The Story of Warfare of Grace
CALLED INTO VICTORY
In 2014 God began a process of transformation. Purity Coach Devon found himself thrust into the process of healing from his addiction in a dramatic and painful way. Finding a healthy healing community, he began the long journey of giving up his addiction to God. Surprisingly, God had a unique path for Devon. Out of necessity he became the leader of that same group in 8 months, an atypical move, due to the sudden departing of the other leaders.
Unwilling to do it alone, Devon gathered a team around him to lead.
God began a two year process of emptying and humbling Devon and his fellow leaders. It was healthy. It was raw. It was real. But once emptied and readied, God did a new thing – he moved Devon into a graduate program in Spiritual Formation. In the 3rd and 4th year of Devon’s healing, God put transforming spiritual disciplines side by side with addiction recovery principles and from that was born a deep abiding burden for the souls of men trapped in addiction. Devon had never known the real power of knowing God personally and it became clear that sexual addiction removed a man’s ability to know God in that way. The way God’s desires. From this foundation came the impetus of Warfare of Grace.
Devon desires more than anything to free men to know God without blinders. That men would experience the deep, sustaining grace of God. Armed with the double edged sword of biblical wisdom and brain science, all God’s revelation, Devon became ready to walk men through the process of getting to know God on HIS terms. And thus, Warfare of Grace was born. God opened the door with mentors, margins of time and various opportunities that confirmed the call. To date (spring 2021), Devon has walked more than 75 guys through the process of healing that leads to freedom. To say God has been faithful is an understatement, almost all of those men are in healing recovery.
"At the end of the day, I want men to know Jesus like I know Him. To be able to approach the throne of grace and receive help. Like Oswald Chambers said, we are all "trophies of grace". Letting God love us as we are, and lead us out, is the greatest experience of our lives."
Devon Stribling
Founder of Warfare of Grace
"I have been learning so much about myself that has been helping me understand why I have been trapped in addiction for such a long time. I have been able to be honest with myself and others for the first time and that allowed to Holy Spirit to really start working me in both heart and mind."
Paul, age 26
“…his depth of insight and ability to counsel effectively are as good as a couple of the best counselors that I have had in over 30 years of counseling. He always has a new strategy to try, provides hope and sees the best in every person, and shows great love and compassion for all those he counsels. My knowledge and insight have grown tremendously so that there is greater understanding of all the different dynamics that set me up for repeated behavior.”
Aaron, age 52
The mission...
Warfare of Grace exists to free men from the shame of sexual addiction into spiritual leadership by the biblical warfare of grace.
What's in a Name?
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you... John 15:15-16a
Warfare
(noun) conflict, especially when vicious and unrelenting, between competitors, political rivals, etc.
of
(preposition) used to indicate derivation, origin, or source; cause, motive, occasion, or reason;
material, component parts, substance, or contents; apposition or identity; and specific identity.
Grace
(noun) unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification; a virtue coming from God; a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance
Why would you choose that one?
When Warfare of Grace was first conceived, many people asked why we chose to use these terms for our ministry. We can understand grace, but warfare? How can those two things go together?
Warfare:
When we talk about sexual addiction, it’s very easy for us to roll our eyes and pretend as though such a thing isn’t so worrisome, doesn’t affect us, or doesn’t even exist. But the fact is, sexual addiction is a massively prevalent, impressively hidden and ruthlessly destructive force in every corner of our country. America is the largest distributor of pornography many times over, and the internet has made access to porn instantaneous and put in the hands of children barely old enough to speak in sentences, students with raging hormones, and their parents. The industry is one of the largest in the world, boasting upwards of 6 billion dollars a year. That doesn’t happen by chance. There are massive numbers of people who are at work all the time trying to slip porn into the lives of children to create compulsive addicts to continue shelling out dollars and views to the industry. They have a strategy to destroy us. That sounds like war to us.
Warfare of Grace is fighting this fire with the living water of grace. We have a strategy too, leaning on eternal principles and current revelation from good work in neuroscience and psychology. We are concerned with more than just behavior change, we want to take back the ground of men’s souls, giving them access back to God! Where porn has created pain, we remove barriers towards God and allow Him to establish peace. This will not happen with intentional, aggressive attacks on the strongholds of the enemy. And that is what we do. We conduct warfare.
Grace:
It’s a cornerstone of our faith, but do we really understand it? It’s a cornerstone of addiction recovery, but are we ready to adopt it? It’s a cornerstone of our self-care, but do we know how to apply it?
I’m so glad to say we have a God of grace! Unfortunately, many people hear that and have the idea that grace is cheap. Or rather, that grace is simple. God loves me. That’s it. Grace is so much bigger than that. Grace is so much more gripping than that. It is grace that takes hold of our hearts. It is grace fuels our faith. So let’s understand it.
Grace is when an all-loving, all-powerful, all-holy God finds a way to make provision for you when you did not deserve it. He steps out and pays the horrible price that you bore so that you can be with Him in paradise. You’ve been saved. Literally “snatched up” out of the clutches of death. What does that mean? It means:
- God thinks you are valuable.
- God wants you back.
- God has won the war for your soul.
- God is on your side.
- God will do what it takes to bring you back to Him, even when that is painful.
This kind of priority on God’s part is not all fun and games. It includes the angels He has battling for our souls, the messy work of dealing with our sin, the long nights listening to our pains and the constant loving assault on our sinful desires. Grace is not passive, it is active. Actively loving. Actively changing. Actively asking us for ourselves. Grace calls out to us to know who we are, Children of God, and then to adopt the character of Jesus Christ. It calls us to clear out space in our hearts and lives for the Holy Spirit. And these movements contain plenty of actions and beliefs that are hard to adopt. And so we create a community of grace to surround a man battling in this fight. He can lean on the practical grace of friendship while battling the spiritual battles inside.
We believe that this kind of understanding of grace is fundamental to all faith, and certainly to addiction recovery. If we want to lose the bonds of sexual sin, we need to replace those lies with the truth of who God says we are. We are His.
Statement of Faith
- We believe the Bible is the inspired and infallible and authoritative Word of God. (II Timothy 3:15 -16
- We believe there is one God, eternally existing in three persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. (Deut. 6:4; Matthew 28:19; Mark 12:29; John 5:17-30)
- We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal future return to the earth in power and glory to rule over the nations. (Isaiah 7:14; Hebrews 7:26; Acts 2:22; I Corinthians 15:3; Acts 1:9-11)
- We believe man was created good and upright, but fell from that place of perfection into a condition of spiritual depravity. (Genesis 1:26-27; 2:17; Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 5:12-19)
- We believe the only means of our being cleansed from sin is through repentance and through faith in the precious blood of Christ. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential for personal salvation and sanctification. (Luke 24:47; Romans 8:16; 10:13-15; Titus 2:11; 3:5-7)
- We believe the Scriptures teach a life of holiness. Sanctification is a separation from that which is evil and a dedication unto God. We believe all believers should earnestly pursue sanctification by walking in obedience to God's Word. We further believe that the Christian is able to live a godly life by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (Hebrews 12:14; I Peter 1:15-16; Philippians 2:12-13)
- We believe that God has commissioned Warfare of Grace to provide a balanced, biblical and sanctifying view of addiction recovery to men for the purpose of improving the interior health of the individual, familial and communal heart's of those within their influence.
It is our greatest passion, pleasure and purpose at Warfare of Grace to bring glory to God Almighty through the outworking of His own marvelous grace in the lives of men. We acknowledge His fore-working, sovereignty, and empowering of our work as we strive to follow His leadership with all our hearts.