1/102013 Continued

This reminds me of something I discovered man years ago, but didn’t continue the practice …notice the “I Didn’t”.  If I would have been seeking God first, He would have been dressing me for battle.  Eph. 6:13-17  talks about the various pieces of armor that we must cloak ourselves with daily because we are in a battle and we must be ready to fight.  Every piece of our battle equipment is directly connected to the word of God.  Let’s just look at them for a moment.

I also want you to see the order in which they are presented in Scripture because it represents a pragmatic approach to memorizing this important passage.  First, we gird our loins with the truth. Second; we put on the breastplate of righteousness.  Third we shod our feet with the gospel of peace.  Fourth , we pick up our shield of faith which will repel the fiery darts of the devil. Fifth, we put on our helmet of salvation, and take up our sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.  The pragmatism is found in the simple of act of doing this in order and recognizing  what each piece of our battle armor is for.  We will ultimately learn the verse, but more importantly, we will experience the comfort and protection that putting on this armor affords us.  I would sometimes try to consistently read the Word  in the early hours of the day, but often fell asleep or failed to prioritize this time and would find myself trying to read the bible before I went to bed, maybe out of some sort of guilt or obligation. Can you see the futility involved this “going through the motion” relationship with God, not to mention the total absurdity of going into battle without your armor.. no wonder I was often living a defeated, powerless, and certainly far from abundant life.  You see it wasn’t that I didn’t know about the significance of the armor or that I couldn’t find it.  It was right there in my closet hanging neatly and clean and shiny because it hadn’t been used.  Duh!  Trust me when I tell you that it is imperative that you incorporate the time for God to spiritually suit you up for battle BEFORE THE First arrows are shot by your enemy.  We need to be fortified and we cannot do it ourselves, God must be the initiator and will be if we are seeking Him first.  I find this interesting as we see over and over the importance of allowing God to empower us to walk with Him, and for us to not take the lead or the Throne if you will, so that we are in harmony with God’s will for our lives and He is helping us to see the more we surrender to Him, the more we want to depend and trust Him; albeit in child like faith.

The other day a long time dear friend of ours came by and my heart was grieving for his situation.  He is very close to getting a divorce and before me was an empty shell of a man who had lost all hope of ever saving his marriage. Here is the efforts of my loving on him and trying to console him.  I told him to please just go before God in a quiet place with no distractions and talk to Him aloud and openly honest. I shared with him that I didn’t know what was going to happen or anything about what the answer could be, but that both of us did know WHO does have the answers.  I shared with my dear friend that he could not fix the situation or change his wife or anything else, but God could. I shared with Him that God would not turn Him away, but would do just the opposite.  He would become so present in his life that He would actually allow my friend to take a breath and relax and to have the hollowness be filled with the unfailing love and mercy of God. 

I am not sharing this to sound “spiritual”, but rather to let you see the simple yet profound discovery of knowing and trusting God first, and then let Him heal your brokenness, fill you with his love and peace, and show you his faithfulness.  This is  Practical Christianity 101 and I missed it for a long time, and I am saddened to think that many others out there are missing it too.

I also wanted to mention that I asked my friend how his walk with God was going and he responded by telling me he was going to church pretty regularly, but he wasn’t reading his bible as much as he should, but overall he was doing ok.  Wrong!  When our friends tell us this it should sound off alarms in our heads because it is the same response we probably have given ourselves many times over the years. I would like to suggest to you that this response is one of obvious weakness and there is no joy or abundant life being experienced here.  It is a real indication that we are fooling ourselves into thinking we are ok, but we probably need more discipline implemented in our walk so we can be more faithful. Wrong again! What we need is more God.  We can never ever have enough God and the more we begin to truly experience this, the more we want.