Love and Protection

 

And take the helmet of salvation and the sword that the Spirit wields, which is the Word of God. (Ephesians 6:17 [AMPC])

Yesterday, I was reading about the armor of God in Ephesians 6 in the Amplified translation of the Bible. In verse seventeen, Paul said, “Take the sword that the Spirit wields, which is the word of God.” I had never read that last part before, “that the Spirit wields.” Yes, we understand each of these pieces of armor is God’s armor for His children who take and wear it. In our heads, as we read this chapter of Ephesians, we know this armor comes from God and helps us in our battles. The question though is this; how many of us just take it and do what we think we must do? God did not intend His children wear it without His power, strength, guidance, encouragement, and knowledge.

Consider verse seventeen. The point of this verse is you must take hold of God’s sword and join Him in holding the sword while He defends you or leads you. Do you understand this? The same thing should happen as we put on each piece of armor. The armor is God’s. He gives it to us and commands us to put it on each day, just as Paul commanded the Ephesians. Never do Christians have ownership of the armor they wear. The armor comes from God to help us.

This same thing applies to each piece of the armor we take and wear. Consider it this way. Wear the helmet to protect your head and keep remembering God is your salvation. Put on the shield of faith so you douse the flaming darts and arrows Satan shoots your way to kill you and lead you to doubt God and His protection and goodness over you. Continue to have a strong faith. Put on the armor of preparation to cover your feet. These armored shoes will prepare you to be ready with the good news of Christ, with firm-footing and stability to battle in rough terrain without doubting God. They will lead you in God’s path for your safety and His purpose of peace. Put on God’s breastplate to protect your vital organs and to give you His integrity and righteousness through Jesus. Tighten the belt of truth around you so you will always know God’s truth and can defeat Satan’s lies and not become distracted and forlorn by them. With each these pieces of armor, always pray in the Spirit with every kind of prayer. By doing this, God encourages you as you wear it and you have faith in Him in all things remembering He is almighty. Most of all, put on God’s complete armor, by which He saves you from Satan’s distresses, so you can resist him and stand firmly in your faith in God.

So many of us pray for the armor of God then walk away thinking, “I've got this.” Instead of this attitude, we should put on God’s armor and walk with Him holding onto His sword, wearing His helmet, tightening His belt around our waist, stepping in faith in His shoes, and raising His shield, so He wins the battle for us. By doing this, God receives the glory, He encourages us in our faith, grows us to be like Him, and we become closer in oneness with Him. Each piece of the armor of God is for bodily protection and a minute-by-minute reminder that God is the One who goes before us, behind us, above us, and with us. His armor protects us from doubting, from fearing, from quitting, and from falling. 

The Spirit wields the sword.

We hold it with Him while He swings it for God’s glory and our good. 

When was the last time you took God’s armor and allowed Him to protect you and be your champion?

I AM, the Eternal Victor

We each come to a point in our lives, actually many points in our lives, when we must decide if we will let our circumstances get us “down.” For some people, death seems to take them “down.” Others face illness or a diagnosis they didn’t expect, and that gets them “down.” Possibly losing a job or not getting a promotion will cause a person to be “down.” For other people, not finding a spouse or being childless can make a person feel “down.”

A whole host of things in life confront us and we get to decide how they will affect us. Notice I said, “We get to decide how they will affect us.” That doesn’t mean I am immune to feeling trampled by life because of illness, death, dark thoughts, lack of family or love, or any of thousands of other non-happy things in life. It means at this place in my life, at least for today, I can say my situation has not made me feel “down.” For me to admit that is a major step in my faith journey. Yes, I have been through difficult times without feeling pummeled before, but they were few. Still, the times of feeling “down” because of circumstances are becoming farther apart. As I pondered that today, I have come to conclusions.

God has been busy teaching me the last year or two that circumstances don’t define Him, but He defines circumstances. This year, He began teaching me more, and I am just at the start of this learning experience. God is teaching me about Himself as He revealed Himself to the people of the Old Testament using the Hebrew word anoki, meaning “I am.”

Any of us who has ever read about Moses and the burning bush thinks, “I know this one!” But maybe you don’t. The I AM God who spoke to Moses does not come from the Hebrew word anoki, but is significant. As I’ve said, I have only begun to study where God says anoki and have finished reading through Genesis. Each time God said anoki in the six instances in Genesis, He revealed something about Himself, about His nature, how we can relate to Him, and how He helps us because of that particular characteristic or nature.

To Abraham in Genesis 15:1, God said, “I am your shield.” He meant He is and would be Abraham’s King, Protector, and faith. Abraham could draw faith from God, the Source of faith, and could rely on God to protect and provide for him. He would also be able to go on the defense or offense in obedience to God because God is His King and Protector. God gives Abraham his shield to do battle for Him and to protect him from harm in a defensive battle just as Paul taught in Ephesians 6 with the armor of God.

To Abimelech in Genesis 20:6, God said, “I know you and I kept you.” God knew Abimelech, his heart as well as his actions and thoughts. He knew Abimelech better than Abimelech knew himself. God is all-knowing and all-powerful. He kept Abimelech from sinning against Him, Abraham, Sarah, and himself even when he didn’t realize what he had thought to do would be a sin. God is as close as our next breath and is transcendent knowing the big picture and able to keep things from happening. He protects us from ourselves and from harm by other people. Remember, Abimelech told Abraham what God revealed to him and so Abraham learned, too, that God is all-knowing and the one who is all-powerful and can keep people from sinning.

To Isaac in Genesis 26:24, God reiterated His revelation of Himself to Abraham, Isaac’s father. He reminded Isaac He is with him by saying He is his father’s God-the King, Protector, source of faith, faithful One, all-knowing, and all-powerful. He adds to this promise for Isaac what He didn’t tell Abraham. God told Isaac not to fear. Lack of fear is assumed when God is immanent. Immanence means God is always with you; He is near. Still, sometimes we people need to hear “do not fear.” Isaac needed to hear that. The king of the Philistines, because Isaac’s people and possessions had become large, asked him to leave their land. They filled in the wells Isaac’s men dug. As Isaac’s people moved on, the herdsmen of the Philistines kept fighting over the wells Isaac’s people dug so that Isaac kept having to move on and felt threatened. Then one night, God met with Isaac and told him, “Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you, and will multiply your descendants, for the sake of my servant Abraham.” When faced with enemies or bad situations over and over, sometimes we need to hear God’s reassurance we need not fear. God is faithful to His promises, and He has it all under control. He is faithful, loving, protector, keeper, all-knowing, all-powerful, and the God of Abraham, your father. Who can be afraid when confronted with this nature of God?

To Jacob in Genesis 28:15, God reminded him He is immanent, protector, and faithful. At this point in his life, Jacob was afraid. As the second-born son, he had just been part of the trickery to steal the birthright of the firstborn son from his twin brother, Esau. Esau had a fiery temper and Jacob was afraid. His father, Isaac, told him not to marry a woman from among the Canaanites, but to return to Paddan-aram, the birth home of his grandfather, Abraham. To get there, he would likely cross territory in which Esau lived. God calmed Jacob with a vision of a ladder that reached from the ground to heaven with angels descending and ascending on it. At the top of the ladder God stood and told Jacob, “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” All the lessons Abraham and Isaac taught Jacob and Esau about God and His nature, God reiterated in this dream. He added another element to His faithfulness. God’s faithfulness to Abraham and Isaac, and His covenant with them meant He must provide for the bodily needs of Jacob and Abraham’s other descendants. Besides protecting, God would feed, clothe, give water, and provide a wife for him. He would bring him to the land He promised his fathers before him. God said He would not leave him until He had done what He promised. This statement was the prelude to God’s statement to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 3:16 when He told them He would not leave them or forsake them.

With Genesis 35:11 and 46:3-4, God reminded Jacob He is almighty; nothing can thwart His plans or purposes. He commanded Jacob to be fruitful and multiply. God promised from him nations and kings would come. Even though hard times would fall on them, God could still make a great nation come from Jacob. He said He was immanent to Jacob and would protect Him and His offspring, provide for them, and would remain faithful to His covenant to him and his fathers. Even though Jacob and his descendants would walk through the valley (Egypt), God would surely be with them. He invested greater immediacy with this latter set of verses to give Jacob greater courage and conviction to go to a foreign land, walk through an unknown place, and have faith in Him.

For each of these men, as for most people of Bible times, continual verbal retelling of history relayed history from one generation to the next. It was an oral society, not a literate society. Abraham relayed to Isaac and his descendants who God is, what He promised to him, and how He intervened in his life. Isaac, Jacob, and each descendant afterwards carried on this oral tradition. Sometimes God reminded the next generation who He is with another anoki statement. Sometimes He revealed something new about Himself to the person to whom He spoke.

Why does God reveal Himself and His nature to people? Because He wants us to seek Him with all our hearts and find Him. God wants to have a relationship with us. He wants to be our faith, Protector, King, Provider, Keeper, Blesser. He wants us to know Him immanently and to know He is transcendent. God wants us to trust Him. He wants us to know Him. That’s yada knowing, experiential knowing so we know Him with our heart, soul, and mind. God wants us to realize at all times-before, during, and after difficult times-He is with us, knows us, protects us, strengthens us, loves us, keeps us, blesses us, and is all-powerful.

God revealed Himself with the anoki statements, the “I am” statements, in the Old Testament. He revealed His nature and by doing that He revealed to our finite minds how we can understand and relate to Him. More important than these “I am” statements and our holding on to this God of love, protection, omniscience, and omnipotence, is the God Moses first came to know. Moses encountered Elohim God the first time in the burning bush and God commissioned him to go to Egypt to bring His people out of slavery there to His Promised Land. He asked Elohim, “And who shall I say sent me?” (Exodus 3:13) God told Moses to tell them, “I AM WHO I AM. That is what you are to say to the Israelites. I AM has sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14) This statement by God of who He is carries more weight than any of the anoki statements. God’s description of Himself includes and goes beyond all the characteristics He reveals to people. I AM is the One Who was, is, and always will be. Understand this. I AM is eternal!

With this understanding that God is before, during, and after time, we gain a new, fresher, and more accurate perception of our particular situations, our troubles, the things that make us feel “down.” Keeping our eyes on God eternal-almighty, all-knowing, faithful, Protector, Provider, Lover of our souls, King, faith, Blesser, Covenanter, immanent, transcendent, Savior-changes our perspective. If our God is for us, who can be against us. (Romans 8:31) Better yet, with our God for us, nothing can beat us. Whether we are sick or well, rich or poor, smart or not, big or small, old or young, God is the same. Circumstances do not define God; He defines them. When Elohim is your God, nothing can defeat you. God already has won the victory. Because of this, you can face difficult days without being “down.” You are not defeated because God has won the victory for you.

“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear NO evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.  Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Psalm 23 is not a death song. It is a victory song.

Lord, so often I fall prey to the victim mindset. Forgive me for giving up on myself and You. Forgive me for mentally allowing my situation to define You. Nothing defines You. Help me to remember You define my circumstances. Help me not to give up or get “down,” but to give praise and testimony for You, I AM, what You have done and what You will do. Help me keep my eyes on You in faith. I am trusting You in my situation today. Amen.

Shield and Blessing

“After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying, ‘Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.’” Genesis 15:1 (NASB)

As a prelude, let’s remember what had happened in Genesis 14. In that chapter, four kings of the southern part of Canaan went into battle against five other kings. In the process of this battle, King Chedorlaomer of Elam and the other three kings of this alliance took Lot, Abram’s nephew, captive along with his possessions. When Abram heard about this, he pursued the kings with his men and defeated them. He returned with Lot and all his possessions including the women and people. The king of Sodom, the place where Lot lived, offered a reward to Abram of the goods he rescued. Abram lived up to his vow to God not to take anything from this king for himself. Abram showed his desire was not more wealth, but the LORD God. God would bless him with his greatest earthly desire.

Abram explained what this desire was in chapter fifteen, an heir from his own body. Before God told him of His blessing, He spoke of something Abram and all people of the LORD would need. God told Abram not to fear, and He is his shield. In actuality, He said not to fear because He is his shield. Why is this significant? Why did God say it before He proclaimed His blessing on Abram?

In reading Genesis 15:1, God told Abram He is his shield. A shield’s purpose is to deflect the swords and other offensive weapons of war, such as arrows, darts, pikes, and claymores. A shield, as an offensive weapon, allows a soldier to punch an opponent like a metal fist and to trap the opponent’s sword hand and weapon against his body. Soldiers rely on their shields heavily. From Ephesians 6:16, we learn the shield from the “armor of God” equates to faith by which to combat what Satan throws at us. Interestingly, in Genesis 15, before God told Abram he would have an heir and numerous descendants, He told Abram that He is his shield, his faith. He does not tell him to have faith, but that He is his shield (of faith). Believe in God. Trust in Him. Faith is belief and trust in someone or something. Abram’s faith is God, and is from God. Faith is having confidence in what or who you know. In Genesis 15:1, God meant as you have learned to trust Him, believe Him because of your relationship with Him. He said this before He revealed His plan to grant Abram’s deepest desire-to have an heir from his body. Abram’s heir did not come immediately. He would need to remember God’s promise, His covenant, to Him. Abram would need to remember God is his shield, his faith. He could trust, believe, and have confidence that what God said would come true.

God reminds each of us to have faith in Him often before situations and people test our faith. Abram’s faith experienced testing several times before God’s appointed heir was born to him. Abram and his wife Sarai doubted God’s promise and tried to create his heir through Sarai’s maid, Hagar. From Abram’s and Hagar’s union, Ishmael was born (Genesis 16). Later, Abram and Sarai had a son of their own whom they named Isaac. Through God’s promise to Abram and His promise to be his shield-his faith-we can learn to trust/believe/have confidence in God, and His truths and promises. Just as God did with Abram, often God reminds us of Who He’s been for us and what He’s done for us before a trial occurs. Then, just as Abram received God’s blessing, we will get through and receive God’s blessing. We who believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior know God and from our knowledge of Him in our lives, in the Bible, and the testimony of His people, realize God is always faithful and we can have continued faith in Him.

He is our shield. He is our blessing.

Oh Lord, be my shield when trials come my way. Forgive me when my faith falters. It’s not that I don’t believe in You, but that I have allowed my situation to become greater in my mind than You. Nothing is greater than You. Please lift me up and restore my faith so I do not fail You and so that I grow into a deeper relationship with You. Amen.

Trust in the LORD: A Psalm 115 Devotional

Focal verses: 1, 9-11, & 18

¹Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your name give glory because of Your loving-kindness, because of Your truth.

⁹ O Israel, trust in the Lord;
He is their help and their shield.
¹⁰ O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord;
He is their help and their shield.
¹¹ You who fear the LORD trust in the Lord;
He is their help and their shield.

¹⁸But as for us, we will bless the Lord
From this time forth and forever.
Praise the Lord!

David wrote saying the LORD alone was to receive all glory. He then went on to show to the readers and hearers of this Psalm that other so-called gods are not gods. They can offer no help to their worshippers.

Those supposed gods are made by the hands of man. They have no mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands, feet, or voice. David added than any person who follows these man-made gods will become like these gods, even the ones who make them.

David said these gods are ineffective and cannot help anyone. The LORD God is unlike the man-made gods. He can hear, see, speak, smell, touch, and walk/run. The LORD can and does help. The Israelites knew that and could rely upon Him.

Because of the LORD being alive, the nation of Israel and every individual Israelite could know and trust that the LORD is their help and shield. He will provide them with every form of provision they need, including protection with His shield.

The LORD’s priests, the Levites, and their families know Him and can trust in Him. He is their help and shield. They have experience with Him and can continue to rely upon the LORD.

People who have come to know the LORD God, though they are not descendants from Abraham, can have faith and trust in Him as their help and shield. These are the people who come to have faith in Him, fear and are in awe of Him, who worship and dutifully follow Him. Even the people who are not from the seed of Abraham can become children of God because their faith made them righteous, just as God declared Abraham’s faith as righteousness (Genesis 15:1-21).

Every person, whether the nation of Israel, individual Israelites, Levites and their families, or those who have come by faith to believe in God, can trust in the Lord’s help and shield. We can each know the Lord will provide everything we need for our daily living. As a people, the children of God have reason to proclaim the glory of the Lord. As verse 18 says, “But as for us, we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forever. Praise the Lord!”

No matter what the circumstances we find ourselves in today, we can trust and know the Lord’s help and shield are already at work for us. We who are His children are cherished, loved, and protected. God gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, as the ultimate and only sufficient sacrifice for our sins.

That is the greatest show of His love. How much easier it is for the Lord to help and provide for us in our daily needs. Whether great or small, our needs are not beyond the Lord and His love is greater than we can anything we can think or imagine.

Trust in the Lord and his help and strength.

Give glory to the Lord

for who He is, what He has done, and what He will do.

Deuteronomy 31:6-8 A Devotion

Deuteronomy 31:6-8

"Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you." Then Moses called to Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, "Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land which the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall give it to them as an inheritance. The LORD is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed." 

Moses spoke these words to the Israelites before crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land. He also said them to Joshua who would become God’s leader for His people. Moses had taught the Israelites over the years who the LORD God was by pointing our His actions for the Israelites - provision of food and water, clothing, signs and wonders, and the defeat of their enemies. The Israelites learned to trust and follow the LORD over their 40 year history with the LORD. Now Moses tells and reminds them that the LORD will be the one who goes across the Jordan River before them and who will defeat the Canaanite nations so as to give them the land He promised to their forefathers – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In our lives, we have encountered God, too. We have seen His hand heal family and friends. The Lord brought healthy babies to us. During droughts of income, He made food available to us. During times of despair, the Lord sent friends and His messengers to encourage and help us. In the sunrise, He showed us His grandeur. Through storms, the Lord showed us His power. We learned about and came to know the Lord just as the Israelites learned about and came to know the LORD.

This message Moses gave the Israelites then is one we can take to heart, too. The Lord is the same today as He was during the Old Testament times. Through Moses He said, “Be strong and courageous; do not fear.” He meant this then and even today. We find these same words about God being our strength and shield in Joshua 1:5 & 10:25 (against enemies), and Hebrews 13:5 (for needs). Those words of God 3400 years ago are just as pertinent and valid today. We can take heart, be courageous, and not fear because He will never fail or forsake us.

Are you going through a difficult time now? Does it feel you cannot keep going or that you might not make it through? Remember God loves you; He is your strength. Remember He will never leave you or forsake you. You are not alone and you do not have to rely on your own strength. Take the strength of God. Remember Jesus said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-20 [NASB])

Call on the Lord today for your help. He will come to you.