Priscilla Shirer: Stand Firm in the Armor of God | Praise on TBN
Priscilla Shirer teaches at the 2018 Passion Conference for TBN’s Praise. Listen in as Priscilla Shirer discusses how to stand firm and take up the full armor of God for your protection and provision in Christ.
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you need to know that there is an enemy
he is against
you he is not for you he plans to do
anything and everything in his power
to stir up challenge in your life enough
to cause you to shrink back and not rise
up and stand
firm in the victory that you have been
given in christ jesus that’s why the
apostle paul
says stand firm the challenges of your
university campus the challenges of your
home your relationships your friendships
on your job those challenges will be
sprawled out in front of you would
you get home and let me tell you
something what the enemy hopes
is that the sight of them will cause you
to shrink back
in so much fear and insecurity that
you’ll never step
up to the plate of being who god has
called you to be
listen if you’ve placed faith in jesus
christ i hope you know
that the enemy understands he cannot
destroy you
he knows his chances are over of
destroying you so he is going to spend
the rest of his time and the rest of his
energy just trying to discourage you
trying to distract you so that you’ll
shrink back in fear and insecurity and
not step
up to the plate and be who god has
called you to be
it is at least in part to this end that
the apostle paul gives us a passage of
scripture
that has become a lifeline for me
in fact i was talking with christine
yesterday chris and i have known each
other for a very long time very close
friends and she was asking me
what i was going to speak on and i had
several thoughts of directions that i
was
leaning toward but in the end we
as we were talking the question came up
if there was only one thing you could
say to them
if there’s only one message that you
ever have the opportunity
to tell these students these young
people that will be gathered together on
this occasion what
would that message be and there was one
thing that immediately popped into my
heart
and my mind for you at the end of this
year’s passions
passion conference the words of the
apostle paul
he writes them in the book of ephesians
listen let me just tell you quickly
before i read this passage you got
if you if you’ve not read the book of
ephesians you’re gonna have to read the
book of ephesians
y’all listen it’s it’s like for real
the apostle paul y’all know he was a bad
boy he gave us most of what would become
the new testament
letters written to first century
believers that now disciple us and help
us to mature as believers and as the
body of christ
and scholars say that of all of paul’s
writing really the cream of the crop the
cherry on top of the cake
is ephesians because in the book of
ephesians y’all he just spends the first
half of the book just rehearsing who you
are as a daughter or a son
he wants to make sure you step up to the
plate rise to the occasion of who
you’ve been recreated in christ to
become those of you
who place faith in jesus christ last
night who stood to your feet at the end
of pastor louie’s message and you placed
faith in jesus listen
the old has gone and the new has come
you’re a daughter you are son and you
have
full rights and privileges that have
been granted to you
the apostle paul wants you to know what
is the hope of his calling and choosing
you
he writes in the first and second and
third chapter about the treasure that
you have
he wants you to know about the mercy
that has been lavished upon you
the grace that has been given to you he
wants you to know that if you’ve been
rejected by everybody else
you’ve been hand-picked chosen and
adopted by the one true god
he wants you to know that if you’ve dug
a pit of sin for yourself
that is so deep you can’t find your way
out of it
that the mercy of god is so great and so
grand
that it can reach down into any pit and
snatch you up
out of it once and for all in fact paul
gets so
worked up that by the time he gets to
the middle of the first chapter
he bursts out in a prayer and he says
i’m praying that the eyes of your heart
would be open
so that you would just know what is the
hope of his calling and choosing you
and after going over and over and on and
on about the lavishness the richness the
grace
the mercy the goodness the adoption that
has been poured out over us the
forgiveness
that has been granted to us he’s trying
to figure out how do i close this letter
to make sure they step up to the plate
how do i put an exclamation point on
passion 2018 to make sure
that what god has given them they don’t
hand over to the enemy as soon as they
walk out the door
and the apostle paul writes these words
to us
in ephesians chapter 6 beginning in
verse 10.
he says finally
you be strong in the lord and in the
strength of his might
he says put on the full armor of god
so that you may be able to stand firm
against the scheme
somebody say schemes against the schemes
of the devil
he says we wrestle not we struggle not
against flesh and blood
but against the rulers against the
powers against the world
forces of this darkness against the
spiritual forces of wickedness that are
in the heavenly places
he says so therefore you might as well
just go ahead and
put down all the weapons of this world
that aren’t working for you anyway
and take up some weapons that actually
have some power
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 ought to just stand
firm
therefore in these few verses of
scripture
the apostle paul begins to introduce to
us a concept
that has not been at least in the
context of thus far in
church uh development at that time had
not been as
overtly described as it is right now
in paul’s letter he brings up the topic
of spiritual warfare he says
you have an enemy he says i want to make
sure that it’s loud and clear there are
other places in the old testament and
throughout throughout the new york
where we can infer that we have a
spiritual
unseen battle going on but this is the
first time that an author comes right
out
and says you have an enemy
and he is scheming against you
that when you leave this place in just a
little while when i leave this place in
just a little while
you need to know that there is an enemy
he is against
you he is not for you he plans to do
anything and everything in his power
to stir up challenge in your life enough
to cause you to shrink back and not rise
up and stand
firm in the victory that you have been
given in christ jesus that’s why the
apostle paul
says stand firm
because you have an enemy an enemy that
wants you to think that just because he
is
invisible he is also fictional
he wants to be chalked up to nothing
more than a caricature
a cartoon picture a myth a a character
for a kid’s nursery rhyme
he doesn’t want you to recognize the
influence that he has
over your life possibly to to cause you
to never walk
into the full expression of god’s grace
and goodness in your life
he is sinister he is a master
illusionist and he is a deceiver
and he hopes to cleverly disguise
himself
behind life’s most pressing problems to
where you will forget he is even there
he wants you to point fingers at him or
at her at your boss
at your parent at that particular
professor or your r.a
in your dorm he wants you to think it’s
that advisor or it’s that financial
problem
anything flesh and blood because he
knows as long as we’re looking at the
flesh and blood
we will direct all the wrong weapons at
the wrong culprit
we’ll think our money will work we’ll
think our rationale and logic
will actually work we think that the
diploma we’re about to
to achieve and receive we’ll think the
diploma will be work worth it we’ll
think
that the connections will work anything
natural
cannot take care of the supernatural
when your problem is unseen and
spiritual you need
weapons that work in that realm
so the apostle paul says you got to know
first of all that your enemy
is not the person you are sitting next
to today
that your enemy is not your parent at
home your enemy
is not that professor that is difficult
to work with your real enemy
is not your boss on your part-time job
your real enemy
is unseen he is hoping y’all that we
will forget he’s there