Priscilla Shirer has issued a warning to Christians, saying that Satan is using the coronavirus pandemic as a "tactic to discourage God's people".

Shirer, founder of Going Beyond Ministries and also a popular Christian speaker and author, has encouraged Christians to stand firm against the works of Satan, and to use the current Covid-19 outbreak as a period to "stand firm against the schemes of the enemy".

The exhortation came at the Q 2020 Virtual Summit, which seeks to equip Christian leaders to engage with modern day culture with a Christian worldview.

In her talk, Shirer said, "God is who He says He is. He's still seated on the throne, and He is not shaken by what shakes us."

She added, "I don't know how people who don't have some sort of foundational bedrock level of truth in their lives are able to make it in these shaky times because everything is changing."

"So in these changing times, there has to be something that we count on that is true, that is unchanging, that does not shift with the shift in times," she continued.

The popular speaker urged believers to focus on the word of God: "We've got to know our Bibles, we've got to know who our God is, and we have to anchor ourselves firmly in those truths now more than ever. That's what provides us hope, even when other people are hopeless."

Satan, she said, "will try to use everything that he can to turn it into a scheme or a tactic to discourage God's people, to dissuade them, to make them feel like they're defeated, even though we already have the victory. We have to then choose: Are we going to operate like victors or are we going to operate like the victims that the enemy wants to use this situation to make us feel that we are?"

Shirer said, "No matter, pandemic or not, I am who God says I am, and I have access to every spiritual blessing that He has given me the privilege to access in the authority of His name.

"I get to choose: Am I going to let fear run my life? Or am I going to let the hope that comes from the position I have in Jesus run my life?

"Do we make choices out of fear, out of anxiety, out of insecurity about the future, or do we say, 'Wait a minute, that's not who we are. That's not what is wired into my spiritual DNA. I'm not going to let the enemy use this as a scheme to now make me start making decisions out of that place.

"I'm a victor. I have access to all the authority and power of God. What kind of decision does that girl make? And then I make those choices and decisions whether I feel like it or not. I've got to stand on the side of victory and operate through that lens."

She added that Christians should choose to see the pandemic, and indeed any other difficulty in life, as an "opportunity for God to be glorified in a unique way" and "for us to be strengthened, our character built, our spiritual backbone fortified."

She declared, "How will we know what it is to feel like a victor unless we've had these circumstances in our life where there was clear obvious demonic opposition and we saw righteousness become a breastplate for us?

"How will we ever know what it's like for the Word of God to become the dagger of the Spirit so that the enemy doesn't stand a chance when he's trying to come against us and our families?"

She exhorted, "Not today, Satan. Not on my watch, not while I'm here, I'm going to be someone who's positioned in prayer. And now we'll get to see what it is to stand firm against the schemes of the devil in prayer for my family.

"What a testimony we have when we literally, physically, practically, put on the armour of God by being righteous believers who gird our minds in the Word of God, who are found on our knees in prayer, who are in the Scriptures so that it becomes a dagger against the schemes of the enemy."