Encouragement

ARMORED AND READY TO DEFEAT THE DEVIL

by Christian Belyea
02/13/18
Free to Share
Author requests article critique

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

ARMORED AND READY TO DEFEAT THE DEVIL!

By

Christian Belyea

     Satan…Wants…You… 

     Plain and simple.

     He wants me, too.

     And although he has lost the war for our souls (that was won on a cross at Calvary), Satan seeks to sabotage our relationship with the Redeemer, our faith in the Father, God’s program for our lives, and our testimonies.  His will is to render us ineffective at winning others to Christ.  And get this: He will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to destroy us!  He is wily, and he is ruthless, and he hates us with all his blackened heart.

     Therefore, we must always be armored and ready to resist his attacks.    

     It is written: “Finally, my brothers and sisters, be strong in the LORD, and in the power of His might.  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 heavenly places.  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.  Stand, therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.  And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:10-17).

     “Be strong in the LORD and in the power of His might” simply means we must take a stand when the evil one attacks us, knowing we have God’s omnipotent power residing inside us.  Standing our ground means having unwavering faith in our Father.  He will protect us with His formidable power against the foul one himself—Satan!  Yes, that disgusting dragon is bent on bullying believers into bending to do his will and not to do God’s.  In short, he wants to destroy us any way he can.  Therefore, he is always scheming of ways to do so.  But we must believe God can and will see us safely through this insecure life, sealed with his love, and safely delivered into eternal summer days of bliss and blessings one day.  But while the war for our souls is over, the battles for our wills still wages on.  And so, God has granted us spiritual armor.

     We must don this defensive armor the Dear One has so kindly provided us with to defend ourselves against our dastardly enemy—the devil himself—or we may become casualties, injured to the point that we are unable to glorify God with our lives.  Or win others to Christ!  Yes, my friends, Satan, is out to fracture our faith in the Father (not our salvation, mind you, just our faith).  In other words, he wants to punch our faith in the face!  He also is in pursuit of pulverizing God’s perfect plan for our lives.  And no wonder…for disciples of Jesus dent the devil’s domain when we live decent lives and do good deeds that point others to the only true Deity—the Lord Jesus Christ!  To be sure, the trickster tries to tell us that the truth of God’s Word cannot be trusted (doubts he whispers whimsically into our ears, using “I” statements instead of “you,” statements, so that we think they were our own thoughts).  How deviously clever he is!  Furthermore, the wicked one wants us to view God’s Word as worthless, or at best, as riddle and rhyme, and certainly not “with the times.”  Worse, that menacing maniac means to render our relationship with our Redeemer in ruins.  For our connection with Jesus will surely be disconnected by sin.  And finally, the devil wants to tear to pieces the testimony of our purity by tempting us to sin so that others can call us quacks and phonies.  Yes, friends, the lost indeed are watching to see if we are truly happy being holy, or if we are just being holier-than-thou hypocrites!  And when the latter is the case, us influencing the lost to turn to God is a lost cause!

    “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 heavenly places.”  That’s right!  We are not fighting with people who oppose us, but rather with demons who despise us. Our real fight is not against people who are rebelling against our religion…it is against foul spirits, who are fallen angels, freaks who play head games with peoples’ minds, planting thoughts like seeds that become weeds in peoples’ heads that we believers are not to be believed.  These devils tell folks that Christ is just a crutch for crippled people who are oblivious to “reality.”  These evil entities impress upon everyone who is lost that we believers are just using God like a drug!  But they have more than one tactic, theses treacherous ones.  They also sow the seed that God doesn’t even exist…and that even if He does exist He is nothing but a spoil sport, a party pooper, and a vengeful and jealous jerk.  Yes, these unseen enemies are trying to trip us up every chance they get.  To be sure, the devil has set aside a demon for every dear believer.  And this demon is watching our every decision, hanging off our every word, just waiting for the chance to sink us like a shipwreck, so that our lives won’t count for the kingdom!  But take heart, comrades.   God has assigned an angel of the LORD encamping all around those of us who fear Him, an angel who is fighting those foes unfailingly on our behalf (Psalms 34:7).

     Therefore, I cannot stress enough how imperative it is that we put on God’s protective spiritual armor.  It will assist the angels in defending us against that ancient evil one’s furious wish to annihilate our faith and to tempt us to turn away from righteousness and to wrap our sorry arms around sin.  If Satan can accomplish this, he has succeeded in cutting off our connection with God…with a God who only wants us to get right with Him as soon as possible each time we surrender to Satan’s sugar-coated tempting treats.  Treats, I might add, which are only candies cunningly laced with cyanide.  For God is our Friend.  And Jesus said we were His friends in John 15:14 of the Bible.  Yes, Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.”  And as God’s friends, He just wants us to confess our sins and to carry on once more in closeness with Him.  Failing to repent leaves us in a sinful state that keeps us cut off from God’s grace and blessings.  That’s right.   Our holy God cannot handle sin’s presence, even though He will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

     To that effect, the first piece of our spiritual armor is to bind ourselves with the belt of truth.  This means telling the truth in all circumstances to God, to ourselves, and to others.  Even if the truth is troubling.  Truth is, lies leave us open to demonic deception and influence in our lives, especially unconfessed ones!  Let us never tell lies to get out of doing something we don’t want to do, to go someplace we don’t want to go, or to give something we don’t want to give.  To be sure, these so-called little white lies are simply fibs from the father of lies—Satan, from whom they originate.  For Jesus told us succinctly that Satan is the father of all lies (John 8:44).  And we don’t want to act like he’s our father, do we?  Of course not.  God in heaven is our true Father…a Father who gets terribly wounded by our lying words (Proverbs 12:19).  Better to say, “No, I don’t want to do something, or go somewhere, or give you something, because at least we are being truthful.  But we must always remember to tell the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).  Yes, the truth may hurt some people sometimes, but better to be beaten with the truth by a friend than to be battered by the flatteries of a foe.  We simply must be truthful to God, to others, and to ourselves—even if others get offended.  God won’t.  And He never has with me, even when I have shared my darkest secrets with Him.  That’s how loving and faithful He is.  And we must not worry about other people getting angry with us if we were kind when we told them the truth.  Peoples’ anger cannot pounce across the room at us.  They are angry because they choose to be angry, not because we’ve made them so.  Besides, unchecked little lies eventually become big lies.  And big lies eventually turn into lapses in our behavior, rendering us impotent in advancing the kingdom.  Which is exactly what Satan wants!

     Next, we are to draw on the breastplate of righteousness…which really means practicing the principles, or the truth rather, that God has impressed upon us.  We are to do this is in public and in private.  And of all things, we must never do in private what we would be ashamed for people to see us do or say in public.  Besides, God is watching.  And so are the angels!  Bearing the breastplate of righteousness always means trying to live as righteously as we can.  If we don’t, the devil will find chinks in our armor—chinks he can exploit to tempt us to sin and to draw us away from God.  In short, living righteously is in always trying to do the next right thing.  Righteousness draws us closer to God.  And Satan won’t hang around too long when too much goodness is going down!

     After that, we are told to always have our feet ready with the preparation of the gospel of peace.  This means that we’ve grasped the gist of the gospel of Jesus Christ and are ready and willing to share it with others if they want us to, or if the Spirit of God prompts us to do so.  No, we do not have to stand on a soapbox on a street corner, eyes wide, red-faced, spittle flying from our foaming mouths as we warn people to repent or die.  God has not called us to be flailing fanatics.  Such behavior only pushes people away; it doesn’t pull them in.  No.  Rather, we are expected to speak up when someone brings up spiritual matters.  Or we can pray to the Holy Spirit that He would prompt that person to whom we are speaking to bring up the matter themselves.  Works every time for me.

     Above all, we are informed to take up the shield of faith, so we can quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one…which means knowing and using God’s Word to tell Satan to take off when he is tempting us to sin.  Yes, when we sin, we only hurt God (Satan’s foremost agenda) before we ever anger God.  Believe me, hurt always comes before hate.  And God, in whose image we were made, is no exception.  When we give in to sin, God cries too.  Jesus proved it when He wept over the death of His friend, Lazarus (John 11:35).  But don’t get me wrong.  God hates our sins, not us.  Remember, also, when the wicked one tempted Jesus in the wilderness when He was at His weakest?   Jesus used the Word of God against that rotten egg, too.  Granted, Jesus did have to wield the Word three times before the hateful one hightailed it outta happy town on the slimy serpent he slithered in on, but he finally took the hint.  And at times, we will have to persist, also.  But the evil one will get the message, sooner or later.   Resist the devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7)!  And remember, we must rebuke that repulsive and vile villain, while commanding him to leave, out loud, for Satan is a creature, not God, and hence cannot read our thoughts!

     As for donning the helmet of our salvation…well, that simply means resting assured that our souls are permanently saved. Our salvation is secure, and it will never be stripped from us.  That’s right.  No sin we commit will ever cause God to leave us or forsake us.  However, the devil will send doubts into our deepest beings that maybe we have lost our salvation because we have sinned too many times.  Not true.  For just as surely as Jesus told the disciple Peter to forgive someone up to 70 times 7 in a single day (Matthew 18:22), it only stands to reason that God holds the same standards for Himself.  Believe me, all God wants is for us to get back into a right relationship with Him again when we’ve wrestled with sin but have given in.  So, don’t listen to the devil’s deceptions. He has lost the war for our souls, and he knows it. He just doesn’t want us to know it.  And so, he delivers doubts.  Frankly, he is simply shooting blanks.  It is God who is really calling the shots!

     Wielding the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, simply means constantly wielding the Word of God against the enemy when he tempts us, for he cannot stand up against it.  Yes, he will flee when we slash his soul with the Sword of the Spirit—every time!   But what makes the Word more effective is in living out Christ’s commandments as best we can.  And we can do it, too.  “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).  It’s that simple.  Yes, God has given us the grit and grace to say “NO! to the tempter’s temptations, no matter how weak or inadequate we may feel at the moment.  Moreover, we must be mindful that even if we keep making the same mistakes, yes, even if we keep committing the same sorry sins, because we are too weak at times to resist said sins, God is still pleased with us that we are at least trying.  He is that kind.  And He loves us that much!

     Hence, our armor—the armor of God—is meant to assist us in protecting ourselves from the putrid one’s attempts to pulverize our pure relationship with God (not our salvation, mind you, just our relationship), to foul up our faith in God’s best for our lives, to pummel God’s plan for our lives, and to trash the testimony of our lives, because people are peering at us all the time to see if we are hypocrites or the holy real deal.  So, let us praise the Precious One—Jesus—not only for His divine protection, but also for providing us with protective gear of our own.  Remember, we play a part in this war, too, soldiers!  So, let’s march!!!