Shield of Faith
Shield of Faith
In every situation take the shield of faith, and with it you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. (Eph. 6:16)
The Battle
Imagine if you went through your day with a continual awareness that the devil is constantly firing flaming arrows at you in the form of lies, accusations, and temptations. Imagine, also, that you have been given a shield able to deflect these arrows harmlessly to the ground.
Well, both things are true. That is the reality you face every day. You are constantly being fed lies and deceptions from the enemy. That’s all he traffics in. Too often, though, we don’t recognize what he’s up to. (He is deceptive, after all.) We wrongly assume that every thought that enters our minds originates with us. Not so. We have an enemy, and he is out “to steal and to kill and to destroy” (John 10:10). We need the shield of faith!
The Strategy
In 2 Corinthians 10:3–5, Paul outlines what taking up the shield of faith looks like: “For though we live in the body, we do not wage war in an unspiritual way, since the weapons of our warfare are not worldly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to obey Christ.” Taking up the shield of faith means subjecting all of our thoughts to the Word of God, and if something doesn’t line up, we reject it.
Bottom Line
Faith is a gift that grows by exposure to the Word. The stronger our faith, the more we can recognize and dismiss the enemy’s lies and deceptions.