You have gone through the process of changing the way you think, and you see your armor starting to fall off. I hope you are enjoying your new sense of freedom. Now, what do we do the day we wake up on the wrong side of the bed and everything goes wrong?
This has happened to me now more times that I want to admit and I am sure that it will happen again. We have not become perfect people, but at least we can say that we have started our journey. Keeping up with God is like staying in the eye of a storm. In a hurricane, the eye is the most peaceful place, but leave that small part of the storm, and you will get hurt. The same thing goes with God. If we want to the have the best life possible we need to stay in His will and be close to him. The eye of the storm may not be the easiest place to stay in, but when you stay in the center and don’t get distracted by all the other things that are whirling past, you allow God to move you where He wants you to be. That is the best place we could ever be.
It’s like what we read in 1 John 5:1-5 (NIV). “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”
David describes this as well in Psalms 91:1-4 (NKJV) : “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler.”
Our part is to “dwell in the secret place of the most High”. We can’t just stop by to visit. We can not be constantly in and out, we need to live there. As a resident of God’s secret place, God promises us His truth which “shall be your shield and buckler”. See God doesn’t want us to be running around without any protection, He wants us to take His armor.
Paul gives us a full listing of God’s armor in Ephesians 6.10-17 and starts by reminding us that we need to “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might” (NKJV). We need to always keep in mind why we are protected, and it’s not because of who we are or what we can do (Psalms 91.9 NKJV).
In Ephesians 6.11-12, Paul tells us the reason God gave us his armour: “to stand against the wiles of the devil” (NKJV), and “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (NKJV). We have been given the ability to fight, and sadly instead of fighting the devil, we tend to fight each other. Our emotional armor separates us from people, the very people we need in our lives for support. We fight a spiritual battle, so we need to take off our emotional armor and replace it with our spiritual armor. Only when your spiritual armor becomes a second skin can we say that we truly do not need our old emotional armor.
Like I said earlier, it is a journey that I am still working on, but praise God that I know I have left and am on my way. Remember God loves you, wants to protect you and guide you. We don’t always understand His ways, but He has our best interest in mind.