into a school and they educate you. And then there is the exercise for the soldier. And in the book of Ephesians, he enters into that phase where it's walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk in love, walk in lowliness, walk in meekness, walk in joy, and walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. And those soldiers are drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled, and they get in shape. And as God's people, we are to walk in the ways of righteousness and get in shape. And then there is the empowerment of the soldier, and it starts there in verse number 10, by opening up, saying, Be strong in the Lord, in the power of His might. And they're introduced to the weapons of the warfare, whether he be a rifleman, or whether they drive a tank, or fly a jet, or whether they're firing missiles, or whatever it might be, a battleship, or maybe they have different things that they deal with. They're introduced to power that they've never had before. The average citizen would never be able to fire 50 cal. They'd never be able to shoot one of those large bomb missiles. Tommy Hawk, they don't belong to us, but those in the army, they know something about that power and that might because they're in the army. And as God's children, you can know something about the power of His might. God said, be not drunk on wine when it is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. And when God fills you with the Spirit of God, He gives you the might and the strength and the grace that you need. And so we see the enlistment of the army. We see exercise of the army. Then the energy of the army. Look in verse 10. My brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. There are three words that are used there. He uses the word strong. He uses the word power. And He uses the word might. And when you go over to Ephesians chapter number 1, you're going to see those words repeated again. And each one of these words have a different element in regard to our strength, our power, and our might that we have. We're not to be an anemic, weak, frail, weak-kneed, cowards of churches. We're to be bold, filled with the Holy Ghost, have strength and power, and not be pushed around by the devil or the world or the flesh. We don't have enough power to knock the fuzz off a gander snout in most of our churches. When we ought to have the power of God, so when a sinner comes in, they know that there's somebody in that building. Beside human beings, the Holy Ghost is there. But He's quenched and grieved and He's so hindered in many of our congregations. that folk just come and say, well, that's a nice little social gathering. And actually, all the social clubs and fraternities and all that, they can do what we do. They can go through a routine and a run. But when God's church is filled with the power of God, the world cannot compete with God's people or with God's church. And then we see not only that, but we see that there is an enemy that we are to fight. You've got an enemy, and I've got an enemy. Notice what he said. Put on the whole armor of God. Why? That you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. The devil is brought up. And he's called many things in this Scripture. It says, the wiles of the devil. Then he said it's going to be closer than that. We're going to be wrestling with the devil. And then he said along with that is going to be principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in high places. You are going to face the evil day and the fiery darts of the wicked. We're on alien ground. We're not citizens of this world anymore. The Lord saved us and our citizenship is over on the other side. And you and I are in enemy territory. And Satan is called the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of darkness. And you and I, as God's people, are in an army that is totally dead set against Him. There is no truce. There is no peace. There is no pact that we can make with the devil. You've got to determine that this is a battlefield, and if you're going to have victory and you're going to go forth, then you're going to have to be doing some fighting against the devil. He talks about the wiles of the devil. We've got trappers right here in our midst. And you know that if you're going to trap an animal, you have to hide that trap and you have to bait him in. If you're going to fish, you cover that hook with a worm or whatever. So the devil has got wiles. He's got schemes. He's got tricks. Hey, young people, Satan won't come at you with a pitchfork and horns and breathing fire. Young men, he'll come to you in a bikini. Young ladies, he'll come to you with a six-pack, all muscled up and a beer in his hand. He'll come riding up in a hot rod automobile. He'll come alluring you and have dollar bills in his hand. Oh, he's a wily, tricky old devil. We've got to battle against him. We've got to realize that we're not facing an enemy that fights fair. You see, the first enemy Israel faced when they came out of Israel was the Amalekites. And it said, the Amalekites smote the hindmost, the weak, the faint, and the feeble. In other words, they snuck up behind, stabbed them in the back, took the weak out. And the devil will sneak up on you and stab you in the back. And that's why you have to be on your guard and walk circumspectly and understand and know. Listen to me now. Come here and listen. The devil does not play fair. He doesn't operate by the Geneva rules of warfare. He'll do anything he can. He's wily, he's slick, he's tricky, he's beguiling. He puts the bait out there, but with that bait's the rat trap ready to snap and break your life up, and to break you up. And you think, oh boy, I really want that, and he'll entice and draw that, but when he lures you over there and he gets you in his grip, he'll bring you right down. The wiles of the devil. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but we do wrestle. Wrestling is a very strenuous exercise. And about the time you relax, back up, and say, I'm just going to lay back that opponent in wrestling, he's going to bring your arm around your back and put the choke hold on you, and you're going to be slapping the floor, a hollering calf rope. And friend, about the time we back up and get lazy, and quit reading the Bible, and quit praying, and quit asking God, and guided by the Lord, we're gonna lose the wrestling match. And then he said, it's principalities and powers, so it's invisible. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. Man, we look at flesh and blood. You wanna roll your shirt sleeve up and cram it down the devil's goons. Well, I'll just take care of them, I'll show them. I had something that happened to me the other day. And I mean, boy, while it was happening and while it was all going on, I was hearing, but I wasn't hearing, if you know what I mean. But when I got in my automobile and I drove off, it hit me what they were saying to me. I don't know if you ever had that happen or not. Boy, the farther I went, the hotter I got. And I'm honest with you, I said, I'm going to call that rascal up and I'm going to take care of this. And the Lord said, leave it alone, I'll handle it. And it took me a little bit to get my composure, it really did. I was wanting to wrestle with flesh and blood. But then I went on down the way, and you know what? God handled it, and he handled it big time, and I didn't have to get involved with it. And when you start looking at flesh and blood, you've got to realize there's something behind that person that's causing them to act like they act, and to do what they do. Why has Satan filled your heart in a nice safari to lie to the Holy Ghost? Satan filled the minds of those Pharisees, and they had all kinds of things going on, and they were moved by the powers of Satan. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against principalities, against powers or rulers of darkness of this world. And listen, there is a spiritual network. Brother Brandon, you pastor this church. You know good and well on a Sunday morning when the Holy Ghost is here free to do what He wants to do. And you know when the devil has showed up. There is an atmosphere. There is a spiritual warfare that goes on and people's minds just can't get absorbed in the Word of God. And boy, the devil just attacking. And you know what I do a lot of times, Brother Scott? I say, let's turn over here and let's sing power, power, wonder, work, and power. And I start singing blood songs. Because they overcame Him by the power of the blood. And they loved not the testimony, the Word of God. And boy, you start singing about the blood, and sometimes the devil has to back right off. Amen? And then He says that there's spiritual wickedness in high places. You wonder why we're going through all that we're going through in this nation? It's because Washington, D.C.' 's the holder of every foul spirit. Have you ever been there and you got any spiritual discernment about you? You know good and well there's a habitation of a lot of foul spirits that are up there. And there are people not there for the good of the nation, but they're there for of other reasons. There's a lot of spiritual wickedness around and it is a spiritual battle. that we're into. Now you say, Preacher, that scares me to death. Well, it may do it, but I want you to look now at the equipment. God said, I've told you about the enemy. I've told you about the difficulty it is to fight that enemy. But I'm going to tell you about the armament that I've given you to be able to fight the enemy. Notice first of all, if you will, down in verse number 14. He says, stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth. The first part of this armor he talks about is the loins girt about with truth. That's that wide belt that cinches down and it holds all the other armor together. You know, we used to wear three-piece suits and have those vests, but so many preachers got pot guts and buttons plying off, it got dangerous. Amen? But that's sort of like this armor. They put that leather belt around and they stitch it and it ties it all together so that you're not out there with loose armor slinging out everywhere. And notice what this is that holds everything else together. It's the loins girt about with truth. Truth. And if we don't have truth, all the rest of it won't do us any good. Truth. You gotta be honest with yourself. You gotta get honest with God. Boy, I appreciate Colton. I preached Sunday morning. I watched him back there. And he gave the testimony standing right there. He said, you know, preacher asked to raise your hand if you're saved. And he said, I raised my hand. He said, when I did, he said it hit me, you're a liar, you're a liar, you're a liar, you made a profession, but you know good and well you don't know God. You know good and well that you're not saved, quit your lying. And I saw him break and come and get in that altar. Heard him weep out and cry out to God and God save him. And he come up from there. He told me, he said, man, it's like a ton's been lifted off my shoulders. He said, I've never felt such a joy in my heart and all of that. And you know why he got that? Because he got truthful. I was a young man in Bible school and a preacher or a deacon. came by on a Friday night after the Bible school in our class, and he said, anybody want to make a decision for Jesus? My buddy Kenny Henson said, I do. I said, well, if you do, I will. We busted each other's nose, fought each other and all that. And I said, if you do, I will. So we went in a room with him. He read three verses of Scripture. And he said, now repeat after me. We repeated after him. He said, you're saved now. When do you want to get baptized? I said, well, I don't care. So they set up a date, dumped me in Green River, put my name on a church roll, and I thought that's what salvation was. I still loved my sin. I didn't want the Word of God. I didn't pray unless I got in a jam. I didn't enjoy fellowship with God's people. I didn't walk with the Lord because I didn't know the Lord. There was no joy and peace in my heart. But if you ask me, you say, yeah, I took care of that. I'm alright. I was just as sinful and ungodly as all the rest of the crowd. But I tell you, oh, I'm doing okay. But then God sent a young preacher in our community and he started preaching something I'd never heard. Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. That word repent means an about face. He demonstrated it for us. You're going in this direction, you repent, you go in that direction. And I know that repentance is a gift of God just like faith and salvation. And the Ethiopian can't change the color of his skin or the leopard spots, Jeremiah said. You're accustomed to do evil and all that. You're not just going to turn around and go to walk with God. God's going to have to do that work in your heart. But when He saves you by His grace, It's just like a baby being born. He breathes air and he begins to cry. And that baby has appetite and desire and growth. And when you really get saved by the grace of God, you're going to desire the sincere milk of the Word that you might grow thereby. And when I got saved, man, I got a hunger for the Bible, for prayer. I got a joy for singing God's songs. I turned from all that. And it wasn't a slavish deal. It wasn't something where God's going to crack me. It's a want to. There's a new nature put on the inside of my heart. God put something in me the night I got saved that I've never had in all of my life. That night I got out of conviction under that gospel tent. I too would have made that profession if you asked me, are you a Savior? But I had to get truthful that night because God the Holy Ghost showed me I was lost. And I wound up in that altar when them Cherokee Indians were singing Amazing Grace in their native tongue. I started asking God to be merciful to me, a sinner, and He saved me. And He changed my life, and He come into my heart, and I have no doubt that I'm alive. No doubt. I know I'm alive physically. Look at me. I'm moving. I have live evidence of it. Praise God. I know I'm saved by the grace of God. There's fruit in my life. There's desire. There's longing. There's appetite. There's a will to serve God. Have you got that? Can you get truthful tonight? Are you a Benedict Arnold? Are you a traitor in God's camp? Are you somebody that's slipped in? Or have you been brought in by faith as one of God's soldiers redeemed and you have to be saved or else you're on the same side of the devil? No, you say, I don't want to be. If you're not saved, you're not in God's army. So we see there is, first of all, glowing skirt about with truth. Then the breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate covered all the vital organs. And how do we get that righteousness? There's by one way, justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God sent forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, and He imputes and imparts to us the righteousness of God. And if you go against the devil and in this warfare say, well, I'm the man, I can handle this, I'll take care of it, you'll get knocked down before you ever get out of the starting block. But if you go forth in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus, and that covers your heart, and you've got it persuaded in your heart, you've believed in your heart on the Lord Jesus, and He's saved you and imputed to you, here's righteousness now, you're getting a breastplate that'll cover all those vital organs, hallelujah. Then he goes on to say, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. On those battlefields it was sword to sword and blood flowed, and that blood made the ground wet and slick. But these soldiers, they had original what we would call cleats. They had spikes on the bottom of their shoes and those Romans would stick their feet in there and while others were slipping and falling all around because they were wearing moccasins or barefooted or whatever, those Romans just stood firm and they weren't pushed back because they were firmly grounded and they could march and go forward without being pushed around. God said you've got to have on those shoes of the gospel of peace. Man, you've got to have a foundation of the gospel. What is the gospel? I heard a funeral one time, had this Catholic bishop on there, and he was giving a eulogy over somebody. I don't even know who it was. And he talked about being a good neighbor and being one that was a part of the church. And this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I thought, man, you don't know a thing about the gospel. Paul said, here's the gospel, the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The good news is that Jesus died for our remission, that He rose and He's ascended on high. And boy, when you're founded on that, the devil can push at you, but he can't budge you. I shall not be moved like a tree planted by the waters. I shall not be moved and I'm not going to be moved off the gospel. You'll run into these little bicycle riding, white shirt wearing boys. They want to give you a King James Bible and another gospel of Jesus Christ. Jude said he delivered that gospel once. That's it. He didn't deliver it twice and give it to Joseph Smith and another gospel and all that. No, no. And Paul said if an angel from heaven comes and preaches another gospel to you, say let him be anathema. Let him be cut off. Don't you receive it, and don't you believe it. Amen. And so he talks about the feet shod with a gospel of peace. And then above all, taking the shield of faith. I used to look at this phrase, above all, saying, man, God's saying, you have all this other armor, but above all that, you have that shield of faith. But here's what I believe He's saying. I believe He's saying, you got this other armament on, but above all, You take the shield of faith. Now the Romans had two kinds of shields. They had the little buckler there, and then they had what looked like a door. And when that army got together, they would lock these doors, and they would push another army away. And then also, when those longbowmen were shooting those arrows, they would take that shield, and above all, they would put that shield, and as the fiery darts came down, those arrows didn't kill them. You can imagine a thousand arrows raining down on this congregation. What are you going to do? What are you going to hide by? You pull that shield up there. Well, what is our shield of faith when the fiery darts are flying? When the devil is slinging these arrows at and thoughts are coming from everywhere? Above all, take the shield of faith and just believe God. Trust God. You rest in Him. Oh, hallelujah. Man, I think about so many in the Bible that above all, they took the shield of faith. I think about how there were three Hebrew children. Everybody's bowing. Everybody else is doing it, mama. Everybody else is listening to the sound of the music. Everybody else has got old Taylor Swift, and we, you know, mama, everybody else. Three boys said, not us. And they said, you either bow or you're going to burn. And they said, we've got the shield of faith. Our God whom we serve is able, but if not, be it known, we're not going to bow. And they put that shield of faith up, and they didn't let the devil's fiery darts drop, and they got thrown in the fire furnace, and you know how God walked with them in the fire furnace, and how God brought them out, hallelujah. I think about Job and how all the fiery darts rained down on him, man, what he went through. And even his wife came up to him and said, Job, just curse God and die. And old Job just pulled the shield of faith up, and he said, you talk like a foolish woman. He said, we've received good at the hand of God, shall we not receive evil? The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And he held that shield of faith up over him. I think about Paul and Silas out there preaching, getting people saved. Got a demon-possessed girl saved. Got her off the street and out from under her pimps. That crazy outfit had them arrested and thrown in jail and whipped and beat and thrown in the inner prison. And I'm sure the devil threw fiery darts all over them and said, it's all over with, boys. But old Paul said, Silas, you want to? He said, I believe I will, Paul. How about you? He said, why don't you start and we'll join. And they started singing, praise God, and praying and worshiping God in the jail. They pulled that shield of faith up. God shook the jailhouse and saved the jailer and his whole family and turned that thing all the way around. You're just going to have to believe God. Some of you need to pull that shield up. All things work together for good to them that love God, who are the called according to His purpose. Some of you are going to have to pull the shield of faith up saying, these things have happened rather for the furtherance of the gospel. You're going to have to pull the shield of faith up and say, I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day. Above all, taking the shield of faith, and you're going to quench the fiery darts of the wicked. But if you don't pull that shield of faith up, the devil's going to hammer you big time. And then he said you put on the helmet of salvation. If you've got a helmet on, you know what? That protects your brain. That protects your head. And that head is your central computer. The Bible talks about being renewed in the spirit of your mind. And when He said, put the helmet of salvation on, He said, you need to keep that on your mind all the time. Praise God, I'm saved. In the morning, don't matter what happens, I'm saved. that ever comes, I'm saved. And He said, I want you to keep that consciousness of the fact that you have salvation and God has redeemed you. Hallelujah. You're going to live as long as God lives. You've got a place in heaven. You're going to have a glorified body. You're going to be sin free, devil free, society free. And we're going home to be with Jesus one day. And if you get that off of your mind and you start thinking like the world and reasoning like God, in the world and operating like the world, the enemy is going to knock you down. And there are no niches in this helmet like there was in Goliath's helmet. Praise God, it covers our whole being there. And you can be protected. Just keep your eyes on God and rejoice in your salvation. Hallelujah. And then He gives us one more. He said, the sword of the Spirit. That's the only offensive weapon we got, and that is the Word of God. This Bible is your offensive weapon. Jesus being the sinless Son of God, when tempted by the devil in Matthew 4 and in Luke 4, and the devil said this out of the other, Jesus didn't say, well now my opinion is, And I think it ought to be, no, you know what he said? He said, it is written. He pulled the sword out of the sheath and he stuck the devil with the sword, but it is written. And I think we'd do a whole lot better if we didn't argue with folk, if we just gave them the Bible. And here's the confidence I've got in being a Bible preacher. If somebody says, I don't like it, I don't agree with it, I say, well, I didn't write it, right? Here it is. You talk to the one that wrote it, you'll have to take it up with him. And that's what I love. I look out through here, and from the front pew to the back, you've got that Bible opening on your lap. Now the Roman Catholics don't want you to do that. The Georgian Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox, they don't want you to have an open Bible because they say, oh, I'll tell you what, you don't have enough. No, praise God, you've got that Bible, read it for yourself. And then don't go throwing off on the preacher or throwing off on the message. You look at the Bible and say, well, there's a book. Well, if it says that, amen, oh me, or hallelujah. the sword of the Spirit, give them the Word of God, and it'll be like a barbed air that they can't shake. And many a person testified how a verse of Scripture just got a hold of their heart and they couldn't shake it off. And when people are arguing with you, just give them the Bible. People say, I don't believe the Bible. It's like my buddy James Esser said. He said, you take a .44 Magnum and a man might say, I don't believe in .44 Magnum. He said, just go to pulling the trigger and watch him go to dancing. Amen? Pull the trigger. Lay the Word of God on him. And it's amazing how God had chosen to use His Word as a sharp, two-edged sword. Hallelujah. And then in verse number 18, he said, now here's the engagement with the enemy, praying always with all prayer and supplication, watching therein too with all perseverance and supplication. You're on praying ground. And many times the battle is won or lost on praying ground. Mama, gather them youngs around you and pray for them. Daddy, gather that family up and pray with them. Get in the altar and pray and seek God's face. Don't let that ever rob you of the power of prayer. Them ground soldiers, you know what they do? They call in and give their coordinates and they ask for help. And you know what happens? Praise God, here comes that Tommy Hawk missile. Here comes that cruise missile. Here comes those jets flying over with that air support. We need air support in these days. We need support from another world. And you can have that through this business of prayer and supplication and calling on God. Because He said, Call unto Me and I will answer thee. And then Paul said, Please pray for me that I might have utterance. When you come to church and your preacher's struggling a little bit, don't sit there and say, well, what happened? Didn't he have time to study? You might as well just whisper a prayer and say, God beat the devils of hell off his back. Give him utterance. Give him strength. Give him power to preach. It's one thing to have a lecture and a sermon, but it's another thing to have unction from Almighty God. And that's what we need and that's what we pray for. I want to say you are an army. You're an equipped army. And we need to bravely go forth from victory unto victory, marching in this army with the courage to fight the good fight. I close with this. All Israel's gathered on one hillside. Philistines are in the valley. Forty days the giant's been roaring. Israel's knees are knocking sound like a bunch of woodpeckers on the side of the hill. They're scared to death. And one little old boy comes on the battlefield. And he said, who is this uncircumcised Philistine? He should defy the armies of the living God. This is just not right. Oh man, you can't go fight him. Listen, God's already given me victory over the lion and bear. And He'll give me victory over this giant. And he stepped out of the ranks. He went down there and he faced the giant. He faced his giant. He faced his giant. And he slew the giant and you know what happened? The rest of that army got courage and they took off and they ran the Philistines out of the country. I wonder if somebody here tonight would face their giant and ask God to give them victory over something that's been hindering you for a while. You know what? I've watched Revival. I was in Wales one time. Brother Edge Meredith was taking us up to the Queensland's property, and we had to go through his pastor land. And we went through one field that had sheep in it. We got to another gate. And he said, just leave that gate open. He said, I'm going to turn the sheep into that. So I opened the gate, left it, we got in, drove up and got out, and I looked. And all those sheep and that pastor, they were looking toward that gate. They wanted to go, but they wouldn't go. They were afraid. But then one old big hard-headed ram, he throwed his chest up and he went bolting through that gate. And man, he started eating that green grass. Then all of a sudden, the other little sheep, they lined up and... Here they came through the gate. God spoke to my heart and said, that's why I call my people sheep. If you can get some of these old hard-headed rams, you're going to find that the ewes and the lambs will fall right in there. They'll get over there in that green pasture and go to eating too. But if you won't move, how can you ask them to move? We're an army. Let's not act like we're defeated and have no power because you've got all the power you need to have victory and revival. Let's stand all over the house. Sister Emily, Brother Scott, you got us a song? You're here tonight not saved. You know, why don't you get truth? That's the first issue about being a victorious Christian's truth. Maybe truth with yourself, maybe truth with the fact that you're not right with God and you need to get right. Getting honest with God is the greatest thing that will happen in your life. And then as God's children, maybe the Lord spoke to you about defeat, warfare, and conquering in some areas that you've really been battling with. You might need some spiritual air support from on high tonight in the place that you're at. We're singing what number, brother? 618. 618. Get your book. Sing it out.