Full Armor of God

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

- Ephesians 6:13

Seems a little redundant, doesn’t it? I mean, you already said “stand your ground,” God. Why “to stand” again? Seems like we need a little editing. This verse, more than almost any other, speaks to the sanctified stubbornness of the Christian who is going to trust God come hell or high water, who’s going to do it even when all logic swings the other way. And this is very hard for people like us who are very concerned with control, who naturally gravitate toward bringing all the threads of life into a neat weave. When those threads keep flying out of our fingers, we are indeed hard-pressed and perplexed (2 Cor. 4:8).

You have to be stubborn. People like us are very good at being stubborn, especially when we know that something is right. And we have to be stubborn about this, about believing God, about wearing that helmet of salvation even when doubting, negative thoughts try to seep in. Of all the things in your life you give your stubbornness to, give God the first-fruits of that stubbornness. Be as Pharaoh was with the Israelites in Egypt: be obstinate, be stubborn, be hardheaded, be unreasonable, be a toddler with a tantrum when it comes to believing God. You keep taking those thoughts captive and bringing them around like naughty children into obedience to Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5) Be warned: There will come a point even in that worthy orneriness where you don’t have the strength to be stubborn. Take heart: at that point, when it seems one more army has amassed solely to wear you down so the other armies can take you, all it takes is asking God for strength. By the end of this, by the time God sends that deliverance you are doggedly believing for, you will have changed your strength many times over, you will have discovered what it actually looks like and feels like to be strong with none of your strength. This is what happens when you say “YES” and you keep saying “YES.”

But this is what I mean about being stubborn. You don’t need to be stubborn when the battle is easy, when everything seems to be going your way. When God seems to be blessing your every move and you sit securely in the middle of your life. It’s when you’ve somehow swung to the outer rim of your life, spinning in the mad gyration of the wheel so you can’t even find the hub where everything is still. What happens when you’ve said “YES” to God and you’re still spinning? What happens when he seems to be a little slow on the uptake? Uh, God? I said yes. I don’t know if you heard me, maybe I wasn’t loud enough. But I said yes to you. So could you, uh, maybe do something now?

And he’s looking right back at you with compassion and kindness, nodding and saying patiently, “Yes, I know. I heard you.” And not saying anything else. But his eyes see everything. They see your wildly wheeling spirit, they see your desperation, they see your absolute frustration with yourself – Why can’t you get it together? – they see those pure moments of trust that you sure do hope last longer than they did the last time.

What you have to understand is he is not being smug about it. Nor is he being reluctant to move. How many of us love to be able to rush in and save the day? Many of us do just that on a pretty regular basis. We’re the ones who don’t panic in a crisis, we’re the reasonable friends who give good counsel to others who are in dire straits, we are the ones who organize the bake sales and the fundraising buffets. We are the ones others turn to when they’re at their wits’ end. They instinctively know that we will listen, help, and usually have good ideas they haven’t thought of. And we love it, don’t we? We love that expansive feelings that we averted disaster, that we were able to help those we love, that we proved ourselves worthy of the trust they have in us. While that enjoyment can tip out of balance if we let it go to our heads, it is a worthy thing in itself. We genuinely want to help and we feel a real satisfaction when we see everything calmed down and put right, when those in our care can finally breathe that sigh of relief. How much more does God feel that? Never deceive yourself that he has something better to do than save you. That is his heart’s desire. And considering the fact that he has all the power one can imagine to put any situation to rights (Job 38), what’s stopping him? Nothing. That can wig us out more than anything. Nothing is stopping him and yet he’s not doing anything? That logic doesn’t match up. But it does when you consider that he is the master of efficiency. He kills nineteen birds with one stone. And many times, if he acted when you expected him to, the way you expected him to, you wouldn’t glean nearly as much good as if you had just let him do it his way. And think of how you are. How often do you hold out when you know that you’ll get a little bit more if you do? How often do you choose to save than to spend? How many times do you take the time to put everything in place before starting a project, knowing how much more efficient you’ll be once you’ve started because of the preparation? We’re careful and we’re efficient and we want the maximum return from our investments. It’s how we roll. And there’s a reason for it. That is how God made us. He didn’t make us all happy-go-lucky, free-flowing hipsters. We were intentional. Even when we are in complete submission to God and we see the results of that in every area of our lives, we will always be inclined that way. And when brought into balance under God, he can do great things with those tendencies. That side of us is a reflection of that side of God.

What’s hard to handle is when “you have done everything” and you are expected just “to stand.” We like being in control. We can’t help that. We like the first part of the verse. What a glorious, powerful, purposeful picture to put on the full armor of God and stand our ground. The battle is just beginning, the vision of victory is clear and unmarred, our armor is clean and freshly strapped on, our bodies are well-fed and well-rested, and our minds are focused. Bring it on! “Oh, God, what glories are mine in my strong hands that know the grip of the sword, the carved muscles of the swing and cut, the unbending back and the clear vision. What strength comes from you, what wonders you have wrought in me. I am your daughter. I am your warrior-princess.” I said those words. Man! That feels good. And it is good. It is part of this journey to become the warriors we were always meant to be.

But what happens when you’ve been fighting for a while and you don’t want to admit it, but you’re getting really tired. You’re worn out. You just want to take off the armor for a bit, stretch your tight muscles, take a much-needed bath, and hit the sheets. Wait – what? You mean there’s no break coming? The enemy is not stopping? Even for a little while? I just need a break. Aw, man!

I’m serious. This is what we’re feeling.

And this is where you stand. It is not redundant. You have done everything. You have trusted God, said “YES” to him, fought with him, claimed his Word over your life and your situation, battled with the full armor of God, and kept at it. You have unleashed the power of praise and worship. You have even stilled and quieted yourself – a hard thing for us to do – and experienced God’s strength replacing your own. You have done everything. And the battle is still waging. There’s no breath to be taken, no pause in the action. It’s still coming and you’re at the end of your strength. You’re wobbly now as you’re trying to hold that vision of the outcome you’re believing for. More and more often you don’t really feel good or bad, just numb, just tired and ordinary and a little dulled. Or you start to hear doubts once again that that outcome you’re believing for was wrong somehow and God won’t help you achieve it because it’s outside his will. You can’t remember what it felt like to stand with your shiny armor and your legs planted on the firm soil of God’s promises. Your armor is all beat up, dented, and dusty. It’s not so pretty now. So what do you do now?

You stand. You accept that there is a place for you on the front lines of this war, but there are also battles to be fought by God alone, often for our sake. There are times to fight and there are times to be rescued. There are times to offer your strength and there are times to accept your weakness and times to keep repeating that God will make his way known to you and guide you straight. And there comes a time when you have to accept that God knows every part of you, knows how well you’ve fought for him, and is as button-busting with pride that you come to him with your exhaustion and weaknesses as he ever was that you were gripping your sword and taking a swing at the enemy.

The Army is Gathering

“For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you."

This is what the LORD says to you: “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God's. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the LORD will be with you."

2 Chronicles 20: 12, 15, 17

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For a woman who has traditionally felt like it’s far safer to hedge her bets with a diversified portfolio than to trust anything so completely, it’s a difficult confession to make, even if the heart yearns to be rescued like a damsel in distress. To admit there is a vast army preparing to attack you and that there’s nothing you can do about it – now that was scary to me. And that army can take many forms: physical, with circumstances or people who seem to be crowding in, emotional, where you can’t seem to find a place to stand in your roiling feelings, or spiritual, when you are trying to stand on what you know to be true but are feeling so terribly weak to do so. Doesn’t really matter what form that army is taking. It’s there and its sights are set squarely on you. Oh, the shaky breath we draw in as we marshal what strength we’ve got left and the breath we lose when we realize we’ve got nothing left to marshal.

Here is the razor’s edge of the soul, the fork in the road where you have to make a choice. What are you going to do? Try to fight anyway when the stakes are so high, knowing you’ll lose this battle and heaven knows what else? Or admit you don’t know what to do and need to trust God.

But trusting God . . . what a tangle that can be. Even if you’ve confessed your need to God, what does it actually look like? The path to trusting God looks different for different types of people, and I can’t speak for how it is for other personality types. But I can speak for how it usually looks to a woman who always wants to do the right thing but who asks questions and wrestles with God and isn’t satisfied by the pat Sunday School answers. It doesn’t look easy, basically.

We’ve all heard the admonitions and parables about committing a situation into God’s hands, unwittingly snatching it back, and then complaining that God isn’t helping. But no one ever seems to explain how not to snatch it back. Honey, if I knew how to leave it, I would! Who wants to lug that weight around? But then I look down, and blow me down, there it is. Dang it.

Funny how so often it’s when you have nothing at all left, no hands with which to take the burden back, no shoulders to bear up under it, that you learn the hard way what it is to trust God. And funny how even though your soul shrivels a bit at the prospect and throws a little resentment God’s way – “You don’t have to go overboard, you know, God. I want to trust you. Can’t you just work with that?” – it turns out that even in the breath-taking sweep of the destruction of what you held dear, it’s not as bad as you thought it would be. There’s such a sweetness in finding out what it actually looks like to see God be as good as he always claimed to be, as close as you need him to be, and faithful as swore by himself all those centuries ago. Oh, the safety.

And then you see, really see. You understand what it means to trust God when you see another army approaching. You understand what spiritual armor is all about. It’s about putting that helmet of salvation on your head –you know what you know and you’re not allowing any other thought to come in – taking up your position, facing that army, and standing firm while you watch what God can do.

See, the thing that the control-freak Christian has a tough time with is not so much that God can do what you need him to do. We know he’s powerful enough. It says so all through the Bible. It’s that he will do it. There’s never anything in his Word that contradicts his capability, his awesome might. But for what he will do, well, there’s no formula, is there? As John Eldredge points out in Wild at Heart, Jesus healed blindness four times and he never did it the same way twice. How many cries did David cast up to God expressing his confusion and fear because he couldn’t predict God? In the end, David did not rely on God’s methods, only his promises. He focused on what he did know. For a person who is analytical, fair-minded, and smart, all about making wise choices in life and living out her years in an honorable and sensible way, the question springs up like a gopher that won’t leave the golf course: “I want God’s will in my life, and I know God won’t answer my requests if they are outside of his will, so what if it’s his will that I go through this, that I suffer, that I am lost, that I am swept away by this army so I can learn some lesson I need to learn? How can I have confidence to stand on believing for ‘whatsoever ye desire’ if it might not be his will and I just don’t know it?” That’s a really hard question to answer unless you go through his Word. There are times when you need to be broken, when you are holding something dearer and closer than your Savior. There are times when you need to find yourself down the rabbit hole of an impossible situation. But you’ll find more often than not, the reason for the impossible situation is not so that you can be crushed but so that God can show you what he’s made of. It is far more logical, based solely on his Word, to trust that God will deliver you than that he will put you through this suffering with no end. He is the God of “yes” and “amen.” (2 Cor. 1:20)

And think about it – what have you really got to lose? Even if you find he does not intend to rescue you exactly as you expected (and logical planners that we are, we always have a back-up plan in case God needs one!) or when you expected, he will always be faithful to warrant your trust in him. He will always give you more than you gave him, even when what you’re giving him is all your trust which is sometimes more than you thought yourself capable of giving. God knows there is no more precious a gift than that trust from a person who always likes to know the last step in a journey before taking the first one, who always has a color-coded, hyperlinked, indexed itinerary for any trip, who always asks “why” and “when,” who with a secret chagrin identifies more with Martha than with Mary. That, my friend, is your burnt offering, that is your sacrifice, and God knows it. And he will always honor those sacrifices. He said so himself.

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Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord. (Ps. 4:5)

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May he remember all your sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings. (Ps. 20:3)

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He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God. (Ps. 50:23)

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The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps. 51:17)

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Now, don’t get all worried if you feel like your trust is not enough because you keep having doubts, you keep wondering if God will come, you keep struggling with negative thoughts. “For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” (Ps. 103:14) And what has dust to do with the high and lofty ambitions of the Almighty? He knows this! He doesn’t judge you for your faulty faith when you offer it with a right heart. After all, how can it be that “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing is impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20)? How can that be? No faith as meager and faulty as one the size of a mustard seed could possibly yield all of that. Right? Ah, but you’re not figuring in God. Is he not the one who multiplied the loaves and fishes not once, but twice, to feed thousands? Is he not the one who created the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing? Your feeble faith is far more than he needs to expand it a hundred, a thousand times its original size. All it takes for him to do this great thing is a sincere offering and a heartfelt desire to trust him more. Few things are sweeter or more encouraging to me than the story of the man whose son was possessed by demons in Mark 9. How many of us have cried out in our spirit, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” That was my life verse for years. It is possible to believe and still feel unbelief trickle in like a leak the source of which you can’t find. How kind and patient of God to help us with this. How heartening to know he thinks far higher of us than we do, that he sees for us all we can be, that his law is the law of the highest potential.

People like us want to know what is our part. What is up to us to do? Surely God requires something of us, right? After all, we’re no shirkers, we don’t shrink from doing our duty. You don’t get something for nothing, after all. Well, aside from the fact that God sent his Son to die for us when we were completely, utterly unworthy of it, and aside from the times God saves his people for his own name’s sake and not through any worthiness of your own making (Ps. 23:3, 79:9, 106:8, 109:21, 143:11, Is. 48:9, Ezek. 20:44, to name just a few), it is a fact that in most cases, if you refuse to trust God, you stopper his miracles and stymie your own amazement. It takes something very simple, but something at times very difficult from you. It takes you saying “YES.” When you feel that faint nudging that now would probably be the time to trust God, that now is when you won’t be able to save yourself, when you think you hear God whispering, “Trust me. I’ve got this,” say “YES.” God does amazing things with YES. He unlocks doors, he breaks your heart open, he gives you a heart of flesh for your heart of stone (Ez. 36:26). He rises with all the force of a tsunami, ready to slam into you not with destruction but with awesome goodness. He spreads his wings like a great eagle and begins to beat the upper air with your soul securely in his talons. He is the earth beginning to quake, he is the sky ready to unleash its rains.

When you’re faced on all sides with either enemies or merely a lack of support, when you’re alone and you know deep down that no matter how you scramble, you can’t see your way to solving this situation, that’s when God acts. There’s a reason he waits until the eleventh hour: if the situation were not truly dark and insurmountable, then how would you be certain when salvation comes that it was by God’s hand and not your own? There are no “too lates” with God, as Alexander Maclaren said. There’s a reason God so often says, “This battle is not yours, but the Lord’s. Take your positions, stand firm, and see the deliverance the Lord will give you.” There’s a reason this loving Lord leads us into these situations that tempt you to doubt the surety of his love – it is so that he can show you once and for all that you are never so lost that he cannot find you, that you are never so drowned that he cannot swim to you, that you are never so charred that he cannot heal you, that you are never so deadened and tired that he cannot bring you new life. His eye is ever on your end. He does everything he does in order to raise you up as his beloved child, to set you at his side in the heavens.

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Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;
together they shout for joy.
When the LORD returns to Zion,
they will see it with their own eyes.

- Isaiah 52:8

He has given many words of deliverance, of rescuing his beloved like the hero in a fairy tale. And He is “watching to see that my word is fulfilled.” (Jeremiah 1:12)

Watch and see the deliverance the Lord will give you.