Waggoner Urges Leaders to Contend for the Faith
Waggoner, a lawyer who leads Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the world’s largest Christian legal ministry, and serves on the legal team that advises the General Council of the Assemblies of God, shared a message that clearly struck home with the thousands of ministers and leaders in the audience.
After praying for God’s words to flow through her, Waggoner shared how physical evidence for the early church the apostles founded can still be seen in Asia Minor.
“But what you won’t see, is a prominent, living Christian witness in that region,” she said. “. . . Today, the Cross has largely been replaced by the crescent.”
Waggoner warned that Americans can be tempted to assume the Church’s witness will always be visibly present, free, and without significant cost.
“I think that’s a very dangerous assumption, because history doesn’t support it,” she said. “Christian influence is not inevitable, but neither is Christianity’s decline.”
Referring to General Superintendent Doug Clay’s message from Wednesday — Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow — Waggoner declared Jesus’ charge to believers also remains the same.
“That charge is to contend for the faith in every generation, once for all,” she says.
Waggoner said that while attending an AG church camp when she was 12, she felt God called her to be an attorney to defend religious freedom. The calling was so clear, she wrote it down. And today, she uses that fulfilled calling to help remove the legal obstacles to the Great Commission of spreading the gospel to the world.
“No matter where someone is in the world, Christ calls us to contend for the faith,” she declared.
Waggoner then spoke of Nigeria where Christians continued to be slaughtered for their faith; how in much of the Muslim world, those who embrace Christ face death; and how in India an AG pastor was imprisoned for holding a prayer meeting in his home.
“While violence and punishment like this is often Satan’s method of choice for opposing the gospel in many parts of the world,” Waggoner said, “here in the West, he often uses censorship for silencing and punishing believers.”
Providing examples of individuals from Finland, England, and Brazil, she shared how Christians were enduring years of prosecution for defending their view of Christian marriage, arrested for silently praying outside an abortion facility, and jailed for writing a book on biblical sexual ethics.
“We’re not immune to this in America, both through laws that seek to censor and chill,” Waggoner said, “but also through our own willingness to conform to social pressure, and to be silent in moments we must speak. We have seen lies that permeate our culture and permeate our law and they have created profound suffering.”
Sharing the specific examples of a child who has been permanently harmed by medical gender experiments, the law refusing to protect the unborn, and a state working to silence a woman from sharing the gospel while saving babies, Waggoner stated that the legal challenges vary, but they all share one commonality.
“They attack the image of God in people while alienating them from the gospel,” she said, later adding, “The Judeo-Christian pillars, that have been prominent in the free world, they’re under severe contest, and it’s not clear what will come next. And yet, this is the moment to which you have been called, the moment in which you were created.”
She shared how recent key rulings by the Supreme Court revealed a deep spiritual depravity and an anti-God vision of the human person, including rulings on mutilation-of-gender procedures on children, access to pornography, and abortion funding — some rulings that simply don’t go far enough, while others are left up to states to apply, but many don't.
“What does this say about our influence in this world right now, what does it say about how our faith is in this country?” Waggoner asked. “The future of our nations, of our communities, of our families, and our churches is not etched in stone. This is a crucial moment for God’s people to contend.”
Yet despite these contentious times, Waggoner pointed out that 2,000 years ago, the faith of God’s people was tested far more severely than it is today.
“It was around that time (60 A.D. to 80 A.D.), Jude, Jesus’ half-brother, penned a letter to Christians,” she said, noting that at time, there was Nero’s persecution of Christians in Rome and the war that led to the destruction of the temple.
However, Jude’s letter, wasn’t focused on the persecution, but the witness of God’s Church in the moment, reminding the Church not only of who they are, but whose they are.
“…Those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:1, ESV), Waggoner quoted. “And those words describe every single believer here today.”
Breaking down the verse, to you are called, you are beloved, and you are kept, she made a statement that resonated throughout the auditorium.
“[God] has saved you, He has justified you, He’s redeemed you, He’s commissioned you, He’s adopted you,” she declared. “And He has put the Holy Spirit inside of you to stand, to contend, and if He does nothing else for you for the rest of your life, that should be enough to have a heart of gratitude.”
She shared how Jude recognized false teachings were placing the church in imminent danger and charged believers to contend for the faith — a faith that is unchangeable through generations.
“The gospel should be changing us, we should not be changing the gospel — despite what the world says is a nuance of a moment, Waggoner stated.
Noting that the ‘contending’ concept in the Greek portrays fighting/intense physical activity, she shared how Jude was either warning believers because they were being seduced by false teaching or they were actively tolerating it.
Waggoner reminded listeners of Jude’s warning in verse five that Christians can be deceived, led astray, and suffer judgment just as the Israelites did in Egypt.
However, she expressed her pleasure of a renewed spiritual interest across the United States and in the world, especially among Gen Z.
“Many of the lies that have seduced the soul,” she began, “many of them are being exposed right now as the sexually revolution has run itself into the ground . . ., I just want to feed your soul today, what the world is looking for, we have . . . we have Jesus!”
Waggoner explained that Satan’s greatest goal is to obscure and to destroy the witness of God’s Church as Christians are called to be the light that overcomes the darkness.
Jude, she said, provided four simple directives to overcome: building up your faith, praying in the Spirit, keeping in the love of God, and snatching them back from the enemy.
“Contending for the faith starts inwardly, by building up our own faith,” Waggoner said. “We’re supposed to abide in Christ . . . I just want to encourage you as ministry leaders, read the Word, and don’t just do it for your sermon preparation, do it for your spirit!”
She urged leaders to also protect their time of prayer as well, as the power to contend for the faith isn’t something that can be mustered.
“You can only rest on your gifts for so long before you run out or before the Lord removes the anointing,” Waggoner said. “The power to contend comes from the power of His presence, it comes from the power of praying in the Spirit.”
She shared an experience where she faced an extremely hostile crowd of Yale college students, in what was supposed to be a civil discussion between her and a humanist. An anonymous note that was passed to her, calmed her fears and gave her the strength and poise to continue. The note was simply John 15:18-21 (“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first . . .”) written out.
“In that moment, the peace that ran through my heart was indescribable,” she said. “. . .and I’ll never forget that God used a student in the classroom to contend for my faith, to build my faith in that moment when I needed to be bold.”
Yet, Waggoner admits, that even now, when she faces a problem or challenge, often her first step is to go to her husband, friend, or co-worker, before she will go to Jesus, even though she knows perfect peace is found in Him.
She went on to acknowledge that ministers and leaders, including herself, are not spared the pains of human life, the loneliness that can come when leading a ministry, the pain of criticism, or self-doubt.
“I have determined that my survival and my joy directly correlate to my time with the Lord and my time praying in the Spirit,” Waggoner said.
Waggoner shared how praying in the Spirit became a regular part of her life as her first oral argument at the Supreme Court, which involved the Masterpiece Cakeshop (a cake artist who refused to express a message that violated his convictions related to same-sex marriage) approached, admitting that she knew the argument was going to be rough.
But then she revealed something much more personal, as the night before she was to leave for that argument, her daughter told her she felt she was on the wrong side of the argument.
“I want to remind you today, that if Satan can’t rattle you, he’s going to go after your kids,” she said.
Waggoner went on to share how while she preparing for the argument, she was also fearing she had lost her daughter, but when she turned to the Word, specifically Psalm 121, she began to repeat the prayer, “Steady my heart, stand by my side, quicken my mind.” And better than the legal victories that came later, she said God began to birth a deep love for the Lord in her daughter and the knowledge of His Word.
Admitting that she initially believed that since she was called to her profession, it was going to be one win after the other, Waggoner said that it wasn’t that way as she experienced some gut-wrenching losses — she was booed, called names, threatened, mocked, and lost friendships as she contended for the faith.
“Yet, what does the Word say about the trials that we face in our own ministries?” she asked, then read James 1:2-3. “Count it all joy, my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds . . .”
Returning to what God said to her as a 12-year-old, she shared what she wrote down, what she felt God said to her in that moment.
“You must know Me because this will be very hard. And you must depend on Me because others will depend on you. You asked Me to answer, and I did. Never forget that,” she shared. “At 12 years old that didn’t mean a whole lot to me; at 52 it does.”
She warned ministers that Satan wants to take Christians down, with ministers and leaders being high on his list, and advised them to speak to their soul with the words and promises God has given them.
“When each one of us fulfills the ministry that He’s given us, the place He’s sent us, we contend for the world, one soul at a time,” Waggoner said.
Waggoner shared how a former leader in the New Atheists, Ayann Hirsi Ali, told her it was Jack Phillips (Masterpiece Cakeshop baker) witness that caused her to reconsider her worldview.
“I was with her just a couple weeks ago and I asked Ayann, in this tumultuous moment, with all that you see, with all that’s going on in this world, what gives you hope for Western civilization?” Waggoner said. “. . . She said the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
In closing, Waggoner shared how it was a small AG church that contended for the faith for her family.
“My parents are first-generation Christians, and God used an AG church to change our lives, to snatch them out of generations of brokenness and alcoholism and with them, three generations have followed.”
Waggoner urged ministers to draw close to Jesus, find rest in Him and live in His promises, but then to go, follow His leading.
“There is a war on God’s image bearers, but you have been built for war — that is what He created you for,” Waggoner declared. “So, contend. Contend for your faith, contend for your marriage, contend for your church, contend for your friends, contend for your children, contend for the world. Contend!
“God offers to use you to build His Church,” Waggoner stated, “and He promises that the gates of hell will not prevail!”
As Waggoner left the stage to a standing ovation, Assistant General Superintendent Rick DuBose challenged ministers and leaders to pick up their sword, the Word of God, to defend their fields of influence, and come forward to the altar for prayer, with the altar quickly flooding.