You Better Go and Get Your Armor

Ephesians 6 talks about the Armor of God.

We, like the Christians in Ephesus, are in a battle. But the battle, if we are honest, is against ourselves.

When I started out my time in college I wanted to change the world. I envisioned leading a multimillion dollar corporation that was completely nonprofit and totally run by volunteers to give homeless people a place to come for psychiatric, physical, emotional, and spiritual treatment. I envisioned a homeless hospital.

I got into class at Belmont and decided I wanted to learn everything in its original language. I wanted to read books in Latin. I wanted to study everything from Genesis to Revelation. I wanted to come up with the new system and new thought that would revolutionize Christianity forever. I knew I could crack the case on who the Historical Jesus was and I knew I could even understand Freud if I just spent enough time thinking. I was eager and I was ready.

But the classes got hard. Languages are tough. Life happens. I don’t even know what a postpositive is in English, not to mention Hebrew. I have only spent time with a handful of homeless people. I don’t know the first thing about running a nonprofit. I know zero words in Latin. I narrowed my attention to only the Gospels. I don’t have a new theory for Christianity. Your guess for the Historical Jesus is as good as mine.

There is a trap we all have to be careful of – sometimes we give up our enthusiasm of faith seeking understanding and replace it with the reasonable. We start with lofty ambitions but we give in to the struggles of life and the routine. It is here we find ourselves battling.

Our armor protects us from our own reasonableness.

My interpretation of Ephesians 6 is the Spirit reveals how we use our battle armor in prayer. We are given truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and a Word from God in prayer. It is what saves us from living life on our own. It connects us with God and the life God is asking us to live. Prayer gives us the armor to live for God. God dwells within us and we are no longer ‘suited’ for a normal life.

To have the Spirit of God dwelling within the heart of someone who chooses a reasonable faith is like having armor trapped within a case in a museum. You are not intended to be a display where people can look at God in you from a safe distance. You are on the battlefield where the Spirit roams wild and free in your life. You are the recipient of the God who cannot be tamed and of a faith that must not be tamed. You are no longer a prisoner of time and space, but a citizen of the kingdom of God. God is not a sedative that keeps you calm and under control by dulling your senses. God does quite the opposite. God awakens your spirit to be truly alive in prayer.

Prayer unleashes the God within us.

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