Thursday, April 20, 2023
In the Heat of the Battle
Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. (Ephesians 6:11 NLT)
Have you ever been humming along in your life as a Christian, feeling good about your walk with God, when suddenly you were facing all kinds of temptations, attacks, trials, and difficulties?
You thought, “What is going on? Have I done something to deserve all of this?”
No, it’s called spiritual warfare.
Instead of trying to find a comfortable foxhole where we can wait out the battle, let’s take clear steps as believers to move forward and go on the offensive spiritually.
Fear has paralyzed some Christians. They worry about the devil doing this or that. But we need to stop worrying about his next move and instead let him worry about what we are going to do under the command of Jesus Christ.
There are two things that we need to understand about the spiritual battle. First, we will win in the end. And second, our adversary, the devil, moves in relatively predictable patterns. Therefore, we can prepare ourselves.
If we want to prevail in the field of spiritual battle, then we need to know about the spiritual armor that God has made available to us. The apostle Paul identifies it for us in Ephesians 6.
Paul had a lot of time to study armor, because on more than one occasion, he was chained to a Roman soldier. No doubt he asked some questions about the various pieces and how the soldier used them in battle.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we are in the heat of battle—a spiritual battle, that is. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 10 that “we are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons” (verses 3–4 NLT).
Let’s make sure that we put on our spiritual armor, because the battle is raging.
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