ARMOUR OF GOD
In his letter to the church at Ephesus Paul points to her high responsibility, her special place in the plan of God. She has been called to victorious life in her risen Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, victorious life in the spiritual warfare against invisible and perilous powers of Satan, continuously opposing her on her way to perfection.
In his letter to the church at Ephesus Paul points to her high
responsibility, her special place in the plan of God. She has been
called to victorious life in her risen Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
victorious life in the spiritual warfare against invisible and perilous
powers of Satan, continuously opposing her on her way to perfection.
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
shoot his fiery darts.<br />
Satan came to the first people created by the Word and unto the<br />
Word to talk them away from this Word. God had said to Eve that<br />
she was not allowed to eat of the tree in the middle of Eden. Satan<br />
came and talked this out of her head. Eve should have armoured<br />
herself against these temptations of the devil, but her shield of faith<br />
was weak, so that Satan could shoot his fiery darts at her unprotected<br />
way of thinking.<br />
This resulted in the terrible fall of mankind. Satan did not<br />
penetrate her faith, but her sentiment. This is as he always does,<br />
coming to us through our senses, our mind. If! approach the things of<br />
God's Kingdom through what I have heard of it or think of it, what I<br />
see with my eyes or what my sentiment says about it, via my<br />
sensorial observations, I will not fmd the things I am looking for.<br />
'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things<br />
not seen' (Heb. 11 : 1). Faith builds its house upon a different<br />
perception: God has said! and that's it! Faith lives of this reality and<br />
cannot walk on natural, visible, palpable, reasoned ways. Faith<br />
directs itself towards what God can do, to what He is, what He says.<br />
This is the highest reality, exceeding everything, exceeding any<br />
criticism or opinion. When all other things in this world pass away,<br />
this reality remains. 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My<br />
words shall not pass away' (Matt. 24: 35; Mark 13: 31; Luke<br />
21 : 33).<br />
Lack of knowledge of the Word of God (Hosea 4: 6), resulting<br />
in our forgetting what we are and possess in Jesus Christ, has made<br />
Satan so perilous for us. Lacking insight in the power of the Holy<br />
Spirit, we have lost the mighty possibility to fight Satan effectively.<br />
We must go back to the Word of God, the mirror. We read in J ames<br />
1 : 23-24: 'For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is<br />
like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass; for he beholdeth<br />
himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner<br />
of man he was.' We have gone our way and have forgotten what we<br />
look like, what we are in the mirror of God; that is the tragedy of<br />
Christianity.<br />
We must go back to the Bible, wherein as in a mirror held<br />
before us we can see that we are more than conquerors in Christ, that<br />
in Him we partake again in 'His image and likeness', and partake' of<br />
the divine nature' (2 Peter 1 : 4). Satan puts a laughing-mirror<br />
51
Change language