Daniel Kolenda on Spiritual Warfare: ‘Kill Your Dragon While It’s Young’
You can pretend it’s not there. You can call it weird. But as Daniel Kolenda emphasizes, the supernatural realm is very real. Not only that, but the enemy can be behind your everyday struggles. In his book Slaying Dragons, Kolenda shares practical, doctrinally sound spiritual warfare tips, including killing the proverbial dragon before it’s born.
“Smash it while it is still inside its egg. If you can kill it in its gestation period, you will never have to battle a monster,” Kolenda says. “Big things start small. Big addictions come from simple curiosity. Big sins grow from small seeds.”
As an example, Kolenda describes a season when he got his hair cut at a salon by a young, attractive hairdresser. He used to hate haircuts, but the young lady was interesting to talk to, and she seemed interested in him. When she cut his hair, time flew by. Then one morning Kolenda woke up and felt a flutter of excitement for his hair appointment that day. He was surprised, but it didn’t take a lot of reflecting to realize why.
“Obviously I was excited at the thought of seeing that attractive young woman,” he says.
But Kolenda was married with three children. So he canceled his appointment and switched salons. While the situation may have never evolved into anything, Kolenda was also aware that every affair could be traced back to a little, innocent feeling of excitement. In his writing he uses this experience to illustrate how to slay a dragon before it becomes a dragon.
“Remember how Jesus told us to deal with temptation—if your hand offends you, cut it off. If your eye offends you, gouge it out,” Kolenda says. “I recognized the latent potential for a little dragon egg to begin growing in my life, and I dealt with it quickly and thoroughly.”
His book Slaying Dragons doesn’t just expose the ways of the enemy. It challenges readers to consider the sin habits they themselves have coddled.
“Most of the dragons that threaten us are ones we have incubated, nurtured, and raised in our own hearts. Lust, pride, greed, selfishness in all its forms, hatred, the abandonment of responsibility, lack of self-discipline—these are the kind of dragons that usually destroy us,” Kolenda says. “And in fact it is these ‘small’ internal dragons that become the huge external ones.”
Slaying Dragons shines light on what the enemy is doing in one’s life and what a person can do to slay every dragon he or she encounters. {eoa}
Daniel Kolenda is a missionary evangelist whose ministry is marked by signs, wonders, miracles and a multitude of salvations. He has led more than 21 million people to Christ face-to-face through massive open-air evangelistic campaigns in some of the most dangerous, difficult and remote locations on earth. As the successor to world-renowned evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, Kolenda is the president and CEO of Christ for All Nations, a ministry that has conducted some of the largest evangelistic events in history; has published over 190 million books in 104 languages and has offices in 12 nations around the world. Kolenda has appeared on TBN, It’s Supernatural! With Sid Roth and Jesus Image TV.
Charisma House empowers people through Spirit-inspired resources. It is the leading publisher of diversified Christian resources motivating people to fulfill God’s purpose. For more than 20 years Charisma House has published books, including 14 New York Times’ bestsellers, that challenge, encourage, teach and equip Christians.
