"In every situation take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one." ~Ephesians 5:16
As we come to this portion of Paul's passage on spiritual warfare and the armor of God, we come to a piece of the armor that is perhaps what typically comes to our minds first when we think about fighting back against the enemy. After all, most often the way the enemy attempts to wage war against us is by crippling our faith. He is the father of lies, so his MO tends to be that he will send flaming arrows of discouragement, doubt, and lies in an effort to attack and weaken our faith.
That is precisely why we must be proactive to arm ourselves daily with the shield of faith.
What this looks like is taking the time to be in the Word, to spend time in prayer, to read great biographies of heroes of the faith, to spend time in encouraging community with wise believers, and to recount how God has been faithful in the past in our own lives.
The Israelites were regularly commanded to place Ebenezer stones of remembrance at sites where the Lord had performed great feats of might, power, and deliverance. We are naturally a forgetful people, so we need to intentionally recount and remember what God has done in the past so that we might have faith for the future.
Life is hard and we go through dark seasons which means that our faith will be attacked and weakened if we are not purposeful ahead of time to regularly recount the faithfulness of God to ourselves. Doing so will go a long way towards protecting us from the attacks of the enemy.
After all, when you have a powerful shield in place, arrows just ricochet off and fall to the ground.
Reflection Questions:
1) How can you daily be intentional to put on your shield of faith?
2) If someone asked you how a shield of faith can guard you against attacks of the enemy, how would you explain that concept to them?
3) What stones of remembrance do you have in your own life?
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