Under Armour

Stop.

Before you read this get your Bible.

I'm waiting.....

Okay. Read Ephesians 6:10-20, slowly.

I love this passage so much and I believe that a large part of Christian's problems come from avoiding this topic, OR intention or not, taking passages like this (ones talking about being a solider) too seriously and becoming a fundamentalist. "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood..." verse 12

The foundation of this text has to begin with verse 10.

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of HIS might."

My humanity does not like these kind of verses. I like to pretend that I am strong enough, wise enough, experienced enough to handle the world by myself.

I am so silly sometimes.

In our life, every single day, we (The Body of Christ) need to be strong IN the Lord.

Trying to do this on our own will only give us hard and bitter hearts. We will either try to destroy sin our our own and become proud or we will become discouraged and give up (I have done both).

The next thing I want to emphasize is verse 13.

"Therefore take up the whole armor of God"

This speaks a lot to how we need to have a better understanding and experience of God. Having a swallow and narrow-minded idea relationship with God is not putting on the whole armor and isn't going to do you or anyone else any amount of good.

Now, to the meat.

Why is it so important that we put on this armor, so to speak?

The rest of verse 13 gives us the answer, "that you may be able to withstand the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm."

I absolutely love the picture being painted here.

God, even though we chose for ourselves to bring evil into this world by rebelling against His Word, gives us the armor to be able to resist this very same evil.

One last point I would like to make is the bold portion of verse 13.

I love that it says having done all.

God knows that we will never defeat sin (thankfully Christ already has) so He doesn't expect us to! But, He also doesn't expect us to lay down. He wants us to stand, and stand firm!

So just as the company Under Armour boasts "We must protect this house" I pray that we Christians would put on the armor of God, stand shoulder to shoulder, and protect this house.

Your brother in the fight,

Fred