Gothic News

I am going to start with the passage from the bible that I discovered applied only recently. Despite knowing this passage quite well I had never managed to put two and two together and see how what I was doing was precisely what the passage described.

Ephesians 6:10-18

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do no wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.

Truth
Righteousness
Gospel of Peace
Faith
Salvation
The Word of God

These are the armor of God and in my life I’ve been shown how important each is.

I wrote previously about my experiences with having thoughts of evil and self-destruction just popping randomly in my head. These thoughts would come at random, usually beginning when everything was going well in my life and then rushing in like a flood. It literally felt as though I was drowning in a tide of self-loathing and hate. At my lowest point these thoughts/attacks finally reached the point that I was being told that I was so evil that not even God could love me now. To repeat my previous note;

“At this something began to stir in my heart. It felt like someone had literally lit a fire in my heart and then it burned through every nerve until I was filled with warmth, love and peace. At the time I didn’t really understand what it was, but since I have come to understand that I was always saved, even when I hated God. He had patiently sat in the background, working things in my life that even though I was doing everything I could to destroy it nothing happened that was so bad it would bring me to utter ruin. When finally the demons attacking me were game enough to make it a direct attack on the promise of God He stepped in to banish all doubt. The Holy Spirit dwells within me and the promise of God is that no matter what we do, nothing can remove us from His love. God wouldn’t allow that lie to stand and He rescued me from a pit so deep and so utterly black that nothing but the love of Christ could bring me out of it.”

What this experience shows is the first piece of the armor of God in action: Truth. The truth of the matter is that nothing can stop God from loving us, nor can anything take us away from God’s salvation. “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). It was this truth of Christ that saved my physical and psychological self from utter ruin on that day. Without even recognising that it was there, I had been armored with the first piece of the armor of God. Since that day, this piece of armor has been of vital importance in my every day life. I still get the thoughts almost every day and without knowing I have the armor of God I would be constantly in a state of utter despair.

The first step in combating these thoughts, feelings and impulses is to capture them and test them, and it is this process which I have truly had to learn the hard way, and at times still forget to undertake allowing the enemy to hurt me deeply. What I mean by “capturing and testing” these thoughts is that when you have a thought, or a feeling or a desire to take some kind of action the very first thing to do is to stop and analyse it, rather than allow it to consume our conscious thought or just acting out on the impulses that come into our heads. The first question to ask is: “is this true”. So say, for example, that you’re walking down the street and you see a hot guy/girl and a thought comes into your head that is like; “wow, they’re hot. I’d like to do them”, rather than letting that just pass through and maybe even dwelling and expanding on how much you’d “like to do them”, you need to stop and ask “is this true?” Would you really want to “do” someone you don’t know just because they appear attractive at first glance? A by-product of this process is that you will very quickly learn the truth about yourself, and in return it will become easier to stop thoughts, feelings and impulses at this stage.

The second piece of the armor of God is Righteousness. What Righteousness means is being “right with God” or “being as God”. Putting on righteousness means that you are trying to live as Christ lived. This has been one of the hardest parts of my recovery. I really struggle to live the way Christ lived, because I have built up a completely unrighteous persona as a defense mechanism against the pains of life. For me this is my weakest link in my armor. If I don’t stop the thoughts, desires and impulses with the Truth, then they will go straight past this defense. Say that I’m hanging out with friends and we’re joking around and the thought of making a harsh call or sexually implicit joke pops into my head and I don’t stop to think “is this true”, then what should happen next is that it will hit the Righteousness of God, where the thought/impulse will be tested against “is this the way Christ acts?” For me, I have a seriously weakened section in that question, and it leads to much regret. I spent so many years trying not to act how Christ acts that it has become a constant struggle to reapply righteousness in my life. However, what should happen in that example is that the desire to make an inappropriate or harsh comment would not make me more like Christ, and so it would not be said.

The third piece in the armor is the Gospel of Peace. For quite some time I was stumped as to what the Gospel of Peace was, and why it would represent the shoes of a warrior. But when you break it down it does make sense. “Gospel” is just a fancy word for “good news”, and the “good news of peace” in the Bible is this; “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) Why this is the third piece of the armor of God seems to be fairly obvious, in that it is the basis for our Salvation, however Salvation is mentioned in and of itself so I don’t believe that is what they mean by this, and it brings into it as to why we are to “shod our feet” with the Gospel of Peace. Our feet are the part of us that walks, that allow us to travel the world and this is the image that the passage is trying to get across. It is saying that we must cover the part of us that travels, that is the outward person with the good news of Christ. How this relates to our defenses is that the next step to controlling our thoughts and desires is to check them against what we present to the world. For all the same reasons as righteousness I struggle with this piece of armor as well. The Gospel of Peace is closely tied to Righteousness, in that when we want to live the way Christ lives, we also desire to present that to the world. Imagine you have been told this really funny but totally racist joke, and you just want to repeat it to others. As a Christian you are to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20a) so what impact will this joke have upon that commandment given to us by God? What outward image will we present to the world with these thoughts and desires if we just act upon them? I believe that is where the Gospel of Peace comes into our armor, as protection for both ourselves and for the image of Christ we present to the world.

The next item of our armor is the Shield of Faith. Our Faith is integral to who we are, and for me it has been my saving influence against the attacks of the enemy on more occasions than I can count. It is Faith in Christ which brings about our Salvation, and through our Salvation comes the assurance of the Truth and the desire for Righteousness. In battle the shield is the strongest and most sure piece of defensive equipment and warrior had. It could shelter a warrior from both ranged attacks as well as hand-to-hand combat. Our Faith does the same. It is our strongest defensive measure and shelters us from both outside attackers (such as people who tell us that God doesn’t exist, that we’re “stupid and illogical” for believing in Christ or just day-to-day pressures) and those that attack us much closer (as in our sinful desires coming from our flesh or the personal oppression from the demonic). When we have Faith in Christ, we become as one with Him, and His Faith becomes our Faith. This is why Faith is such a strong defense. Christ was able to stand up to all the temptations of all mankind and through His Faith overcome them. It was His Faith that refused the temptation of the devil in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11) as well as His Faith which kept Him in His path to our Salvation. That is the Faith that we are granted when we Believe in Christ, and it is that Faith which shields us against the “fiery darts of the enemy”.

The penultimate (2nd last) piece of armor is our Salvation. For me this brings me full circle to my experiences. Our Salvation is a guarantee of the promises of God, which the bible testifies to on many occasions however one of my favorite passages is from Ephesians 1:13-14:

“In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.”

It is that sealing with the Holy Spirit upon my Salvation that allowed God to dwell within my heart even though I hated Him so much. It was through Salvation that the Holy Spirit remained within, waiting until such a time as I would hand my problems over to God. It still is this Salvation granted to me by God which ultimately protects me at the end of all. It is the promise that no matter how bad I fail now or in the future, my eternal place with God is guaranteed. This is such an uplifting truth to be able to hold on to when things seem hopeless. As a helmet protects our head, the seat of our consciousness and who we are so Salvation protects our spiritual center from all attacks, it defines and protects who we are in God.

And this brings us Finally to the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. As a final defensive measure we have been given the tool with which to fight back against all fear and doubt. No enemy can stand against the Word of God, because the Word of God is Jesus Christ who has conquered all. (John 1:1-5) By testing our thoughts and desires against what God has revealed to us through the Bible we can ultimately overcome all that is brought to bear against us. On top of this Salvation comes by Faith through Grace and “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17).

It is the Word of God which is the ultimate test of Truth and that teaches us not only what Righteousness is but how to obtain it. The Word of God is the Gospel of Peace and our Faith and Salvation come through hearing that Gospel. This is why the Word of God is our weapon against our enemies, it is integral to every piece of our defense and our only tool to strike back and to shine in the darkness as the Chosen of Christ.

The final part of the passage is the one that I struggle with the most. Prayer. I am not good at praying, in fact I am dismal. I don’t talk with God nearly as much as I need to and I find it very hard to ask for anything from Him. But for the armor of God to be truly effective then we must use it together, and with prayer. When ever you come across a situation, or a desire or a thought that you’re not sure about it is of utmost importance to ask for Gods help with it. I have learnt that the hardest way possible, and even though I now know I should I still try to do things myself before asking God to help. But the armor of God is weak and full of cracks without the communication between ourselves and God.

No matter how strong we believe ourselves to be, the armor of God is only effective when it is held together by the Grace of God.

Original post: 
Defence Against the Dark Arts