Did you realize that the ONLY offensive weapon in the passage on spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6 is the Bible--the Sword of the Spirit? God calls us to "Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil." Some Christians act as if they just have to pull out a very large, heavy Bible and hit people over the head with it.
How many battles do you think an army would win with just a breastplate, a shield, shoes, etc. No matter how strong the defensive armor, eventually without some offense--a sword, for instance--the battle is lost.
We all pay lipservice to the fact we are in a battle--"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places"--and we are!
So to my point: God gives us a clue in Psalm 119 what it is to have a sharp, strong, powerful sword for our fight: Thy word HAVE I HID IN MY HEART, that I might not sin against Thee. How shall a young man keep his way pure?
Your sword is just as big as the portions of scripture you have hidden in your heart--i.e. memorized, meditated on, ruminated on, marinated your heart in. Spurgeon said of John Bunyan (Pilgrim's Progress) that his blood was "bibline" because he had saturated his mind and heart with the Bible. Luther, Calvin, and many other Christian leaders throughout history have memorized large passages of scripture.
Our mission at BibleMemoryCoins and our associated Bible Memory Society is to revive the old fashioned habit of Scripture memorization, one practiced by Christians for 1900 years, and largely lost today. Billy Graham, Rick Warren, John Piper, Tim Keller, Ravi Zacharias, John MacArthur, Dallas Willard, Howard Hendricks and many others point to Bible memorization as a, if not the, key to spiritual growth.
I hope you will act on this, not just agree in your heart. Take a first step and email us--BibleMemSociety@gmail.com-- a request for our free booklet "Hidden in My Heart" on the first steps to developing the memorization habit. Don't go out into battle swordless.
The battle is fierce and the enemy quite literally hates us. My question is: are you defenseless and weaponless in this fight?
My dad and I were just talking the other day about this passage. I told him I thought it was talking about memorization. He wasn't convinced, but he did agree it meant spending lots of time in God's word (which he does).
ReplyDeleteWhen I was young, I memorized the first part of the Sermon on the Mount. There are some passages I'd like to commit to memory from the Psalms ... Gospels ... and elsewhere. Thanks for this!