The Fight You’re In Whether You Know It or Not

The Helm

Welcome to the first issue of Fightin’ Poseidon with the new format. I’ll break this down so you know what to expect going forward.

⚔️The Helm - this is the welcome aboard to every newsletter.

⚔️ Clash of Tides - this is the main topic we’re going to be discussing. It’s the location of the battle.

⚔️ Armory - this is the practical advice you can put to use. I’ve gotten feedback that past newsletter have been way too abstract in order to pull out anything relevant. The Armory is concrete action.

⚔️ Sunbreak Stories - this is something new. I’m asking for your help to turn this not into just a newsletter, but a community. Share your stories of God’s faithfulness, answered prayer, victories in the fight, etc. If you have a story where things looked grim and then the Sun broke through? Reply to any email and share the story to have a testimony of God’s faithfulness in YOUR life featured in an upcoming issue of Fightin’ Poseidon.

⚔️ Dropping Anchor - this is the closing where I bid farewell.

⚔️ Below Deck: A Deep Dive - this is where I’ll be sharing a resource, whether a podcast, video, or section from a public domain book, as part of an ongoing study on spiritual warfare. You can come back to it and even use this as fuel for your own Sunbreak Story.

Additionally, I want to be up front about my use of AI with Fightin’ Poseidon. You’ll find it in each of post images and I use it for research. I favor Grok, but have used ChatGPT. Most of the images are built with Bing Image Creator Dall-E3. The new anchor logo was a banger from Gemini. Even with all that, every word you read is one I typed, not spit out from an AI. If Fightin’ Poseidon grows into an economic juggernaut, then I’ll hire an artist.

Clash of Tides

What IS spiritual warfare?

Overcoming temptation. Holding your tongue. Not being a drunk or looking at digital nasty books. There’s a lot of “thou shalt nots” on the forefront as I think about it.

Stand firm. Be strong. Hold your ground. Be resilient. These all sound good and very appealing to me as a man. That’s the good fight! What separates any of that from stoicism, though?

What exactly IS the fight?

Spiritual warfare is more than holding the line, gritting your teeth, strengthening your resolve, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Uniquely, spiritual warfare is a Christian action because the fight is fought through faith in Christ’s accomplished work on the cross.

This means along with all of hell and earth that the forces of evil throw at you, the chief weapon you’ll face is accusation. The name satan means accuser. If it only takes guilt to separate you from God, why bother with calamity or oppression? If my life and walk with the Lord can be derailed by coveting what I don’t have, even if I never get the pleasure of a reward, why go to greater lengths?

We’re getting ahead of ourselves.

I’ll admit that I’m coming at spiritual warfare from my own unique lens built on my Christian journey. That may capture my take, but I wanted a broader look than that.

I asked Grok to help me with some of the research of different Christian traditions. Reformed Baptist, Presbyterian, non-denominational megachurches, Charismatic/Pentecostal, Lutheran (Missouri Synod), and Roman Catholic. For my Protestant readers who may chafe at me including Roman Catholics, without going down a rabbit hole, their tradition has added a lot to the imagery and conversation of spiritual warfare so that’s a big reason I included them in the research.

I waded through a lot of responses and deep dives into the differences between all these traditions to find the common ground, which I present to you in my own words.

All of these faith traditions have the common ground of Satan and dark forces being a reality. They aren’t symbolic of the evil within us. These forces are outside of us. In Christ’s death on the cross, he broke the power sin and darkness had over us by paying the wages of sin by His death on the cross. In Christ, we are victorious. The weapons of warfare against these forces aren’t physical swords, shields, artillery or armaments. The spiritual weapons against such forces are Christian disciplines: reading and meditating on the Bible (the Word of God), prayer, fasting, baptism, and communion.

How do you understand and describe spiritual warfare? Hit the reply button and let me know!

Armory

Pray that the Lord would protect you and your family this week from direct and subtle attacks of the enemy.

In your prayers, use Psalm 3 as your guide.

Sunbreak Stories

One weapon we can lean into as we guard our hearts is gratitude and thankfulness. I went to X and asked friends to drop a comment about one thing they’re thankful for.

I present this weapon of warfare without further comment.

Have you had a victory you’d like to share? Reply to this issue and let’s share the story of how the Sun broke through your darkness.

Dropping Anchor

What stood out to you from today’s newsletter?

If you take away anything, I hope it’s that there’s at least the possibility of a spiritual realm. This isn’t a world for strict materialists anymore. In fact, it never was, even if we tried to lie to ourselves.

Hit reply and let me know what you think of the new format, share your story, or just say hey. Let’s keep in touch and build beyond the algorithms as we fight these spiritual battles together.

Stay Anchored and keep fighting the good fight,

~ J.P. Simons ⚓️

Below Deck: A Deep Dive

What’s the one thing you should NOT do when it comes to spiritual forces?

The late Dr. Michael S. Heiser made massive contributions in helping us understand the unseen realm. For today, our deep dive is a 1 minute YouTube short with Dr. Heiser answering our question.