I conclude with tips for transforming yourself from a hapless POW to Christian warrior known and feared by demons. Remember what the demon said to the sons of Sceva (Acts 19:15): Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you? Does the devil know and fear your name?

And before you get all modest, fearful, and/or hopeless, remember how screwed up, addicted, and demonized I used to be. If I have a Wanted poster in hell with my face on it, then any Christian can get one! It definitely takes courage, but it isn’t rocket science.

Here are some tips to get you started. But expect much more ammo for the fight in later chapters.

A foothold is not a mindset; it’s a “lifeset,” an entrenched way of life, a behavioral pattern, a repetitive habit that over time opens the door for the literal presence of demons.

A hearthold is all about your passions and your dreams, the secrets of your heart, the things you think about when you fall asleep at night. Maybe it’s a 1964 Ford Mustang, maybe it’s your fantasy football team, maybe it’s the business you want to start, or that novel you always meant to write. Perhaps it’s a co-worker? She’s looking mighty fine, whereas your wife can’t seem to shed those 30 pounds after having your last kid. Demons love to stoke the fires of old flames, reminding you constantly of just how good and pleasing and desirable achieving a particular fantasy would be.

Like Adam and Eve, if demons can get you to swallow a lie (You’ll will never be free…), then they are well on their way to winning the war. Specifically, demons will attempt to control your mind by filling it with Strongholds. A stronghold is a mindset, an entrenched mental pattern of thought, a habitual attitude, a set of beliefs, a paradigm that always has at its core a lie or multiple lies of Satan.

How Does Satan Neutralize Christians?3 Primary Means: Demons, the World, Carnal Christians. As a memory aide, picture the devil’s 3-pronged pitchfork. The primary satanic means of taking out Christians is via Demons, the World System, and Carnal Christians.

Like the Christians in Laodicea, the devil wants you deceived, addicted, immature, and carnal. Even better, he wants you deceiving and/or hurting others, even though you claim to be a follower of Christ. Any of this sounding familiar? The statistics on American Christians, for example, are abysmal. Divorce rates, church attendance, Bible reading, tithing, witnessing, sexual sins and addictions—is it any wonder our country is launching itself off the cliff?

Maybe this is why Scripture gives us this command: Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). And yet you’ve likely lived a life immorally out of control and asleep to any threat posed by the deceiver of heavenly angels. You’ve been schooled by an extremely cunning enemy (2 Corinthians 11:3); indeed, it’s quite likely you are still deceived in some areas! The best kind of deception is the one you never notice! Wake up and smell the Father of Lies, brothers and sisters!

You must personalize the murderous danger of spiritual warfare, because everything you value and love is at play in this war. Your sexual purity, your health, your mental sanity, your job and finances, your marriage, your children, your ministry, your testimony, and ultimately your eternal destiny and reward all hinge upon your effectiveness as a soldier warring on behalf of the God of Angel Armies (the Lord of Hosts). Nothing less than the destiny of the world is at stake, because you live in the last days and thus are called to fight in the Last Battle.

Do you know how to stand your ground against the cosmic forces of evil? Do you know how to fight against demons? Or how to equip yourself with the life-saving armor of God? “Stage 3: Spiritual Warfare” offers you a specific strategy for winning the invisible war that rages about you, starting with the fundamentals as laid out in this next series of posts.

Hopelessness is the granddaddy of all excuses, because in effect it excuses all other excuses! Think about it for a second. If you’re without hope, if everything is truly pointless, then why bother attempting anything, since you’re doomed from the get-go? Hopelessness is the one excuse above all others that the devil wants programmed into your brain and self-talk, because the man or woman who is hopeless is already defeated. Hopelessness is the dead opposite of faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Hopelessness is perhaps the greatest, most devilish lie of them all—because if you embrace it, you have fundamentally rejected the very truth that will set you free.

As you become familiar with your own internal code (read “excuses”), it’s time to get down to the brass tacks of deciphering your internal dialogue so you can rewrite your code, renew your mind, and change your life. Ladies, you seem to be naturally much more self-aware than men, but even so, most of us have received little training or modeling in the art of self-analysis—even though the Bible commands us to “examine yourselves” and “test yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5).

With codebreaking in mind (pun intended), here’s your Biblical Big Picture. In the war for purity, there’s a constant stream of coded messages, words whose decryption will help turn the tide of your personal battle. I refer to your self-talk, the messages you’ve been sending yourself inside your own brain. Many of you have been transmitting the exact same messages for 20, 40, and even 60 years, and yet you remain clueless to your own internal code. These coded messages are vital to your relapse process. Indeed, they are integral to everyone’s relapse process—because, as you’ll discover in these pages, everyone is selling themselves with the same old Lame-Ass Excuses. If we never excused and justified and defended our addictive behaviors, we’d never do them!

In other words, all addicts are con artists at heart, because the first person you must con is always yourself. This is precisely why Scripture commands us to take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5)—or in my warfare parlance, why you must decrypt your own self-talk so you can finally hear your own addictive excuses. Mental self-awareness always precedes the destruction of stinking thinking strongholds!

Once the devil has planted the beachhead of perversion in your life and invaded you with 24-7 iAccess, his next step is thought control. This post is sponsored by the words Codes and Propaganda, because you must learn how to decode and expose the addict lies ingrained within your mind. The enemy has been broadcasting his encoded propaganda for so long, you no longer hear the loudspeakers blaring inside your own head. You’ve been programmed to mindlessly obey the devil’s constant commands and relapse for the umpteenth time—and yet you remain clueless to your own brainwashing.

Here’s some brass tacks for filtering/blocking your television, gaming consoles, tablets and cable tv. The following recommendations apply especially to those who have/will have children. It’s your choice to expose your children to the Internet, so likewise it’s your responsibility, no matter how challenging, to protect them. Trust me, I’ve talked with way too many parents on the phone whose children secretly accessed Internet at home. You do not want to have a 9-year-old sex addict on your hands!

Here’s some brass tacks for filtering/blocking your devices—and remember, I’m being general here. The following recommendations apply especially to those who have/will have children. It’s your choice to expose your children to the Internet, so likewise it’s your responsibility, no matter how challenging, to protect them. Trust me, I’ve talked with way too many parents on the phone whose children secretly accessed Internet at home. You do not want to have a 9-year-old sex addict on your hands!

Now before we get to the specifics of closing the door of unforgiveness allow me to illustrate with your required dose of WWII history just how powerful the act of forgiveness can be. Take a moment and return with me to Pearl Harbor…

It’s no coincidence that the final puzzle pieces of my destiny fell into place as I was doing the hard work of both purifying and healing my heart. Indeed, a basic reason why many of you remain clueless as to your calling is that your hearts are still impure and immature. Only a healthy and wholesome heart can see with the eyes of faith. And without faith, you’ll never have the courage to take that leap into the unknown when the time comes. Without purity you can’t mature enough to faithfully pass the Wilderness tests, and therefore your destiny dies stillborn, a Promised Land in promise only. Indeed, failure to live out one’s destiny is an even greater sin than sexual immorality—precisely because destiny, unlike sin, encompasses the very reason you were put on this planet in the first place.

Let’s close out our week or learning about God’s testing with a brief reminder that all this means War! Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand’s biography of WWII hero Louis Zamperini, is an unforgettable book about an unforgettable man. The author is a marvelous writer, but ironically she gets the title of the book catastrophically wrong. The book’s title should have been Broken—because Zamperini’s incredible life story reveals the incredible measures God Himself will take to break one man.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m honest, I don’t really like God’s tests. Especially the ones that involve pain and self-sacrifice. Why does everything have to be a test? Why does God’s way have to be the hard way? Do we really have to drink from this cup? Do I sound like Jesus in Gethsemane?

Sorry, folks, there is no quick fix here, no instant gratification, and no pill you can take to make it all go away. God tests His children for two extremely important reason: Brokenness and Dependence.

How serious is God about the testing process required for every believer? I offer as proof the most common divine examinations you and I will undergo—a list that’s by no means complete. See if any of these tests sound familiar.

Speaking spiritually, your Acting-Out Cycle is your personalized, miniaturized Wilderness experience, and your addiction is your Goliath awaiting decapitation. That’s right, it’s back to the Israelites stumbling around Sinai and Jesus in Gethsemane, because this is not about masturbation or sex or drugs or alcohol—the idol right in front of your face. Instead it’s about the unseen Promised Land of your destiny awaiting fulfillment.

You have been put on this planet for Purity, Maturity, and Destiny. But here’s what’s crazy: Your Acting-Out Cycle is a critical part of God’s testing process that helps you fulfill your destiny and take your specific Promised Land. That’s right. THIS IS ALL A TEST! Indeed, the first test is that you get that this is all a test.

There are many different kinds of “drugs” you can choose during your particular cycle, but generally speaking, there are only two kinds of addicts in this world: Medicators seek to numb or medicate old trauma, childhood abuse, the absence of a father/mother, the wounds caused by divorce or growing up in an addict home, and so on. For Compensators, on the other hand, the key is the outward stress and pressures of life that drives them to compensate by seeking a temporary relief from what they feel are overwhelming, inescapable demands.

There is another alternative to the endless cycle. You can actually move from Point A to Point B, Upward and Onward into the Kingdom of God. Eugene Petersen calls this The Long Obedience in the Same Direction. There are still ups and downs but you’re covering new ground - moving forward. You’re learning from past mistakes. Making progress. Building a sure foundation.

“Your next objective is to completely destroy your personal Acting-Out Cycle(s). Simply put, you cannot transition from Private Pervert to Captain Clean without first identifying your personal Acting-Out Cycle and then ruthlessly killing off your former negative, unhealthy behaviors, even as you replace them with positive, healthy behaviors. “

“Mr. and Miss Hunt, you have been saved to save others. Get pure and mature, and then fulfill your destiny even as you walk in increasing intimacy with God and others. Become part of God’s Epic End-Time Mighty Men and Women, part of the Greatest Spiritual Generation ever born for such a time as this, because the Sovereign God always saves the best for last. And therefore, since we are now in the last, it’s time you and I become the best! “

“How do we achieve our Mission Possible? We follow Jesus’s awesome example and live lives of Purity, Maturity, and Destiny, as we walk in ever increasing Intimacy with the Father. Jesus conquered His giants even as He passed through the Wilderness of testing. Staying pure and true, Jesus grew into the universe-changing call upon His life, making the most mature of decisions to lay down His life for the lost. He then fulfilled His personal destiny in the most amazing way possible, while walking in intimate relationship with His Father. Is it any wonder the Father is so proud of His Son?! We then—if we are truly Christ-ians—must fulfill the unique destiny set before each of us.

If Jesus can do it, anyone can! “

“Are you doing your pre-flight checklist? You and I will be taking off someday soon. We must practice consistent accountability in this life if we want to give a good account in the next. In short, only by giving a good account Now can you give a good account Then. Think of your Pureheart Checklist as your daily/weekly dress rehearsal for your moment before the Great White Throne… “

“No Body/body can reap a harvest without the discipline of self-control. DISCIPLINE is the Achilles heel of almost every Christian I know (remember what I said about divinely placed weaknesses?). Our lives are utterly shaped by the presence and/or absence of discipline. . . Discipline is nothing more than the ability to consistently remove bad habits and practice healthy habits via the art of setting and achieving goals. “