Learning To Put On The Armor Part one

For the last few months, I am writing a series called “learning to be victorious Christian”. If you are walking with Christ and in obedience to Christ, an attack from Satan is inevitable. Peter tells us, he is roaring like a lion, ready to devour us. Therefore, no matter how long you have been a Christian, you have to be ready for a battle. Make no mistake, we are at war and it is important to put on our armor. We are in spiritual warfare and the battle starts the day you become spiritually alive, in other words, “Born Again”. You see until you accept Christ and invite Him to be your Lord and Savior, you are spiritually dead and dead don’t fight in battle. But, once you start living a Christian life of obedience and faith, an attack from Satan is certain. You have a lot of things working against you. First of all, the flesh. Your fallenness is a problem, as is mine. We all face the same reality that we’re living in an unredeemed body. There are in this body impulses that go along with being human that are not yet reformed. And that is what Paul calls the flesh in Romans 7, and it wars against the spirit. There is a battle going on in every believer between the spirit, which is that new creation, and the flesh, which is what’s left of that old man. And there is a war going on so that Paul says, “I don’t do what I want to do and I do what I ought not to do.” And he says, “It’s a wretched man that I am.” He describes it as having a corpse tied to your body that you can’t get rid of. In fact, at the end of his life, he said “I have fought a good fight.” In his ministry, he said, “I fight not as one who beats the air.” To Timothy, he said, “be a soldier who endures hardness.” Repeatedly in Scripture, the Christian life is seen as warfare. When Jesus began his ministry the initial onset of his ministry was a war with Satan, a struggle with Satan after 40 days of fasting in which Satan approached him and tempted him subtly three times and the way his ministry ended was the same way as Satan began to besiege him in the garden of Gethsemane and he began to sweat as it were great drops of blood. That shows us a lot of things but it shows us one thing I’d like to point out and that is that whether you’re at the beginning of your walk with Christ or at the end of it you’re going to be in the same battle and if you think it will get easier you’re wrong. The more obedient you are, the harder Satan works. Walking with Christ is not a stroll on the beach with a nice breeze, watching a sunset. It is a walk in the jungle with danger lurking at each step of the way ready to kill you. This is war and the enemy is hell-bent on the destruction of every divine purpose and so the believer has to view himself in that manner. We are sons, yes, and we are servants, yes, but we are soldiers too. And as soldiers, we need to put on armor and be ready for a battle.

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Ephesians 6:10

I want to draw your attention to the word “strong”. Too many of us are happy “being in the Lord” but, that is simply not enough. We are to be strong in the Lord. His strength is the issue. God is our strength and we must tap into this very powerful resource. There is a divine resource and a divine power that gives us victory, but verse 11 says we have to have a part, too. And verse 11 says, “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” There is that same divine enigma: the strength is God’s, and yet the commitment must be ours. We see it in the Christian life. Yes, it’s a battle, and know well that our enemy is a formidable enemy. You can’t see him. You can’t touch him, and you can’t outwit him, and it’s an enemy in the supernatural realm, literally, perhaps, millions of demons engulfed in a system that’s beyond our understanding. There’s no way you can deal with that system with human intellect. There’s no way that you can deal with that system in human power, but God’s power is available, and if you put your armor on, the whole system is powerless against you. What an incredible thought. God is our strength, but that strength can only be appropriated in obedience. We’re secure, ultimately, I believe that. I believe, if you’re a Christian, you’re secure in God’s power. I think God’s power is enough to hold you. The point is this. We are in a war but there is no reason to lose and there’s no reason to be afraid. The divine resource belongs to us. Young David goes to visit his brothers on the battleground and the whole Israelite’s army is shaking with fear of Goliath but, David draws on the strength of God. He knew God was going to fight the battle. The point is this. There is no Christian, at any time in his life who needs to feel that he loses the battle to the enemy. God has given us in Christ the resource for victory. “Now unto him who was able to do exceeding abundantly above all you can ask or think according to the power that works in us.” Now the fact is we can win. We know we’re going to win the war in the end because Christ has gotten us the victory. There’s no sense losing the battles along the way but there are some things we have to know. First, we have to have our strength in the lord and secondly, we have to have the armor on.

We have an untapped resource within our hearts. In Ephesians Chapter 1, in verse 19, it talks about the power toward us who believe. What kind of power? Mighty power. How strong? The power that raised Christ from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named not only in this age but in that which is to come. What kind of power do we have? The power that conquered death on the cross. The power that conquered death in the grave. The power that exalted Christ to the right hand and set every angel and demon in the universe under his feet.
That’s the power we have. That’s the power toward us so that I say to you that every believer has a resource within him with which he or she can deal with Satan no matter what onslaughts the devil may bring but on conditions. One that his strength is in the lord, not himself. Two that he fulfills the conditions of the armor, the provision God has made. The victory is ours. The only thing we need is dependence on God and obedience to put on the armor. Are you ready to put on the ARMOR?