In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Ephesians 6: 16 [NIV]
Ephesians 6: 16 [NIV]
This verse, to me, conjures up images of police in riot gear facing rioters throwing flaming bottles of petrol – or perhaps some dark scene from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Somehow the “good guys” are always the one facing the fire-throwers, holding up the shields.
How strong is your Shield of Faith? The shield is something we don’t just strap on and forget about – we need to pick it up, hold it up and put it in the way of any arrows. As long as we hold our shield up (hold our guard), we will be able to deflect the evil attack. When things are going badly, and it seems like we are under severe attack, there is nothing we can rely on more than our faith. It is by faith that we can hold on to the truth we talked about on Monday. We are believing in “things unseen”, but we have the Bible, our Christian friends and the life-experience and teaching (discipleship) we have received – these all help us to deflect the flaming arrows.
If you want to strengthen your shield of faith, Hebrews 11 is a good place to start – it includes some examples of people with faith in the Bible including Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Sarah. Read Hebrews 11 online if you have time.
Lord, strengthen my faith, let me use the Shield of Faith to ward off the attacks I face this week. In Jesus name, Amen.
Dave MacLellan
No comments:
Post a Comment