When I graduated from high school, a local organization awarded me a scholarship that would have covered a significant portion of my four-year tuition. Unfortunately, they made the critical error of handing that money — in a single lump sum — directly to a seventeen-year-old with absolutely no concept of financial responsibility.

Based on the enthusiastic advice of a high school friend who had already enlisted, I made the brilliant decision to join the Army — which, in hindsight, was possibly the worst possible environment for a headstrong, non-conformist, authority-questioning rebel who had made a personal philosophy out of never doing what he was told.

(By the way, that friend and I are no longer close.)

Nevertheless, I enlisted. And off I went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, as a brand new recruit.

Basic Training

When I joined, there was no active military campaign underway — but there were rumblings. Whispers about an emerging threat from the Middle East, a vague and ominous notion called terrorism. As a new member of the Armed Forces, I understood that if conflict broke out, I would be expected to go and fight.

Fortunately for the sake of national security, the U.S. Army does not simply hand a new recruit a weapon and ship them into a theater of war. First, they send you to basic training. And as my drill sergeants informed me — repeatedly, loudly, and with great conviction — the purpose of basic training is to break you down, and then build you back up again.

What does that mean in practice? Breaking down means pushing you to your physical and mental limits through relentless exercise — running, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, marching for miles under load — while simultaneously subjecting you to a considerable amount of carefully calibrated verbal abuse. The point is not cruelty. The point is to show you exactly where your limits are, so you know what needs to be strengthened and what needs to be discarded. So that when the moment comes to defend yourself and defend others, you are ready — not because someone told you that you were, but because you have been through it and come out the other side.

That process is exactly what we will mirror in this first phase of the Spiritual Warfare Course. You are going to get to know yourself in ways you never have before. You will come to understand your strengths — the ones God placed in you by design — and your weaknesses, the ones you have accumulated through living in a fallen world and rubbing up against fallen people. The Apostle Paul understood this tension intimately:

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. — Romans 7:18-19 (NKJV)

You will practice and rehearse these things until they become second nature — until you carry the settled confidence of someone who knows they can fight, and knows they can win. Paul also knew where that confidence ultimately comes from:

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. — Philippians 4:13 (NKJV)

The SmartBook

In those early weeks at Fort Jackson, amid the flood of new information and the relentless physical grind, I was issued something on my very first day that would become my most constant companion. It wasn’t my rifle. It wasn’t my Kevlar. It was a field manual — called TRADOC, though the drill sergeants had a more direct (and predictably condescending) name for it: the SmartBook.

The SmartBook had everything. How to march. How to stand. How to lace your boots. How to clean, load, and fire your weapon. How to put on your defensive armor. It was the complete operational guide for a soldier in the United States Army, and I was told, in no uncertain terms, to never be without it.

As for my other equipment — I learned to wear my Kevlar jacket and helmet, the armor that could literally save my life. I learned to dress myself correctly, to be combat-ready at any given moment. I was issued my rifle, which I was instructed was never to leave my side. In fact, tradition required that I name it after a woman in my life. I named mine Lisa, after my girlfriend at the time.

(She was not nearly as flattered by this as I had hoped.)

Over time I became proficient with that rifle, and eventually a marksman. I trained on other weapons too — rocket launchers, grenades, anti-tank weapons, machine guns, and various specialized equipment. I didn’t know how to use all of it on day one. Neither will you. But don’t worry — by the end of this course, you will have a full arsenal at your disposal, and you will know how to use every piece of it. For now, we focus on the basics.

In spiritual warfare, we also have a SmartBook. We have a field manual of our own. It’s called the Bible.

The SmartBook didn’t just tell me how to fight. It told me about the situation — the state of the conflict, our position as a nation, the nature of our adversaries. We called it the SITREP, the Situational Report. Before any soldier can engage effectively, they need to understand the situation they are in.

Our field manual does the same thing. The Bible gives us our SITREP. It tells us exactly what situation we have been born into, and that situation is captured in what I call Jehovah’s Story. Paul makes this point powerfully when writing to the church at Ephesus:

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 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 6:11-12 (NKJV)

Jehovah’s Story: The SITREP

Before I dive in, let me address a question that almost always comes up: why do I refer to God as Jehovah?

Simply put — because that is His name. “God” is an English translation of the Hebrew word Elohim, and Elohim is not a name. It is a title of residency. If you dwell in the spiritual realm, you are an Elohim. The beings we call angels are Elohim. Jehovah Himself is the supreme Elohim. If you dwell in the physical realm, you are called man. Unfortunately, most of our Bibles translate Elohim as “God,” which obscures an important distinction.

The covenant name that God gave to Moses is YHWH — four Hebrew consonants with no vowels, since Hebrew implies its vowels. The most widely accepted pronunciation is Yahweh. The German transliteration of that is Jehovah, which is simply easier for me to say. When Moses asked God directly for His name, here is what he was told:

Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” — Exodus 3:13-14 (NKJV)

Throughout this course I will use Jehovah, Yahweh, and God interchangeably — they all refer to the same Being. Now. Back to the story.

In the Beginning

At the beginning of existence, Jehovah created two realms: a spiritual realm and a physical realm. Through His unique Son, Jesus — referred to in the Gospel of John as “the Word” — He created the heavens and the earth:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. — John 1:1-3 (NKJV)

As the Book of Job reveals, both realms were already occupied by lesser Elohim whom Jehovah had created — beings called the Sons of God, or Bene Elohim. They were present and singing for joy when the foundations of the earth were laid:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” — Job 38:4-7 (NKJV)

These Elohim had been given authority over portions of both realms. We don’t know how long their civilization existed. But we do know that at some point, something went catastrophically wrong. There was a rebellion. We infer this because the earth, which was not created dark and formless and chaotic, is described in Genesis as exactly that:

The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. — Genesis 1:2 (NKJV)

Something happened to it between creation and that moment. The SmartBook gives us additional details later on, but for now it is enough to know that an Elohim rebellion occurred, Jehovah put it down, and the result was massive destruction.

The New Creation

So Jehovah decided to rebuild. He brought light back into the darkness, restored the devastation, repopulated the earth with plant and animal life. And then He did something unlike anything He had done before — He created man. The difference in how He did it was significant:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. — Genesis 2:7 (NKJV)

Everything else in the recreation was spoken into existence. But man was not simply spoken into being. Jehovah reached down, formed him physically from the dust and clay of the earth — establishing man’s fundamental connection to the physical world — and then breathed into him the ruach of life. The spirit. The breath of God Himself. Man was simultaneously physical and spiritual, unlike anything else Jehovah had made.

This new creation was given something extraordinary: dominion. Authority over the earth — the very authority that had previously belonged to certain Elohim:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” — Genesis 1:26 (NKJV)

Notice the phrase “Let Us” — Jehovah is speaking to His divine council, the Bene Elohim, announcing His intention to create man and transfer dominion. Jehovah also created a companion for man, a woman, through whom all future human life would come. Together, they held full authority over the earth.

The majority of the Elohim in the heavens celebrated this. But not all of them felt that way. A segment resented man — jealous of the special attention Jehovah lavished on this new creation made of dirt, offended that dominion once theirs was being transferred to an inferior being. And with that resentment, we arrive at the first act of spiritual warfare.

The First Battle

One of the Elohim — who had previously stood on Jehovah’s side, known as the Nachash, or the Shining One — approached the first man and woman and tempted them to disobey their Creator. They acquiesced. They fell:

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” … So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. — Genesis 3:1, 6 (NKJV)

That was the first and most consequential victory for the opposing side in this war. Jehovah, being perfectly righteous, had to judge the man and woman for their disobedience. But He also judged the Nachash — and in that judgment, He declared war and planted the first seed of ultimate victory:

So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” — Genesis 3:14-15 (NKJV)

That final verse is the first prophecy of the entire Bible — and it is a declaration of war. All of humanity would now be at war with the fallen spiritual powers. And Jehovah declared that a specific descendant of the woman — a single human being — would ultimately crush the head of the Nachash and restore what had been lost. The Edenic state of human dominion over the earth would, in the end, be fully reclaimed.

The Nephilim Gambit

As humanity multiplied across the earth, the fallen Elohim devised their most audacious counter-move. The SmartBook records it plainly:

Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. … There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. — Genesis 6:1-4 (NKJV)

According to the Book of Enoch — an ancient text considered an adjunct to our SmartBook — approximately two hundred of these fallen beings descended to earth and took human women as wives. Their offspring were called the Nephilim.

Why would they do this? Because it was a legal maneuver. Jehovah had established that dominion over the earth belonged to entities that were both physical and spiritual. Man qualified because of the ruach breathed into him. The fallen Elohim were purely spiritual — no physical component, no legal standing to claim earthly dominion. But the Nephilim were hybrids: part Elohim, part human. Part spiritual, part physical. If the fallen Elohim could populate the earth with Nephilim and eliminate the purely human population, they could claim dominion by the very laws Jehovah had established. They were using God’s own principles against Him.

And it nearly worked. The Nephilim dominated the earth, consuming everything men produced, eventually turning on humanity itself. After more than a thousand years, only one human family remained:

Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the LORD said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. — Genesis 6:5-8 (NKJV)

The fallen Elohim had come within a single family of winning. But Jehovah intervened. He sent the flood, preserved Noah’s family, and wiped out the living Nephilim. The Nephilim who died were cursed to roam the earth as disembodied spirits — the entities we call demons — perpetually craving the physical bodies they no longer possessed. Jesus Himself acknowledged these entities and their nature:

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.” — Matthew 12:43-44 (NKJV)

Nimrod, the Nations, and the Corruption of Worship

The flood ended the Nephilim. It did not end the rebellion.

A few generations later, a man named Nimrod — Noah’s great-grandson — gathered the new human population and set himself up as the world’s first global dictator. He initiated the first organized religious opposition to Jehovah, and together with his wife Semiramis — also, disturbingly, his mother — established a counterfeit trinity: Nimrod as the divine father, Semiramis as the holy mother, their child Tammuz as the divine child. This unholy triad was the world’s first false religion, and its imagery would resurface in virtually every major civilization that followed.

Nimrod then attempted something more audacious still:

And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” — Genesis 11:3-4 (NKJV)

Jehovah ended this by confusing humanity’s languages and scattering the nations. When the people dispersed, they carried the false Nimrodian religion with them — which is why its imagery shows up, in different forms, across cultures that supposedly had no contact with one another.

Jehovah then raised up His own nation through Abraham. He also assigned seventy of His holy Elohim from His divine council to shepherd the newly formed nations of the world — an arrangement confirmed in Deuteronomy:

When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. — Deuteronomy 32:8 (NKJV)

The Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls render that final phrase as “according to the number of the sons of God” — a direct reference to the divine council members assigned to the nations. Their job was to shepherd those nations while Jehovah focused on building His chosen people, Israel.

Every one of those seventy Elohim eventually fell. The reason is both simple and deeply instructive — and the Psalmist recorded their judgment:

God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods. How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality to the wicked? … I said, “You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High. But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” — Psalm 82:1-2, 6-7 (NKJV)

They fell because human beings worshiped them. And this brings us to something you need to understand at the core of everything in this course.

The Problem with Worship

We are hardwired for worship. Jehovah designed human beings to worship — it is not an optional feature of the human operating system, it is the core function. We have no off switch. We must worship something.

The reason He designed us this way is beautiful in its simplicity. Jehovah’s greatest desire is for us to dwell with Him — to be with Him. But to truly be with Him, we need to become like Him. And Jehovah built into the nature of worship a profound transformation: you become like what you worship. Paul describes this process in his letter to the Romans:

Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man — and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. — Romans 1:21-23 (NKJV)

Notice what Paul is describing: people who stopped worshiping Jehovah didn’t stop worshiping. They redirected their worship — to images, to idols, to created things. Because if a human being does not worship Jehovah, they will worship something. A person. A nation. An ideology. An Elohim. Worship does not disappear — it finds another object.

Here is the other side of that design. Jehovah gave us free will:

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. — Deuteronomy 30:19 (NKJV)

The blessing and the curse of free will is that we can do with it whatever we choose. We can use it to worship Jehovah and fulfill His will — or we can use it to oppose Him and do the opposite. And when the seventy Elohim assigned to the nations received human worship, they discovered something intoxicating: worship is a form of spiritual energy, and only Jehovah is built to receive it properly. For everyone else it is addictive — overwhelming, consuming, impossible to satisfy. The more worship the Elohim received, the more they wanted. Their judgment collapsed under the weight of it. One by one, every Elohim assigned to shepherd the nations fell.

This also explains the origin of wars of conquest throughout all of human history. An Elohim with a nation of devoted worshipers will always want more. But everyone in their nation is already worshiping them. The only source of new worship is other nations — nations under the authority of other Elohim. The solution, from their perspective, is conquest: overthrow the neighboring nation, absorb its population, and absorb its worship. Then repeat the cycle, pushing toward global domination. The wars we read about in history books are, at their deepest level, fallen Elohim fighting each other for worship — using human armies as their instruments. The prophet Daniel caught a glimpse of this reality:

Then he said to me, “Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia.” — Daniel 10:12-13 (NKJV)

The “prince of the kingdom of Persia” is not a human being — it is the Elohim assigned to Persia, actively resisting the messenger of God on behalf of his own agenda. This is what spiritual warfare behind the scenes of human history actually looks like.

For a deeper exploration of the spiritual dynamics behind human government, I have additional resources available at faithbyreason.net. But for now, let’s step back and take stock of what we know.

Your enemy’s primary goal — the one objective that unifies all of his tactics — is to keep you from fulfilling God’s will.

The Three Enemy Factions

Three distinct enemy factions are arrayed against humanity, each with their own motivation:

First, there are the fallen Elohim — spiritual beings who desire to reclaim dominion over the earth and who view humanity as the obstacle. Peter warns us about their chief:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. — 1 Peter 5:8 (NKJV)

Second, there are the demons — the disembodied spirits of the dead Nephilim, who crave physical experience and seek to inhabit human bodies to satisfy that craving and carry out the agenda of their fallen Elohim progenitors.

Third, there are the principalities — fallen Elohim who have become addicted to worship and who work through the kings, rulers, and elites of the world’s nations to feed that addiction. Paul names all three categories plainly:

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 (NKJV)

Three factions. Three distinct motivations. But one shared objective: to keep you from God’s will. Everything they do — every strategy, every tactic, every attack — serves that single goal. They do not want you to spend eternity with Jehovah. They do not want you to fulfill the purpose for which you were made.

That is the war we are in. That is the battle you have been born into. And now the obvious question arises.

Why Does Jehovah Let This Happen?

If Jehovah is all-powerful — and He is — why does He allow beings so much mightier than us to attack us? Why does He permit these entities to bring harm to us, to our families, to our health and our finances and our minds? Why doesn’t He simply step in and fight our battles for us? While it will take us some months to understand Jehovah’s Nature and get the ultimate specific answer, there is a general answer.

That answer is Jehovah’s Story.

Our existence is a story. And every satisfying story requires three things: characters, conflict, and resolution. Without all three, there is no story. This means that our struggles, our joys, our defeats, and our victories are not accidents — they are the essential fabric of a narrative that Jehovah is living out through us. James understood this:

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. — James 1:2-4 (NKJV)

Jehovah loves stories. And so do we — because we were made in His image. Consider this: you can forget facts, figures, dates, and doctrines. But you never forget a story. You still remember the first time you met your best friend. The day your child said their first word. The afternoon your father took you fishing. The moment you fell in love. Those moments are alive in you because stories speak directly to the heart. And they speak to our hearts because they speak to Jehovah’s heart. We are part of His story.

How God Sees Time

Here is something that took me a long time to understand about God and time, and I want to share it in the most practical way I know how.

My favorite movie is The Empire Strikes Back. I’ve seen it literally hundreds of times. I know exactly what’s going to happen in every scene. I know the Millennium Falcon makes it through the asteroid field. I know Luke is going to lose the fight with Darth Vader. I know the ending.

And yet — every single time I watch it — I feel the same things I felt the first time. The tension in the asteroid field. The hope for Luke even when I know what’s coming. The story pulls me back in regardless of my foreknowledge, because a great story is not bound by time. I can enter any moment of it and be fully present there, experiencing everything all over again.

That, I believe, is something close to how Jehovah relates to time. He exists in eternity — outside of and above linear time — seeing the entirety of existence as a story He can enter at any point and fully inhabit. The prophet Isaiah records God’s own description of this:

“Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.'” — Isaiah 46:9-10 (NKJV)

He sees the whole story from beginning to end — from creation to the New Jerusalem — and yet He can step into any chapter of it and experience it fully. This is why the Old Testament sometimes shows God expressing what looks like surprise or grief at things He surely knew were coming. He is not ignorant of the outcome. But He can enter any moment of it and feel the full weight of that chapter — just as you can enter your favorite story and feel it as though for the first time.

And this is why, I believe, one of the reasons Jehovah created us is simply this: He loves stories. Each one of the billions of human beings who have ever lived carries a completely unique story — one that would never have existed had that particular person not been born. The Psalmist captured this sense of individual significance beautifully:

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. — Psalm 139:13-16 (NKJV)

Your story is unique. From your first breath to your last, you are living something no one else has ever lived. And one day, if you are His, you will spend eternity sharing that story with Him. Our struggles in spiritual warfare are a critical part of that story — the battles we fight, the ground we take, the victories we win and the defeats we recover from. These are not inconveniences to be avoided. They are chapters in a story that God delights to experience through us.

Why He Doesn’t Fight For Us

We are not passive observers in Jehovah’s story. We are fully in it — and Jehovah wants us there. He doesn’t fight our spiritual battles for us for the same reason a good parent doesn’t do their child’s homework when the child already knows the answers: it wouldn’t help them. It would stunt them. It would rob them of the very development that makes them capable and confident. Paul put it plainly:

You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. — 2 Timothy 2:3-4 (NKJV)

God has equipped us to fight. He has given us authority over these entities — authority that Jesus Himself confirmed:

“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” — Luke 10:19 (NKJV)

He wants us in the struggle, in the conflict, down in the trenches — because that is the only way we become what He intends us to be. We are meant to fight. We are meant to win. We are meant to be heroes in this story. And we can only become that by getting into the battle.

But we are not alone in it.

Communicating with Headquarters

In those first weeks at Fort Jackson, the single most valuable piece of equipment I was issued was not my rifle, not my body armor, not even the SmartBook. It was a walkie-talkie.

With that walkie-talkie, I could always reach headquarters. If I was lost on a march, if I didn’t know what to do, if I needed intelligence or reinforcement — I could reach back to the people who had the authority, the experience, and the full operational picture. That line of communication was a lifeline.

In spiritual warfare, we have a far more powerful form of communication available to us. It is called prayer. Open your SmartBook to virtually any page and you will find warriors using it to achieve remarkable results. Paul describes it as our primary weapon alongside the Word:

And 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, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. — Ephesians 6:17-18 (NKJV)

We will teach you how to use prayer — not by giving you specific words to memorize, because your prayers are as unique as your relationship with Jehovah, and that relationship is unlike anyone else’s. What we will teach you is how prayer works, what makes it effective, and how to use it with precision rather than just sincerity. Jesus Himself gave us the framework:

“In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” — Matthew 6:9-13 (NKJV)

But beyond formal prayer, know this: Jehovah wants to hear from you. Unlike my drill sergeants, who had no interest whatsoever in casual conversation with a new recruit, God longs for you to speak with Him. Not just in structured prayer — but in everyday conversation. The writer of Hebrews tells us we have unrestricted access:

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. — Hebrews 4:16 (NKJV)

As that relationship deepens, so does your confidence. And as your confidence grows, so does your effectiveness as a warrior. However — and this is vital — you must learn to recognize His voice amidst the noise. There is a great deal of static on the spiritual frequencies. Other communications are always coming in. Jesus described this clearly when speaking about His own sheep:

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” — John 10:27 (NKJV)

You must learn to tune to the specific frequency on which God speaks to you, so that when His message arrives, you know with certainty where it is coming from. We will train you in that discernment.

Council Meetings

Finally, there is one more form of communication that deserves special attention — and its own dedicated section in this course. Jehovah gave us access to something that most Christians have never heard of and virtually none are using. We might call them Council Meetings.

These meetings involve direct access to the very throne room of the Creator of the universe — access available to you, personally, at any time. The writer of Hebrews speaks of this access, and the Book of Revelation gives us a glimpse of what that throne room actually looks like:

That is the room you have access to. That is where your communications with Headquarters can take place. These Council Meetings are perhaps the most potent resource available to you in spiritual warfare — and they are your birthright as a child of God.

In the next section, we will cover the Rules of Engagement — the spiritual laws that govern this conflict, laws that apply to every combatant in this war, including Jehovah Himself. We will examine your extraordinary access to His throne room and show you how to enter it, how to stand in it, and how to conduct those Council Meetings with the God of the universe and His heavenly host.

Get ready for your next level of training.