| Spiritual Warfare Lesson #12 The wiles, Devices and Deception of the devil. Ephesians 6:11 Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. The word wiles means tricks. And believe me satan has a bag full of them. This is why Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God. The phrase whole armor is taken from the Greek word panoplia, And it refers to a Roman soldier who is fully dressed in his armor from head to toe. Since this is the example that Paul sets before us, we must consider the full dress, the panoplia, of the Roman soldier. Because Paul was in prison so much, this was an easy illustration for Paul to use. Paul could see the Roman's Soldiers armor good. The Roman soldier of the New Testament times basically wore 6 pieces of armor. First of all the Roman soldier wore a loinbelt. This was the ugliest and most common piece of Weaponry that the Roman soldier wore, it was the central piece of armor that held all of the other parts together. For instance the loinbelt held the breastplate in place; The shield rested on a clip on the side of the loinbelt. On the other side of the loinbelt was a clip on which the Roman soldier held his massive sword when it was not in use. The loinbelt was so ordinary that no soldier would have wrote home about it. Yet the loin belt was the most important piece of weaponry that the Roman soldier owned, because of its importance to the other pieces of armor. Without the loinbelt the other pieces armor would have fallen off. We will cover more on the loinbelt in a later chapter. The loinbelt stands for truth. It is vitally important that during this time that we are learning to use the armor that we come clean before God. Tell him the truth about anything in your life that you know may hinder you receiving this great power. God wants to know your spiritual condition. A commander of a Roman soldier would not send one of his men into battle if he knew he had some kind of sickness. God wants us to come clean before him, so that he can help us fix up those weak areas in our armor. God is our Commander and chief and he welcomes us to His Holy throne. Hebrews 4:16 says, Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Saints of God if we are going to be able to fight satan, We are going to have to go to God and get our battle plans. A good soldier always has a good plan before he goes into battle. We need to come before the Lord, so that he can help us to get our armor on. This means that we must spend time with the Lord. I'm not talking about a minute here and there, But we must learn to spend some quality time with Him, So that he can teach our how to properly use our armor that He has given us. Why not start today? |