SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/24/2019 10:30 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Shield of Faith”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
6:16
Message of the
verse: “in
addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to
extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”
I have to say that the
faith that John MacArthur is talking about is different than the faith that I
thought the “Shield of Faith” was referring to.
He writes “But faith in God is immeasurably more reliable and more
important than the practical, everyday faith by which we live. And it is far from being simply ‘faith in
something.’ Faith is only as reliable
and helpful as the
trustworthiness of its object; and Christian faith is powerful and
effective because the object of faith, Jesus Christ, is infinitely powerful and
absolutely dependable. Christian faith
never fails, because the One in whom that faith is places never fails.” In my Bible reading this morning I was
reading from the 7th chapter of Hebrews, a chapter that explains how
Jesus Christ is our High Priest, and one of the differences between Him being
High Priest and those from the line of Aaron is that Jesus Christ will never
die again, therefore He is High Priest forever.
Knowing this can help my faith which is what we are learning about, “The
Shield of Faith.”
MacArthur tells the
following story: “When John Paton was
translating the Bible for a South Seas island tribe, he discovered that they
had no word for trust or faith. One day
a native who had been running hard came into the missionary’s house, flopped
himself in a large chair and said, ‘It’s good to rest my whole weight on this
chair.’ ‘That’s it,’ said Paton. “I’ll translate faith as ‘resting one’s whole
weight on God.’””
We want now to move
onto talking about the flaming arrows that were shot at the Roman Soldiers and
how their thureos shield would quench them. First of all we need to understand that the
arrows that the enemies of the Romans, or any other nations army would wrap the
tips of their arrows with cloth and then soak them in a flammable source and
just before shooting them they would light the arrows and when the arrows hit
they would splash fire all around setting on fire the clothes of those they
were fighting against. The Romans would
soak their shields in water and so when the flaming arrows came at them the
fire would most of the time be put out, doing no harm to them.
The spiritual flaming
missiles against believers that Satan shoots against us is mostly temptations
as he continually bombards God’s children with temptations of immorality,
hatred, envy, anger, covetousness, pride, doubt, fear, despair, distrust, and
every other sin. In my prayer list that
I use most every day I put on the spiritual armor and when I get to the shield
of faith I ask the Lord not to allow me not to add fuel to those fiery darts or
missiles that Satan shoots at me. To add
fuel to those missiles is exactly what Satan desires for me to do. I think of two examples from the life of
David where Satan shot missiles at David and he then added fuel to those
missiles. In his sin against Bathsheba
who was taking a bath on the top of her house David added fuel to this missile
that Satan shot at him and he dwelt on her lusting for her. In the other sin that we know that David
sinned against the Lord he had just come from a great battle and was feeling
good about himself and so Satan shot an missile at him tempting him to number
the people of his great nation, which he did and 70,000 people died because of
David’s sin. Like I said in both cases
David added fuel to those missiles that Satan shot at him and did not protect himself
with the shield of faith.
In today’s quotation
from “Love in Action” we look at Acts 5:1-2.
But a certain man named Ananias, with
Sapphira his wife, sold a
possession. And he kept back part of the
proceeds,
his wife also being aware of it, and
brought
a certain part and laid it at
the apostles’ feet.
I now want to continue quoting from Warren Wiersbe’s book “The Strategy
of Satan.”
When God called Moses to go to Egypt to deliver Israel, Moses argued
with God. He protested that he was slow
of speech and could not do the job. Was this
humility on Moses’ part? Of course
not! It was pride; in fact, it was the
worst kind of pride: false humility. The
person who is truly humble has these characteristics: (1) he knows himself; (2) he accepts himself;
(3) he yields himself to God; (4) he seeks to better himself that he might
serve God better. The humble man
realizes that all that he has comes from God and must be given back to
God. John the Baptist said:
‘A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.’ (John 3:27).
“And Paul echoed this
truth:
For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not
receive? And if you did receive it, why
do you boast as if you had not received? (1 Corinthians 4:7).
“To boast of your gifts is
a sin, because God gave them to you and you cannot take credit for them. But to deny
your gifts is also a sin. We must accept
our gifts and affirm our gifts to the glory of God. We must not think more highly of ourselves
than we ought, but neither should we think less
of ourselves!”
This last paragraph is seen in Romans 12:3 and after this
verse in the book of Romans Paul goes on to teach about spiritual gifts, as it
seems to me that Paul is trying to warn us the truth of humility before he
writes about spiritual gifts so no one will get puffed up about the giving of
gifts from the Lord.
It looks like we will be
able to finish the quotations from Dr. Wiersbe’s book in our next SD, Lord
willing.
10/24/2019 11:15 AM
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