I’ve been staring at my laptop for a while now, feeling completely unqualified to write about spiritual warfare. Honestly, I feel like a fraud. I’m so new to understanding this that I keep second-guessing myself. But maybe that’s exactly why I need to write this—because I’m learning alongside you, not preaching down to you.
Then it hit me, that feeling of “who am I to write this?” right before helping others… that might BE spiritual warfare trying to stop me.
The church I grew up in never talked about spiritual warfare. That was reserved for scary exorcism movies or “crazy” churches. My church was safe and cozy; we never talked about the very real danger of the enemy. But then I realized spiritual warfare isn’t always Hollywood-esque things-flying-off-the-walls demonic possession.
The enemy doesn’t always come announced. Sometimes it’s the slightest whispered lies buried in half-truths.
What Spiritual Warfare Actually Looks Like
The Subtle Attacks
Have you ever noticed things get unusually harder after you’ve had a breakthrough? Maybe you’ve finally broken an addiction or finally placed your full trust in God. You’re finally doing everything right, but then an unexpected attack comes. In my case, it was a friend reaching out after we both had experienced different traumas. Everything seemed fine until they started claiming authority over me and attacking my calling.
Timing Patterns
Sometimes these attacks come before the breakthrough. This is the enemy trying to prevent you from growing. Whether it’s before or after, spiritual attacks tend to come during a period of breakthrough, opportunity, and major decisions. They also try to attack you during vulnerable seasons of life—seasons of grief, transition, or growth. And here’s what I noticed for me: when you step into your calling and start doing what God wants you to do, the attacks double down. My husband and I joke that when bad things start happening that we must be on the right track.
Categories of Warfare
So what does this actually look like in real life?
Emotional: These attacks prey on your emotions and can manifest as unexplained depression, anxiety, or hopelessness that feels disproportionate to your circumstances. Now, I want to be really clear—I am not downplaying mental illness or suggesting that depression and anxiety are “just” spiritual attacks. Mental health struggles are real and often need professional help. I’m simply encouraging you to look at patterns and timing. Does it seem oddly targeted around your spiritual growth or calling? Sometimes it’s both/and rather than either/or.
Relational: One of the worst spiritual attacks I faced was relational. These can manifest as sudden conflicts or misunderstandings when things are usually healthy. This can look like sudden marriage struggles as soon as you’ve agreed to grow in faith together. On the opposite end, isolation or being intentionally left out is a tactic of the enemy. If someone is all alone, they’re more easily targeted and vulnerable.
Mental: These attacks can present as intrusive thoughts, confusion, or self-doubt spirals. Again, this isn’t to dismiss mental illness, quite the opposite, actually. Yes, mental illness is a brain chemistry problem (as was the case with me). It can also be a spiritual attack. These two things are not mutually exclusive; so is it crazy to think it could be both?
Physical: Unexplained sudden illness or other attacks on the physical body can be another ploy of the enemy. Even something that seems insignificant like unexplained exhaustion or sleep disruption can be an attack.
Spiritual: Spiritual attacks can make you second-guess if what you’re hearing is God’s voice. Sometimes these attacks make you feel distant from Him. Maybe it’s the inability to stay focused while praying or just feeling like you haven’t reached out in a while.
Spiritual Warfare vs Normal Life Struggles
It can be easy to explain away subtle attacks as normal life struggles that everyone experiences. And on the flip side, it can be easy to get stuck in thinking every single hardship that comes along is an attack of the enemy. Here are four key factors that help determine if something is a spiritual attack or not.
Proportionality: Spiritual attacks usually feel a lot bigger than what the circumstances warrant. For example, I had ARMR Collective’s logo, website, social media accounts, and first post ready to go for weeks. But I was scared of launching it. I wanted everything to be absolutely perfect before I officially started it. I was so terrified of saying the wrong thing, not being qualified enough to write about mental health and faith, not being Christian enough, offending people—the list goes on and on. Finally, I just randomly decided to launch it one day with zero fanfare, and I’ve posted every single week without fail since.
Looking back, all that delay, perfectionism, and disproportional fear was classic spiritual warfare trying to keep a ministry that helps hurting people from ever getting started. It’s normal to have pre-launch jitters, but paralyzing perfectionism and fear that kept me from my calling? That was textbook spiritual warfare.
Timing: This is usually the key indicator of a spiritual attack. Every single time I’m going through a stage of growth or I’m on the right track, something blows up. I wish I was exaggerating, but so many of my posts were written about current struggles I was experiencing; and I strongly believe all of these struggles were attempts to derail myself and ARMR’s ministry. Looking back at my blog posts since launching ARMR, I can literally see a timeline of spiritual attacks—every single time I stepped deeper into my calling, another area of my life came under fire. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Isolation Factor: Another tactic of the enemy is to isolate you. The enemy prowls around like a lion waiting for a stray animal. Spiritual attacks can include urges to withdraw from healthy communities. Looking back, I can see how each attack I experienced was designed to isolate me from support—gossip threatened my friendships, betrayal from so-called “friends” shook my foundation, and spiritual abuse made me question who was safe to trust. The enemy knows that isolated people don’t launch ministries that help others heal.
Solution Responsiveness: Normal problems will respond to normal solutions. Stressed about work? Try resting, setting boundaries, or taking a vacation. You’ll usually feel better after. Have financial worries? Start budgeting, financial planning, or get a side job, and it should improve.
But spiritual problems don’t respond to normal solutions. Maybe you feel exhausted at work only when you’re being a light to others. Maybe every time you step out in faith, sudden unexpected expenses hit. The key here is spiritual warfare only happens around Kingdom activities and can only be “fixed” through spiritual solutions.
If the stress or worry is specifically tied to your faith, calling, or obedience to God—and practical solutions don’t work—it’s likely spiritual warfare trying to keep you from your purpose!
The Real Enemy
It’s easy to take spiritual attacks personally. Especially when they hit so close to home and hurt us so deeply. I used to take every conflict, every attack on ARMR personally. But I knew when I launched ARMR to expect criticism and attacks. Ephesians 6:12 helped me with this perspective shift.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
The people hurting me weren’t my real enemy, they were just being used by the actual enemy. This doesn’t excuse their behavior in any way, but it did change how I responded.
When we know who the real enemy is, we can fight the right battle.
People as Weapons
The devil likes to use wounded people to wound others. He weaponizes their hurt and inflicts pain on others with it. In my experience with spiritual abuse, the ones who hurt us had gone through unimaginable pain. Hurt people hurt people, and the enemy loves to keep that cycle going.
We can still love people while recognizing enemy tactics. It’s easier said than done, especially if you’ve been hurt so profoundly. But we should be careful not to become paranoid about everyone and their intentions.
The goal is to stay discerning about spiritual forces at work behind harmful behavior without becoming suspicious of everyone with good intentions. Pray for those who hurt you while protecting yourself wisely.
And remember that wounded people can become healed people when they encounter God’s love through our example of grace and boundaries.
Your Spiritual Armor
This is where the rest of the Ephesians passage comes in.
“Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” (Ephesians 6:13)
Starting each day with a simple prayer can be the start of your defense against attacks: “Lord, protect me and my family today. Help me recognize any spiritual attacks and give me wisdom to respond with Your truth instead of reacting in fear.” That’s it—nothing fancy required.
Belt of Truth: We need to know what God actually says about us. The enemy loves to tell us lies about ourselves. To keep ourselves grounded in the truth, write God’s truths down to combat the lies. Or, vice versa: write down the lies and combat them with Truth. Fight “you’re worthless” with “you are fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
Breastplate of Righteousness: We can rest with our identity in Christ. Condemnation has no place here. Try affirming who God says you are with identity affirmations. “I am loved. I am saved. I am a child of God.” etc.
Shoes of Peace: We need to stay grounded in God’s peace, the peace that passes all understanding. Instead of being reactive or easily stirred up, we can take a beat to breathe or pray. Try not to get caught up in the chaos, but rise above it.
Do a peace check: am I responding from peace or panic? We should be the people who bring stability to chaos, not adding to it.
Shield of Faith: It can be hard to have faith that everything will be okay in the midst of a trial. But we must remember God’s promises over our circumstances. We can use Scripture to extinguish the enemy’s lies, just like with the truth list.
Helmet of Salvation: We need to take extra care to protect our thoughts. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says to take every thought captive. If you experience intrusive thoughts, try combatting them by replacing the thoughts with something biblically true. “I am useless” can turn into “For I know the plans I have for you, declare the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Sword of the Spirit: The Sword of the Spirit is our offensive weapon; it’s how we fight back. With the Sword, we’re not just blocking attacks but actively striking back with God’s Word. Reading Scripture for comfort is more of a defense while speaking Scripture out loud drives the enemy back. While in the midst of an anxiety attack, speaking “God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and sound mind!” can cause the enemy to run (2 Timothy 1:7). The key is to speak Scripture out loud with authority. The enemy has to flee when you wield God’s Word like a sword!
Warning Signs You Need Help
Unhealthy Spiritual Warfare Mindset
When everything becomes “spiritual warfare”, you may need to take a step back and reevaluate. Yes, spiritual attacks are real, but not every hardship we endure is an attack of the enemy. Medical issues should still be addressed even if it seems like a spiritual attack, and the same goes for practical issues as well. We need to be careful not to isolate from all communities and counsel and not become constantly paranoid or fearful. There’s a balance here that we need to maintain.
Balanced Approach
We can seek both spiritual and practical solutions at the same time. Maybe you’ve been needing to get that lump checked out for a while, but you’ve waited because it seems like an attack of the enemy. Yes, pray about it, but sometimes we need practical solutions too. Follow up with the doctor to make sure it’s nothing serious. “Faith without works is dead” so we can’t sit around and do nothing and expect God to do all the work (James 2:26).
Armed and Ready
We don’t have to live under attack, and we don’t have to fight for victory.
We can live from victory knowing God has already won.
Looking back at my ARMR launch story, I realized the breakthrough came when I stopped overthinking and just obeyed. But I also couldn’t have done it alone. Having people pray for me and cheer me on made all the difference. The enemy wants us isolated and paralyzed by perfectionism, but we’re stronger together and braver in community.
We don’t have to have it all figured out to start fighting back. Put on your armor, ask trusted people to pray with you, and take the next imperfect step God’s showing you. Sometimes the best spiritual warfare strategy is simple obedience, even when it doesn’t feel ready.
That’s exactly what I did when I randomly launched ARMR Collective one day despite all the attempts to derail it. If God can use my messy obedience, He can definitely use yours too.
Have you experienced suspiciously timed struggles in your own life? Did it start when you were growing in faith? I’d love to hear your stories in the anonymous comments below. We’re stronger together.
