Week 3 – Put on your armor

Annie, one of my very best childhood friends, lived in this huge stone house tucked away in the fancy pants part of town, perched like a fairy tale castle on the top of a steep hill. True to form, my friend Annie and her family had their very own life-sized, 4 foot tall knight in shining armor. It stood at the bottom of their grand, curved staircase and was kind of a legend. They called their little tin man George and everyone would say things like “Good morning, George” as they passed by him on their way to the kitchen to make toast, imagining that a real person lived inside George’s hollow armor.

Sleepovers at Annie’s would always include imagining that George came alive at night, the call of duty summoning him to animation – fighting epic battles that kept their castle safe from siege while we slept blissfully upstairs. We would imagine that his feet were positioned slightly differently in the morning, as proof.

I always think of George when I read this passage from Ephesians. 

Ephesians 6: 13 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. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

I imagine wearing all of that armor. I feel the heaviness of it, the lack of mobility a steep price to pay for its protection. And I think that sometimes we Christians imagine ourselves a little like that. Heavy, cumbersome and burdened by all of the armor we’re expected to wear, thinking of it as an obligation rather than a gift – one that freezes us in place, inhibiting our freedom.  But God’s protection isn’t heavy like George’s armor. It’s light. In fact, Jesus said: 

Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

All that spiritual armor in verses 13-17 may feel like it’s weighing us down, but it’s actually freedom.  Because you know what’s really heavy and really confining?  Sin. Sin is the actual thing that weighs us down. Sin makes life feel heavy and awkward. It pushes that inward desire to be united to our Creator way out of alignment. 

We’ve all been there – nights spent wallowing in regret, the muddy guilt of sin that clouds our relationships, the trail of lies that make repentance feel impossible …. These are the things that really weigh us down. Yet Satan has pretty effectively convinced us that this way of sin and selfishness is freedom. A lot of people in the world think that not thinking about God and all that ‘religious stuff’ equals freedom. They think it equates to getting to do what we want to do and having more fun. But that’s just another one of the Enemy’s lies. 

Sin is unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness” 
–St. Ignatius of Loyola,

The truth is, the farther we get from the one who created us to live in fellowship with himself, the farther we get from the peace our soul yearns for.  And that deosn’t feel like freedom. It manifests in our lives as anxiety, depression, anger, etc. This is why our Ephesians scripture is so vital. Because we need to be reminded that there are evil forces relentlessly pecking at our hearts like some kind of obnoxious bird.

But I think sometimes we secretly think that if we don’t think about something, like those evil forces all around us, they aren’t there. It’s easy to do. So often, we want to kind of slough off all that spiritual talk, convincing ourselves that it’s more theoretical – something that only people practicing dark magic or witchcraft might encounter.  But that’s the farthest thing from the truth. Spiritual forces are all around us – they are just sneaky.  Genesis 4:7 says that sin is crouching at our door and that it desires to have you.  Those dark forces that need us to put on our spiritual armor every day don’t necessarily look like high crimes and misdemeanors. Sometimes they look like rolling your eyes at your mom or telling your boss you did something when you actually forgot. These are the micro-ways in which the enemy wedges his foot in the door of our lives. And when we let him get a foothold, he makes his way in more and more.

That’s why the protection of our mighty God is such a vital aspect of the life of the believer. When we believe, we gratefully accept and put on that armor. 

So put on the belt of truth – the commitment to studying and reading God’s Word. 

Put on the breastplate of righteousness – committing to doing what is right. 

Step into the boots of readiness – allow the gospel of peace to remove our hesitation and obliterate our insecurity about who we belong to. 

Hold up your shield of faith – let it makes your faith steadfast, solid as a rock.

Pop that helmet of salvation on your head so that your minds remains set on the road before you. 

And, finally, wield the sword of the Spirit – that you may know that we are never, ever defenseless when the Spirit lives within us.

This is beautiful, is it not? God tells us that we never are left to fight Satan and these unseen forces on our own. He has fully outfitted us with everything we need to be fully victorious through the power of the Holy Spirit. We never need to fear or feel intimidated, because we have the Creator of the universe on our side, right there, on the battlefield with us.