You must rule over it..
The full armour of a God is a new Testament principle first introduced by Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4, but sin and having control over sin with God’s help is a principle that has been going since the beginning of time. God says He is the Alpha and the Omega, this literally means the beginning and the end. They are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, and the title of both Christ and God given in Revelation 22:13–15.
God never leaves us alone and without instruction.
In Genesis 2:15, God instructed the man, Adam, to work and take care of the Garden of Eden. In 16 He told the man, he is free to eat from any tree in the garden but he must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for he will die. He told the man they would name the animals together in 19, but that whatever the man named them, would be their name.
In Genesis 3, as a side note to the instruction narrative we are on, the serpent spoke to Eve and planted a curiosity, a thought, ‘did God really say?’, she was used to eating from every tree, except the tree of good and evil, and now she was about to change her mind. Sin is going away from God’s will, repentance is while you are walking away you turn around and walk back into God’s will. In 23, God commanded Adam and Eve to leave the garden.
We will stop here in Genesis 4 with Cain and Abel. Sin crouching at the door.
After leaving the garden Adam and Eve had a baby, Cain who was a gardener, then his brother Abel who was a farmer. Wording in the Bible is very specific, so let’s look together at Genesis 4:1–15. In the course of time, so after some time had passed, Cain brought an offering of some of his fruit to give to God, while Abel brought some fat from the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked on Abel’s fat offering from the firstborn of his flock, with favour, but he did not do the same to Cain. This is the very first incident in the Bible, where we see giving the first of something to God for Him to bless the rest, when we do this with money it is called tithing. Trusting God with the first 10% of your money, and trusting He will make less, the remaining 90% cover everything the 100% wasn’t covering anyway.
Now in v5 we see it says, Cain was very angry, there is nothing wrong with being angry, but how many times has acting out of any extreme emotion gone well? Specifically, ‘very angry’, God asked Cain, “why are you angry? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” God knew out of Cain’s anger, he would kill his brother, so he advised him, instructed him to master his anger and to repent, out of this repentance God could help Cain do what is right. If Cain didn’t know or understand why Abel’s offering was better, he could have asked God, after all they were talking! The story continues to unfold, in v8 Cain takes his brother Abel to a field and kills him. God again, gives Cain an opportunity to do the right thing, like his mother and father had the opportunity, once they had sinned, to tell God the truth. God asks Cain, in v9, “where is your brother Abel?”, and Cain replies that he is not his brothers keeper. God knew Cain had killed him, but the spiritual realm extends into everything, as we see in this next verse, in v10, God says, “what have you done? Listen! Your brothers blood cried out to me from the ground.” Abel’s blood was crying out to God from the ground, a sound we as human’s can’t hear but God is a Spirit, He lives in the Spiritual realm.
When God asked Adam, where he was, when he was hiding, he has an opportunity to run to God, confess his sin, ask for forgiveness, repent and move on, but as we know neither he nor Eve did this. Cain then did the same thing. We now do the same thing. Sin crouches at our door, waiting for an opportunity to get us to follow it, and master us as opposed to following God’s will.
Don’t shy away from God’s commands. In Nehemiah, when they built the wall the had their weapons with them and physical attack was imminent and sometimes happening as they were building because they were building something for God. This is what the Christian life is like, but God will protect you and whatever you are building will be built. There is another prayer outline in Nehemiah 1.
The idea for this particular post came from this video by Linda Bolton, titled ‘Armor of God Bible Study Week 1 Day 1’ it is on her YouTube channel.
In it, she prepares a a prayer and suggests we write it down and pray it.
This is her prayer:
I gird my waist with your truth to have you and me to my core.
Help me to live out your word which is truth and keep me from lies and error.
I put on the breastplate of righteousness, keep my heart and emotion safe in Your hands and help me not be governed by feelings but by your truth. Keep my heart right and clean and God filter it all.
I shod my feet with peace, plant my feet firmly in your truth, empower me to stand firm against attack. Help me to be peaceful and to bring peace and guarding God my comings and goings.
I take up the shield of faith, protect me from Satan's fiery arrows, place me shoulder to shoulder with your army to oppose the devils schemes and let my faith come from you.
Now put on the helmet of salvation. Protect my mind, my imagination in my eyes, keep it all focused on You and let me think like You, and only about You Lord.
I take up the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. Let your word do a working and through me Lord. Help me to study the bible in a fresh exciting way and help me to memorize it to use it for myself, for others and against Satan. Help me to pray in the Spirit at all times today Lord and help me to stay alert and be persistent in my prayers. Bless me with your strength and your power for the battles today in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This is a lovely prayer, but what I want to do first is to encourage you to use it as a framework. To use it as a guide to create your own powerful prayer.
The armour of God comes from Ephesians 6:10–18. The Apostle Paul is finishing off his letter to the Ephesians around early 60 AD, during his Roman imprisonment. Written around the same time are the other letters in what we can commonly call the prison epistles. These epistles include Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. As he introduces the armour of God, Paul reminds us that we do not struggle against flesh and blood, but what does this mean?
As Christians we believe in the Spiritual realm, we ask God to lead us by His Spirit because there are many other Spirits out there who want to lead it. It does not always mean a full scale the exorcist, head twisting, vomit spewing possession, it can be a thought that [asses through our minds, or words that we allow out of our mouths, these suggestions and occurrences open spiritual doors for demonic entities to enter.
Have you ever had been so angry that you just blew up, to the point where people were shocked, and you we’re having a weird almost out of body experience where YOU knew this wasn’t like you. People say, ‘wow, he/ she is never usually like that’, ‘I've never seen them do that’, or you say ‘I just saw red/ the mist came down’. These are spiritual influences on you. There are so many ways we can open these spiritual doors for demonic spirits to enter us, making the armour of God necessary for daily survival.
Abel got a warning from God, sin was crouching at his spiritual door. This door had been opened with anger, and the enemy, this demonic spirit was trying to get him to do more. Demonic spirits have bottomless appetites. A really easy example is addiction, someone who cannot stop doing something, the more they try and stop, the more they want, they can’t stop, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they die first. Addiction can range from caffeine, cigarettes, approval, social media and phones to drugs, alcohol, money. All these things want to take the place of God in your life, there’s nothing wrong with most of these things as long as you are really and truly in charge.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:12–20 that all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful, he goes on to explain that food is for the stomach, the body is meant for Christ, when we use it for anything outside of God’s will, he compares it to being with a prostitute. Once we have surrendered to Christ, He looks after us we no longer belong to ourselves, we belong to Him. Not in a possessive way, but in the way we pray ‘God, look after me’, ‘God look after my finances’, ‘God i want to get married’. We want God to do things for us, as we do whatever we want, He is not a magic genie, He is our Father, our protector, our God.
There are rankings everywhere, in a school there is a headteacher, teachers, cleaners, students. If your country has a monarchy there is a King, or a Queen who has a Queen consort or a King consort, this basically means that they are not the ruling monarch but the spouse of the monarch. King Henry VIII was had 6 wives, when they married into Royalty they became the Queen of England but Henry was the monarch, he was the ruler, he had all the power.
The same can be said with what we call powers and principalities mentioned multiple times but also here in Ephesians, or a slightly easier term would be rulers and powers. There are rankings in the spiritual realm, God is the ever- ruling and unchallengeable King, under Him are theologically proposed rankings of angels, the bible gives no clear raking, we will not know until he returns but Got Questions has complied a nice, easy list. Don’t be confused that all powers are bad, since our easy list notes those as well.
Those random thoughts that come to you from nowhere, have in fact come from somewhere. You see someone struggling with a heavy door, and you offer ‘can i help?’, after having the thought, ‘should i help?’, or ‘I’ll help’, is the same way, someone can decide to have a school shooting. A thought, plants a seed, if that seed grows, like a natural seed grows into a plant, a mental seed can grow into an action.
Back to the armour, you can’t fight something you can’t see, but you can guard yourself against it. Popular culture wants us to believe the devil is a tall, skinny, guy who is red with horns and a massive fork walking around causing trouble. Do not be deceived, Satan is real, and he HATES you. He wants you not to fail at the little things in life, or even the big things in life, he wants you to not be saved.
We won’t go into hell today, but we will touch on this.
The concept that ‘why do bad things happen to good people’, goes far beyond everyone’s individual concept of good and bad, it is not a ‘good’ God sending people to hell if they don’t do exactly as He says, here he is holding a gun to your head. It is more accurately described as a good God who doesn’t want you to go to hell, since you are going anyway, here you are holding a gun to your own head and God is BEGGING you not too. Hell isn’t limbo, the place between death and the next life, it is the next life, specifically fire, punishment, torment, for eternity. Hell was created for rebellious angels, for Satan and those who followed him. This does not mean the worst of society, it is for anyone who rejects God no matter how ‘good’, or ‘bad’ they, or others thought they were. This is real and true justice. It is easy to say this because the alternative, the literal, get out of jail free card, is not just free, but also a gift. Salvation is free.
So, aside from choosing Jesus as your Lord and saviour and going to real, life and eternal heaven, there are lot’s of other gifts and perks too! It would be very mean and unfair for God to not protect us whilst we are here for what we have to deal with now. So He gave us armour too, we are protected then and we are protected now! You don’t wear armour every day, no one does, not even soldiers and army commanders, because no one is under physical attack every single day of their lives, at all hours. But, we are quite literally under spiritual attack.
To defend against this attack, Paul helped us by taking the revelation he got from God and shared it with us, so when we are under spiritual attack, big and small, we will be ready.
- The belt of truth.
- The breastplate of righteousness.
- The shoes of peace.
- The shield of faith.
- The helmet of salvation.
- The sword of the Spirit.
He also includes another one to occupy our minds, our mouths and by defect our Spirits, Paul says we should pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests, we should constantly be alert and pray especially for the Lord’s people, which by the way, is everyone!
Build your prayer based on these pieces of armour, which all have specific symbolisms.
The belt of truth symbolizes living with integrity and honesty, it encourages us to ground ourselves in God’s truth which will help make all your day- to- day decisions. There is an answer for everything in the bible, even something silly like ‘should I do the dishes, or leave them for someone else?’, Jesus said, ‘do onto others as you would have them do to you’, would you like someone to do your dishes? If you look to the word of God for small things, then when big things come, you will be grounded and pointed in the right direction, it might be hard, but it will be God’s will!
The breastplate of righteousness is the armour piece which protects your heart, literally and spiritually. Protecting your heart, will help you to live a righteous life. How can you live morally, and righteously, live in God’s will, if you don’t know what His will is? You remember what the belt of truth symbolizes.
The shoes of peace represent a willingness and readiness to share the message of peace and salvation found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. These shoes are multifunctional, they protect your active feet, and encourage you to actively spread the gospel. Sharing the gospel will result in spiritual and literal attack, you will be hated by the world, but so was Jesus! How can you guard your heart from this hurt? Wear your breastplate! How do you know it is God’s will for your life to spread the gospel? Read his word, keep it with you, close to you, wear it like a robe, or like a belt.
The shield of faith, is a defensive piece of the armour. It protects you on a battle field from attacks, it protects you in the spiritual realm from doubt and enemy attacks. Trust in God’s promises and wear them, use them, declare them, like a shield that goes before and around you.
The helmet of salvation protects your mind, your head and your brain. Our salvation is assured, know this, be confident in this and share this with others. Your mind has been protected so in sound mind, you can share the gospel you have received by utilizing the other parts of this armour. What use would armour be without protecting the head from which everything depends. Without brain function, you are medically deemed brain dead, you will not regain consciousness or be able to breathe without support- legally, you are dead. A dead man cannot spread the gospel and the rest of the armour is useless- see Luke 16!
God gives us the strength to do these things, but we have a part to play too. Make your own prayer based on these pieces of armour and what they represent. As you begin to do these things, the word of God will settle into your mind, your heart and your Spirit. Once in your Spirit, you will see your life change. Your circumstances may stay the same, but your life will change.
If you have never invited Jesus Christ into your life and would like too, here is a short prayer for you to say out loud. Living a Christian life, wholly for Jesus is not easy, but it is worth it.
Dear Jesus,
Thank you for dying for me on the cross and taking away all my sin. Thank you for loving me even when i rejected you. Come into my life and take first place. Help me to become who you know i am. Thank you, i know and believe because i have asked i am not eternally saved.
In your name, I have prayed. Amen.
I hope you prayed that prayer, good luck with your journey, there are plenty of resources available to you to help guide you with God, the most important of which is your bible and your prayers and talks with God. Here are some additional resources including other blogs, websites, pages, scriptures and key word searches.
No commission has been made from anything in this post, it is not sponsored in anyway. Including all links and mentions of specific people by name.
