Putting on the Armor of God: How to Win Your Battles with Satan

by Steven A. Cramer

Satan is a master at manipulating emotions through the vicious whisperings he has perfected with practice on billions of our predecessors. He knows how to create worry and doubt, fear, hatred, resentment and jealousy, stress, anger, lust, depression, feelings of emptiness and loneliness, and so on. Have you felt angry in the last week? Have you felt lonely, alone or misunderstood? Have you felt anxiety or fear, doubt, resentment, depression, rebellion, or the desire to retreat from life’s challenges? No such feelings come from above. You have been under the influence of powerful demonic spirits who know how to trigger your self-defeating emotions and thought patterns and then laugh and rejoice at your misery.

It has been said that “Forgiveness is giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me.”

Wearing the helmet of salvation means using our minds to focus our thoughts and affections on the Lord, on the principles of spiritual combat he has revealed, and on his promises to be part of our battles.

We give a victory to Satan every time we neglect a prayer that should have been offered.

Satan seems to have a contingency plan for every attack that fails. If he finds that he cannot prevent or delay a person’s prayer, he will attack the person with confusion. He surrounds the person with evil spirits who whisper all kinds of distracting thoughts. Suddenly the person can’t seem to focus on his prayer; his mind wanders off in every direction. This is simply because those whispered thoughts from our enemy are being conveyed through the spirit into the conscious mind. The thing to do in this situation is to pray for the ability to focus. Ask for a shield of light to surround you and shut out the demons so that you can communicate with your Heavenly Father.

May I suggest that when you pray for something very special, you pray for two things. First, pray for the blessing that you want, whether it’s a new baby, or a job, or whatever; and second, ask the Lord for the blessing of understanding. Then, if he feels for some reason that the blessing isn’t appropriate for that time, the blessing of understanding will come—and the frustrations that ofttimes come because we feel our prayers are not answered will blow away in the wind. (Ensign, June 1981, 74–75)

point of all this is that when Satan tries to use our temptations to put barriers between us and the Lord, we can have faith in the truth that our temptations are not a barrier, but a common bond between us and the Lord.

I am certain, however, that the most common form of demon possession is not physical habitation, but in having our hearts, emotions, and desires captive to the strong, manipulative influence of the evil spirits assigned to defeat us.

When I was a young boy, it was my assignment to put a rope around our goat and lead it out to the field where it could graze. It went willingly, even eagerly. But when it was time to bring the animal back to the confines of the pen for the night, it dug in its feet and refused to be led. It would shake its head and fight every step of the way. Falling into spiritual captivity is something like that. At first we go willingly. The pleasures of sin bring thrills of excitement. They are adventurous. They give us a “high.” But soon we find ourselves going beyond what we would have ever thought possible. We never meant to go so far. We must stop. We must retreat. We must repent. We must return to the Lord. But we can’t. Every time we try to resist, those chains of habit pull at us and drag us back into the cycles of sin we have grown to hate. Unknown to us there are dozens of evil spirits around us, whispering, shouting that we can’t win, that we must do as they bid.

Because of Satan’s whisperings, most people who are seeking to repent of sexual sins have an absolute conviction that they are worthless and incapable of divine notice or rescue. In one way that is a good sign because it evidences their conviction of guilt and remorse. But Satan knows how to use these feelings of self-loathing to prevent the repentance and victory these people strive for so earnestly. Always, inescapably, what holds your attention holds you. When we allow Satan to focus all our attention on the ugliness of the sins we have committed, he successfully blocks us from focusing on the way back—the Atonement and gospel of Jesus Christ. The Lord does not consider anyone worthless. As terrible as impurity is in the Lord’s sight, and as much as he may be hurt by what we have done, the wonderful truth is that his attention is not on the sin but on helping us to escape and return to him so that we may be transformed into new creatures in Christ and stand before our Heavenly Father in perfect beauty and holiness.

The celestial kingdom will not be filled with people who never made a mistake, but with people who recognized their weaknesses and overcame them through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

One reason change takes longer than we want it to is that once we place ourselves in the Lord’s hands, he is going to do a lot more changing than to simply remove our outward symptoms. We are anxious to stop doing this or that, but his goal is larger: to make us whole, to turn our weaknesses into strengths, to remove every character defect, to achieve a total transformation of heart and nature. Change always produces withdrawal pains and we must be willing to endure the struggle and pain for months, if not for years. Just as a physical birth is the result of many months of preparation within the body, even so a spiritual birth is the result of much development and maturing within the personality. Instant change is the exception, not the rule.

Many valiant warriors have been defeated on the battleground of memory. One of the devil’s favorite weapons could be symbolized by a rear-view mirror. Though necessary for any driver wanting to stay aware of traffic behind his moving car, the rear-view mirror would be disastrous if most of that driver’s attention was focused there. Satan works hard to keep us looking in our spiritual rear-view mirrors, looking back at our past mistakes so he can destroy our confidence in the future. I doubt if anyone endures more misery and unnecessary suffering than the person who won’t take his attention off the past, who insists on going through life with that mental rear-view mirror stuck in front of his eyes, always looking back, always digging up the mistakes of the past, continually criticizing and condemning himself for his failures. Surely this does not please the Lord. Elder Marvin J. Ashton said, “Where you’ve been is not nearly as important as where you are and where you’re going” (This People, March 1984, 27). The past can never hurt us once we decide to let it go and allow it to truly be the past.

A legitimate way to increase your self-esteem is to become aware that God loves you as you are at this moment. What you have done in the past in no way diminishes his love for you. It is unconditional love. There are no ifs or buts attached. If your feelings about yourself are largely negative, you can change them by realizing that your Heavenly Father loves you unconditionally. (Joseph C. Bentley, The Instructor, November 1969, 399)

Self-sufficiency seems a noble goal and worthy of pursuit, but it can also be deceptively destructive if it prevents us from developing the proper dependence upon Christ, which he has declared essential to winning our battles.

Our worth is not a result of circumstance, or even of our particular level of obedience or righteousness. It is part of our heritage as children of God. No condition, no action, no attitude or thought can change or diminish the love he has for us or the worth of our souls in his sight or his plan. Our worthiness may change, but our worth is eternal in the eyes of our all-knowing, all-loving Heavenly Father.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound … to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. (Isaiah 61:1–3)

If circumstances in your past have led you to surrender to temptations, if you have sometimes felt confused and blind to the way out of your failures, if you have tried hard to win your battles but seen your efforts destroyed by weakness, if you feel the need to develop a powerful faith in Christ, try the 3 x 5 card method of “laying hold” on the word of god.