Warfare Revisited

The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So, how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now. Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad that you're with us today.

We have a special kind of occasion for the Masculine Journey. We don't often do this, we don't often have an author in the studio with us live to talk about their book, and we're doing that today. And this particular author is just not any author. He's a friend of the ministry. He's spoken at some boot camps.

You've done talks at the different boot camps. You've attended the boot camps. You happen to be my pastor, one of my pastors at the church. And so we all know him pretty well. I know him probably best.

But it's our friend Mike Giannopoulos. And so Mike wrote a book on spiritual warfare. Mike, you want to tell us a little bit about your book? Sure. And I would use that term author very loosely.

So this is the first book I've ever written. It was a challenge I gave myself this year to see if I could. You know, sit down and put some of the thoughts that I've had rolling around in my heart and my soul on paper. And this is what came out.

So the book is called Equipped. It is Fighting from Victory. And uh Is You know, it's probably two months old, is what it's been out. I'm excited about it. I've had a lot of good feedback from especially men who have been reading it.

And so that's why I talked to you about possibly partnering. And so I'm going to give a copy of this book away to every person that comes to your boot camp in a couple weeks. And so I think it's that important to get it in these guys' hands. Yeah, one of the things that we hope guys take away with them from boot camp is tools to fight spiritual warfare. Right.

And this is another element of that that we haven't really discussed at boot camp.

So I'm excited to talk more about it today and then also have the guys learn more about it at the boot camp. Right. You know, because we do talk about elements, about agreements and things like that, but we don't, we've never really talked, have we, Andy, about fighting from the victory already being won? No, not really. No, it's just.

There's probably some assumption to that, but a lot of what we focus on is the Whole idea of agreements, that's a big part of it, and what you believe. But what you believe has to come from a place of victory, or you're going to have a fight-a-losing battle.

So, yeah.

Well, Art, if you'd spin this over here, I'll get a picture of the book in question, and it can get this where, Mike? You can buy it on Amazon. You can get it in Kindle or print version on Amazon. You can also get it on Bars and Nobles, e-books, and Apple. Books.

Awesome.

So, this is what it looks like. You can go look it up. It's Equipped Fighting from Victory from Michael B. Giannopoulos. And good luck spelling that last name.

So we'll kind of go through that.

Well, Mike, what inspired you to write this? I mean, I know that. You said you challenge yourself, but why this book and why now? He did like spelling that last name. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Thank you, Art. We appreciate you checking up on our podcast. You know, I've been in full-time ministry almost 30 years. And over the years, One of the things that I have just found So heartbreaking. are people who are followers of Jesus, claim to be Christians.

But yet they always walk around with this defeated mindset. They're spiritual Eeyores, so to speak. And I don't think that's the way God designed us to live. And you go back to The crawls. The grave, and the resurrection That's when that battle was won.

And that's when victory was won. And so we go through life. uh with this expectation um number one that we're not equipped to fight any battles. And number two, we're fighting for a victory. Like it all rests on our shoulders.

And Jesus is saying, No, I won that victory 2,000 years ago. What are you doing? And so, trying to get folks to flip that script a little bit and look at it from the mindset of: if I'm fighting from a place of victory. It just gives you such an advantage mentally, spiritually, emotionally to be able to push through some of the things because you're still gonna get attacked. You're still gonna have battles.

You're still gonna be fighting, but you're fighting victories that have already been won by Jesus. I use the story in the beginning of the book, the illustration. I'm a huge Atlanta Braves fan.

So in 1995, they won the World Series. And I remember as a 21-year-old kid, sitting on the edge of my seat every game, watching every pitch, nervous and scared to death that they were going to lose again, just like they did in 91 and 92. But they didn't. They won, and they won that World Series there in 95. In 2020, they had.

The anniversary of that team, the 25-year anniversary. And one of the stations replayed each night the game. And I would turn those games on and watched. But you know what? I wasn't stressed anymore.

I wasn't sitting on the edge of my seat. I sat back enjoying what was going to happen because I knew the outcome already. And I think, I just thought to myself during, that's really when all this started rolling around in my brain. Like, man, what if we as Christians. Could sit back.

And look at life from a place of victory. Like this battle, this fight, this has already been won. we're called to be participants still in life, and we're fighting battles for other people and until they're able to fight their own. But at the end of the day, the victory has already been won.

So what if we walk through life from victory instead of for victory? Right. And yeah, not walking as defeated. I think it's like anything else. It's a pendulum swing.

Right. And you're describing one side of the pendulum. But I think sometimes you have Christians that go all the way to the other side of the pendulum saying, I don't have to fight anything. You know, Jesus has already won. And yes, that's true.

He has won. But there's a lot of scripture. You know, Peter says pretty clearly, your enemy prowls around like a roaring lion, you know, looking for who he can devour.

So we still have a role we need to play or we wouldn't need the armor of God. Absolutely. And that's where this book lands on. It's this idea of fighting from victory.

So if you're fighting You want to make sure that you're equipped. You want to make sure that you have on the necessary. you know armor And For what you're going to need to go up against these battles. And so, what better place to look than the armor of God? To go to Ephesians and read what Paul is writing as he breaks down the six pieces of the armor of God.

And that's what we do in this book: we go through each piece, you know, starting with the belt of truth and moving all the way through to the sword of the spirit, talking about each of these different parts of the armor, how we apply that to our life. And what that looks like. Coming from victory using those items. Right. So help us break down some of those items.

Let's say.

Someone's read it a long time ago, they don't really remember it, or they just said, ah, it's a nice little story, but it's something we essentially need. And so you wanna help break that down a little bit, just not to give away your whole book, because we want them to go buy this book, right? We want them to go get this, but help them kind of understand a little bit more about that. that breakdown. Yeah, and I'm going to try.

Robby and I were just talking about this earlier. When you get on the air, sometimes your mind blinks.

So here I have a book about the arm of God. I'll probably forget half of them. But it starts off with the belt of truth. Right? That has to be the foundation of our faith: is what do we believe?

Well, there's only one truth. The world today will tell you there's lots of truths and there's lots of things that you should buy into or you believe, or even you make your own truth.

Well, those are all lies. Those are agreements that the enemy wants us to partner with him in. There's one truth. The base of our faith has to be on that truth of Jesus Christ.

So it starts off: hey, put on that belt of truth. Put on that breastplate of righteousness. To me, righteousness comes right after truth. If you're believing the truth in Jesus, righteousness is gonna be something that you're going to be drawn to and that you're gonna crave. And then the next thing the Bible tells us to put on in those scriptures is The the ba feet fitted with piece.

If you're locked into the right truth, if you're living your life from a place of righteousness. You're gonna have peace. Like, this is like the perfect equation to put these things together. If people say, Well, I don't have peace in my life, I would say, Well, let's go back. Let's look at what's the issue.

Is there a righteousness problem in your life? Is there a truth problem in your life? Are you believing something? I know we talk a lot about agreements. Have you believed an agreement that's disrupting your righteousness, that's causing you not to have peace?

You know, one of the things that I learned in writing this book and doing a deep dive into this is the way the scriptures are written, those first three are assumed. That if you're going to be. A child of God, if you're gonna be this follower of Jesus, these three things you put on daily. Every day you have to link arms with truth, righteousness, and peace. The next three, we look at the helmet of salvation.

It talks about and when and now the verd now the words change.

Now the worst, the the first one is put on. Put on the belt. put on the breastplate, put on the feet, fit it with piece. Then all of a sudden it's take up. Take up the helmet.

Take up the shield. Take up the sword. These are things that we take into battle with us. These are the things that is a case-by-case basis. You may not always need your sword or shield, but you may need your helmet.

You may need your shield more than you need this.

Sometimes we need the sword, right? And, um, and And so That's how the book is broke down. That's awesome. One of the things that you were talking about when we don't have peace in our life, I think a lot of times we misunderstand the peace that God's talking about. They think peace is an absence of conflict.

Right. But the peace that God talks about is having peace in the midst of conflict. Exactly. Right? You're still going to have warfare going on around you.

You're still going to have people with free will making bad decisions that affect your life. There's going to be conflict, but it's having peace in the midst of that, knowing that your Father's got you. Right. Right. And that you're walking with Him through it.

Yeah. And again. That's why the book is fighting from victory. It's not resting from victory. It's not sitting back.

And you're right. There is that pendulum swing where people feel like, well, I've given my life to Christ.

Now I'll just hide out in my little spiritual cocoon and bubble and live there and not go out and do anything. You're just wasting your faith. You're wasting what Christ has done for you. That is not what He intended at all. Or the minute we got saved, He would put us all in bubble wrap.

So the enemy, when He seeks to kill, steal, and destroy, would not be able to harm us. That's not life. Absolutely. Now, I like the thickness of this book. This is perfect for me.

I don't know how many pages it has. I'll have to go back and look, but that's a perfect amount of pages for me. Yeah, that's around 80 pages.

So it's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, that's like, yeah, I could do that over about a week.

Some people do it in 30 days. My attention span is not that long. And I've had a lot of guys say this is the first book I've read in years. And they loved it. And because I tried to, I'm a simpleton, right?

Like, I don't. I tell everybody, you know, when they're like, oh, you wrote a book. And I'm like, well, look, first of all, it's not war and peace. You know, it's not a thousand pages. I'm not C.S.

Lewis or Tim Keller. You're not going to be able to read a paragraph and then have to put it down and chew on that for the next four days. Like, this is something you could sit down and devour really in an hour. You know, get a lot of good practical stuff out of it. Um At worst, it's the perfect bathroom reader.

That's what I was thinking. That's why it's going to take me a week. I just ended up saying it. Yeah. Well, and it is about war and peace.

Or your legs will fall asleep. Oh, yeah. My legs would fall asleep. But no, it is about war and peace.

So you did write. Yeah, that's true. You know, you are on to war and peace. That's good.

Somebody else taking that on, too. Absolutely. Absolutely. But, Mike, what's been your greatest?

Well, we'll come back. I'll ask you a question when we come back. We're getting ready to go into break. But when we. Come back from break.

We're going to talk about the book some more. We're going to talk about why does God keep warfare in our life? What's the purpose of warfare in our life? Because obviously God has a purpose for it. But what is that going to look like?

Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the boot camp coming up November 20th through 23rd. We'll talk with you after the break. What we have at our boot camp is something that makes you stronger and gives you the strength to go on your regular walk with God. It's something that will make you be bigger than you were when you got there. What brings you here this weekend?

So I met Robby and he invited me to come to the boot camp and there was just so many doors that were closed before I was able to come here, but God allowed these things to happen. And I said, you know, God, I'm going to ultimately acknowledge what's going on for all these doors to be open for me to come to this camp. I just want to seek you.

So throughout that time since I've been here, you know, just the illumination of God speaking to me through my heart and through my mind and through my soul is just. It's went to a whole nother level since I've been here at the boot camp. The covenant of silence after the talks and being able to go out and just submit myself to being able to hear from God and what we've been working on, and it's just been transparent in my life. The level of the sanctification process, the discipleship process, and coming here, I feel like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Register today at masculinejourney.org.

Why? Whew! Yeah! What do you Absolutely. Nothing.

Girl, what is it going for? Absolutely. Never say y'all. Whoa! Look out!

What is it going for? Absolutely!

Now listen to me! Welcome back to Mascoon Journey War. We are talking about spiritual warfare. We're talking about Mike's book, and it's right here, everybody, equipped. I have to read the rest of it.

Fighting from Victory. It went out the back. I couldn't read it from the back side. But we were having a great conversation about this. This would be great for you to pick up.

The holiday season's coming up. A great little stocking stuffer that you could give for somebody. Put it in there. You know they're probably going to read it because it's not a lot of pages. And so, you know, if you give them something too big, they're going to say really nice things and not do anything with it.

This is a perfect size to give to somebody for the holidays.

So it's coming up. But when we left, we were talking about the book. And, Robby, you had a great question during the break. If you want to go ahead and ask that question to Mike.

Well before I do that, you know, you just can't help but go That bump-in song seems to be the exact opposite of what you question you're asking us all.

Well, I set it up. Why did God allow warfare in our life and then what's it good for? Absolutely nothing, right? Huh? Yeah, we will get to that.

That actually fits in with my question.

Okay, anybody that's ever. Um Okay. preached, given a talk. You know, had to teach a Sunday school class on spiritual warfare, knows that Satan does not like this disgust. He'd just as soon keep all that under the carpet.

And so. You know, God allows you to deal with some warfare quite often. And so I'm curious if there's a story behind that, Mike, Lynn.

So you were writing this book. I'm guessing he brought the house.

Well So, the way that I preach when I'm coming up with sermons at church is usually it's a lot of things that I'm dealing with in my life, or the people that I see within our church are dealing with. And so, whether it's going through a book of the Bible, whether it's going through a certain biblical character and looking at how they approached whatever it is folks are going through, or something topical. And so, this actually in 2020. I preached this sermon series on the armor of God. And We needed it then.

I mean, you don't want to talk about spiritual warfare. I mean, I know in my life, that felt like. The most spiritually attacked year that I'd ever experienced. I mean, you obviously had the pandemic, you had crazy election stuff going on, you had, um, you You know uh The George Floyd, the police, the social justice stuff, the Me Too movement. I mean, it was like natural disasters, huge fires out in Colorado.

I mean, you had all of these things that happened in that year. And I was just seeing a lot of people almost like cowering in fear of all of these attacks, including myself. It was hard. I mean, you're a pastor. You know, it is hard to do, it was hard to do ministry during COVID and during 2020.

And so. Me preaching out of the Ephesians and the armor of God. I was preaching it to myself. I was having to remind myself: Mike, every day you've got to put on this belt of truth. Every day you have to put on this breastplate of righteousness, you know, to have the peace to be able to get through this.

Like it was, it was being, I preached it to myself as much as I was preaching it to our congregation. And so um You know, so that comes and goes. And I remember thinking at the end of that, Man, I don't know. I just felt in my heart like God was saying. This would be a good book one day.

And I even thought, I'm gonna give these notes to somebody and let them write a book about this. Cause I think this is pretty good stuff. Because again, I don't feel like I'm a writer, right? I can preach all day long, but I'm just, I don't enjoy writing. And so we'll fast forward now to 2025.

And at the first of the year, the other pastor on staff, Tim Dixon, and I usually try to look at the year and we talk about, again, what are we going through? What are we seeing happen in our community? What do we see happening in our church? What are people's lives going through? And we try to just roughly kind of like ask, well, maybe we could preach on this at some point this year and this.

And I think it was Tim who brought up. He's like, maybe we could do the armor of God. And I was like, you know, I preached on that like five years ago. And so I brought out all my old sermon notes and I shared them with him. And I was looking through them and I'm like, This is really good, and it's still applicable today, like just as much today as it was during COVID.

And so Um So it's really, I feel like, been a five-year battle of spirit. You know, like, I get it. Like, there are times when you try to preach on spiritual warfare or you write a book on spiritual warfare and it feels like it goes up. But I think because mine was, this originated out of a place. of so much attack, Yeah.

You know, anything that happened this year. It didn't compare to 2020, you know? Like, I can handle that. And so there were little bumps, but it was more of just. You know what?

This is what I feel like God's called me to do, and I'm going to get this out there. Whether I'm the only one that ever buys a copy or, you know, whatever, so be it. This is what I feel like God has told me to do. He's given me this in my heart. I'm gonna put it down in paper form and just put it out there.

And just let God do the rest. Awesome.

Awesome.

Anyone else have a question for Mike you'd like to ask? I'll make a comment. Of course. As for comments, I had one of those.

Well, go for it. No. I just. I love this idea of approaching it from a point of victory. And you can see it in Mike.

that he just explained all the attacks. But he's doing it from a point of joy. Right? And if If you think about coming at this from a point of victory, all right, all things work together for me. Like, we win, you know, this is good, you know, like.

It's a different idea of coming from a point of joy, which helps me. Like feet fitted with the gospel of peace when you don't have peace. Right. You're going to have a hard time in the struggle. If you think that, you know, all is going to fix and be lost.

If you don't have this happen, you know. Like, wait a minute. You know, and so when you see that in Mike's I'm sure you see it too. The joy of the Lord is his strength. And it's always been, you know, that's when I see it in Andy or I see it in you.

You know, there's so much of what I see in Jim and all the guys sitting around here that. That's your strength. Absolutely. Jim, you had a comment?

Well, I was uh actually it was more of an illustration. Early on in my true walk with God, I've always believed in Him, but when I got serious about the relationship, He sent me after a close friend. To share the gospel, who was a fallen away Catholic and said, well, you know, he might, he wasn't an atheist, but he was definitely agnostic. And Uh I told God, I can't do that. He's smarter than I am.

He'll destroy my face. And I kept Being told to go, I finally went. We sat out in his driveway Uh till four or five in the morning talking. Um I walked to her end. I almost used his name.

I'm not going to do that. But it was a great conversation. I had done what I was supposed to do. But Chuck hadn't, there I did, hadn't changed his mind yet.

Okay. And God very clearly told me after that I said, I didn't tell you to bring him to me. I said, go talk to him about me. And I think that kind of fits into the the topic. We don't have to win the war.

It's won. But There's always mop-up action. There's a role to play. And at this point, many. a couple of decades, three decades later, After that, He has gotten back into the church with his wife, which he didn't have at that time.

And God took care of the victory. But he let me share in that in a small way. And that's one of the many things that warfare is for in our lives, I think. Yeah, it helps us transition into the question that I wanted to ask: why does God leave warfare? He defeated the enemy.

But he didn't send him away. He's still active in our lives, so what role does warfare play in a Christian's life? I asked the question, so I'll throw out an answer real quick, because I've had longer to ponder it, right? I know that if I didn't have warfare in my life, I would not have as close a walk with God. Because I would chart off on my own way too often trying to take care control.

and deal with things and I know that if I do that I'm gonna get slammed. Not from God, but from an enemy that's trying to have me make a mess step, and I'm very quick to make one sometimes, and so I've got to walk very closely with my Father. just to get through it. And I am in a place of victory, but I'm also in a Um in a place of relying on him. Right in the midst of the battle, I've got to lean into him.

to really fight smartly and bravely. But don't die quickly. But don't die quickly. I'm trying not to. Um I was just thinking, you know John Eldredge says we're living in a love story set in a world at war.

And we know that, you know, we talk about these things at boot camp in Exodus 15. God says the Lord is a warrior, the Lord is his name. and and were created in his image.

So we're in a war. We know we're in a war. And and Rightly so. The victory is won, but we still have to enforce that victory. I think that's our role in it.

Do we believe what he did enough? To say that that makes an impact on my life. I'm saying, no, enemy, you're not going to go further than what. Um You're not going any further because this is what I believe, and Jesus has given me authority over this. But you know why we fight?

Anything you value you're willing to fight for. And this is our lives, our hearts. our family members Uh, whatever it may be, anything that God's intrusted with us as kings, We're to go out there and fight for because it's of value. We're of value to him. And the kingdom is of value to us, therefore we go enforce what he's given to us.

But again, from A place of victory. Who who wants to go to battle? As a defeated, is knowing that your inheritance is defeat.

Well, that's not who we are. We have to, but we live like that. Like, to Mike's point. A lot of the I'd lived a lot of my life like that. I knew that we were victorious, but lived.

defeated. And it You know, it's not something that's taught. Shame on a lot of our pastors who haven't taught this, that we are coming to victory, but we're coming from a place of victory. And I don't want to be confrontational here. I'm just saying we're in a society where we have not had this taught like we should.

We all have stories where we weren't. Really influenced in that way.

So that's an important part of what we do in this ministry: is to really. You know, again, open wars upon you whether you would risk it or not, is the statement that I took to heart of. I wanted to just hide back and think it would all be taken care of. And again, we're The battle is won, but we have to enforce that victory. You might remember ABC World Water Sports, right?

The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. There is a sense.

Now, granted, it is an opportunity for you to have faith. It's an opportunity for you to walk with God. It's all the things that you just described. But there's a thrill of victory that because You know, when you come up against something really, really, really hard that you can only feel like you have what it takes. On the other side of that war, right?

Yep, that's right. Or. you can experience what it feels like to really Phase plant. Yeah. Which again brings leads to humility and a place of battle again.

Well go to Amazon and order the book Equipped Fighting From victory, sorry. It's like four words that I can't remember. Equipped Fighting for Victory from Mike Giannopoulos. We'll talk with you next week. Go register for boot camp, masconjourney.org.

Spell it quick. No.