Reading Transcript: Strategies and Schemes

Spiritual Warfare – Session 14: Under Siege

Welcome back to our Spiritual Warfare class. This is Session 14, and I want to thank you for sticking with me through everything we've covered so far. We’ve taken a deep dive into the names of Satan, getting to know our enemy so we’re not caught off guard.

Now, we're turning a corner. In the last session, we began shifting from who Satan is to how he operates—his strategies and schemes.

👀 The Watchman Metaphor

Think of the Old Testament image of a watchman on the tower. The watchman’s job was to spot where the enemy was approaching, so the people could prepare their defenses. That’s a great metaphor for spiritual leadership today. As Christian leaders, we're called to be watchmen—not only for our own lives but also for our churches and communities.

So what are we watching for?

• Where is the enemy pressing in?

• Where are the signs of spiritual assault?

• Where do we need to raise our defenses in the church, in the Kingdom, in our families, and in ourselves?

🐍 Satan’s Strategy: Subtlety and Division

In the previous session, we focused on Satan’s subtlety. He rarely attacks head-on. Instead, he slips in through side doors:

• Doubt

• Deception

• Schism (division)

He especially targets the Church, and it gets even worse when we help him—when believers divide, backbite, and break fellowship over things that should be handled with grace and unity.

🛡️ New Strategy: Putting Us Under Siege

Today, we’re looking at another of the enemy’s tactics: the siege.

Let’s begin with a verse from Ephesians 6:13:

“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
— Ephesians 6:13 (WEB)

We’ll dig into the armor of God in detail in a later session, but for now, focus on the phrase:
“when the day of evil comes…”

Paul is talking about a season when spiritual attack feels unrelenting. That’s what a siege is—a prolonged, pressurized attack meant to wear you down until you surrender.

📖 What Does “Under Siege” Mean?

Let’s define it:

“Under siege” (idiom):

• To be surrounded by soldiers or police in a prolonged attack

• Or, to be very seriously attacked or criticized by many people over time

Example:

“The city was under siege, and food was getting scarce.”

In ancient times, sieges could last months or even years. The enemy would surround a city, cut off its resources, and wait for the people inside to grow weak, starve, or lose hope—until they gave up.

Satan uses this same method spiritually.

💣 How the Enemy Sieges Us Spiritually:

• Constant temptation without relief

• Chronic discouragement or weariness

• Isolation from community

• Physical or financial pressure

• An unending feeling that “nothing is working”

The siege is not always loud or dramatic. It’s long, slow, and meant to break your will. That’s why Paul says: “Stand your ground… and after you’ve done everything… stand.”

🛠️ Your Role: Leader Under Fire

As a leader in God’s Kingdom, you're called to recognize when you or your people are under siege and:

1. Name it – call it out for what it is

2. Resist it – don’t surrender emotionally or spiritually

3. Defend – through prayer, scripture, community, and endurance

We’ll look more at spiritual defenses in the upcoming sessions, especially the armor of God, but for now, understand:

A siege is not an ambush.
It’s a grind.
The battle is won by those who keep standing.

If you’re feeling like you're under siege right now—emotionally, spiritually, or in ministry—don’t lose heart. You are not weak. You are being pressured because you’re dangerous to the enemy.

So stand your ground.
Encourage your people to stand.
And remember: even a siege has an end.

We’ve been talking about what it means to be under siege spiritually—that place where you feel constantly under pressure, having to watch where you go, what you say, what you do. That’s what the enemy wants: to wear us down and force surrender.

But here’s the miracle I’ve seen again and again in my years of ministry:

God’s people don’t give up easily.
When they are under siege, many draw from a deep, unexplainable current of strength.

🕊️ The Power of Intercession

Often, when someone is going through a prolonged, painful struggle, I’ll tell them, “We’re praying for you. Your church is praying for you.”

And the response I get so often is:

“We know. We can feel it.”

There’s something real about spiritual intercession—about the strength that flows when others stand in prayer for those under siege. And this ties directly into the weapons of our warfare, which we’ll talk about more in future sessions.

🌍 A Story from the Frontlines of Faith

Let me tell you a story that has always stayed with me—about a man who embodied what it means to stand firm under siege.

In 1989, I had the privilege of being one of the American delegates to Lausanne II, a global evangelism conference sponsored by the Billy Graham Association. Over 4,500 Christian leaders from around the world gathered for a week in Manila, Philippines.

We worshiped, prayed, learned, and shared stories of the Gospel’s advance in every nation. We met in small groups, in training classes, and in powerful plenary sessions with speakers who deeply moved us.

One of the most memorable moments was when 98 Russian Christians stood on stage. It was the first time they were allowed to attend such an event after years of isolation under Soviet rule. The entire room erupted in applause—many with tears—as we welcomed them back into visible fellowship with the global Church.

⛓️ The Man Who Cleaned the Latrines

But the one who stood out most to me was a Chinese pastor—a man who became one of my heroes.

He spoke during a plenary session and shared how he had been arrested for preaching Jesus. That was his “crime.” He simply told people about Christ. For that, he was sentenced to a correctional labor camp in China.

Because of his Christian faith, he was given the worst job in the entire camp: cleaning the latrines.

Let me describe what that really meant. We’re not talking about cleaning a tidy toilet bowl with a brush and some disinfectant. In this camp, the latrines were primitive. The prisoners would relieve themselves into an open trough dug behind the latrine building.

This pastor’s job was to shovel out that trench—all the human waste—and load it into buckets. Then, under guard, he would carry those buckets out of the camp, dump them, and return to do it all over again.

Every day.

For years.

🧎‍♂️ Faith in the Filth

But here’s what stunned me.

He said that this horrible job became a blessing.

Why?

Because no one else wanted to go near the latrines. The guards stayed away. The other prisoners stayed away. And there, in the stink and the filth, he was alone with God.

He could sing hymns out loud.

He could pray freely.

He could recite Scripture.

And in that trench, under siege, he found peace and power.

He said, “The latrine became my sanctuary.”

✝️ Lesson from the Trenches

The enemy put him under siege. He was isolated, humiliated, and forced to labor in filth.
But instead of breaking him, it became the place where his spirit grew stronger.

That’s what God does with the siege.

He doesn’t always remove the pressure—but He meets us in it, and sometimes turns our lowest places into our deepest altars.

So when we say we're under siege, we're talking about a kind of spiritual attack where you're constantly under pressure. You have to be careful where you are, where you go, what you say, what you do. It’s a season when everything feels scrutinized, heavy, and surrounded.

But here's what amazes me after many decades of ministry:

God’s people, even when under siege, often tap into a current of supernatural strength.

They don’t always break. Many times, they rise.
And we’ll talk more in upcoming sessions about the weapons of our warfare—tools God gives us to draw on that strength.

🙏 When People Say, “We Can Feel It”

I’ve seen believers in prolonged, painful situations—months, even years—and I’ve told them,

“We’re praying for you. Your church is lifting you up.”

And again and again, the response is:

“We know. We can feel it.”

That kind of spiritual resilience—drawn from God and sustained by the prayers of others—is no small thing. It's one of the great miracles in the midst of spiritual warfare.

🌍 A Global Reminder: Lausanne II, 1989

Let me share a moment that embodies this for me.

In 1989, I was honored to be one of the American delegates to Lausanne II, a global evangelism conference sponsored by the Billy Graham Association. It brought together over 4,500 Christian leaders from around the world in Manila, Philippines.

We gathered every day—for prayer, discussion, training, and worship. There were small group meetings, teaching sessions, and large, powerful plenary gatherings.

One day, a historic moment took place: 98 Russian Christians stepped onto the stage. It was the first time they were allowed to participate in such a gathering since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The applause that greeted them was deafening. Many wept. They had been separated from the global body of Christ for so long, and now they were standing among brothers and sisters from every nation.

🧽 A Hero in the Latrines

But one of the people who spoke became a personal hero to me.

He was a Chinese pastor, arrested and imprisoned for simply preaching the name of Jesus. That’s all he had done—share Christ with others. For that, he was placed in a correctional labor camp.

Because he was a known Christian, the authorities assigned him the worst job in the entire camp: cleaning the latrines.

Now, this wasn’t like cleaning a modern toilet with a brush and some cleaner. This was far worse.

The latrines in that camp were primitive. Prisoners relieved themselves into open trenches behind the buildings. All of their waste flowed into a deep, foul trough.

This pastor’s job was to shovel that human waste—every day. He had to fill buckets with it, carry it outside the camp under guard, dump it, and return to do it again.

Day after day.
Week after week.
Month after month.

🕊️ Sanctuary in the Stench

But here’s the part I’ll never forget.

He said those latrines became his sanctuary.

Why?

Because no one else would go near him. The guards didn’t want to be around the stench. The other prisoners stayed away.

In that isolation, in that filth, he was alone with God.

There, among the waste, he could:

• Sing hymns

• Pray aloud

• Recite Scripture from memory

• Worship freely

No one stopped him. No one interrupted him. He was covered in the waste of others—but filled with the presence of God.

And that, friends, is what it looks like to stand under siege and not give in.

✝️ When the Siege Becomes Sacred

That man was surrounded. Cut off. Pressured.
But the siege became a place of power, peace, and presence.

He didn’t surrender.
He worshiped.

The enemy thought he buried him in filth—but God met him in the trench.

Talk about being under siege. Talk about wondering if your testimony was truth. How could God let this happen to you, after all? And yet, he said he realized, after a few days in this odious and smelly task, that he had a huge advantage, he said. Because he smelled so badly, nobody came near him, and nobody came near the latrines where he was working in that trench, and so he said, I could meet God there every day. And he started singing the song he would sing. I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear calling out, I hear the Son of God. The Son of God comes and he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me, I'm his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there. None other has ever known. Wow. Talk about being under siege.

That's the idea here. What are some of the ways we get under siege? Illness, cancer. A friend of mine is going through radiation treatments every day for eight weeks, you know, five days a week. And this is a time when he's getting tired and weaker, and it's a time where you feel like, "Where's God? Where's God?" I talked to him this past Sunday. I asked, "How are you doing?" He said, "I'm doing good. God's showing up." A good friend died of cancer, and for months he gradually went down, down, down. He thought he'd been cured. And three years after being declared cured, it showed up again, and it was a time of siege, as he's worried about his family and knows he's going to die.

They tried all these experimental things, and for months, that family was under siege, facing a frontal attack. One of the people I just read about last week talked about waking up in the middle of the night and feeling the approach of evil. You feel it all around you, and you've got to go to the next day; this person was going to teach a large group of believers in Asia, and yet, he felt this attack for hours. Financial issues can sometimes put us under siege—loss of a job, not knowing where your money is coming from, loss of your house, or an accident where the house burns down. Relational problems often put us under siege too: divorce, death, tension. Spiritually, there's the dark night of the soul. A deeply spiritual woman who was one of our worship leaders in the last church where I served full-time talked about being in a time where she just couldn't hear God anymore.

And these are the kinds of things that put us under siege, and this is one of the tactics of the enemy. So be aware, as you're looking out there, that there may be these times in your life, but know that there are going to be powers you can draw on. We're going to get to that later. Not only is there subtlety, schism, siege, but there's also surprise. Here's how it's put in Ephesians chapter six: In addition to all of this, take up the shield of faith, and we're going to look at this in more detail later, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

In the ancient world, the attack of flaming arrows was one of those things that struck terror into the hearts of people because you didn't know they were coming. Then, all of a sudden, you have this huge flame entering a protected area. Usually, it's a walled city or, in my country's history, one of the events we look back on is the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. The movie about that shows how they're trying to resist the entire army of Santa Anna, the Mexican general who's trying to take over and not let Americans take over Texas.

And anyway, the fear when these arrows start coming, and fires start showing up all over, is a surprise because you're not expecting it, and it's there. Well, that's the way the enemy will work. All of a sudden, there'll be some surprising things that happen in your life, some surprising things that, wow. All of a sudden, it seems like there are fires everywhere. And this might be, you know, the challenge of the loss of a job, and you're looking for a job, or then at the same time, somebody in the family gets sick.

At the same time, there are all these other things going on and it's a surprise. Now, surprises can lead to great destruction, and that's why you've got to be looking as someone who's out watching for the work of the enemy. You've got to be looking so that you're not surprised. One of the things I was reading about recently is the flood in Galveston, Texas, in 1900. Now, here's some of the devastation: Galveston, Texas, a hurricane was coming, and the ability to predict where it was going to go was pretty poor at that time. But the people in Galveston said they knew a storm was coming. However, a hurricane had never struck. In the history of Galveston, Texas, a hurricane had never struck that city, so they didn't expect it. Gradually, as the waves kept getting bigger out in the Gulf of Mexico, they started to panic because this was a surprise, and you know, Galveston is a small island connected to Texas. They didn't evacuate because they'd never had a hurricane in Galveston, Texas.

It is the worst death toll in American history from a hurricane. Somewhere between six to 12,000 people died, and 3,600 buildings were destroyed by this hurricane. The people weren't ready, but after this incredible, surprising storm, they got ready. They got ready. They built a protective barrier along the beach. They rebuilt much of the city, and they improved their predictive system so that they know when a hurricane is coming. They're evacuating. My exhortation here is, don't be surprised. The enemy's coming after us. He's coming after the kingdom. If you're a leader in the kingdom, he's coming after your church. Don't be surprised when all of a sudden there's a flaming arrow, and problems seem to show up everywhere.

That's a time to engage in spiritual warfare, and I wish we could get to that today, but that's coming. We're going to talk about the weapons we have, both defensively and offensively, to battle against the enemy. So, surprise. And then a final one, enslavement. Jesus is talking here in the passage where he identifies himself as the Good Shepherd, the one who protects the sheep. And he says that the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. He says, I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. Jesus says, now we've looked at this verse before, too, where Jesus heals this woman by surprise. Remember, this is the woman who comes up and just touches the tassels at the edge of Jesus' garment, and as a result, is healed of this issue of blood that's kept her bound for 18 years, and it's a powerful story where she has these chains built in her life. We read that she spent everything in these 18 years on doctors, everything she had, trying to get a cure.

Nothing worked. Nothing worked. And so, this was some kind of issue of bleeding, which in that time would mean you were unclean. In other words, you weren't allowed to enter the temple to give your sacrifices or to pray at that visible presence of God in that place where the Ark of the Covenant was placed. You weren't allowed to be there. Wherever you went, you were supposed to be crying, "Unclean, unclean," so that people wouldn't get near you, because they might be contaminated by your uncleanness. And so this woman, for 18 years, lived this way. Certainly, that's a time of siege, but it's also a time of limitation, and that's why Jesus uses these words: bound. It's a fascinating passage to read, if you get a chance. You know, just read that story. I don't want to take the time now to do that, but it's the story about this woman who's coming with the hopes of being healed, and she's finally gotten some hope, as she's heard about Jesus Christ, that maybe he's the one. But how is she even going to get close to him? There's a crowd around him, and how would she be the one to get close enough to touch his garment?

As she says, if she had such faith, if I only touch his garment, I can be healed. It's a possibility that I could be made whole again. I could go into the temple of worship. I was listening to one sermon about this passage, and the person speculated that maybe she was able to get to Jesus because she could, you know, whisper to people, unclean, unclean, unclean. And so people start, you know, creating an opening for her to get to Jesus, and she touches the garment of Jesus, and she knew she was immediately healed. Remember what Jesus said? He stopped and said, Who touched me? Who touched me as disciples and who touched you? There's this crowd around you, jostling, trying to get near you, trying to get another touch, and then this woman comes forward and confesses. Now Jesus is on the way to heal a young girl at that time, you remember, and Jesus says, I know somebody touched me because I felt power coming from me. There are some people who are enslaved by Satan. They've been given something that limits their life, and yet she touches the hem of the garment of Jesus, and she's healed, but Jesus defines it as being bound by Satan, bound for 18 long years.

Now, some powerful music about this, Christian music right now, about that idea of being bound? Oh, my chains are gone. I've been set free. I'm no longer a slave. I've been set free. Yeah, this is something to celebrate, but know that when you see enslavement, when somebody is experiencing the thief coming to steal and kill and destroy, and it goes on, it's not just the siege, but they're bound. Their life is limited. Know that the enemy is at work in the background. We're going to continue this subject next time. Join me in prayer. Lord God, we pray for those that we know who are under siege, who have been bound, and it's gone on for so long, and their lives have been defined by it. Lord, I pray for, yeah, I think of the niece I have who's so limited in her life, and parents are lovingly caring for her, even though she's now in her 30s, and it's been 36 long years of care for somebody who's at the infant level. And Lord, give them strength. Give them strength to testify of your presence and your goodness. Give them strength so that the enemy may not lead them to think they have to give up. And Lord, people who are listening to this all know somebody who's enslaved, set them free. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you. We'll see you next time.