“Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to
withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore,
having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of
righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of
peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to
quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation,
and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” –Ephesians 6:13-17
The Armor of God, spoken of in the 6th chapter of Ephesians
is something most Christians have heard about. But for me it wasn’t until
my 20th year, when I was dating the man who is now my husband, that
I heard of the idea of actually putting on this armor. Until then it had been a
nice concept, and I more just thought of the different pieces as almost another
set of things a believer should have or use; Faith, the Word, Salvation,
Righteousness, Truth, and the Gospel of Peace.
But then I witnessed an intense spiritual battle. I saw my
future husband engage in a fight against the enemy in his parent’s parlor, and
afterwards this brought on quite a discussion. One of the things he told me in
the weeks to follow is that he woke up every morning and put on the armor of
God. He took the time to stop, and pray on every single piece by name,
sometimes even mentally visualizing himself putting them on. By the time we
were engaged, he had encouraged me to do the same thing, and had even done it with
me a few times so I got the hang of it.
For some, this seems like an obscure and maybe even
ridiculous practice. Sounds like I’m engaged in some weird supernatural
practice. Well…I don’t think it should be called weird, but it is supernatural.
In the same passage concerning the armor of God we are told the exact reason
that such a practice is needed.
“For we do not wrestle
against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against
the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness
in the heavenly places.” –Ephesians 6:12
When I was first married, I lived in an apartment surrounded
by spiritual warfare. Those who have dealt more with the powers and
principalities know that sometimes the warfare comes with a season of life
where the enemy is desperate to keep you from accomplishing what you were
created to accomplish, and sometimes it can simply be a physical place where
people nearby have made them comfortable/invited them in.
More recently I have been once more engaged in regular
spiritual battle. I created a war room for that specific reason. With
this once again being the season that I have been in, I have once again taken
up the practice of putting on the Armor of God every morning when I wake up.
There are often days where I even notice the need of this in my children’s
lives. I do not pray this with them every day(I probably really should), but
there are days where my older toddler son and I have sat down and prayed on the
armor of God together when we started to notice that the day was taking a poor
turn, the enemy was knocking, and we weren’t dressed and prepared to fight
back.
I even recently asked my musically talented brother to make
me a song about the Armor of God I could share with my boys, since the ones I
found online were terrible and corny. He just got the song back to me a few
days ago, and my sons and I have been singing it together every day.
The one piece of armor I have most on my mind in the last
few months is the shield of faith. As I recognize more and more quickly the
constant arrows that the enemy sends towards me, my husband, and my boys, I am
ever more aware of the incredible need of a shield to ward against them. This has even been re-enforced in my personal devotion time, as the verse reading plan I have been using has a theme for each month, and the theme for August has been Faith. Just a couple of verses that I read every day, and this month it has been Faith.
"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." -Romans 5:1-5
"Commit your way to the Lord;trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday." -Psalms 37:5-6
"Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise again.' Martha said to him, 'I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.' Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.' " -John 11:23-27
"For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." -1 Corinthians 15:16-22
These are just a few of the verses on faith that I have read over the last month. Faith has been such a strong concept on my mind, and a couple mornings ago, God even opened a window for me to talk about it with my oldest son. MiniMe is a child of extremes(and my mother will laugh if she reads that, because she knows exactly where he got that characteristic). He can be giggling one minute and sobbing the next. Some days he is really happy, and others he just seems abnormally grouchy for no apparent reason. So a few months ago, we started doing something interesting. One tough morning I finally just asked him in frustration...
"Are you listening to the bad guys?"
And without missing a step he just nods and says with tears, "Yeah...."
"Are they telling you that Mommy is mad, or that Mommy doesn't love you, or that you are a bad boy?"
"Yeah..."
"Well you need to tell the bad guys to go away. You need to listen to Jesus instead. Jesus gave you a Mommy who loves you very much, and Jesus loves you very much and says you are a treasure to Him."
MiniMe grinned really big, a couple of tears still glistening on his perfect little cheeks and shouts "Go away bad guys! I listen to Jesus!"
Yeah...that is my child. I cannot say for sure where my very young son is in terms of salvation, and I'd rather not get into a theological debate about it in the comments, but my son absolutely adores Jesus. My heart just wants to sing when he begs me to read out of his Jesus Storybook Bible, or when he tells me he is going to "sing to Jesus" every night when I put him in bed, or when he tells complete strangers in Walmart that "Jesus keeps me safe." He talks about Jesus more than anyone else. And my child never stops talking.
So now when he is grouchy I often ask him "Are you listening to the bad guys?" And he'll stop his fussing and say very loudly "Go away bad guys, I listen to Jesus!!" It is his catchphrase now. I am in awe of my child's faith. And that brings me to the conversation we had a couple of mornings ago. The boys and I were eating breakfast, and I was reading one of my small sections of scripture about faith, and MiniMe just pipes up.
"I listen to bad guys a lot."
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah, I listen to them a lot."
I put down the Bible. "Well the Bible tells us that the bad guys are going to try to tell us bad things a lot. He calls them the flaming arrows of the evil one. So do you need something to keep away the arrows of the bad guys?"
"Yeah!"
"You need a shield of faith, buddy. We are told that our faith, like I was just reading about in the Bible, is what keeps the bad guys away. Would you like it if I made you a shield of faith to help you remember to listen to Jesus?"
He nodded, although not really sure what I meant, and before the morning was over, I had made MiniMe(as well as Little One, because he wanted one too) a shield of faith.
Mini Me's Shield. Made from cardboard, colored, and with the Greek word for Faith. Used old t-shirt to make handle on back.
Both Shields.
The only challenging part was putting a decent handle on them, so I cut an old t-shirt into strips, braided them, and then put the ends through a small hole on either side of the cross before making a neat knot.
I love when God decides to teach multiple members of a family the same thing so they can grow closer to God in the same area at the same time. Have you ever seen this happen in your family? I would love to hear about it in the comments!
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