Whose Kill Chain Are You Closing?

Last year, I got a message from a leader I had met exactly once, about four years earlier. We hadn’t had any communication since. He was relaunching a local chapter of a Christian business organization, and he wanted to know if I would consider leading it.

I knew immediately it was a distraction.

I had just recently stepped down as co-President of a regional Christian Chamber. I prayed about that decision for a full year to be sure I was hearing God correctly. He was clear: in this season, I was not to lead another organization. Alongside my primary responsibilities as co-founder of Kingdom REACH Leadership, my attention belonged to building out The Disruptor’s Council, to preparing Spirit & Truth Global for its relaunch, and to my daughters. My older daughter was stepping into young adulthood, and I needed to be there for her as she navigated what was next. My younger daughter needed more of my time too.

So I declined and told him the Lord had instructed me to focus elsewhere.

Some time later, he came back. They had found their new leader, and now he wanted me to consider helping him get the chapter off the ground. Same ask, smaller package.

I declined again. And then…nothing. I haven’t heard from him since.

Here’s the thing. A few years ago, I would have said yes to that first message.

And every yes like it helped close someone else’s kill chain while mine stayed open.

Every Assignment Is a Kill Chain

Inside The Disruptor’s Council, we’ve been studying what it means to close your kill chain while breaking the enemy’s. Christian Brose, former Senior Policy Advisor to Senator John McCain, describes a kill chain as a sequence of actions that moves toward an intended effect against a target. He breaks it down to understanding what’s happening, deciding what to do, and taking action. We use it as a framework for how an assignment moves toward completion and where that movement gets interrupted.

Closing your chain means taking your assignment through every decision and action it takes to finish it: the operational change, the leadership team you’re developing, the launch. It has to be specific enough that you’d know whether it’s done. (Can you name yours right now?)

Breaking the enemy’s chain means interrupting whatever is working to undermine that assignment. Deception influences a decision. Offense grows into division. Fear turns into avoidance. An appealing opportunity quietly eats the capacity your assignment needs.

Both chains run at the same time. You keep building while you watch for what’s coming against the build, and your dependence on God stays at the center of both. We don’t control every outcome, and we can’t fully map the enemy’s intentions. We can steward what’s in front of us.

The Enemy Used My "Yes"

I fill gaps. When a need arises, I see the hole, step into it, and fill it so things go smoothly. God wanted me to fill some of those gaps, but He never asked me to lay myself down completely in the process. Every need I saw became a yes, and every yes became work I managed for someone else. For years, I shape-shifted and code-switched to meet other people’s needs, losing the essence of who God created me to be.

A few years before I stepped down, I started dealing with health issues. Fewer than a handful of people knew. I kept pushing, kept neglecting my own care, and let people pull on me at the expense of my well-being. (Side note: needy people don’t have a habit of stopping to ask how you’re doing.)

I could sense the grace lifting and shifting. What was once easy became unusually hard. Yet I kept plowing forward in service to others.

Until I crashed.

I was closing everyone’s kill chain but mine, and I called it the Lord’s work.

God took me through a hard pruning season after that. He showed me how far I had strayed from the person He had created me to be and what He had called me to do because I was so focused on helping others do what He called them to do. That pruning restored the first link: I finally understood what was happening. The year of prayer before I stepped down settled the decision. And when the invitation came, declining it twice was the action that kept the enemy’s kill chain from closing on me again.

Nehemiah Wouldn’t Come Down

In our (The Disruptor’s Council’s) spiritual warfare series, we’ve been reading through the book of Nehemiah, and he shows both chains working at once. His assignment was the wall. When threats came, the people prayed, set a guard, and kept building with weapons at their sides. When the opposition switched to invitations, Nehemiah saw the intent behind them and refused: “I am doing important work and cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3, CSB). They asked four times. He gave the same answer four times.

The invitation was the enemy looking for a way to break Nehemiah’s chain, but Nehemiah’s refusal broke the enemy’s. And in only 52 days, Nehemiah was able to close his own kill chain. 

Stuck Studying the Enemy

Maybe you’re in the opposite ditch. You’ve spent months praying against the opposition and examining everyone’s motives, while the decision on your desk sits untouched and your team waits for direction. Paranoia and distraction have you stuck. If your assignment gets less attention as your focus on the enemy grows, he has interrupted your chain. Recognizing a threat creates a responsibility to respond: pray, seek the counsel of the Holy Spirit, clarify expectations, address harmful behavior, and follow it all the way through to action.

Moving Too Fast to See the Break

This was me, and I suspect I’m not alone. Maybe your company keeps losing momentum after the same unresolved conflict, or your people have stopped bringing you bad news because of how you react. You’re exhausted, every rushed decision creates the next problem, and you keep pressing forward because stopping to deal with things head-on feels like you’re falling behind.

When the grace lifts and everything gets hard, pay attention. That’s information that shouldn’t be dismissed.

Be honest about what’s yours, too. Poor planning, thin resources, ordinary disagreement, and personal mistakes need correcting. You can’t rebuke a bad budget. Calling something spiritual warfare cannot excuse us from correcting what falls within our stewardship.

Progress that depends on disobedience requires immediate examination, even when the business appears to benefit. That includes closing someone else’s chain at the expense of your own, even when everyone is applauding you for it.

Whether you’re stuck studying the enemy or moving too fast to see the break, it ends the same way: the enemy’s chain closes, and yours doesn’t.

Find the Break in Your Chain

Answer these honestly:

• What is the one assignment God gave you for this season, specific enough that you’d know if it’s finished?

• What have you said yes to in the last 90 days that closes someone else’s kill chain instead of yours?

Since I stopped closing everyone else’s chain, the Council is moving powerfully, and none of it has come at the expense of my primary responsibilities at Kingdom REACH Leadership. God has given us so much clarity with Spirit & Truth Global that we’re preparing for a full launch in 2027 as both a global and local ministry. I’ve witnessed my older daughter grow in her confidence navigating real-life adult situations. (Adulting, as we call it.) And I’ve had more quality time with my younger daughter and gotten her connected with programs and people who have enhanced her life significantly.

Your kill chain is the one you’ll give account for. Close it while you break the enemy’s.

Whose kill chain have you been closing this year, and where is yours still open? Tell me in the comments.