Getting Through the Invisible War Study Without Losing Your Mind
Chip Ingram's Invisible War study guide is companion material for his teaching series on spiritual warfare. It breaks down each session into discussion questions, scripture references, and reflection prompts. You use it if you're running a small group or want to work through the material on your own instead of just watching the videos and forgetting everything by Thursday. I used it to facilitate a group at my church back in 2019. The series runs twelve sessions. Each guide page covers one session with background context, key verses highlighted, and about six to eight discussion questions. It's straightforward. Nothing fancy.
Chip Ingram The Invisible War Study Guide
Here's what most people miss when they start using it. The study guide assumes you've already watched the corresponding video lesson. If you show up cold and just read the guide, half the questions won't land because they reference specific illustrations Ingram makes during the teaching. People skip ahead to the discussion questions without doing the homework. Then the conversation stalls because nobody watched the segment on principalities and powers and now they're trying to debate something they've never actually seen explained. The guide itself is organized session by session. Session one lays out the framework — the concept that spiritual warfare is real and ongoing. Sessions two through four dig into identity, authority, and the armor. Sessions five through nine get into practical territory: prayer, renewing the mind, dealing with strongholds. The last three sessions wrap with application and commissioning. Knowing this structure helps you pace yourself. Don't burn through two sessions in one night. The material accumulates. By session seven, earlier concepts come back in new contexts and if you haven't absorbed the first half properly, the second half will feel random.
Where the Guide Falls Short
There are real gaps in how this study guide handles certain topics. Ingram frames spiritual warfare primarily through a charismatic Pentecostal lens, which means the guide leans heavily toward deliverance language and authority-declaring practices. If your tradition is more Reformed or cessationist, you'll find yourself pushing back against portions of the discussion questions without much alternative framing offered in the text itself. The guide doesn't acknowledge that tension. It just presents its position as settled. Another problem I ran into: the scripture references are often listed without full context. A question might point you to Ephesians 6 and ask about "taking authority" over a situation, but the surrounding passage in Ephesians is actually about standing firm, not advancing. The guide conflates the armor imagery with offensive spirituality in ways that aren't textually supported. I had a guy in my group start quoting those discussion prompts as if they were direct commands from Scripture. That took twenty minutes to untangle. For anyone wrestling with that, I found it useful to keep a separate notebook where I'd write the actual full verse before answering any discussion question. Don't trust the short reference. Read the whole chapter the verse lives in. It takes three extra minutes per question and prevents about half the theological confusion that comes up in group settings.
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How to Actually Use This Study Guide
Watch the video lesson first. Pause it when you need to. Rewind if Ingram moves too fast — he does that. Then open the guide and read through the background section before touching the questions. The background notes are where Ingram connects the dots between Old Testament patterns and New Testament teaching. Skip it and the questions feel disconnected. Write your answers in the guide or on separate paper. The printed space is tight. I recommend using a loose-leaf notebook so you can flip around and cross-reference earlier sessions. That cross-referencing is where the actual learning happens. Session 7 references concepts from session 3. If you don't look back, you're missing half the point. For group leaders: assign one person to be the timekeeper. The discussion questions are designed for about ten to twelve minutes each. Without a timekeeper, people will sit on question two for forty minutes while the rest of the group sits in awkward silence. Also, don't let one person dominate. The guide's questions are personal reflection prompts turned into group discussion, which means some people will share deeply and others will shut down. Either way, the loudest voice in the room tends to steal the session. Assign quiet reading time for five minutes before opening the floor. It levels the playing field.
Where to Find It
The study guide is available through Passion Conversions, which is the ministry behind the teaching series. You can order printed copies from their website or download a PDF version. Some churches bulk-order for small groups. Used copies show up occasionally on Amazon and eBay, but the formatting on older print runs had some alignment issues with the scripture references that made them harder to follow. Stick with the newer versions if you can. It's also sometimes included free with the DVD or digital course purchase. If you're committing to the full twelve-session arc, that's the cheaper route. Buying the guide separately runs around ten dollars depending on format.
Alternatives Worth Considering
If the charismatic framework doesn't fit your theology, consider pairing the guide with Richard Philips' commentary on Ephesians for a more Reformed perspective on the same passages. Or use Martyn Lloyd-Jones' sermon series on spiritual warfare alongside the study guide. You'll get the same structural progression but with different theological grounding. The guide itself won't push you toward those resources, but after going through sessions four and five, you'll probably want somewhere else to turn anyway. The Invisible War study guide does what it sets out to do. It's functional. It's not academically rigorous. It's designed for small group facilitators who want something structured without spending three weeks prep per session. Just go in knowing its limitations and you won't waste time wrestling with it.
