Tag: walk

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The Breastplate of Righteousness

“with the breastplate of righteousness in place,” Ephesians 6:14b

The breastplate was a part of a soldier’s armor used to protect the soldier’s heart, lungs, kidneys and spine, all vital organs to survival.  Also, in Jesus’s time, the heart was considered to be the center of a person’s character, so if your heart was good, you were good. No matter how it was looked at, the heart was an organ that needed protected. Our hearts need protected as well, both physically and emotionally.

When we love someone, we don’t say “I love you with all my mind”, no we say “I love you with all my heart.” When we talk about believing something to be true, we don’t believe it only with our thoughts or mind, but we know it to be true when we believe it with all of our heart. As a child, we feel loved by our family and a sense of belonging to them in our heart, not just as a fact that we know.

I believe Paul used the breastplate for the concept of righteousness because knowing that we are the righteousness of God through Christ is one thing, but feeling it in our hearts is something that is on a deeper level. The devil also knows that we carry our feelings in our heart and if he wants to attack us then he comes after our heart. When we have negative thoughts about ourselves and how imperfect we are, we can dismiss them easier when they are only thoughts, but when we put emotion to those thoughts, it becomes very hard to stop feeling those emotions. We need to protect our heart from all the arrows of lies that the devil will shoot as us in an attempt to have us doubt how much we are loved by God. He would love for us to believe that we are too far gone to be forgiven.

We should put on the breastplate of righteousness every morning to protect ourselves, our hearts, from the enemy who sneaks around only wanting to steal our peace, kill our hope and destroy our eternal life. Don’t let the devil win, make sure and wear your breastplate of righteousness today.

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The Belt of Truth

“Stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist,” Ephesians 6:14a

The belt was an important part of the soldier’s armor as it held the breastplate in place as well as carried the sheath for the sword. It is no wonder Paul mentions it first. In John 14:6, Jesus is comforting His disciples as He talked about leaving them by telling them that He is the way, the truth, and the life. So what does Jesus mean when He said he was the truth? Jesus is telling His disciples and us that He is The Authority regarding spiritual wisdom and reality. If you want to know how to live a spiritual life that is focused on the truth, then following Jesus is the answer.

Through His word, God teaches us how to think, how to feel, how to react to situations and how to live in accordance to His will. He made us to be in a relationship with Him, to live in such a way that we are walking in His will. We can only do that when we know the Truth about who God is and we find that out by studying the Bible and commentaries. The truth is very important, it is where we all need to begin in our walk of faith and without the truth, the rest of the armor falls apart. It is hard to know who we are in Christ, which we will talk about tomorrow, if we don’t know the truth about who Christ is. Our armor needs the belt of truth to connect the rest of it together.

Do you know who God is? God is the creator of heaven and earth, He is the reason we are alive and able to seek Him. He created us to be in fellowship with Him, He is our Father and we are His children. Following God is the only true way to live and is the only way we are able to live in eternity forever with Him.

I implore you this morning, to dig into God’s word and find out for yourself who God is and what the truth means to you. For me, knowing that the devil is the father of lies and that God is the father of truth helps me to stay focused on making sure my thoughts line up with what I know is in God’s word about who He is and how He wants me to live my life so that I can glorify and honor Him in all that I do. Trusting God, who is the truth, is the best and only path that we should be on in this life. I pray that as you search God’s word, that you find out the wonderful truth about God and build your walk with Him on that truth, which is a sure foundation. Have a wonderful day.

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The Armor of God

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” Ephesians 6:10-11 NIV

In this chapter of Ephesians, Paul was giving instructions to the people of Ephesus about how to behave but also about how to fight when it comes to the devil and the fight for our souls. He begins in verse 10 to encourage them to be strong, to rely on God and His power because God is all powerful and can do anything. As a child of God, we each are able to ask God for help knowing He is there for us. Paul also warns the Ephesians about being aware of the devil and his schemes. The devil was just as active in Paul’s time as he is in our time, and we have a God who is just as strong today as He was in Paul’s time.

God knows the devil and what the devil wants, which is to take everyone away from God. So in addition to the Holy Spirit, God gave us tools or weapons that we can use to defend ourselves against the devil. In the following verses, Paul explains the tools/weapons that God gave us and he does it by pulling them all together and calling them the armor of God. The armor that Paul is describing is spiritual in nature, which is what we need when we are going up against the devil, a spiritual being. Sometimes spiritual concepts can be too abstract for us to truly grasp so God has Paul use an analogy to help clarify all of the spiritual ways we can defeat the devil’s plans to lure us away from God.

Paul uses something the people of Ephesus would have understood all too well, the armor of a Roman solider. This analogy is still useful today because although we do not have Roman soldiers walking around us all day long, we do know what the armor looked like. Also, we know that our soldiers today wear armor or pieces of gear which protect them in much the same way as the pieces of armor that a Roman soldier wore, protected him. In the verses that follow verses 10 and 11, Paul then links each weapon to a piece of the armor in a way of taking the spiritual tool/weapon and making it tangible so that everyone could visualize how to use that spiritual tool.

How blessed are we that our God is willing to give us the tools we need to fight against our enemy after all the times that we have let Him down. I am amazed at how God keeps forgiving me, a sinner, each time I ask for forgiveness and He hasn’t walked away from me saying He has had enough. We are all imperfect but we are not too much for God to deal with. He created us, loves us and is willing to support us, as a loving parent does, each step of the way. He will walk beside us and guide us, if we let Him, which is the key to all of it. We have to let Him, because God did not create robots, He gave us free will. Free Will enables us to be able to choose to have a relationship with God or not, to choose to want Him in our lives or not and choose to love Him or not.

So, which choice have you made? I have made mine and I have chosen God! You still have time to make a choice, which one will it be? Have a wonderful day.

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Anxiety

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6 NIV

I love this verse because it makes it sound so easy. Just don’t be anxious. That is so much easier to tell someone else to do than to hear yourself or try to do sometimes. For non-believers, it can be very hard because they are trying to not be anxious, all on their own.

When we struggle with worry and anxiety, we are actually stepping back away from our faith. When we worry, we are trying to figure out how to control the outcome of a situation that we are either in or believe we may be in sometime in the future. The only true control we have over things is the control of how we respond to our own feelings, how we respond to others, and how we respond to the events that are occurring either around us or to us.

We do not have control over what someone else thinks, feels or does. We don’t have control over the situations that are happening around us. We only have control of ourselves and there are times when we don’t have very much control over that. However, the wonderful news is that as believers we are not on our own, we have God to help us. God is right there with us and will give us strength to do things we do not believe we can do, such as not worry or be anxious.

In Philippians 4:6, God, through Paul, has given us the very method that we are to use to calm ourselves, to take our faith and exercise it by giving the worry or anxiety to God. Paul wrote that we are to not be anxious about anything, but in every situation we are to pray. We are to pray and ask God for what we need. There is an extra part in the verse that we may find difficult to do while we are praying and asking God for what we need and that is the part of the verse that says we are to do this with thanksgiving.

Who is thinking about being thankful when they are in the middle of feeling anxious? Not many of us but that is what we are instructed to do, be thankful. What are we to be thankful for? That varies from person to person, but a good place to start is to be thankful that God wants to be and is your God. That He wants to be involved in your life and that He loves you. Those are some very large things to be thankful for. This may be hard to do at times but being purposeful in expressing our thankfulness to God in prayer is a step towards exercising our faith and giving our worries and anxieties to God.

I pray that as you go about your day today, that you are able to express your thankfulness to God for who He is and how much He loves you. Have a great day.