Armour of God - Who Are You Fighting?

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” (Ephesians 6:10)

This is the exhortation that Paul gave just before he launched into an admonition to remember what enemy we face in spiritual warfare, just as it was the same admonition that God gave to Joshua just before he and the Israelites marched into their own warfare to claim the land the Lord had promised to His people.

And I will tell you that whether you know it or not, you are in the midst of a spiritual battle. There are unseen battles for souls, for our attention, for our strength, and for our witness in Christ. If you’re going to fight successfully, you must heed Paul’s warning to be strong in the Lord. There is no strength outside of the Lord – outside of an abiding, intimate relationship with the Lord Who is over all.

So how is your strength? Are you and the Lord tight? Is your relationship with Him one of trust; of learning more of Who He is every day through the Word He has given to us; of spending time every day in communion with Him, talking to Him, but also listening to Him?

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6-12)

There have always been wars upon the earth. This kind of war is just as detrimental, maybe even more so, because it’s an unseen war. People tend to deal with what they see, but we are reminded that the bigger battle is with what we don’t see.

This is who our enemy is: the spiritually wicked rulers of darkness who dwell in the heavenlies; the former angels who chose to fall from grace and who now live as enemies of the Lord of Light and of anyone who chooses to follow Him.

Our enemy is not our spouse, it’s not our children, it’s not our neighbors, it’s not our co-workers, and it’s certainly not our brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s not even ourselves, although we can allow the enemy to use us against ourselves. Oh, the enemy would love for us to think it is. He is the ancient and evil warrior whose deceptions and traps are well worn. He knows how to cause our focus to be linear rather than to point the finger of guilt where it belongs: squarely at him.

So we need to take our eyes off of the people we’ve thought we had some sort of dispute with, forgive them, and remember that the enemy is only using the situation to keep us angry and unforgiving.

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:13)

Because this is a different kind of war we need to have a different kind of armour. We can’t fight this enemy with trillions of dollars of military jets and guns and bulletproof vests.

God has given us spiritual armour and if we wish to stand at the end of each battle and at the end of the war it would behoove us to become an expert in the usage of each piece of equipment, put it on, and never remove it. The enemy never takes time off and neither should we.

This is longer than I thought so I will start next time with our spiritual armour. In the meantime, let’s stop warring with one another and forgive each other. We have bigger fish to fry.

The reality is, we’re on the same team with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should be fighting our common enemy together. Rather than helping the enemy by tearing one another down with angry words and spiteful attitudes, we need to be encouraging and praying for each other so that we can all have the strength we need to keep fighting and find our way to our Promised Land.