Battle Ready
About this sermon
In “Battle Ready,” Pastor Nancy Odle teaches married couples to recognize that their spouse is not the enemy. Because husband and wife are one flesh, insults, suspicion, contempt, and scorekeeping wound the same union God joined together. Drawing from Matthew 19, 2 Corinthians 2, David and Michal, and practical marriage examples, she traces how spiritual suggestions can become resentment, hardness of heart, and destructive speech when they are not recognized and rejected.
Chronological teaching outline
Select a section heading to play the sermon from that moment.
Odle opens with prayer and frames marriage as a team standing against attacks on God’s Word, family, and unity. Since husband and wife are one flesh, she argues that insults and relational attacks are self-inflicted wounds against something God ordained. “Putting asunder” can happen gradually as unresolved issues create emotional distance.
The enemy’s “devices” are described as strategies aimed at the mind. Using a domestic illustration, Odle shows how an untested thought about an undone chore can grow into suspicion, irritation, and conflict. Couples must recognize recurring points of attack rather than assume every hostile thought accurately describes their spouse.
The illustration is repeated with a different response: the believer identifies the divisive thought, rebukes it aloud in Jesus’ name, and refuses to accept it. Odle then turns to Michal’s contempt for David, warning that despising a spouse in the heart eventually surfaces in words that tear down the home.
Proverbs contrasts the wise woman who builds her house with the foolish woman who tears it down. Odle links Michal’s scorn to Jesus’ teaching about hardness of heart, defining it as spiritual poverty of perception. She warns that resentment can make a spouse highly alert to the other person’s faults while blind to his or her own condition.
Odle names common sources of resentment: unequal workloads, phones, sexual disconnection, unresolved childhood wounds, involving outsiders, lack of appreciation, control, and keeping score. These pressures do not automatically prove that one spouse is the enemy; they reveal areas that require honest self-examination and deliberate change.
Marriage is not a contest over who has contributed or suffered more. Odle calls both spouses to serve, stop making every conflict about “me,” and accept Christ’s command to deny self daily.
Forgiveness means dropping the weight rather than repeatedly retrieving the offense. Odle urges couples to prefer one another, desire each other’s good, and make humble moves toward reconciliation—even a simple affectionate gesture can reopen communication after an argument. She then introduces the marital roles of submission and sacrificial love.
Wives are urged to yield without adopting a spirit of rebellion; husbands are told to love as Christ loved the church and to honor their wives as precious fellow heirs. Rather than trying to remake one another, each spouse should draw near to God and allow the Word to correct his or her own path.
Odle defines life as a series of choices and adapts a military maxim: know God, know your spouse, know yourself, and know the enemy. Couples become battle ready by repeatedly choosing God’s way, putting down distracting devices, and refusing to let temporary ruts become permanent separation.
Satan attacks marriage because agreement carries spiritual power, and a united couple can bring its children into that same strength before contributing it to the church. Psalm 133 presents unity as the place of anointing and blessing; Odle closes with the reminder that a wife is a good gift and favor from the Lord.
Open each passage and read it in its complete biblical context.
Read and follow along
Read representative excerpts here, or open the complete indexable transcript to search every timestamped section.
Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:00:04
Lord, I just thank you for this group of people that you've brought together for this purpose, Lord God. I thank you that we're going to continue to just draw closer to you, dive into your word, and Lord, that we're going to just let our hearts be softened, Lord, towards you and towards each other. Father God, I pray in Jesus' name that you would do a mighty work in marriages and singles and even the children that are here, Lord God, I just pray that your Holy Spirit would be with us, would help us to grow, and help us to draw closer to you and each other. In Jesus' name, amen. So I entitled my little talk Battle Ready. A lot of times in marriages we get so consumed with what's going on in between spouses that we forget who our battle is against. I mean, Pastor Troy and Pastor Dee really just went through all the scriptures and everything else. We could just go home on that, and those are all the things that we need to study and get right in our lives and in our marriages, but I will go ahead since I did a PowerPoint. I have here relationship goals. I love this picture because this is what we're supposed to be, hand in hand, battling everything that comes against the Word of God, our marriage, our families, our unity. This is what we're supposed to look like, and we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Unfortunately, a lot of times, like I said, we are wrestling against each other in flesh and blood. We're actually not realizing it, but we're shooting arrows at ourselves. Like Pastor Troy and Pastor Dee said, we're one flesh, so when we do this, when we launch arrows, when we launch insults, when we have these issues with each other, Matthew 19.5 through 6 says, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. Wherefore there are no more two, but one flesh. But therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder. So if you're one flesh, I had a really, I tamed down my picture, I did this one instead. My first instinct was to pull up someone stabbing their own flesh. It was pretty gruesome. I decided to lay off, I knew we would have snacks and drinks and stuff, so I decided to go with something that illustrated it a different way. But that's exactly what it is. You're jabbing, you're stabbing, and you don't realize that God has literally ordained what you are in, and you are destroying it.
- 0:03:05
You are destroying something that is God-ordained, and if we would look at that and take it seriously that it's God-ordained and that you are one person, you are a team, then we wouldn't do that as often. The word asunder, it says, what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Asunder I thought was interesting. One of the words, one of the definitions was to place room between. And a lot of marriages, this happens because of each other, and they don't even realize it. You end up with a lot of room between you. You end up in different worlds, like you have people who in counseling they'll come to you and they'll say, oh, she's not the woman I married. He's not the man I married. And it's because they have allowed things to put room between them to where they don't even recognize each other anymore, and they don't have the same visions and goals and motivation. So if we're not to fight each other, who are we to fight? Anybody? This guy. This guy. We are supposed to be recognizing and fighting the enemy, and he is all up into marriages because he hates marriage. He absolutely hates it. The Apostle Paul was talking about forgiveness, and he said in 2 Corinthians 2, 11, lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. So we are not supposed to be ignorant of his devices, and especially when it comes to putting room in between us in our marriage. That word, devices, in 2 Corinthians 2, 11, it means an evil purpose. So the enemy has an evil purpose for your relationships, and of course this goes not just with marriages. This is in churches, this is all relationships, but especially with the marriage. So devices, if you look at where it's been used in other places, you find that it's always referring to their minds. But their minds were blinded, the God of this world had blinded the minds, casting down imaginations in every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought. It's about how the serpent beguiled Eve, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ, and then the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ. So it's always referring, it's referring to your mind, it's referring to the enemy attacking your mind.
- 0:06:07
And boy, does this happen in marriage relationships. I mean sometimes it feels like there is just a dark cloud swirling around and just all of these, you know, I mean crazy stuff. I love my husband, my husband loves me. We have a great relationship, we're pretty, you know, understanding of spiritual warfare, and yet he gets us, you know. I'll be sitting there, you know, especially certain times and I'll be like, he just doesn't love me, you know. I mean that is the most idiotic thing that could, and sometimes I just start sulking and it just feels good to sulk sometimes, you know. And he's like, he doesn't love me enough, he doesn't do this, no, no, no, no, no. So that's how the enemy gets in. He just starts planting these seeds to put room between you. So I pulled up, well first I've got a quote from Sun Tzu, if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. That's from the art of war, Sun Tzu. And so that's what you have to realize, you know, a lot of people say, don't focus on the enemy so much, don't, you know, don't talk about the devil, but you need to be educated about what he's doing in your life, because he's doing stuff in your life, whether if you can ignore it, but it doesn't make it go away. So I pulled up this, there's three illustrations that Dr. Rebecca Brown, who's passed away now, but she wrote several books. This is from, he came to set the captives free. And this is an illustration of how the enemy works in someone's mind. You can see in the first picture here, who are you listening to? These are two roommates, one just happened to be named Nancy, oh, Nancy, get it together. She's in a good mood, she's singing, she's happy, she's praising the Lord, right? And the enemy comes in and puts these thoughts in her mind. I'll bet Sally didn't do the dishes last night. Now how many of you wake up in the morning, you're getting ready, and just all of a sudden a thought comes in. I bet he didn't take out the trash. I use that one, because apparently that's a, that's just a thing in, in coupleship. It's like, he never takes, do you play the game where you, ours is in the corner next to a door? And so you see how much you can pile up on the wall, as it goes, you know, here's a milk carton, it stayed, you know, seems to be a thing, but you know, he starts coming in and you can be in the best of moods. And then all of a sudden, in the morning, you're like, I bet he, oh, listen to him, he's doing this, he's doing that, she's doing this, she's doing that. And so in this illustration, she just lets it roll, you know.
- 0:09:07
The demon continues to build her anger, throwing in more negative thoughts about her roommate, Sally. So by the time she sees Sally, Sally doesn't even know what's hitting her, because she's already ticked off, and Sally's like, okay, well, so what does that do for Sally? That gets her irritated and angry at Nancy. So this is how the enemy plays spouses against each other all the time, I mean all the time. So how do you handle it? What do you do? How do you respond to the negative thoughts? Well, in this illustration, you see that she's having the same scenario come up. I'll bet Sally didn't do the dishes last night. She actually recognizes, she says over here, wait a minute, I shouldn't be thinking these things, I'll think about the Lord instead, let's see. And she starts quoting, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. But the enemy continues. The enemy continues to plant those seeds. And so it happens again. Because it didn't cause the enemy to stop those thoughts, you know. So she ends up, here we go again. She's irritated and ticked off, and that happens with Sally. And they both have a horrible day. And this is what happens once again in marriages. So how do you deal with the enemy? How do you deal with him and the onslaught of thoughts and the issues that he brings into your life? Here we have her, she's singing, she's happy, he brings that up. She recognizes it, that's the key. That really is the key. You have to recognize what the enemy is doing in your marriage, what his tricks are. He uses the same ones all over, but he will find some buttons that work with you, and he will keep pushing them until you recognize them and stop it. And so how do you stop it? You actually say, you know, Satan and you demons, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus, I will not accept those thoughts about Sally, go. This is what we have to do. And you have to do it out loud. You have to speak out loud to these demons. They're not in your head. Do you have some thought come in, which is a spirit of division? Call it what it does. Spirit of division, I bind you in the name of Jesus and I command you to go from me. Go from my house. Take authority over these things to protect your marriage. So what happens when you don't take those thoughts captive? What happens when you let the enemy just rule your mind and your marriage? We have a story about this in the Bible, and it's in 1 Chronicles 15, and I'm just going to give you bits and pieces of it.
The complete timestamped transcript is published as a crawlable reading page so every sermon topic remains searchable without making this video page unnecessarily heavy.
Read and search the complete transcript