Do you want to be as close to God as possible? Do you also desire to win every spiritual battle you fight?

If so, the No. 1 most important spiritual warfare strategy in which you will want to specialize is simply this:

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Keep clean hands and a pure heart before the Lord.

In Psalm 24, we read that only those with clean hands and a pure heart may ascend into God’s holy place. This beloved passage says:

The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein. For He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters.

Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face. Selah (Psalm 24:1-6 NKJV).

What does it mean to have clean hands and a pure heart?

It means that we each, as individuals, must view the most important part of our relationship with God to be personal holiness, purity, and individual obedience to Him. It means that we learn to love righteousness and hate lawlessness as Jesus does:

You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions (Hebrews 1:9 NKJV).

It also means we are careful to repent of our sin as soon as we commit sin.

We don’t have to go around all day sinning; God’s grace empowers us to live holy lives. However, if and when we do sin, and whether that sin seems big or small, we must immediately repent to the Lord. We must change our minds and forsake the sin right away. We must confess those sins to Him, which involves admitting that the thing we did is sin and telling Him that we are genuinely sorry.

As we do, He will forgive us every time:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9 NKJV).

However, remember that repenting does mean to change one’s mind. Therefore, you must actively work to “… not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2 NKJV).

What else does keeping clean hands and a pure heart before the Lord look like?

Here are a few ideas:

• It looks like reading God’s Word, the Bible, and letting His Holy Spirit convict you as you read, showing you every way in which He desires you to change.
• It looks like asking the Lord to make you good soil into which His Word can run swiftly, bringing forth good fruit—30-, 60-, and 100-fold.
• It looks like beating your own breast and crying out, “God, change me. Keep me from sinning against You,” rather than pointing the finger at everyone else and telling God to change them.
• It looks like asking again and again, every day, for the Lord to make you humble—even if you think you don’t have a pride problem. (Read how the Lord convicted me about my pride problem here!) People with clean hands and a pure heart cry out for humility and holiness, just because they know that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV).
• It looks like forgiving everyone who has ever hurt you, and continuing to forgive them even if they continue to hurt you. (Keep in mind that boundaries are also good. We have to continue forgiving, but we don’t have to continue allowing toxic people so close that they are continuously able to hurt us.)
• It looks like being more concerned with bearing fruit unto righteousness than you are concerned with how many people know or recognize your name.

Beloved, keeping clean hands and a pure heart means that you take your personal relationship with Jesus personally—and that you take responsibility for it.

We would each be wise not to enter an external spiritual battlefield until the battlefield within ourselves has been subdued under the blood of Jesus.

Every person is engaged in spiritual warfare at some level. But when you begin waging war in the spirit on broader fronts, you catch the attention of the demons of hell. If you’re going to do that, you can win in the name of Jesus every time—but not if you’re not truly submitted to Jesus. Remember the seven sons of Sceva in Acts 19:

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.” Also there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so.

And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”

Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.

And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed (Acts 19:13-20 NKJV).

The seven sons of Sceva were trying to wage war in the name of Jesus, using His name as a tool without actual relationship with Christ.

And we must still be on guard against that very thing today. If we are not believing believers who read God’s Word and do what it says, we have no business trying to wage war using the name of Jesus as a tool—for we have no relationship with Him.

True spiritual power comes with abiding in Christ, and in His love … and acting like it.

As Jesus said in John 15:4:

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me (John 15:4 NKJV).

And in John 15:9-10, He said:

As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love (John 15:9-10 NKJV).

At the end of days, Jesus is not going to ask us how many people followed us on social media.

He is, however, going to take stock of how much we loved Him and obeyed Him. He is going to take stock of the fruit of our lives—which begins with the fruit of holiness.

You can be saved without changing the world, but you can’t be saved without seeing a change in you. Real salvation, at a minimum, produces fruit in your personal life. If the blood of Jesus is active in you, then your actions, desires, words, and motives will change over time to reflect that.

Obeying God is the fruit of salvation; it is of utmost importance.

Remember Jesus’ words in John 15:14:

You are My friends if you do whatever I command you (John 15:14 NKJV)

And also in John 14:15:

If you love Me, keep My commandments (John 14:15 NKJV).

So beloved, do you desire to fight the good fight of faith today? Begin where you will win: on your knees, purifying your heart before the Lord through confession of sin, repentance, and crying out to Him in sincerity for true heart change. This is the very best “good fight of faith” that we could ever fight, and it is by winning this battle first that we can access Christ’s victory in every other battle.

Are you keeping clean hands and a pure heart before the Lord? Is the Lord speaking to you about returning to your first love for purity and holiness in Him before all other things? If so, leave a comment below!

Jamie Rohrbaugh is the founder and CEO of From His Presence. She is the author of Victory In the Camp of the Lord Volume 1: Healing from Fear. Her resources have been published by YouVersion Bible Plans, Charisma Magazine, The Elijah List, Spirit Fuel, and various other ministry outlets. You can find free mentoring on her podcast, Take Your Territory with Jamie Rohrbaugh, which is available through your favorite podcast streaming app. Download her free prayer tool, Praying the Names of God: 555 Biblical Names of God and How to Use Them in Prayer and Worship, here.