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You will not live for God too long before you find out that you are an active participant in a war. Each day you fight battles with an enemy who wants to destroy your new-found life with God and to steal your soul. It's not a physical battle with guns and swords clanging against an enemy that you can see in the natural, but in the spirit, the battle is real enough. Whether you want to or not -- if you are going to live for God -- you will have to fight in this war and you are not in it by your choice, but rather because the devil is an enemy that is jealous of your walk with God, and the Spirit and power that you have received and wants to see you fall. If you will live for God, you will have to fight.

What that means is that when you receive the Holy Ghost and get baptized in the name of Jesus, you are enlisted in the "Lord's army." You become a soldier for Christ. Strange as it may sound, this is a scriptural concept and one that was used extensively in the New Testament by the Apostle Paul. Listen to some of the comments that Paul made in his writings to the church:

And then when Paul was about to have his head chopped off by Nero, he wrote this about his own life:

Everything that Paul was in the kingdom of God can be summed up by simply saying "he was a mighty and good soldier" for God. And the reason that he was successful and the reason that he shook his known world and the reason that he was able to endure severe hardships and trials and yet be faithful to the end, was that he recognized that there was an enemy and that he was at war and he was willing to fight for the things of God!

And so I'm preaching to you: you need to come to the realization that you are not just living your life and attending a church, but everyday -- whether we have service or not -- you are at war! You are not just a normal human being on a big planet with a bunch of other human beings, but you are a soldier! It's the will of God that you be anointed of God, but it will not come without a fight. It's the will of God that you end your life saved and on the right road, but it will not come without a fight! It's the will of God that you be happy and peaceful, but it will not come without a fight! We are in a battle for our souls and the souls of others, and so we must realize that we must give everything!

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So if you've got to fight, then you want to fight to win. It's no fun fighting and losing. It's not fun standing up and getting your brains bashed in spiritually. If we must fight, then let's fight with everything in us to win!

How do I do that? By taking on the whole armor of God. God has not just thrown you into a battle without any help, but not only will He fight for you and with you, He has given us some things that will help us win even the everyday battles. We read about them in our text in Ephesians chapter 6. The Apostle Paul was writing a letter to the church in Ephesus from a Roman jail cell. He's locked up and chained to a Roman soldier, because they had heard about all of that "miracle stuff" that had been going on and they didn't want to lose him. Paul knows that the church in Ephesus is fighting for survival and revival. He knows that they are waging a war against the idolatry and wickedness of that city. And as he closes his letter he looks at the soldier next to him and begins to realize that his fighting gear corresponds to things that God has given us! And so writing to the Ephesians, Paul commands them to "put on the whole armor of God." If you are going to fight and you want to win, then you'd better have on God's armor!

Let's look at some of this armor and it's importance:

The first thing that a Roman soldier put on was the wide balteus or decorated belt around his waist. It was arguably the most beautiful part of the entire armor and usually was engraved or decorated with gold or silver. But it was also important because the breastplate would be tucked into and thus held in place by this belt. The sword -- the only offensive weapon of the soldier -- would be hung from this belt. A loose belt would lead to the breastplate moving from what it was supposed to protect and becoming bothersome and would cause the sword to not be accessible and useable in the heat of battle. Therefore, the soldier would carefully put on his belt and gird it to himself tightly, before he did anything else!

And Paul said that it represented truth in a Christian's life! Truth is the opposite of tradition. It's the opposite of a lie. It's the opposite of doing things our way. Truth is obeying God's Word and obeying it fully! Truth is doing things God's way and answering to Him for our belief. The Word and doctrine that we teach in this church, I believe is truth, because it is founded solely on the Word of God. We don't lead people in sinner's prayers, but teach them to repent of their sins! That is truth! We know who Jesus Christ is that He is Jehovah God in flesh and that there is only One God and we follow the Biblical example of only baptizing in the name of that One God which is Jesus! That's truth! We believe that you must be born of the water and of the Spirit and that you need the Holy Ghost to enter into the kingdom of God. It's necessary. It's not a second work of grace. It's not an optional blessing. It's absolutely a must. And that is what the Bible teaches. That is what the Apostles taught. That's truth!

And so the first thing that you'd better make sure that you've got cinched up close to you so that it cannot slip is truth! You'd better put it on and tighten it down till it feels a part of you! Because you will never be able to fight without it! Without the belt of truth firmly fastened, the breastplate of righteousness -- trying to live as God would want us to live -- will slide and slip and seem to become a huge burden in the way. Without the belt of truth firmly girded to our loins, the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God will never be what it should be in your life! If you want to get dressed to fight, then the first thing that you better put on is the belt of truth, and makes sure that it's fastened down so tightly that it won't move or budge even in the worst fight of your life! We cannot compromise our message or our doctrine. We must believe and contend for the Apostolic church's example and teachings. Because that truth is our belt that holds everything together! If it gets loose then everything else in the church will loosen and we will become just another religious movement without the active power and might and blessing of God.

The breastplate was the part of the soldier's armor that protected the chest cavity and the many vital organs there. It kept the sword of the enemy from hitting anything vital and served as a barrier between the enemy and the heart and the lungs and such. Paul said that in the Christian's life, the breastplate was "righteousness." When we live a holy life and live according to God's Word in every area and we separate ourselves from sinful things and change things to match God's Word, that is putting on a spiritual breastplate over the important parts of our relationship with God. Think how silly and foolish it would be to see a soldier out fighting with everything else on except his breastplate. He wouldn't last long in the fight before he would fall to the attack! And it's the same way when Christians try to hold on to truth and study the Word of God and fight for God and yet won't separate themselves from sinful lifestyles or sinful habits. They are easily felled by the devil. We must separate ourselves from the lifestyle of this world. There are some places that we just shouldn't go. There are some things that we just shouldn't watch or read. There are some people that just aren't good to hang around because of their bad influence to do things against the Word of God. There are some fashions that we just shouldn't copy in this world because they violate the modesty teachings of scripture. There are some words and jokes that we just shouldn't say. There are some entertainments that are just not conducive to healthy Christian living. But God has not commanded such things just to be "hard" but rather righteous living is a breastplate of protection! It protects your heart. It keeps it from being hardened by the things of this world. It protects your lungs, your ability to breathe praises to God unashamedly and without reservation. Show me someone who allows every sinful habit to abound in their life and doesn't draw some lines between them and the world and I'll show you a heart that has trouble beating for the things of the Spirit and lungs that have trouble praising God freely! We need the breastplate of righteousness.

The phrase in the Greek literally reads "shod with the readiness of the gospel of peace." Paul was referring to the fact that a Roman soldier had to be ready to march at a moment's notice. The Roman empire had roads -- good roads and some of them still are there today -- that connected every area of the empire. In a time of war or in a time of sudden attack in one area, the Romans could have a garrison of soldiers at any point within a matter of hours. The Romans had the fastest response time of any kingdom of the earth, and so a soldier never took off his fighting sandals. Even if he was going to the farmer's market or doing business or visiting with friends, he always had his soldier sandals on because he had to be ready to fight for the cause of Rome at a moment's notice.

Paul said that we as Christians aren't fighting a fight of evil conflict but of peace! We have a message of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ that comes to bring peace between God and man! It comes to bring peace to the troubled soul! He is the Prince of Peace. But we must be ready to go and carry this Gospel at any time. You might be going to the grocery store and God put someone before you that needs to hear the message of the Gospel of Peace! You might be going to the lake or in the bank or receive a phone call and someone who is hungry needs to hear about the message of what God has done for you and can also do for them! The Christian must be ready at all times to march to the point of need with this wonderful message! We are not just soldiers at church, but every day and every moment, no matter what role or cloak that we have on, our feet must be ready to do God's will for whatever the need is! It's the will of God for people to receive the Holy Ghost in parking lots. It's the will of God for people to be healed at work. It's the will of God for people to receive peace and freedom from depression because of a prayer prayed over the phone! If God can use donkeys to speak then He can use a cell phone! And praying for people certainly beats the more common use of cell phones today! We've got to be ready for God to move and His power to perform His will at all times!

Think of how important your head is to your well being. It has your brain and your ability to reason and to think right. It has your eyes with the ability to see. It holds your ears with the ability to hear. It holds your nose which has the ability to sense things. It holds your tongue and it's ability to taste. It holds your mouth which is where you have the ability to eat and gain nourishment. I would say that our head is a fairly important part of our body. And so that's why a soldier needs a good helmet. Because to fight well, he must be able to use all of these things that we just mentioned.

Your salvation is a spiritual helmet. We must repent of our sins. We must be baptized in Jesus' name. We must be filled with the Holy Spirit. Without that salvational plan of God in our life, we don't have the ability to think clearly about the things of God. We don't have the ability to see what we need to see in the Spirit. We don't have the ability to hear correctly and obey the Word of God taught to us. We don't have the ability to sense things and taste and see that the Lord is good. Without the full plan of Biblical salvation, we don't have the ability to really get what we need from the Word of God or church services so that we can grow spiritually. The Holy Ghost makes a difference. Being baptized the right way by immersion in Jesus' name makes a difference! Truly repenting of your sins makes a difference! It's a helmet that protects our ability to learn and react to the things of God correctly!

Paul said that the sword of the Spirit is "the Word of God." The single most important thing that you can do is read your Bible, go to a Bible Study, or memorize scripture. They say that at first it takes practice to learn to correctly use a sword. At first it is heavy and a little hard to wield, but with practice everyday, you build up the muscles to use it skillfully and you develop the muscle memory to wield it effectively in battle. It's the same way with the Word of God. Too many people pick it up and it looks big and it looks hard and it seems a little heavy, and so they put it down and say "I can never use that skillfully, I can't even start." But if you'll pick it up and begin to try to use it and learn it, then you'll find that with time, it will become easier to handle and you will be able to use it effectively!

It can be an offensive weapon and a defensive one also. When Jesus Christ was tempted in the wilderness after a forty day fast and Satan tried to put a little untruth or lie into Him, He responded all three times with the Word of God. Satan tried to put in a little dagger of untruth and zing!, the Word of God knocked it away! I believe that the Word of God is the answer to every situation that you will face in life, but it does not good unless you learn to use it! How many of you have ever done something and then later read the Bible and find out that you shouldn't have done it and then you realized why it turned out the way it did!? Why do we have to wait till we are going through something to try to wield the sword? Why don't we apply ourselves now so that when a situation arises that the Word of God speaks, we're ready to do what's right and the sword is ready for use! You don't wait until battle and then try to learn some moves with the sword, but you do it over and over in practice first! So it is with the Word of God. Just because you don't see the need for a message or a lesson in your life right now, doesn't mean that you should tune it out, because it could be that God is giving you something for the future, so that you won't be caught off guard! We must practice learning to use the Word of God! It's the sword of the Spirit!

In verse 18 of our text in Ephesians, we find that Paul makes mention of the importance of prayer. We can go directly to our Commander-in-chief for daily direction! Imagine how worthless a soldier is if he does not know what the plans for the battle are! He could be the best trained soldier and thoroughly outfitted with everything that he needs, but if he does not have clear direction and instruction from the Commander, then he will be destroyed and will not be effective in fighting. An army is powerful only when in unity under one command and under one set of orders.

That's why you need to pray everyday. You are checking in with your Commander to see what His will for that day is. You are reporting for duty. You are letting Him know that you are available for battle that day. You are finding out the battle conditions. Prayer is important. I wonder how many Christians are AWOL from the heavenly army because they go days without receiving instructions from our general, Jesus Christ? We need to pray and we need to pray everyday! We need to report in for duty like a good soldier. We need to pray for one another that we might fight in unity against our common foe! Everyday prayer is a key for being a successful soldier!

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I've saved this for last because I felt led to emphasize it to you. The Roman shield was not a small little blocking device a few feet wide, but was a huge massive buckler that was almost as long as the soldier was tall and wide enough to hide behind. It usually had several layers of leather and was not designed to block a sword or for close combat but was absolutely necessary at turning aside darts and arrows that were shot at the soldier from a distance. In such cases, the soldier would have quickly died if he did not have the shield's ability to deflect the enemies arrows.

Often such arrows would be tipped in a flammable substance and shot burning so that when they found their mark they would set fire to the soldier's clothing and armor and thus even if the arrow itself did not do lasting damage, then perhaps the fire that it started could destroy the soldier's gear enough that he would be easily destroyed soon thereafter.

That's how the devil works. He attacks with "fiery darts." If the temptation to sin doesn't kill you or cause you to walk out on God then he brings condemnation after your repentance hoping that the fires of condemnation will burn you up from the inside out. If a bad situation doesn't do you in and you are able to avoid lethal injury at first, then he hopes that the fires of conflict or loneliness that come from that bad situation will cause you to feel helpless and burn up your trust in God. I want you to understand that the devil is no match for a well armored Christian and he knows better than to confront you when you have properly put on truth, righteousness, the Gospel, Salvation, and the Word and prayer! So what he does is resorts to throwing fiery darts. A bad situation blind sides you and seems to come from nowhere. A seemingly good day suddenly erupts in the fires of persecution. A fiery trial begins to rain down on you from seemingly oblivion. A problem flies in here. An issue there. And you look around and you are under attack and there is no enemy that is close by to focus on. You can't tell why you're going through this or where it's really coming from. I'm talking about fiery darts!

But God has given us a defense against such things: the shield of faith! It's not talking about just saving faith. Faith is believing that God's Word is right and sure even when you cannot see any evidence of it. And faith without action is dead. So what Paul means by faith is believing God's Word in a situation instead of what the situation is telling you, and believing it enough that you act according to God's Word, even though only your faith in His Word tells you that it is the right thing to do! That's true, Godly faith, and it's a shield in my life that quenches and puts out the fire from the darts that Satan tries to rain down on me.

Sadly, the shield of faith is the first thing some Christians drop when they under attack. They drop the shield and run. To be effective, a shield must be held up in place. But when a situation comes in our life and we can't see the immediate answer, our first inclination sometimes is to try to make it out alive and see if we can find an answer ourselves. But by trying to work it out on our own understanding, we are dropping the shield of faith. What we should do is stand and say "I don't know how God is going to work this out, but I know that He will, therefore I'm going to be faithful to doing what I know He has commanded me to do!" That's faith! And with that kind of faith, it doesn't matter what fiery darts the devil launches your way, you can quench them and survive and fight back! But if you ever lose your faith. If you ever lose hope in God. If you ever stop trusting in His ways and His Word and lean on your own understanding, then you've dropped the shield in your life and then there is nothing to do but run, but you can't run from the fiery darts of the devil without exposing your backside, the only side that is not protected by God's armor! And so you'll be an easy prey! That's why the devil just wants you to give up and say "it's no use." Drop that shield. That's why the devil wants you to say "my family will never be saved." "My financial situation is impossible." "My illness is unhealable." "My life is not worth much in the kingdom of God." "This trial is to much for me to take." This persecution is to heavy to have to carry." "There is no hope." That's the devil trying to get you to drop your shield! And if you do so, you'll be easy prey. We must keep holding up the shield of faith!

And so I have a scripture for you tonight. We quote it often, but recently I realized something about this scripture that I never noticed before. The scripture reads like this in the King James Version:

What a promise! If I am in the will of God and living for Him and obeying His commandments and seeking after His righteousness, then "all things work together for good." In other words, even in the worst situation, things are going to turn out for the better. Even in the worst trial, I'm going to come out doubly blessed like Job. Even in the worst persecution, things are going to be okay and even better after it's over! "All things work together for good!"

What is not obvious to you and I is that the King James translators left something out. In the original Greek there is an additional subject in the sentence and so the original reads something like the New American Standard:

"God causes all things to work together . . . " It's not that when you do right and live according to His purpose and are growing in God and in His perfect will that things just happen to work out for your good, but that God causes things to be that way! In other words when you respond to your circumstances no matter how bad they may look by holding up the shield of faith and say "I'm still going to be faithful to God's Word and God's plan for my life," then God gets active in your situation and God causes everything to work out for your good! Even if it's a hopeless situation, it's not hopeless if you will raise your shield of faith and stay faithful to God, because then He will get actively involved on your behalf!

Somebody says "preacher, I don't see how anything positive could come out of this situation." That's good, that means that you can have true faith which is believing in something that you cannot see. Somebody says "but preacher I don't see how anything could be good in my circumstances." With your own ability and trusting in your own ways, nothing can. But I've got a promise from God for you! No matter how crazy it may seem to say "I'm going to be faithful to God and I'm going to do His will and I'm going to endure this and I'm going to make it," if you do so and raise that shield of faith, not only will you find that the fiery trial will eventually be quenched and go out, but you will find that God will move in that situation and something good and great will come out of it! But it only comes by you looking at your situation and saying "I'm not losing hope, I'm still going to believe God!" No matter how hot the trial or how big the fiery dart, you've got to raise your shield of faith. Don't drop it! Don't face it on your own. Grab you a promise from the Word of God and stand upon it! Quote Romans 8:28 and daily remind yourself of God's promise to those who will hold up the shield of faith. And remind yourself of our other text in the book of Proverbs:

"He is a shield unto them." Faith in God is not just positive thinking. It's not just be optimistic. But faith in God is tangible because God can move in your faith. God becomes your shield. God does it. He fights for you. He works it out. He blocks the situation from destroying you. Positive thinking doesn't change anything. Faith in God changes everything. Whatever you do, don't drop your shield of faith. You can have everything else in place perfectly, but if you drop that faith, the devil will destroy your heart and your mind. He'll destroy your salvation and your witness. He'll destroy your love of truth and the influence of the Word of God in your life. He'll destroy your prayer line to Jesus Christ. But keep that shield of faith up and trust in God Almighty, and you will find that nothing will be able to destroy you. The fieriest trial will be turned by God into a tremendous blessing. The darkest night will give way to the most beautiful sunrise. Not because you thought it into becoming that, but because God stepped into your situation in response to your faith and caused all things to become your good!

Don't believe the lies of the past that says that God will not fight for you if you are faithful. Listen to what the prophet Isaiah said that God would do when they repented of their sins and turned back to God:

It doesn't matter what the situation looks like, lift up your shield of faith and stand faithful to God and His Word! You will come out victorious and mighty because God will fight for you and stand up and be your shield! He is our shield of faith!