Day Twenty-Three : Strong enough to lift (The Shield of Faith)

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  (Ephesians 6:16)

Faith is not easy.

When everything in the world tells you to believe one thing…  When everyone says you are crazy to believe something else…
When you can’t see what you hope for…

How do you keep it up?  How do you hold onto your faith?

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

Sometimes having faith is hard.  Your faith feels heavy.

Just like I am sure the huge shield was heavy.  A solid sheet of steel, covered in wood and leather, is no joke to lift. 
It was hard!

So how did the Roman soldier get better at lifting it?

By lifting it every day.

At first it was heavy, and clumsy, and kept feeling like it was holding him back.  It would be easier to just drop it and run.
But he kept lifting it, day after day.  And only by doing the heavy lifting, was he able to strengthen his shield arm to carry the shield.

 

We need to strengthen our faith, but doing some “heavy lifting”.  The more we choose to hold onto our faith, and keep holding onto it, the stronger our lifting arm will become, and the easier it will be to have faith. 

The more we rely on faith, the more our faith is rewarded.

Day Twenty : Shield of Faith

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
(Ephesians 6:16)

 

The shield of faith.  My favourite item on the list I think.

What is faith?

… faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
(Hebrews 11:1)

“sure of what we hope for….”

Without hope, there is no faith.
Without being sure of that hope, there is no faith.
Hope comes in the morning, but faith gets you through the night.

What do you hope for this Lenten Season?
Where does your faith lie?

Day 16 : Maturity

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:11-14)

We have a simple faith, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to be stupid.  GOD never told anyone to be stupid.  (I know, I looked it up.)

When we first pick up the Bible, we probably won’t understand it.  I’ve been reading it for 25 years and it still tells me a new story every time I listen.  It was given to us as a gift, and failing to understand it is to reject that gift.

We won’t all be scholars, we might take our entire lives to to get to the same place that someone else starts at.

But the willingness to grow is what is important.  To seek to learn more.  The writer to the Hebrews says “by constant use [they] have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil”  It doesn’t say they are smarter than anyone else, or more gifted.  It says they have “trained themselves” by “constant use.”

Am I willing to grow, or am I just wanting to rest on my salvation and let others do my thinking for me?

Day 10 : Assurance

 

“let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22)

A quarter of the way through Lent, let’s look at developing a spirit of…

ASSURANCE

We see in this reading from Hebrews that the writer is talking about drawing near to GOD in full assurance of faith.  What is this assurance, and how do we be sure of it?

If we look at the verse in it’s full context, then we see …

• we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (v10)
• by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (v14)
• Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more."And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. (v17-18)

We mess up.  All the time.  What we need to do is remember that through Jesus sacrifice, we have an assurance of holiness.  We cannot earn our own holiness, but we can borrow his.

 

So let us today try to remember that we have been saved, and a sacrifice made for us.  Let our response be to draw near to God with a sincere heart.