Paul says a Christian should be characterized by readiness, a spiritual buoyancy that comes from the use of the gospel of peace. We’re looking at the armor of God and we’re in the third part of our examination of the shoes and this one little phrase...
When Paul talks about shoes, he’s talking about a kind of spiritual athleticism. The idea behind the armor of God is that God has given us all sorts of things we aren’t using. The shoes were part of the armor, and the shoes of the Roman soldier had...
Some of you may be surprised that when Paul thinks about armor, he lists the shoes. Paul goes through the pieces of equipment that a Roman soldier would wear. It’s an illustration on how to live the Christian life, and it gets at a balance that is c...
When you fail, when people accuse you, when people reject you, how do you defend yourself? How do you look yourself in the mirror? We all have a problem of feeling unpresentable, of deeply seeking to be examined and approved. In Ephesians 6, Paul ta...
If you’re on your back and you’re a Christian, it’s because there are resources in your faith that you’re not using. Paul exhorts Christians to take the benefits and resources in the gospel, and to not just believe in them but to use them—so that in...
When you become a Christian, there’s a sense in which you receive all of the blessings and all of the privileges and power and benefits instantly. But there’s another sense in which you don’t. You’ve received the armor when you became a Christian, b...
The armor of God is the benefits, the privileges, and the freedoms you have in the gospel. To put on the armor of God means to get a new mindset. It’s to look at yourself and look at the world in a new way—through those truths and through those free...
What are we supposed to do so we don’t lead defeated lives? Ephesians 6 tells us about spiritual warfare, about the problems that get thrown at us. And it also tells us about our arsenal, the full armor of God. We’re now going to look not so much at...
You make or break your life on the basis of your choices. In Hebrew Scriptures, the word for guidance is usually derived from the word for rope because the ropes were the method of navigation for sailors. They used ropes to lower or move or raise the...
We all at certain times have a lot of trouble dealing with the deep, conflicting, confusing, powerful, sometimes warring dynamic impulses and feelings that just roll through our hearts. Sometimes we don’t feel we have any power over it. We don’t kno...
We’re looking at qualities you must have in order to live a wise life. Today, we come to self-control. A man or woman without self-control is not going to live a wise life, is not going to make wise choices. They’re going to mess up their lives, and...
Anybody who reads the book of Proverbs will see how often the book talks about the subject of work. It talks positively about work under the heading of “diligence.” It talks negatively about work under the heading of “sluggard” or “sluggardliness.” ...
Americans are how-to oriented. We want a technique. But Proverbs doesn’t give methods for wise decisions. Instead, it says, “Here’s the kind of person you have to become to make wise decisions.” And here is the one character quality that’s most cruc...
Very basic to the development of wisdom is the ability to understand and channel the deep currents of our hearts. The book of Proverbs looks at the subject of wisdom. And in these passages, we come to a theme the Bible says is very important to under...
You will have a mess of a life if you only follow the rules and don’t have actual wisdom in the area of money. Wisdom is not less than being moral and good; it’s much more. It’s knowing the right choice in the majority of life situations that moral r...
