Jesus prepared for His warfare with the Devil through prayer and fasting. Then, when it came time for Him to engage the Enemy on the field of battle, He chose an effective weapon: the Sacred Scripture - the powerful Word of God. Satan himself tried to wield that weapon, but fumbled with it, and Our Lord skillfully parried the assault, turning the blaed back upon him. Each time the Devil attacked with the temptation to doubt or disobey God, Jesus quoted Scripture to throw him back. After three failed attempts, the Enemy withdrew (Mt4:1-11)

The Apostle Paul is often depicted in art as bearing a sword. Thats because the Holy Spirit chose him to write more books in the Bible than anyone else, and accordin to his inspired words, "the sword of the spirit...is the Word of God"(Eph6:17) Scripture is our sword against Satan! And a powerful weapon it is: "For the Word of God is living and efficient and keener than any two-edged sword(Heb4:12)

For this reason, one of the essential strategies for spiritual warfare is to fortify our lives with Scripture. We must listen carefully to the scripture and meditate on them deeply. We must read the scripture on our own daily if possible, and ponder how we can apply it to our lives.

We must also memorize scriptural texts that we can use against temptation. Then, when the Enemy assaults us, we can imitate Our Lord by effective counterassault of quoting the Word of God.

For example, if the Devil should tempt us to doubt God's faithfulness, we can reply with St.Paul, applying his words to ourselves: "God is trustworthy, by Him I was called into fellowship with His Son"(Cor1:9)

If he should accuse us, we can say with St. John: "The accuser of our brethern has been cast down!"(Rv12:10)

If he tries to frighten us, we can say to God with King David: "The Lord is my Shepherd...I fear no evil, for you are with me; Your rod and Your staff they comfort me"(Ps23:1,4)

If Satan tries to seduce us away from God, we can say with Our Lord: "Blessed are the clean in heart, for they shall see God" Mt5:8

And if he tries to provoke us, we can say to God with the prophet Isaiah: "You keep him in perfect peace whos mind is stayed on You"(Is26:3)