As we study through the armor of God from Ephesians 6:10 –
20 we look at guarding oneself in verse 16 with the shield of faith:
Above all, taking the shield of
faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Why is faith our shield? Why not the word or righteousness?
Really when you think about it the shield of faith is proper since most of the
fiery darts being hurled these days are those who say there is no God. The “Adversary”
has started to us “science” to show there is no God. With an onslaught of “scientist”
saying there is no way the earth could be 10,000 years old the first chapter of
the Bible is then questioned, thus leading one to question it all.
If we do not fall back to Genesis 1:1 and believe that to be
true then science is right and God does not exist. It reads very simply:
In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth.
If we cannot believe that then how can the rest be true and
this is where faith is the key to shielding us from those darts. Honestly can
science say it’s not true? No, they have created a story based on the data and
interpreted it without God. At the same time this same data can be reviewed and
interpreted with God and a totally different “story” comes that more closely
follows the Bible.
My point is we need to rely of faith to shield us from the
onslaught of information to contradicts our faith. Honestly the only way to do
that is a day by day strengthening of ones faith. You need to actively study
the Bible and pray! The key to building one’s faith is seeing the application
of faith.
The other day I was in line at Burger King … and before you
attack me on this try their chicken, apple & cranberry salad, it’s
wonderful … and I got a prompt to pay for the guy in front of me. Before I
could act he was paying and off. I noticed he left and realized his credit card
did not work and he went hungry. If I had acted he would have got lunch and I
could talk to him on why I was “prompted” to pay. But alas, I failed but did
improve my faith since that was a prompt that I realized was important and
valid. Now he did go to his car and get a card that worked, so he did eat, I just
didn’t give him the food of the gospel.
Faith is the only way we can shield ourselves from the “fiery
darts” of doubt, since we worship an unseen God. Otherwise the darts of doubt
would prick our understanding so we too start to question our beliefs instead
of strengthening them.