Going Beyond Ministries with Priscilla Shirer – The Armor
Priscilla Shirer – The Armor
“If I were your enemy, I’d magnify your fears, making them appear insurmountable, intimidating you with enough worries until avoiding them becomes your driving motivation. I would use anxiety to cripple you, to paralyze you, leaving you indecisive, clinging to safety and sameness, always on the defensive because of what might happen. When you hear the word faith, all I’d want you to hear is “unnecessary risk.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer
Today, we are so blessed to be able to have with us.
Uh one of the great uh gifted and blessed speakers on, on the face of the planet.
I mean, she could be anywhere she wanted uh in the world.
But today by God’s purpose, God’s design, she is here.
She and Jerry, her husband have three sons, uh gifted community cater of the word of God.
How many people saw War Room? You, you saw War Room? Come on. Was that not like the greatest movie?
I mean, just we took our old staff and it just so motivates you to pray to call on God.
She’s a gift to the kingdom. We are blessed to have her today.
Would you join me in welcoming Priscilla Shire? Come on, give it up. We got Priscilla Shire in the house.
Let’s give her a big welcome. Thank you.
Amen. Amen.
Well, hi y’all.
It’s great to be here from Dallas last night.
The privilege to be able to come and be with our Springfield family.
We’ll just go ahead and y’all didn’t adopt me, but I adopted my own self into uh James River because we just love your church so much.
We love what God is doing through you to minister to the lives of so many people outside of your walls.
See sometimes when you’re in a church, you don’t actually realize the extent of what, what you’re doing, how it’s impacting others.
But those of us on the outside are blessed because we see what God is doing um through you in many aspects in my life, specifically through the women’s ministry at this church.
Very few churches minister to women the way James River does.
And I’m so thrilled about that and excited about that.
And it is a privilege to be able to share with you on this Sunday under the leadership of your, your pastors and your leadership team at this church.
I want to share God’s word with you.
But before I do, I wanna tell you this, um I, I have the privilege to be in a lot of different settings, a lot of churches.
Um And y’all need to know that every church does not have leadership that actually has integrity.
Like, I mean, the person you see when they’re standing on the platform is a completely different person than the person that is in the back at the g in the green room or at their home.
And the fact that at this church, you have a couple leading a team of people who are walking in integrity and have character and all are the real deal.
Come on y’all. That’s where celebrate right there. That’s where celebrate right there. Yeah.
Yeah, we salute you.
We salute you and your whole team for your integrity for um oh um we, we do, we salute you.
I appreciate integrity. My parents have integrity. I’m so glad.
Um I wanna share with you God’s Word this morning because I believe in the power of the word of God.
I believe it is living and that it is active and sharper than any two edged sword.
And I believe today he’s going to give somebody a word.
What that means is you don’t just hear the general simple little message. I’m gonna share with you.
It takes the Holy Spirit to take one little word and divide it 2000 different ways.
So that all of us in this room, all of you at the west campus and the two or 300 of you that are here with us.
But in the building across the parking lot um that all of us hear it together and I’m gonna pray for that this morning, Lord Jesus.
Thank you. Thank you that we your daughters, your sons can hear you speak. We are, I am moved.
Lord, I am beyond shocked that you the God of the universe would let us hear from you.
So today, Lord, our ears are open because we need a word speak.
We’re your servants and we’re listening in Jesus name.
Amen in light of the happenings of our week.
Uh, I’m from Dallas so it has hit particularly close to home.
This week, I ran across this post from Natasha.
I do not know her, but I reposted it because one of my friends posted it and I read it and moved by it.
An African American lady named Natasha, uh, wrote this.
So this morning, she says I went into a convenience store to get a protein bar.
And as I walked through the door, I noticed that there were two white police officers, one about my age and the other several years earlier older, they were talking to a, to the clerk at the store who was also an older white woman.
She was behind the counter and they were talking about the shootings that have gone on in the past few days, not only in Dallas, but in different parts of our nation.
So when I walked through the door, Natasha writes, they all looked at me and then fell silent.
I just went about my business to get what I was looking for.
And as I turned back up the aisle to go and pay, the oldest police officer was standing at the top of the aisle and he was watching me as I got closer to him, headed toward the register.
He looked at me and said, how are you doing?
I replied, I’m ok, how are you?
He paused for a moment and looked at me again with a very strange concerning look in his eyes and he asked me again.
No, really? How are you? I looked at him and I said, I’m tired.
Actually, his reply was me too.
Then he said, I guess it’s not easy being either of us right now. Is it?
I said, no, it’s not.
And then the police officer hugged me and I cried, she set up says I have never seen that man before in my life.
I have no idea why he was moved to talk to me.
All I know for sure is that he and I, a white police officer and a black woman in a convenience store in the middle of Dallas in an early morning hour.
Shared a beautiful moment together. No judgments, no justifications.
We just knew that it wasn’t easy being either of us right now.
It occurs to me, it occurs to me that in a group this size with black people and white people, with Hispanic people, with Asian people, with every creed and class and background and culture and color that no matter if you’re single or married, tall or short, no matter what side of town you live on where you came from, how well educated you may be or may not be.
It occurs to me that no matter who you are, it’s not easy being any, any of us right now.
Not only because our culture and our country is in trouble, but the reality is our own homes.
Are in trouble that our marriages are under assault, that our sense of peace of mind and peace of heart, our financial stability, every part of our lives is being shaken up.
And if you and I as the church of Jesus Christ, if we keep our attention zeroed in on the people or on the physical tangible occurrences or difficulties that are right in our face every day.
If we turn our anger and our frustration and our attention onto the physical tangible things we can see and forget that we have an enemy that is underneath the surface that has a hand in it all.
If we forget that he is there, we will waste all our time and energy offering the wrong solutions in the wrong places.
And it is to this end that I believe the Apostle Paul wrote to us in the book of Ephesians.
The book of Ephesians scholars say is the highlight of all that Paul wrote. Y’all know the Apostle Paul.
He was a bad brother. He gave us most of the New Testament.
He penned incredible words, letter after letter to people that he hoped would read them and their lives would be changed and transformed, that they would know who they are.
But scholars say of all that he gave us to teach us who we are in Christ.
The book of Ephesians is like the cherry on top of the cake because he spends the first half of the book just rehearsing who you are as an adopted daughter or son into the family of God.
He just wants you to know that, that you were not rejected, that you were hand picked and chosen by God.
He wants you to know that you have been lavished upon with all the grace and the glory and the riches of God.
Our father. He wants you to know that you have been completely forgiven that you were chosen.
He says, I’m praying that the eyes of your heart would be open so that you would know the bigness and the greatness and the depth and the riches of his choosing of you.
He spends most of the book just telling you who you are.
And then he gets to the end and he offers fair warning.
He says these words in Ephesians chapter six, the last chapter in the book beginning in verse 10.
He says, finally, you be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
He says, you put on the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes.
Somebody say schemes against the schemes of the devil.
He says for our struggle, it is not against flesh and blood, but it is against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.
He says, so therefore you better lay down all your earthly weapons that do not work and take up some weapons that will actually have benefits in your life.
He says, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything to stand firm.
He says, you want to just stand firm.
Therefore, in this passage, the Apostle Paul introduces almost for the first time.
At least this overtly, he introduces the concept of spiritual warfare.
He says, I want you to know that the enemy that you think you have.
The one you can see the person that is sitting next to you.
Maybe that you think is the cause of your difficulty or your frustration or that coworker, that one that if she says one more thing to you, you go knock her out that one or your boss or that person that you have contention with or that financial struggle, even the struggle you have in your own mind and even your your own heart.
The Apostle Paul says, would you realize that your real problem is not flesh and blood?
It is nothing you can see. It is not the white police officer or the black police officer.
It is not the Asian person or the Hispanic person, it is not the government, it is nothing that you can see.
There is an invisible enemy and he is banking on the fact that you will forget that he is there.
He so wants to disguise himself behind the tangible physical problems of your life that you will forget.
He’s often the one that is influencing some of the most difficult circumstances, not only in our nation, but in our own homes.
The Apostle Paul says you have an enemy and he’s very, very real and he’s banking on the fact that you will forget he is there.
So I have, I have three sons.
My husband just text me and said that they’re home watching right now. Hi, guys. I have three boys.
Three giant boys. Uh, listen, I mean giant boys. My 13 year old wears a size 14 men’s shoe.
Somebody come help me feed these people.
So I have Jackson, I have Jerry Junior and I have Ju J C is 11.
My middle son is 11. He wears a size 12 shoe already.
My seven year old stands up tall to me and these boys are just getting so big.
And one of the things we like to do a around the um Halloween time is we go to a harvest festival that’s at a small church right down the street from us and we go there because it’s just kind of fun and, and quaint and we like it.
I can keep an eye on everybody at least when they were smaller.
And I needed to really see everybody as they were running around.
This small church environment gave me the chance to do that and, and what it is that the church does, is a trunk or treat.
Does anybody know anymore? What I mean? When I say trunk or treat? Ok. Some of you remember that?
Um, a lot, not a lot of churches do it anymore. But this church still does.
It’s where they volunteers from the congregation who agree to pull their car into the parking lot on harvest festival night and they open up the trunk of their car and they, they prepare a game of some sort, a carnival game or a fair sort type of game so that kids can line up and, and do the game.
And then whether the kid wins or loses, they load the kid down with a bunch of candy and we, the parents are so grateful.
So anyway, a couple of uh harvest festivals ago, I’m standing in line with my boy behind one of the, the games.
This one was in the bed of a truck. This was the longest line.
Everybody wanted to play this particular game.
The um proprietors of this particular game, what they did was they put um, a step ladder right there at the bed of the truck so that a kid could climb up into the bed of the truck, turn to the side and they had placed a table top or a wooden board that’s basically the same size as the bed of the truck.
They had attached it to the side of the bed of the truck cut holes in the top.
About six of them draped it with some fabric and then out from the underneath the holes.
Every now and then a puppet would pop through the hole.
They would give a huge plastic mallet to the kid as the kid would stand there and try to hit the puppets on the head.
It was a homemade whack. A mole game is what it was. So this line is so long.
We can’t wait for our turn. Little Jude was maybe four at the time.
He was so excited about this game behind us.
There was probably a four or five year old that was talking to his mom and it was hysterical.
All of us in the line were laughing long line and this four year old was so frustrated. Mom.
I came to this carnival to have fun. I can’t believe I have to stand in this line. Mom.
How about you stand in the line while I’ll go over here and play some other games.
Then I’ll come back when it, when our turn is next, mom.
This is not when I came to the carnival for mom.
Are you sure I have to stand in this line and wait my turn.
But he was not only frustrated because he had to stand in the line.
He was frustrated as he watched the game because mom, I don’t understand this game. Why in the world?
What is the point of me popping these puppets on the head.
If, when they go down, they’re just gonna come back up in a few minutes.
I don’t understand why I would even do this. Why are we playing this game? Mom?
I don’t understand what the point is of this game.
So we are left and at this four year old just going off as he’s waiting in line.
And before any of us could really think or see straight, I just saw a four year old flash by my peripheral vision as he ran forward, grabbed the drapery off of the table top and pulled it clean off underneath.
There were three adults puppets on each hand, y’all.
We got such a good laugh, but we also learned a good lesson that there is always something you cannot see controlling what you can.
And if you spend, if I spend all of my time and all of my energy popping at all of the symptoms of the problem, just dealing with those things that are occurring and erecting in our marriage and in our finances, in our struggle and we spend our time and our money and our resources and our human ration out to figure out the problem.
We will at best exhaust ourselves when we haven’t even begun to tap into the root of where the real problem is.
Stemming. The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians chapter six, he says, come on, y’all pull back the curtain and let the enemy know we got our eyes on you that it’s not your spouse.
Who is the problem? There’s an enemy, it’s not your boss. Who is the problem. There is an enemy.
It’s not even your own personal internal turmoil. That is the main problem.
There is an enemy who lives to stir descension and division and to see jealousy and envy to call to you and I not to have any peace of mind and peace of heart and the enemy wants or Paul wants you to know how strategic the enemy is y’all because he says, listen, the enemy is scheming against you.
Somebody says scheme, listen, if I find out that somebody has done me wrong, I mean, I’m upset but I can get over that.
But if I find out somebody has been planning to do me wrong.
Now, that’s a whole another story.
I myself, I find out you’ve been scheming against me, meaning you’ve been sitting back studying my tendencies and my patterns you’ve been watching for where I come and what I go and you’ve been trying to take advantage of what the weaknesses of my flesh are.
You’ve been looking into my personality to figure out what would be the best way to throw me off.
Course, when I find out that not only have you been studying me, but you’ve been studying my husband trying to look into his history so that you can figure out given my history and his history the best way to make explosions of anger happen in our family.
When I find out you’ve been trying to explore his weaknesses so that you can tempt him away from his heart and his emotions being at home with me when I find out that not only have you been studying me and my man, but you’ve been also looking into my three boys, these little men that the Lord is given me to raise in the fear of God.
And you’ve been trying to figure out the best way to thwart them from reaching the destiny that God has assigned to them.
You’re trying to figure out the best way to take advantage of their fears and their weaknesses and their deficiencies.
When I find out you’ve been studying me and the people that I love you better believe that now a holy indignation rises up on the inside of me.
I’m not just gonna stand back and let you run roughshod over my family.
I’m not just gonna stand back and let my city decline continuously and just act like you are not there uh playing us for the fool.
I will be the one and I pray the church of Jesus Christ will be the one that will stand as gatekeepers in our community and say not today.
Yes. And so if it’s a war, the enemy wants, it’s a war.
He will have not by our strength and not in our power, but by the power of God’s own spirit, the victory is already won and we have the privilege to claim that victory and experience it as a regular part of our lives.
So would you know everything that has happened this week?
Y’all, all the devastation and all the tears that have been cried, all the lives that have been lost underneath it all, it’s not about officers and it’s not about racial division.
There is an enemy trying to stir up trouble and if we turn our attention on each other instead of pulling back the carton and say, uh-huh, we got our eyes on you and we’re coming after you with weapons that work.
The Apostle Paul says, put down all of the weapons that are futile.
They’re just popping at symptoms and they may take care of them in your marriage or in your city or in your home.
They may take care of them for a while but you better believe when one goes away.
There’s another one coming right back up.
Paul says, I’m gonna give you some weapons that work and he gives us traditionally, people say six, but really, I believe there are seven pieces of armor.
I wanna tell you briefly what they are.
He says you need to make sure that you stand firm in verse 14, guard your loins with truth.
He says, then you need a breastplate called righteousness, but he doesn’t stop there.
He says you need something for your feet. They better be shot with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.
Then he says, you need a shield and it’s called faith.
He says in verse seven 17, you need a helmet, you need something to guard your mind.
You need a helmet called salvation. And you need a sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
And while most people stop there, the Apostle Paul does not.
He says, even though these six things are important, you need one more thing in verse 18.
He says, and pray, prayer is the divinely ordained mechanism, y’all that our God has given us, it’s like a key that unlocks the heavens and allows all the blessings that our God already has for us to actually be dispensed to us.
Prayer doesn’t manipulate God. It accesses what God has already aligned to us in our, in our lives here on earth.
And so pray. If you want victory in your marriage, would you make sure you are a man or a woman of prayer?
If you want victory, teenager in your high school or student at your university, then you got to become a person of prayer.
And if you say you want to live victoriously and abundantly and yet you don’t pray, then I don’t believe you because prayer is how we live in the abundance of our God.
I wish I had time to go through all of the pieces of armor, but just a couple of them that I thought you and I could talk about uh today in light of everything that has happened over the course of this week, in particular, but in general for our lives.
So the very first two were just two.
I wanted to highlight to you in verse 14, Paul begins by saying, stand firm, having girded your loins with a belt called truth.
Somebody say truth. Can I tell you that we will look to at a, at a picture of the Roman soldier?
The Roman soldier was a ubiquitous presence in the first century, meaning they were everywhere.
Every civilian could look and see a Roman soldier just walking down the street.
So they would have known what these pieces of armor looked like on a Roman soldier.
So we’ll look to that in a second.
But what I do wanna tell you is something else that the first century believers would have known that you and I don’t necessarily go to when we read this passage, a very familiar scripture that I’m sure in this Bible teaching church.
Uh You guys have heard before um the first century believers when they converted to Christianity, when they placed faith in this Messiah Jesus Christ and became a part of the church.
They automatically began a rigorous study of the Old Testament.
So they, they studied the prophets and they study the the words of all the works of old so that they could know what had come before them and what they were looking forward to in these props season.
So they would study the Old Testament.
And can I just tell you that I love the jewels and the riches of the New Testament?
But if in your life in Christ, you are neglecting the study of the Old Testament, you are missing out on so much of what the word of God is designed to offer because the Old Testament is like an arrow and a spotlight that points more fully to Jesus Christ.
And so in the New Testament, these believers would immediately start studying the Old Testament.
So as soon as they read this part of the letter, the breast plate, the belt, the shoes, they would have immediately recognized something that most often we do not.
In the Old Testament. In the book of Isaiah chapter 59 the prophet Isaiah talks about our God Yahweh, the one true God.
He paints a picture of him as a divine warrior coming with righteousness, as his breastplate and with truth guarded about his waist and with salvation as a helmet on his head.
He paints a gorgeous picture of a divine warrior in the Old Testament.
But in the Old Testament, yahweh came as a warrior against his people because of the rebellion of Israel.
So when Paul comes along in the New Testament and says, uh huh, you get a breastplate of plate of righteousness, you get a belt of salvation.
You get a helmet on your head.
When he describes it in the New Testament, he’s basically reminding us that the same armor that God used against us in the Old Testament.
Now, under the new covenant of Jesus Christ’s bloodshed on Calvary, that same armor that was used against us is now given to us as a gift to stand firm against the schemes of the enemy.
Let me tell you why. This is good news because it means what we have to war against the enemy in our lives.
It is not some second hand, second rate hand me down stuff that may or may not work.
Uh uh If it was good enough for God in the Old Testament, it is good enough for you in the New Testament, my friend.
And that’s the primary picture Paul had in his head when he wrote this.
It wasn’t about a Roman soldier, although we can use it as a real illustration.
It was really about God’s own armor now being given as a gift to us to wage war against the enemy.
So he says, truth, the very first thing they need. If they’re gonna stand against this enemy is truth.
He picked it first. The very first thing of all of the litany of things.
He is going to give us as weapons against the enemy. He says truth is where it starts.
When you saw a Roman soldier in the first century.
The first thing you would have noticed was a helmet with those bright, the colored colored feathers that would most of the time be at the top of those helmets.
Or you might notice the enormous breastplate or the huge shield that was big enough for two or three soldiers to get behind.
Or the big broad sword, it was about 3 to 4 ft long and they would carry it at their side.
There were so many other more noticeable parts of the uniform of the Roman soldier.
And yet when Paul was trying to figure out what is the best piece to correlate with the belt?
He did not or with, yeah, with the belt, he did not choose that, which was most impressive that which was most noticeable or that, which was most applaud when you saw a Roman soldier walking by.
But he did choose the piece that the soldier put on first before anything else the soldier would put on the belt because the belt really was the central hanging point for every other piece of armor.
Without the belt, nothing else would be in place for very long.
Paul says, if you want any chance of standing firm against the schemes of the enemy, you must first make a decision to be a man or a woman committed to the truth of God.
Can I just tell you that I am so glad you are in church this morning and that you were at the west campus or you’re in the overflow here on this campus.
I’m so glad you were in church on Sunday.
I pray that you are a regular part of the family of God that you are planted in the house of God that you don’t just dip in when it’s convenient and then dip out when you don’t feel like it.
But that you are really here fully and completely, completely devoted.
I pray that you are but just because you’re in church does not mean you are girded in truth.
I hope you’re in Bible study regularly y’all.
But just because you are studying the Bible, listen, you can study it, know it applaud it until you are blue in the face.
But that does not mean you have made a commitment to it that you have pledged your allegiance to the truth of our great God, which means you may not always be politically correct, but you’re ok because you’ve decided like Joshua, as for me in my house, what we’re gonna do is serve the Lord.
That’s what we gonna do. Cool.
And it’s a choice you’ve got to make for yourself that when the tide of the culture change changes, when the philosophies and new ideas that they are suggesting rise to the forefront of everyone’s mindset and they are legislating new ways of thinking and new ways of living.
We must be a group of people who don’t just celebrate the Word of God on a Sunday when it’s convenient and everybody is applauding along with us.
We’ve got to decide that when we walk out of these doors, even if we have to stand alone, we will pledge our allegiance to the truth of our great God.
I do not describe myself as a black woman because that gives too much power to my blackness.
I don’t want black my race to be the describing adjective, the defining adjective of who I am as a woman.
I am not a black woman, I am a Christian woman who happens to be black because it’s the job of your adjective to describe the noun of who you are.
And if there’s gonna be an adjective describing me, it is not gonna be my race.
It is going to be that.
I am a woman who believes in every single thing that my word, but that my God has declared to be true and I will stand firmly on the promises of his word because I will be girded in truth.
So you may be a black woman, a black man, a white woman, a white man, but that should not define you.
So that if your race or if your political group is going in a different direction than the word of God.
You don’t choose your blackness or your whiteness or whatever culture you are, you do not choose that or your political persuasion over what it is that God’s word declares to be true, right?
I hate to tell you this but God doesn’t ride the backs of donkeys or elephants.
He did not come to take sides.
He came to take over, he came to take over the reason why this issue of truth is so important is because the enemy’s major calling card is deception.
It’s how you can see him coming a million miles away.
The tragedy of deception y’all is that there seems to be embedded in deception.
There’s a blinding, a blinding agent so that the person that is being deceived doesn’t know it.
See what makes what makes deception so scary is that when you’re the person being deceived, you can be standing on the very edge of a precipice and everybody around you knows that if you take one more step, you are headed into despair.
If you walk one more uh piece into that relationship or down that path, if you do it, everybody out there around, you can see that you’re going to fall into a pit of despair.
But the person being deceived can’t tell, oh, you’ve had this happen before because you’ve had a friend tried to describe to you why they were choosing this relationship and this relationship made sense to them.
And this is where they needed to be and wanted to be.
And this was why it was better for them to choose this path.
And as they’re talking to you, your eyebrow continues to raise higher and higher because you cannot see for the life of you.
How in the world they don’t see. This is not good for them. It’s because deception blinds you.
And the reality is, some of us don’t even have to look to a friend to remind to, to see a picture of deception.
The truth is if most of us just look back to a different season of our life, there’s a whole season in my life y’all where I look back now and I realize that I can’t even believe why I would have allowed those kinds of relationships or those kinds of thinking patterns or those kinds of influences.
Why I walked down those kinds of paths.
If it were not for the grace and the miracle working, delivering power of our God, where would we be?
And I wonder if I have any witnesses in the house of, of being able to stand outside of a season of your life and look back and realize that you were being deceived anybody.
And so since there is a blinding agent in deception, since you can’t tell when you’re being deceived, you’ve got to have a standard that is outside of yourself that you can look to, to determine whether or not you’re being taken for a ride.
Y’all remember the movie called Inception Leonardo dicaprio was in this movie, I did not see this movie.
Uh because when I go to the movies, I don’t really wanna think I came to enjoy some hot buttery salty popcorn, a Coke.
And I just want to feel good for two hours. I don’t want to use my brain space.
Anybody know what I’m talking about. Ain’t nobody got time for all that.
I came to just relax from the day. So that’s why I didn’t see Inception.
Dad told me about it. He told me that about how complicated it was great movie he says, but it was complicated.
Leo’s character would be in the real world, but then he’d fall asleep and have a dream and he’d be in a dream and in the dream, everything was so real and so tangible that he thought he was in the real world.
So he would make choices and decisions in his dream world that would get him in trouble because they weren’t designed for this world.
So he would be in trouble all the time.
And if that weren’t complicated enough, sometimes when he was already in the dream world, he would fall asleep, have another layer of dreaming.
So now he’s two layers deep in dreams.
But in the dream world, everything is so tangible and so real, so touchable that he thinks he’s in reality.
So he’s making decisions in that realm that don’t work there.
And if that wasn’t complicated enough, sometimes when he is already in too deep layers of dreaming, this brother has the nerve to dream again.
So now he is three layers deep and everything is so tangible and so real that he thinks he’s in the real world, but he’s not.
He’s in a dream that is within a dream, within a dream, within his reality.
So he learns about midway through the movie to take a spinning top with him.
Everywhere he goes, he finds a flat surface, he spins it and he watches it if it spins endlessly and it never slows, never topples over.
Then he knows he’s in a dream because gravity isn’t working.
But he knows if it slows down and it falls over at some point that he’s home because gravity is at work.
What he has learned to do is no longer lean to his own understanding.
He no longer trusts his own perceptions.
He has stopped believing that what his eyes can see or ears can hear is exactly how it is.
He has decided that for his own safety, he better have some objective standard that he takes with him that is outside of himself that he can look to as the determining factor to determine whether or not he’s being played for.
The fool you go, or the enemy hopes you will trust how you feel.
He wants more than anything for you and I to trust what our eyes can see or what our mind perceives what our ears can hear.
He does not want there to be a body of believers who have an objective standard, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth can I just tell y’all because this is the second service.
So that means that I have like more time.
They said, they said you have 40 minutes.
I was like, that’s just my introduction. Let me tell you all something.
Second Corinthians, I believe. Chapter 15 verses three and four. It’s like Israel is in turmoil.
It’s basically America, brother, fighting against brother uh murder and deception and lies and horrendous culture.
It is America and there are several reasons why that are listed in those verses.
And one of them is that there was no teaching priests. It does not say that there were not priests.
It says that they weren’t talking about nothing. It doesn’t say that there weren’t leaders.
It says that the leaders were not teaching the truth. Let me tell you why I love James River.
Well, I love this church because you have leaders that do not share with you their opinions and their ideas.
They do not get up here and just try to tell you what sounds good for the day or what will be politically correct or what will put their church in the right limelight in the media.
They aren’t concerned about that. What they’re concerned about is making sure that you have the truth.
And can I tell you father and mother, your home needs a teaching priest that you’re toddlers and your teenagers, that ministry, the enemy has downgraded ministry in our mind so that we think unless you’re on a platform with a little microphone attached to your face that you’re not in ministry.
But if you’re sitting around the dinner table with your three year old and your four year old or your 17 year old or your 15 year old, I’m telling you, you’re in ministry and you feed them the truth while you feed them chicken lasagna for dinner.
That’s right.
So Paul says, you decide that this book is the Compass for your life.
You wrap it around you, you gird yourself in it, you stand firm.
Even if that means university student that you’re gonna stand alone, high school student.
Everybody might not be your friend.
You say it’s ok because I believe what my God has said just one more y’all.
Ok. Everybody. All right. He says, stand firm. Gird your loins with truth.
And then he says, now you need, you need a breast plate and the breast plate is called what?
Righteousness, Jerry. And I live in a fairly rural part of Dallas Fort Worth.
We like it that way because I got three boys.
So I believe they need to go outside and play anybody still believing outside.
So we purposefully moved there. Not for the house really.
Our house is a really small little little house.
Um And it’s just been cozy and great for us, but it’s a small little house.
But I moved there because the backyard, there’s trees and bugs and mud and things. Boys need in their life.
And any time my boys come to me and say, mom, I’m bored. I say, oh no, you’re not.
You see that tree right there, go play with it.
So, one of the things we love is our neighbor across the street.
She’s one of my closest friends. She has a pond. So she would let us take the two fishing poles.
I bought on sale at the local Super Walmart. I bought a tackle box as well.
You know, we got extra bobber things and extra hooks in there because we catch little fish on the side of the pond.
I also have gloves in the tackle box because y’all know I don’t mind going fishing, but I ain’t gonna touch no fish.
So we get all that stuff and we walk across the street and we fish normally just standing on the edge of the pond.
We just catch a little sun perch and stuff like that.
But my neighbors bought a little uh metal old rusted rowboat off of Craigslist.
So it sits there, turned upside down on the bank of the shore near the shore of the uh the pond.
And so every now and then I’m feeling adventurous and I’ll say guys, let’s not just fish from right here, let’s take the boat.
Oh, you know, out into the middle a little bit, it’s a huge pond, maybe five acres or so in the front of their property.
So you can row a little boat out toward the middle and fish out from there.
So sometimes I’m feeling a adventurous and I want to do that.
But every time I’m feeling that I actually have to think twice because in order to get in this boat, that means I have to turn this sucker over.
And I know that because the environment that has been created under this upside down boat was moist and cool and damp and shaded.
That inevitably when I turn it over, something’s gonna hop out from underneath it.
Something’s gonna waddle out from underneath it or worst of all, Lord help me, something’s going to.
So I always brace myself.
I stand way back at the very edge while I let the boys get the sides so that we could turn the boat over.
And inevitably something comes out. It has always been interesting to me that never once have I had to write an invitation and send it into the brush nearby and say, critters, you are welcome to join us.
We’ll be here at 1:00 today.
If any of you would like to come, please feel free to make yourself at home.
Never had to do it. I’ve never had to stand on the shore and call out and say, hey, we’re here.
Come on. Never once have I had to invite them.
The environment created by the upside down boat was invitation enough.
Righteousness is right side up living that invites the Son of God’s favor and His blessing on our lives.
Unrighteousness is upside down behavior that creates an environment that invites the enemy to come and make himself at home to where you don’t have to ask the enemy to come.
You just choose not to live in alignment with the word of God.
And you have just created an environment that has invited him and encourages him to flourish in your life.
Righteousness is not being perfect.
It is just choosing as a lifestyle by the power of God’s spirit to live your life in alignment with the word, guarding your, guarding yourself in truth means to affirm God’s standard for your life.
But being righteous means aligning your behavior to the truth that you say you affirm.
There are so many of us y’all that are saying we love Jesus and we love His word.
And then we go out of these doors and live and have attitudes that are completely incongruent with the truth of God.
And so we wonder why we’re praying against the enemy. We’re in our war rooms praying against the enemy.
But then we walk out of our war rooms and live a raggedy lifestyle and wonder why the enemy is running rampant through our lives.
So if you’re finding the fingerprints of the enemy in your marriage or in your own heart and mind, if you’re seeing jealousy and division and divisiveness in your organizations or in your school, if you’re finding that you can see the enemy’s handiwork around you ask myself, is my Burt boat turned upside down in any way that I need to realign my behavior with the truth of God so that I can invite his favor upon my life.
The armor of a Roman soldier Weighing about 70 lb.
Can you imagine trying to do battle, trying to move nimbly and quickly with 70 lb of extra weight on you?
Most of that weight was in the breast plate. Most of it was right there.
Mostly because it needed to be. The heart is the most vital organ of our bodies.
Pumping life and vitality. It didn’t matter how smart the soldier was, didn’t matter how many muscles he had how much experience he had.
If he didn’t have a breastplate on one blow to the heart would wipe him out.
That’s why more than anything the enemy is tempting you toward unrighteousness because he wants you to have no breastplate on because then it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how many verses you read a day to keep the devil away.
Then it doesn’t matter how much experience you have, how much you go to church, how many Bible studies you do one blow to your spiritual heart when you are not protected in the most vital spiritual organ that you have that which pumps life and vitality and passion and gives you the fervor to continue to follow God.
The enemy just wants a group of people who say they’re believers but have no breast plate on.
Wow. And so it needs to be strong and it needs to be intact in our lives and, and, and of all of the, the, the £70 that a soldier carried, most of the weight was in the breast plate.
If the soldier had to carry all of that weight on their shoulders, he would be so tired and so exhausted before the battle even begun.
All that weight hanging on their shoulders would just, it was just too much, too much for them to carry.
Part of the job of the belt was to take some of the weight of the breast plate off of the shoulders of the soldier.
So that all that weight they weren’t having to carry on their own.
It was the belt that took that weight off and set them free to be the soldiers.
God had called him to be.
Can I just tell you that if you’re trying to carry your own righteousness, it’s too much weight for you to carry.
Oh man, if the enemy can’t shackle you to sin or addictions in some part of your life, he’ll shackle you to perfectionism to where you’re carrying this righteousness all by yourself.
And you can’t live free and fully and abundantly because you got too much weight on you.
Listen, you and I, we weren’t meant to carry our righteousness alone. Righteousness is too heavy.
A weight to carry. God’s standard of righteousness is perfection.
It’s like the ceiling here in the gorgeous building you all have here. It is so high.
It doesn’t matter if you’re more athletically inclined than I am either.
None of us in this room could jump and reach that standard. It’s just too high.
Doesn’t matter how good you are, how high you can jump, how high I can jump.
None of us can reach that standard. That’s the righteousness of God. It’s too high. A standard.
It’s too heavy a weight. And if you’ve been carrying it, you know what I mean?
Because that perfectionism will keep you up at night. It’ll rot your soul from the inside out.
But I got good news for you.
There’s some truth that’ll take the weight of that right off your shoulders.
And here, here is the truth.
Here’s the truth that can set you free and set you on a path to finally pushing back the enemy in your marriage or in your mind or in your heart or in any area of your life where you really feel like you need to stave him off.
Here’s the truth that will begin to set you free.
The truth is that 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ came and he shed his blood on Calvary.
And let me tell you when you accept his gift, let me tell you what it does.
It does not just withdraw sin and the debt, the wages you, you and I are supposed to pay for our sin and our, um, our disrepair relationship with God, he not only withdraws that from your spiritual bank account, he doesn’t leave you empty.
Then he deposits the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, which means His righteousness is already in you.
Now, it just has to be on you.
Uh one of the great uh gifted and blessed speakers on, on the face of the planet.
I mean, she could be anywhere she wanted uh in the world.
But today by God’s purpose, God’s design, she is here.
She and Jerry, her husband have three sons, uh gifted community cater of the word of God.
How many people saw War Room? You, you saw War Room? Come on. Was that not like the greatest movie?
I mean, just we took our old staff and it just so motivates you to pray to call on God.
She’s a gift to the kingdom. We are blessed to have her today.
Would you join me in welcoming Priscilla Shire? Come on, give it up. We got Priscilla Shire in the house.
Let’s give her a big welcome. Thank you.
Amen. Amen.
Well, hi y’all.
It’s great to be here from Dallas last night.
The privilege to be able to come and be with our Springfield family.
We’ll just go ahead and y’all didn’t adopt me, but I adopted my own self into uh James River because we just love your church so much.
We love what God is doing through you to minister to the lives of so many people outside of your walls.
See sometimes when you’re in a church, you don’t actually realize the extent of what, what you’re doing, how it’s impacting others.
But those of us on the outside are blessed because we see what God is doing um through you in many aspects in my life, specifically through the women’s ministry at this church.
Very few churches minister to women the way James River does.
And I’m so thrilled about that and excited about that.
And it is a privilege to be able to share with you on this Sunday under the leadership of your, your pastors and your leadership team at this church.
I want to share God’s word with you.
But before I do, I wanna tell you this, um I, I have the privilege to be in a lot of different settings, a lot of churches.
Um And y’all need to know that every church does not have leadership that actually has integrity.
Like, I mean, the person you see when they’re standing on the platform is a completely different person than the person that is in the back at the g in the green room or at their home.
And the fact that at this church, you have a couple leading a team of people who are walking in integrity and have character and all are the real deal.
Come on y’all. That’s where celebrate right there. That’s where celebrate right there. Yeah.
Yeah, we salute you.
We salute you and your whole team for your integrity for um oh um we, we do, we salute you.
I appreciate integrity. My parents have integrity. I’m so glad.
Um I wanna share with you God’s Word this morning because I believe in the power of the word of God.
I believe it is living and that it is active and sharper than any two edged sword.
And I believe today he’s going to give somebody a word.
What that means is you don’t just hear the general simple little message. I’m gonna share with you.
It takes the Holy Spirit to take one little word and divide it 2000 different ways.
So that all of us in this room, all of you at the west campus and the two or 300 of you that are here with us.
But in the building across the parking lot um that all of us hear it together and I’m gonna pray for that this morning, Lord Jesus.
Thank you. Thank you that we your daughters, your sons can hear you speak. We are, I am moved.
Lord, I am beyond shocked that you the God of the universe would let us hear from you.
So today, Lord, our ears are open because we need a word speak.
We’re your servants and we’re listening in Jesus name.
Amen in light of the happenings of our week.
Uh, I’m from Dallas so it has hit particularly close to home.
This week, I ran across this post from Natasha.
I do not know her, but I reposted it because one of my friends posted it and I read it and moved by it.
An African American lady named Natasha, uh, wrote this.
So this morning, she says I went into a convenience store to get a protein bar.
And as I walked through the door, I noticed that there were two white police officers, one about my age and the other several years earlier older, they were talking to a, to the clerk at the store who was also an older white woman.
She was behind the counter and they were talking about the shootings that have gone on in the past few days, not only in Dallas, but in different parts of our nation.
So when I walked through the door, Natasha writes, they all looked at me and then fell silent.
I just went about my business to get what I was looking for.
And as I turned back up the aisle to go and pay, the oldest police officer was standing at the top of the aisle and he was watching me as I got closer to him, headed toward the register.
He looked at me and said, how are you doing?
I replied, I’m ok, how are you?
He paused for a moment and looked at me again with a very strange concerning look in his eyes and he asked me again.
No, really? How are you? I looked at him and I said, I’m tired.
Actually, his reply was me too.
Then he said, I guess it’s not easy being either of us right now. Is it?
I said, no, it’s not.
And then the police officer hugged me and I cried, she set up says I have never seen that man before in my life.
I have no idea why he was moved to talk to me.
All I know for sure is that he and I, a white police officer and a black woman in a convenience store in the middle of Dallas in an early morning hour.
Shared a beautiful moment together. No judgments, no justifications.
We just knew that it wasn’t easy being either of us right now.
It occurs to me, it occurs to me that in a group this size with black people and white people, with Hispanic people, with Asian people, with every creed and class and background and culture and color that no matter if you’re single or married, tall or short, no matter what side of town you live on where you came from, how well educated you may be or may not be.
It occurs to me that no matter who you are, it’s not easy being any, any of us right now.
Not only because our culture and our country is in trouble, but the reality is our own homes.
Are in trouble that our marriages are under assault, that our sense of peace of mind and peace of heart, our financial stability, every part of our lives is being shaken up.
And if you and I as the church of Jesus Christ, if we keep our attention zeroed in on the people or on the physical tangible occurrences or difficulties that are right in our face every day.
If we turn our anger and our frustration and our attention onto the physical tangible things we can see and forget that we have an enemy that is underneath the surface that has a hand in it all.
If we forget that he is there, we will waste all our time and energy offering the wrong solutions in the wrong places.
And it is to this end that I believe the Apostle Paul wrote to us in the book of Ephesians.
The book of Ephesians scholars say is the highlight of all that Paul wrote. Y’all know the Apostle Paul.
He was a bad brother. He gave us most of the New Testament.
He penned incredible words, letter after letter to people that he hoped would read them and their lives would be changed and transformed, that they would know who they are.
But scholars say of all that he gave us to teach us who we are in Christ.
The book of Ephesians is like the cherry on top of the cake because he spends the first half of the book just rehearsing who you are as an adopted daughter or son into the family of God.
He just wants you to know that, that you were not rejected, that you were hand picked and chosen by God.
He wants you to know that you have been lavished upon with all the grace and the glory and the riches of God.
Our father. He wants you to know that you have been completely forgiven that you were chosen.
He says, I’m praying that the eyes of your heart would be open so that you would know the bigness and the greatness and the depth and the riches of his choosing of you.
He spends most of the book just telling you who you are.
And then he gets to the end and he offers fair warning.
He says these words in Ephesians chapter six, the last chapter in the book beginning in verse 10.
He says, finally, you be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
He says, you put on the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes.
Somebody say schemes against the schemes of the devil.
He says for our struggle, it is not against flesh and blood, but it is against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.
He says, so therefore you better lay down all your earthly weapons that do not work and take up some weapons that will actually have benefits in your life.
He says, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything to stand firm.
He says, you want to just stand firm.
Therefore, in this passage, the Apostle Paul introduces almost for the first time.
At least this overtly, he introduces the concept of spiritual warfare.
He says, I want you to know that the enemy that you think you have.
The one you can see the person that is sitting next to you.
Maybe that you think is the cause of your difficulty or your frustration or that coworker, that one that if she says one more thing to you, you go knock her out that one or your boss or that person that you have contention with or that financial struggle, even the struggle you have in your own mind and even your your own heart.
The Apostle Paul says, would you realize that your real problem is not flesh and blood?
It is nothing you can see. It is not the white police officer or the black police officer.
It is not the Asian person or the Hispanic person, it is not the government, it is nothing that you can see.
There is an invisible enemy and he is banking on the fact that you will forget that he is there.
He so wants to disguise himself behind the tangible physical problems of your life that you will forget.
He’s often the one that is influencing some of the most difficult circumstances, not only in our nation, but in our own homes.
The Apostle Paul says you have an enemy and he’s very, very real and he’s banking on the fact that you will forget he is there.
So I have, I have three sons.
My husband just text me and said that they’re home watching right now. Hi, guys. I have three boys.
Three giant boys. Uh, listen, I mean giant boys. My 13 year old wears a size 14 men’s shoe.
Somebody come help me feed these people.
So I have Jackson, I have Jerry Junior and I have Ju J C is 11.
My middle son is 11. He wears a size 12 shoe already.
My seven year old stands up tall to me and these boys are just getting so big.
And one of the things we like to do a around the um Halloween time is we go to a harvest festival that’s at a small church right down the street from us and we go there because it’s just kind of fun and, and quaint and we like it.
I can keep an eye on everybody at least when they were smaller.
And I needed to really see everybody as they were running around.
This small church environment gave me the chance to do that and, and what it is that the church does, is a trunk or treat.
Does anybody know anymore? What I mean? When I say trunk or treat? Ok. Some of you remember that?
Um, a lot, not a lot of churches do it anymore. But this church still does.
It’s where they volunteers from the congregation who agree to pull their car into the parking lot on harvest festival night and they open up the trunk of their car and they, they prepare a game of some sort, a carnival game or a fair sort type of game so that kids can line up and, and do the game.
And then whether the kid wins or loses, they load the kid down with a bunch of candy and we, the parents are so grateful.
So anyway, a couple of uh harvest festivals ago, I’m standing in line with my boy behind one of the, the games.
This one was in the bed of a truck. This was the longest line.
Everybody wanted to play this particular game.
The um proprietors of this particular game, what they did was they put um, a step ladder right there at the bed of the truck so that a kid could climb up into the bed of the truck, turn to the side and they had placed a table top or a wooden board that’s basically the same size as the bed of the truck.
They had attached it to the side of the bed of the truck cut holes in the top.
About six of them draped it with some fabric and then out from the underneath the holes.
Every now and then a puppet would pop through the hole.
They would give a huge plastic mallet to the kid as the kid would stand there and try to hit the puppets on the head.
It was a homemade whack. A mole game is what it was. So this line is so long.
We can’t wait for our turn. Little Jude was maybe four at the time.
He was so excited about this game behind us.
There was probably a four or five year old that was talking to his mom and it was hysterical.
All of us in the line were laughing long line and this four year old was so frustrated. Mom.
I came to this carnival to have fun. I can’t believe I have to stand in this line. Mom.
How about you stand in the line while I’ll go over here and play some other games.
Then I’ll come back when it, when our turn is next, mom.
This is not when I came to the carnival for mom.
Are you sure I have to stand in this line and wait my turn.
But he was not only frustrated because he had to stand in the line.
He was frustrated as he watched the game because mom, I don’t understand this game. Why in the world?
What is the point of me popping these puppets on the head.
If, when they go down, they’re just gonna come back up in a few minutes.
I don’t understand why I would even do this. Why are we playing this game? Mom?
I don’t understand what the point is of this game.
So we are left and at this four year old just going off as he’s waiting in line.
And before any of us could really think or see straight, I just saw a four year old flash by my peripheral vision as he ran forward, grabbed the drapery off of the table top and pulled it clean off underneath.
There were three adults puppets on each hand, y’all.
We got such a good laugh, but we also learned a good lesson that there is always something you cannot see controlling what you can.
And if you spend, if I spend all of my time and all of my energy popping at all of the symptoms of the problem, just dealing with those things that are occurring and erecting in our marriage and in our finances, in our struggle and we spend our time and our money and our resources and our human ration out to figure out the problem.
We will at best exhaust ourselves when we haven’t even begun to tap into the root of where the real problem is.
Stemming. The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians chapter six, he says, come on, y’all pull back the curtain and let the enemy know we got our eyes on you that it’s not your spouse.
Who is the problem? There’s an enemy, it’s not your boss. Who is the problem. There is an enemy.
It’s not even your own personal internal turmoil. That is the main problem.
There is an enemy who lives to stir descension and division and to see jealousy and envy to call to you and I not to have any peace of mind and peace of heart and the enemy wants or Paul wants you to know how strategic the enemy is y’all because he says, listen, the enemy is scheming against you.
Somebody says scheme, listen, if I find out that somebody has done me wrong, I mean, I’m upset but I can get over that.
But if I find out somebody has been planning to do me wrong.
Now, that’s a whole another story.
I myself, I find out you’ve been scheming against me, meaning you’ve been sitting back studying my tendencies and my patterns you’ve been watching for where I come and what I go and you’ve been trying to take advantage of what the weaknesses of my flesh are.
You’ve been looking into my personality to figure out what would be the best way to throw me off.
Course, when I find out that not only have you been studying me, but you’ve been studying my husband trying to look into his history so that you can figure out given my history and his history the best way to make explosions of anger happen in our family.
When I find out you’ve been trying to explore his weaknesses so that you can tempt him away from his heart and his emotions being at home with me when I find out that not only have you been studying me and my man, but you’ve been also looking into my three boys, these little men that the Lord is given me to raise in the fear of God.
And you’ve been trying to figure out the best way to thwart them from reaching the destiny that God has assigned to them.
You’re trying to figure out the best way to take advantage of their fears and their weaknesses and their deficiencies.
When I find out you’ve been studying me and the people that I love you better believe that now a holy indignation rises up on the inside of me.
I’m not just gonna stand back and let you run roughshod over my family.
I’m not just gonna stand back and let my city decline continuously and just act like you are not there uh playing us for the fool.
I will be the one and I pray the church of Jesus Christ will be the one that will stand as gatekeepers in our community and say not today.
Yes. And so if it’s a war, the enemy wants, it’s a war.
He will have not by our strength and not in our power, but by the power of God’s own spirit, the victory is already won and we have the privilege to claim that victory and experience it as a regular part of our lives.
So would you know everything that has happened this week?
Y’all, all the devastation and all the tears that have been cried, all the lives that have been lost underneath it all, it’s not about officers and it’s not about racial division.
There is an enemy trying to stir up trouble and if we turn our attention on each other instead of pulling back the carton and say, uh-huh, we got our eyes on you and we’re coming after you with weapons that work.
The Apostle Paul says, put down all of the weapons that are futile.
They’re just popping at symptoms and they may take care of them in your marriage or in your city or in your home.
They may take care of them for a while but you better believe when one goes away.
There’s another one coming right back up.
Paul says, I’m gonna give you some weapons that work and he gives us traditionally, people say six, but really, I believe there are seven pieces of armor.
I wanna tell you briefly what they are.
He says you need to make sure that you stand firm in verse 14, guard your loins with truth.
He says, then you need a breastplate called righteousness, but he doesn’t stop there.
He says you need something for your feet. They better be shot with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.
Then he says, you need a shield and it’s called faith.
He says in verse seven 17, you need a helmet, you need something to guard your mind.
You need a helmet called salvation. And you need a sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
And while most people stop there, the Apostle Paul does not.
He says, even though these six things are important, you need one more thing in verse 18.
He says, and pray, prayer is the divinely ordained mechanism, y’all that our God has given us, it’s like a key that unlocks the heavens and allows all the blessings that our God already has for us to actually be dispensed to us.
Prayer doesn’t manipulate God. It accesses what God has already aligned to us in our, in our lives here on earth.
And so pray. If you want victory in your marriage, would you make sure you are a man or a woman of prayer?
If you want victory, teenager in your high school or student at your university, then you got to become a person of prayer.
And if you say you want to live victoriously and abundantly and yet you don’t pray, then I don’t believe you because prayer is how we live in the abundance of our God.
I wish I had time to go through all of the pieces of armor, but just a couple of them that I thought you and I could talk about uh today in light of everything that has happened over the course of this week, in particular, but in general for our lives.
So the very first two were just two.
I wanted to highlight to you in verse 14, Paul begins by saying, stand firm, having girded your loins with a belt called truth.
Somebody say truth. Can I tell you that we will look to at a, at a picture of the Roman soldier?
The Roman soldier was a ubiquitous presence in the first century, meaning they were everywhere.
Every civilian could look and see a Roman soldier just walking down the street.
So they would have known what these pieces of armor looked like on a Roman soldier.
So we’ll look to that in a second.
But what I do wanna tell you is something else that the first century believers would have known that you and I don’t necessarily go to when we read this passage, a very familiar scripture that I’m sure in this Bible teaching church.
Uh You guys have heard before um the first century believers when they converted to Christianity, when they placed faith in this Messiah Jesus Christ and became a part of the church.
They automatically began a rigorous study of the Old Testament.
So they, they studied the prophets and they study the the words of all the works of old so that they could know what had come before them and what they were looking forward to in these props season.
So they would study the Old Testament.
And can I just tell you that I love the jewels and the riches of the New Testament?
But if in your life in Christ, you are neglecting the study of the Old Testament, you are missing out on so much of what the word of God is designed to offer because the Old Testament is like an arrow and a spotlight that points more fully to Jesus Christ.
And so in the New Testament, these believers would immediately start studying the Old Testament.
So as soon as they read this part of the letter, the breast plate, the belt, the shoes, they would have immediately recognized something that most often we do not.
In the Old Testament. In the book of Isaiah chapter 59 the prophet Isaiah talks about our God Yahweh, the one true God.
He paints a picture of him as a divine warrior coming with righteousness, as his breastplate and with truth guarded about his waist and with salvation as a helmet on his head.
He paints a gorgeous picture of a divine warrior in the Old Testament.
But in the Old Testament, yahweh came as a warrior against his people because of the rebellion of Israel.
So when Paul comes along in the New Testament and says, uh huh, you get a breastplate of plate of righteousness, you get a belt of salvation.
You get a helmet on your head.
When he describes it in the New Testament, he’s basically reminding us that the same armor that God used against us in the Old Testament.
Now, under the new covenant of Jesus Christ’s bloodshed on Calvary, that same armor that was used against us is now given to us as a gift to stand firm against the schemes of the enemy.
Let me tell you why. This is good news because it means what we have to war against the enemy in our lives.
It is not some second hand, second rate hand me down stuff that may or may not work.
Uh uh If it was good enough for God in the Old Testament, it is good enough for you in the New Testament, my friend.
And that’s the primary picture Paul had in his head when he wrote this.
It wasn’t about a Roman soldier, although we can use it as a real illustration.
It was really about God’s own armor now being given as a gift to us to wage war against the enemy.
So he says, truth, the very first thing they need. If they’re gonna stand against this enemy is truth.
He picked it first. The very first thing of all of the litany of things.
He is going to give us as weapons against the enemy. He says truth is where it starts.
When you saw a Roman soldier in the first century.
The first thing you would have noticed was a helmet with those bright, the colored colored feathers that would most of the time be at the top of those helmets.
Or you might notice the enormous breastplate or the huge shield that was big enough for two or three soldiers to get behind.
Or the big broad sword, it was about 3 to 4 ft long and they would carry it at their side.
There were so many other more noticeable parts of the uniform of the Roman soldier.
And yet when Paul was trying to figure out what is the best piece to correlate with the belt?
He did not or with, yeah, with the belt, he did not choose that, which was most impressive that which was most noticeable or that, which was most applaud when you saw a Roman soldier walking by.
But he did choose the piece that the soldier put on first before anything else the soldier would put on the belt because the belt really was the central hanging point for every other piece of armor.
Without the belt, nothing else would be in place for very long.
Paul says, if you want any chance of standing firm against the schemes of the enemy, you must first make a decision to be a man or a woman committed to the truth of God.
Can I just tell you that I am so glad you are in church this morning and that you were at the west campus or you’re in the overflow here on this campus.
I’m so glad you were in church on Sunday.
I pray that you are a regular part of the family of God that you are planted in the house of God that you don’t just dip in when it’s convenient and then dip out when you don’t feel like it.
But that you are really here fully and completely, completely devoted.
I pray that you are but just because you’re in church does not mean you are girded in truth.
I hope you’re in Bible study regularly y’all.
But just because you are studying the Bible, listen, you can study it, know it applaud it until you are blue in the face.
But that does not mean you have made a commitment to it that you have pledged your allegiance to the truth of our great God, which means you may not always be politically correct, but you’re ok because you’ve decided like Joshua, as for me in my house, what we’re gonna do is serve the Lord.
That’s what we gonna do. Cool.
And it’s a choice you’ve got to make for yourself that when the tide of the culture change changes, when the philosophies and new ideas that they are suggesting rise to the forefront of everyone’s mindset and they are legislating new ways of thinking and new ways of living.
We must be a group of people who don’t just celebrate the Word of God on a Sunday when it’s convenient and everybody is applauding along with us.
We’ve got to decide that when we walk out of these doors, even if we have to stand alone, we will pledge our allegiance to the truth of our great God.
I do not describe myself as a black woman because that gives too much power to my blackness.
I don’t want black my race to be the describing adjective, the defining adjective of who I am as a woman.
I am not a black woman, I am a Christian woman who happens to be black because it’s the job of your adjective to describe the noun of who you are.
And if there’s gonna be an adjective describing me, it is not gonna be my race.
It is going to be that.
I am a woman who believes in every single thing that my word, but that my God has declared to be true and I will stand firmly on the promises of his word because I will be girded in truth.
So you may be a black woman, a black man, a white woman, a white man, but that should not define you.
So that if your race or if your political group is going in a different direction than the word of God.
You don’t choose your blackness or your whiteness or whatever culture you are, you do not choose that or your political persuasion over what it is that God’s word declares to be true, right?
I hate to tell you this but God doesn’t ride the backs of donkeys or elephants.
He did not come to take sides.
He came to take over, he came to take over the reason why this issue of truth is so important is because the enemy’s major calling card is deception.
It’s how you can see him coming a million miles away.
The tragedy of deception y’all is that there seems to be embedded in deception.
There’s a blinding, a blinding agent so that the person that is being deceived doesn’t know it.
See what makes what makes deception so scary is that when you’re the person being deceived, you can be standing on the very edge of a precipice and everybody around you knows that if you take one more step, you are headed into despair.
If you walk one more uh piece into that relationship or down that path, if you do it, everybody out there around, you can see that you’re going to fall into a pit of despair.
But the person being deceived can’t tell, oh, you’ve had this happen before because you’ve had a friend tried to describe to you why they were choosing this relationship and this relationship made sense to them.
And this is where they needed to be and wanted to be.
And this was why it was better for them to choose this path.
And as they’re talking to you, your eyebrow continues to raise higher and higher because you cannot see for the life of you.
How in the world they don’t see. This is not good for them. It’s because deception blinds you.
And the reality is, some of us don’t even have to look to a friend to remind to, to see a picture of deception.
The truth is if most of us just look back to a different season of our life, there’s a whole season in my life y’all where I look back now and I realize that I can’t even believe why I would have allowed those kinds of relationships or those kinds of thinking patterns or those kinds of influences.
Why I walked down those kinds of paths.
If it were not for the grace and the miracle working, delivering power of our God, where would we be?
And I wonder if I have any witnesses in the house of, of being able to stand outside of a season of your life and look back and realize that you were being deceived anybody.
And so since there is a blinding agent in deception, since you can’t tell when you’re being deceived, you’ve got to have a standard that is outside of yourself that you can look to, to determine whether or not you’re being taken for a ride.
Y’all remember the movie called Inception Leonardo dicaprio was in this movie, I did not see this movie.
Uh because when I go to the movies, I don’t really wanna think I came to enjoy some hot buttery salty popcorn, a Coke.
And I just want to feel good for two hours. I don’t want to use my brain space.
Anybody know what I’m talking about. Ain’t nobody got time for all that.
I came to just relax from the day. So that’s why I didn’t see Inception.
Dad told me about it. He told me that about how complicated it was great movie he says, but it was complicated.
Leo’s character would be in the real world, but then he’d fall asleep and have a dream and he’d be in a dream and in the dream, everything was so real and so tangible that he thought he was in the real world.
So he would make choices and decisions in his dream world that would get him in trouble because they weren’t designed for this world.
So he would be in trouble all the time.
And if that weren’t complicated enough, sometimes when he was already in the dream world, he would fall asleep, have another layer of dreaming.
So now he’s two layers deep in dreams.
But in the dream world, everything is so tangible and so real, so touchable that he thinks he’s in reality.
So he’s making decisions in that realm that don’t work there.
And if that wasn’t complicated enough, sometimes when he is already in too deep layers of dreaming, this brother has the nerve to dream again.
So now he is three layers deep and everything is so tangible and so real that he thinks he’s in the real world, but he’s not.
He’s in a dream that is within a dream, within a dream, within his reality.
So he learns about midway through the movie to take a spinning top with him.
Everywhere he goes, he finds a flat surface, he spins it and he watches it if it spins endlessly and it never slows, never topples over.
Then he knows he’s in a dream because gravity isn’t working.
But he knows if it slows down and it falls over at some point that he’s home because gravity is at work.
What he has learned to do is no longer lean to his own understanding.
He no longer trusts his own perceptions.
He has stopped believing that what his eyes can see or ears can hear is exactly how it is.
He has decided that for his own safety, he better have some objective standard that he takes with him that is outside of himself that he can look to as the determining factor to determine whether or not he’s being played for.
The fool you go, or the enemy hopes you will trust how you feel.
He wants more than anything for you and I to trust what our eyes can see or what our mind perceives what our ears can hear.
He does not want there to be a body of believers who have an objective standard, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth can I just tell y’all because this is the second service.
So that means that I have like more time.
They said, they said you have 40 minutes.
I was like, that’s just my introduction. Let me tell you all something.
Second Corinthians, I believe. Chapter 15 verses three and four. It’s like Israel is in turmoil.
It’s basically America, brother, fighting against brother uh murder and deception and lies and horrendous culture.
It is America and there are several reasons why that are listed in those verses.
And one of them is that there was no teaching priests. It does not say that there were not priests.
It says that they weren’t talking about nothing. It doesn’t say that there weren’t leaders.
It says that the leaders were not teaching the truth. Let me tell you why I love James River.
Well, I love this church because you have leaders that do not share with you their opinions and their ideas.
They do not get up here and just try to tell you what sounds good for the day or what will be politically correct or what will put their church in the right limelight in the media.
They aren’t concerned about that. What they’re concerned about is making sure that you have the truth.
And can I tell you father and mother, your home needs a teaching priest that you’re toddlers and your teenagers, that ministry, the enemy has downgraded ministry in our mind so that we think unless you’re on a platform with a little microphone attached to your face that you’re not in ministry.
But if you’re sitting around the dinner table with your three year old and your four year old or your 17 year old or your 15 year old, I’m telling you, you’re in ministry and you feed them the truth while you feed them chicken lasagna for dinner.
That’s right.
So Paul says, you decide that this book is the Compass for your life.
You wrap it around you, you gird yourself in it, you stand firm.
Even if that means university student that you’re gonna stand alone, high school student.
Everybody might not be your friend.
You say it’s ok because I believe what my God has said just one more y’all.
Ok. Everybody. All right. He says, stand firm. Gird your loins with truth.
And then he says, now you need, you need a breast plate and the breast plate is called what?
Righteousness, Jerry. And I live in a fairly rural part of Dallas Fort Worth.
We like it that way because I got three boys.
So I believe they need to go outside and play anybody still believing outside.
So we purposefully moved there. Not for the house really.
Our house is a really small little little house.
Um And it’s just been cozy and great for us, but it’s a small little house.
But I moved there because the backyard, there’s trees and bugs and mud and things. Boys need in their life.
And any time my boys come to me and say, mom, I’m bored. I say, oh no, you’re not.
You see that tree right there, go play with it.
So, one of the things we love is our neighbor across the street.
She’s one of my closest friends. She has a pond. So she would let us take the two fishing poles.
I bought on sale at the local Super Walmart. I bought a tackle box as well.
You know, we got extra bobber things and extra hooks in there because we catch little fish on the side of the pond.
I also have gloves in the tackle box because y’all know I don’t mind going fishing, but I ain’t gonna touch no fish.
So we get all that stuff and we walk across the street and we fish normally just standing on the edge of the pond.
We just catch a little sun perch and stuff like that.
But my neighbors bought a little uh metal old rusted rowboat off of Craigslist.
So it sits there, turned upside down on the bank of the shore near the shore of the uh the pond.
And so every now and then I’m feeling adventurous and I’ll say guys, let’s not just fish from right here, let’s take the boat.
Oh, you know, out into the middle a little bit, it’s a huge pond, maybe five acres or so in the front of their property.
So you can row a little boat out toward the middle and fish out from there.
So sometimes I’m feeling a adventurous and I want to do that.
But every time I’m feeling that I actually have to think twice because in order to get in this boat, that means I have to turn this sucker over.
And I know that because the environment that has been created under this upside down boat was moist and cool and damp and shaded.
That inevitably when I turn it over, something’s gonna hop out from underneath it.
Something’s gonna waddle out from underneath it or worst of all, Lord help me, something’s going to.
So I always brace myself.
I stand way back at the very edge while I let the boys get the sides so that we could turn the boat over.
And inevitably something comes out. It has always been interesting to me that never once have I had to write an invitation and send it into the brush nearby and say, critters, you are welcome to join us.
We’ll be here at 1:00 today.
If any of you would like to come, please feel free to make yourself at home.
Never had to do it. I’ve never had to stand on the shore and call out and say, hey, we’re here.
Come on. Never once have I had to invite them.
The environment created by the upside down boat was invitation enough.
Righteousness is right side up living that invites the Son of God’s favor and His blessing on our lives.
Unrighteousness is upside down behavior that creates an environment that invites the enemy to come and make himself at home to where you don’t have to ask the enemy to come.
You just choose not to live in alignment with the word of God.
And you have just created an environment that has invited him and encourages him to flourish in your life.
Righteousness is not being perfect.
It is just choosing as a lifestyle by the power of God’s spirit to live your life in alignment with the word, guarding your, guarding yourself in truth means to affirm God’s standard for your life.
But being righteous means aligning your behavior to the truth that you say you affirm.
There are so many of us y’all that are saying we love Jesus and we love His word.
And then we go out of these doors and live and have attitudes that are completely incongruent with the truth of God.
And so we wonder why we’re praying against the enemy. We’re in our war rooms praying against the enemy.
But then we walk out of our war rooms and live a raggedy lifestyle and wonder why the enemy is running rampant through our lives.
So if you’re finding the fingerprints of the enemy in your marriage or in your own heart and mind, if you’re seeing jealousy and division and divisiveness in your organizations or in your school, if you’re finding that you can see the enemy’s handiwork around you ask myself, is my Burt boat turned upside down in any way that I need to realign my behavior with the truth of God so that I can invite his favor upon my life.
The armor of a Roman soldier Weighing about 70 lb.
Can you imagine trying to do battle, trying to move nimbly and quickly with 70 lb of extra weight on you?
Most of that weight was in the breast plate. Most of it was right there.
Mostly because it needed to be. The heart is the most vital organ of our bodies.
Pumping life and vitality. It didn’t matter how smart the soldier was, didn’t matter how many muscles he had how much experience he had.
If he didn’t have a breastplate on one blow to the heart would wipe him out.
That’s why more than anything the enemy is tempting you toward unrighteousness because he wants you to have no breastplate on because then it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how many verses you read a day to keep the devil away.
Then it doesn’t matter how much experience you have, how much you go to church, how many Bible studies you do one blow to your spiritual heart when you are not protected in the most vital spiritual organ that you have that which pumps life and vitality and passion and gives you the fervor to continue to follow God.
The enemy just wants a group of people who say they’re believers but have no breast plate on.
Wow. And so it needs to be strong and it needs to be intact in our lives and, and, and of all of the, the, the £70 that a soldier carried, most of the weight was in the breast plate.
If the soldier had to carry all of that weight on their shoulders, he would be so tired and so exhausted before the battle even begun.
All that weight hanging on their shoulders would just, it was just too much, too much for them to carry.
Part of the job of the belt was to take some of the weight of the breast plate off of the shoulders of the soldier.
So that all that weight they weren’t having to carry on their own.
It was the belt that took that weight off and set them free to be the soldiers.
God had called him to be.
Can I just tell you that if you’re trying to carry your own righteousness, it’s too much weight for you to carry.
Oh man, if the enemy can’t shackle you to sin or addictions in some part of your life, he’ll shackle you to perfectionism to where you’re carrying this righteousness all by yourself.
And you can’t live free and fully and abundantly because you got too much weight on you.
Listen, you and I, we weren’t meant to carry our righteousness alone. Righteousness is too heavy.
A weight to carry. God’s standard of righteousness is perfection.
It’s like the ceiling here in the gorgeous building you all have here. It is so high.
It doesn’t matter if you’re more athletically inclined than I am either.
None of us in this room could jump and reach that standard. It’s just too high.
Doesn’t matter how good you are, how high you can jump, how high I can jump.
None of us can reach that standard. That’s the righteousness of God. It’s too high. A standard.
It’s too heavy a weight. And if you’ve been carrying it, you know what I mean?
Because that perfectionism will keep you up at night. It’ll rot your soul from the inside out.
But I got good news for you.
There’s some truth that’ll take the weight of that right off your shoulders.
And here, here is the truth.
Here’s the truth that can set you free and set you on a path to finally pushing back the enemy in your marriage or in your mind or in your heart or in any area of your life where you really feel like you need to stave him off.
Here’s the truth that will begin to set you free.
The truth is that 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ came and he shed his blood on Calvary.
And let me tell you when you accept his gift, let me tell you what it does.
It does not just withdraw sin and the debt, the wages you, you and I are supposed to pay for our sin and our, um, our disrepair relationship with God, he not only withdraws that from your spiritual bank account, he doesn’t leave you empty.
Then he deposits the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, which means His righteousness is already in you.
Now, it just has to be on you.
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- Morning Prayer 11:11 💌🙏Tháng năm 30, 2023
