When our righteousness is being taught with clarity; the first sign and wonder
takes place in the heart of man; where the issues of life are formed and nurtured makes us know; the difference between living
a life of obligation verses the free will choice to love or not love and know that; what ever we choose; we are always loved
and accepted by God the Father. Our flesh is an undisciplined child and can only think as a need orientated self centered
person which is a child only focused on a survivor mode existence. Our true fight of faith is us learning how to allow God
to love us so we can start loving ourselves and stop doing harm to our self and each other. When Christ is not the center focus of our lives; mankind becomes more addicted and more gullible
in the evaluating of his life choices. He begins to look for gratification and comfort in people and things and believe that;
this will make him secure and complete. Our flesh or unregenerate self has a will of its own and has a cunning, deceitful,
or treacherous quality that must be inspected by the Holy Ghost continually so that; we do not get caught up in unholy alliances
or miss God's time tables of life.
Paul states this in Galatians 5:6.
"Faith is only activated, energized and expressed and works through love." When we do not have God's agape love
as the foundation motivating our faith; we have no power to fight the good fight of faith. Agape love puts other people's
needs, interests, or wishes before our own. It gives us a security in ourselves of how to go to God to get the provisions
we need to fill our needs and wants at any given time. In turn, this equips us to go to battle as a person who knows how
to stand in the gap and fulfill God's purposes in the life for us and others. This only takes place by His anointed love
at work in us. By trusting in God's way of providing for our needs and wants; we surrender ourselves to love others because;
we are learning how to love ourselves in God's sufficiency and not our own.
We must totally understand what Paul meant when he said in 1 Cor 13:1. "If I speak in the tongues of men and
even angels, but have not love (that reasoning, intentional, spiritual devotion such as is inspired by God's love for
and in us), we are a noisy gong or a clanging symbol."
Our natural
un-redeemed self does an excellent job in faking love, and a person can be mesmerized into being sold a bill of goods and
become imprisoned; by living a life of obligated service; which in turn, robs them of the independent freedom of making a
choice whether they want to submit to God the Father's provision and protection; or try to find success by their own planning.
This type of relationship not only happens between God and our self but; it will then be passed down to our relationship
with others.
In Ephesians 6 it describes what our armor and weapons are
that God has given us to fight the good fight of faith. Paul states. "Therefore, by having God's armor on we will
be able to stand firmly in place and be able to handle all crises. First tighten the belt of truth around your loins and having
on the breastplate of righteousness, you will be able to make correct judgments that will keep you in right standing with
God. You will be able to stand on your feet so you can face the enemy and be ready because, you have a peace in you put there
by God. Lift up over all the shield of faith, which will enable you to put out all the flaming missiles of the wicked one.
Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit that is the authority
of the Word of God. In addition, be praying at all times on every occasion and in every season in the Spirit in all types
of prayer. To the final end, keep alert and watch with a strong purpose and holding fast interceding in behalf of all the
saints or all of God's consecrated people."
The first weapon is
the weapon of truth. The truth will set a person free from any thing contrary to God's will. When we live in denial and
in darkness by lying to ourselves about the true condition of our heart, we cannot participate in kingdom living and our life
is wasted on trivial pursuits that have no consequences in eternal matters. Only God's opinion of things makes up truth.
If you're not listening to His truths and acting on it, life has no real meaning. This scripture tells us that; we are
to tighten the belt of truth around our loins.
The word for loin in the
Greek is osphus: It means a hip or procreative power. God is the author of procreative power; its how He brought all of exists
into being. We need to know God's truths from His word and use it as Jesus did against the Devil when He was tempted.
Since the Devil is a liar and the father of liars, he can't stand the truth and he shakes when we use it, however, only
when it is being inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The next weapon stated is
the breastplate of righteousness. This word breastplate in the Greek is thorax: It means an upper chest protector or a corset.
This represents a heart protector where the issues of life take place in our being. Its how we get our assurance and deep
rooted assurance between God being our Father and knowing that; no matter what happens in our life nothing can ever separate
us from His love and holding power. I never cease to say this over and over; we need to know without a shadow of a doubt that,
when we made Jesus our savior, we were spiritually infused into the God's family permanently. Righteousness means, when
God the Father looks at us He sees Jesus His perfect son. This childish teaching of God loves me when we do well and doesn't
when we do badly must end.
These conditional love themes are the most destructive
and blasphemous teachings ever perpetrated by the devil through men of ignorance in explaining the holding power of God.
Eternal security has to cease from being interpreted as a doctrine of devils or a license
to sin, as it is being interpreted in many circles. We are eternally secure but, we can through faulty teaching and bad choices
be living out of fellowship with God and grieving the Holy Spirit because, we stop Him from comforting and strengthening us
in our daily warfare.
There is a security, which builds integrity within
us as we become deep seated in our understanding of our permanent relationship with God. By not having this type security,
the devil makes us believe through subtle persuasions that; the God we serve is an indecisive
Leader of mere opinion
and His mood changes with circumstances.
That is why there are so many
Christians that have no commitment and a stick to it attitude no matter what happens. When the warfare gets to hot they fold
and run away and deny their savior as Peter the Apostle did in his childish years of growing up. Without integrity in ones
life you have no example to represent the Love of Jesus Christ to the world. The word of God tells us that our statements
in life should be either yes or no. The Holy Spirit doesn't compromise. He tells it like it is and we can do nothing less.
Its time to put our childish thinking away and! GROW UP!
The next
weapon is the shield of faith. The word for shield in the Greek is thureos: It represents a shield shaped like a door that
can be opened and closed. The word for faith is pistis: This is god's children having a consistency of confessing God‘s
truth because; they have been persuaded that God is not like a man who lies. As God showed me this concept it made me realize,
what a commitment and trust God has for His children to give them a powerful weapon like this. As we learn to use it; we are
able to have the ability to control our thought life by being able to close and open this door type shield when we need to.
To me it was a very practical application that was simple to understand. When the devil shows up to dump his garbage in our
minds we keep it closed.
Rev. 3:20 tells us, "Jesus stands at the
door of our heart and knocks and if we respond to Him and open ourselves up to Him when He shows up, He will come in, discuss
with us His plans, and train us in the warfare that we are all going through. In turn, we will be over comers and will be
able to sit beside Him as a sovereign King and Priest having great power to rule and reign with Him."
You have to really be living in extreme darkness or have a serious brain deficiency to not want to
be close to Him and be in His company at all times. Unending volumes can be written on faith because; Christ Jesus Himself
is our faith. Every thing He thinks, feels, and His very being and intense passions rubs off on us as we hang out with Him.
To be like Him that has to be our first desire.
The next weapon is the
helmet of salvation. The word for helmet is perizonnumi: It means to prepare one self for action and to tighten a belt around
our mind. The word for salvation is soterian: meaning, our defender, rescuer and savior Jesus the Christ. There has to be
created in us a security and total persuasion by God in our inner most feelings that, there is no way we can lose this war
no matter what ever the adversity. This helmet or attitude of confidence cannot be tightened around our minds unless we are
totally sold out with a concentrated effort in us seeking after the Lord and His counsel because the battle we are fighting
is in our mind and becoming more intense daily.
The next weapon is the
sword of the Spirit, which is the authority of God. The word for sword is machomai: It means a person fighting for the administration
of justice. The word for Spirit is pneuma: meaning, superhuman or Christ's Spirit the Holy Spirit. This gives us the authority
as God's children to rise up in the authority of the Holy Spirit to fight these demonic forces in this present age. This
is what God's kids are supposed to be doing, going about their Heavenly Fathers business administering His justice in
the lives of people on this planet. We are not to do this in our own fleshly self-righteous attitudes by sitting in judgment
and portraying God as some kind of control freak wanting to inflict punishment and pain.
This type of warfare has to be administered through us by the author and lover of our souls who became a servant
and ultimately died on a cross for our sin and the sin's of the whole world. We need to get a hold of what it means to
die to self by the Holy Spirit's leadings and unless we do that, we have the capability of becoming the devil's disciple
coming in the name of the Lord and ministering self-righteous concepts that, we have been reaping on ourselves for years.
This way of ministry has no power to deliver others or ourselves. Scripture
tells us that; "the devil disguises himself as an angel of light." It says only Jesus is the true Light of the world.
We cannot expose the darkness in others or our self by our false and fleshly interpretations of God's ways. It's time
for us to not be afraid and let the Holy Spirit check us out and see if there are any harm full ways in us that we may not
be aware of.
We now come to the last weapon that is talked about in this
chapter. The weapon of prayer, (Intimate conversations with God) and this is what it's all about. Prayer is our endless
conversation with God now and forever. It's His life and our life becoming one life. Therefore, we see that there is no
end to this weapon. It's the weapon that makes all the other weapons work. Moreover, to me this is our greatest weapon.
It is also the weapon that we need to discipline this fleshly body to lay down and die. It's where we receive our stability,
and sound minded thinking. Wisdom in the day and night hours of our life, His hugs, rebukes and chastisements, that are needed
for our safety and guidance. It's the way we search for His presence, play, and joke and carefully listen for Him to reveal
new wisdom's of His ways as we learn to be comfortable with His friendship. I have found that over the years; my prayer
life has changed more than anything else.
It has become more of a natural
all hours of the day and night conversation that continually goes on at all times. It's like living with another person
that you're learning to trust and get comfortable with.
The word for
prayer is proseuchomai: It means to stay in a humble state before God in worship, adoration and requesting. The prefix of
this word is pros: meaning, on all occasions and together with at all times. We stated that we are in a war with spirits in
lofty places of the air. Let's realize that this is an outward force trying to impregnate us with ideas, emotions and
principles to do their bidding. It is a spirit of anti-christ. Now that we're God's children and the Holy Spirit lives
within us; let's learn to trust Him to keep the door of the house of our heart; where the issues of life are formed and
watered locked, when the devil shows up to bombard our thought life with things that have no eternal value. We will never
know how to keep our armor on without our Commander and Chief inspecting us to see if we are equipped to go into battle and
wrestle for the kingdom of God that lives with in us. Walking with the Lord doesn't have to be a chore in our lives. What
we have to do is lay down our lives and allow the Holy Ghost to live big in us.
