Suited Up From Head To Toe!

 

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Ephesians 6:13-18

For the last several days I have gotten up and donned my paint clothes, they have so much paint on them they practically stand by themselves. I have an old long sleeved shirt that protects my upper body and arms, old pants that covers my legs, my old shoes that covers my feet but I usually neglect to cover my head which gets me into trouble sometimes.  Many times I mistakenly put my head in places it does not need to be.

As I look at the scripture in Ephesians 6 about God’s armor, I think of myself dressing to protect myself against the spattering of paint, but instead of clothing I put God’s armor in place. I begin with the belt of truth buckled around my waist. Truth would come from scripture and I have that one taken care of since I love to read the bible. I love the truths that the bible tells us is actually God breathed. When I am into the scriptures I feel God talking to me. Phew! Okay one piece in place!

Now the breastplate of righteousness. Okay, I had a hard time with this one because “righteous” sounds well….so…..righteous. But when I looked up "righteous" in the dictionary, I found it means being right with God. God gives me an okay on that one too because the bibles says if we confess our sin (for we have all sinned) and ask Jesus to come into our lives we are right with Him.  So I am righteous not by anything I could do on my own but because of what Jesus has done for me.

Now moving on to my feet, verse 15 says I should be fitted with readiness that comes with the gospel of peace. Readiness for what? Readiness to spread the good news and the peace that knowing God brings! I am there! I want everyone to know the same Jesus that I know!

The shield of faith is so important because our faith is what protects us from the devils attempts to throw us off course. Faith is knowing what I cannot see with my eyes right now.

Next comes the helmet of salvation. This is what protects our minds from the works of the devil. Just like, when I am painting without something to cover my head I get into the wet paint, I can also find my head in the wrong places like I did a few nights ago. I came across a program that interested me on The History channel, good place, right? The program started out rather funny, sighting history or more like trivia about characters that we would find in our history books but it soon became what I decided was a bit “off colored”. Knowing this I continued to watch since the history part of it was very entertaining. I soon found it very “off colored” but hoping those parts were isolated, I continued to watch. It wasn’t long until it became downright “filthy” and I had, had enough and I finally switched channels but not before my mind was polluted with the filth. We need to filter what goes into our minds because as the bible says “as a man thinks, so is he”. Do we listen to too much gossip or negative talk? Too much news if not balanced with God’s Good News may cause us to be off balanced. Pure thoughts are what God expects as we put on the helmet of Salvation to protect our thinking.

Verse 18 says we are then ready to pray in the power of the spirit for anything and everything that we need and for the spiritual needs of others. What a blessing that is ours, that God in His wisdom did not leave us defenseless but prescribed a formula to keep us safe from the devils plans for our lives.

Now where is that old paint hat?