Welcome to the Daily Blade. The word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Welcome to a new week of the Daily Blade. For the last couple of weeks, Joby has been taking you through some content that aligns with his latest book, which is out now: Stand Firm and Act Like Men, Becoming the Man You Were Created to Be instead of Who the World Says You Are. So it is officially hit stores and bookshelves. So, guys, make sure you go out, get yourself a copy, buy a box of them, hand them out to your buddies, and you can go over to my other podcast on Daunted Life, a man's podcast, and listen to a long-form sit-down between Joby and myself where we get into all the nitty-gritty about the book. But this week on the Daily Blade, I'm going to be giving you five of my highlights from the book and the scriptural truths therein. As you likely know by now, there are two key passages of scripture that provide the foundation of Joby's new book. That's 1 Corinthians 16, verses 13 and 14, and Ephesians 6, verses 13 and 14. I'll read them both now. First Corinthians 16, 13 through 14. Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, let all you do be done in love. And then Ephesians 6, verses 13 and 14. 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, stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the blessed breastplate of righteousness. Now I want us to key in on a couple of parts from those two passages today. So first in 1 Corinthians 16, verses 13, verse 13, I want to look at the first part. Be watchful. So essentially, vigilance is described before the call to be firm, the call to act like a man, the call to be strong, and the call to do everything in love. So is this just random, or is this the Apostle Paul trying to establish a foundation for us as he builds the narrative of his letter? On this side of glory, all we can do is speculate. We can't really know. But I surmise that Paul is doing this to remind us that we need to be on the lookout for threats. Okay? That our firmness, our manhood, our strength, and love can only happen if it is preceded by careful observation, by attentiveness, by alertness. So it reminds me of one of my favorite passages from the book of Isaiah. That's Isaiah 62, verse 6. On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen all the day and all the night. They shall never be silent. So, guys, if you followed my ministry for any length of time, you've heard me say that I feel that God has put me on this planet to equip men to push back darkness. So, with that, I encourage men to look for darkness, to seek it out, to root it out, so that it has no place to hide, right? You see, you can't push back darkness if you refuse to even look at it. Now, this transitions us to Ephesians 6. And once you've identified where the darkness is, you have to get ready for battle. Darkness doesn't stop itself. It has to be actively pushed back. So let's actually back up to verse 12 of Ephesians 6. So verse 12, 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. And men, we shouldn't give ourselves the option of opting out of this battle, right? I mean, God has taken some Christian giants off the chessboard this year. You got Phil Robertson, John MacArthur, James Dobson, Charlie Kirk, and recently Vody Bacham. And I see a lot of guys looking around waiting for the person that is going to replace each of these men. Well, I've got news for you guys. We don't get a one-to-one replacement of those guys. We only get one Phil. We only get one J Mac. We only get one Dr. Dobson. We only get one Charlie. And we only get one Vody. So it's not who will replace these individual men, it's how many of us will replace them. So if you're ready to get into the fight, you don't get ready haphazardly, right? So what we do need is to get ready for battle, and we can look at what Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to give us a really, really clear idea what it's going to take to get there. So in Ephesians 6, he talks about the whole armor of God, which includes the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes for our feet given by the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and finally the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. So, guys, come back here tomorrow as we dig more into the scriptures and into Joby's new book, Stand Firm and Act Like Men.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Before you go, if you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five star rating and review. Stay sharp.