The Armor of God
Tomorrow at Village Church we are continuing our series on Ephesians with 6:10-18. As I’ve been studying and writing, I’ve been thinking about how wrong we have had it for so long. There are many things within the current construct of American Christianity that I struggle with, but how many are applying this passage to everyday life is so discouraging.
This passage does not exist to encourage us or to simply keep us from discouragement in our daily life. It exists to be a battle cry at the end of possibly the most Christ, mission, and church centered book of the entire New Testament. We often read a passage like this and find ourselves looking for spaces in our lives that we need to apply the message to, and that is exactly where we go wrong. If you find yourself doing that, then the reality is that this message does NOT apply ANYWHERE in your life.
Years ago, I heard David Nassar and he began the series of meetings with the sentence, “God wants to ruin your life.” This is an offensive statement to most of us because of how we view God, and His blessings. If you stand back though, and view all of Scripture, that statement could not be truer. God does want to ruin your life, because your life is sinful, worthless, meaningless, vein, and completely unworthy in comparison to His life.
God desires to deconstruct everything about your life and how you are setting it up. The fact is that if you take Ephesians 6:10-18 by itself, you are not at all getting what Paul is talking about. For the real message you must return to Ephesians 1:1 and read through to the end. This is a book about God’s plan for His people in His church. It is about what God wants to build and how He has set up a plan to accomplish His mission. God wants to take our death and turn it into His life, but that can only happen when we stop looking for where He fits in our lives. It can only happen when we are willing to lose absolutely everything that we are and replace it with what He wants to give us. Because then we aren’t looking to where things fit, but rather living it out in who we are.
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