The devil and all his demons are, for the most part, the cause of our spiritual conflict; it is against them that we are called to war (Eph. 6:12). The demons are referred to here as “principalities” (or rulers), as “powers,” as “rulers of the darkness of this world,” and as “spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  They are organized into a powerful evil force, whose purpose is to corrupt, destroy and to keep people from the saving grace of God (2 Cor. 4:4).

Our battle with the devil is both defensive and offensive.  Defensively, we stand firm against the devil—always having on our spiritual armor (Eph. 6:14-18).  Offensively, we seek out and destroy demonic strongholds that Satan builds up against us in our mind (2 Cor. 10:4-5).  These strongholds are the accumulation of arguments for evil that he tries to bring into our mind—for the purpose of deceiving us into believing his lies as truth.  They are the places in our mind where demons are protected and like to go.  They are the places of moral darkness.  If we categorized them, I suppose we could give names to them, such as: unbelief, failure, fear, and lust.

But we have many weapons at our disposal to break down these strongholds. Here are just a few: the word, faith, obedience, humility, and love; but our greatest weapon is prayer.  Without prayer we would have no power at all.  Prayer brings us the energy to put on our armor, as well as to pick up our sword.  Without prayer we can do nothing at all against the enemy, but with prayer we can always gain the victory.  Hence, in all our warfare against the enemy there must be constant, earnest prayer, all kinds of prayer, and prayer that travails.