“But You, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.” Psalms 3:3 NIV. “But in the depths of my heart I truly know that you, Yahweh, have become my Shield; You take me and surround me with Yourself. Your glory covers me continually. You lift high my head.” Psalms 3:3 TPT.“Above all, carry the shield of faith so that you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. ..” Ephesians 5:16-18.

Using our faith is using our shield – whether it is for protection from attacks, or we are attacking our enemy, the shield of faith is an essential piece of spiritual equipment. I was taught to put on the whole armour of God as a younger Christian. So I faithfully prayed that I would somehow, by osmosis, have all that equipment, if I just said those verses in Ephesians 5 out loud every day. 😳 In the past my problem was that I wasn’t actually using my faith – I was using the scripture like an incantation.

That had a positive side, it meant I actually memorised all that scripture!  I had the theory, but not the practical. For this armour to work in our lives we desperately need the practical. We all have w-a-y too much theory.  God’s word is practical.  In order to use this shield, we need to keep it next to us on our arm, and live aware of it. I shouldn’t have to hunt about for my shield – it belongs on my left arm. The sword of the Spirit is in my right hand. When something bad comes toward me that shield is the first thing that needs to go up, followed by the Word of God out of my mouth. 

Everything else in that list of weapons in Ephesians depends on my shield. It REMAINS on my arm.  It is a metaphoric shield, but a very REAL STANCE. I stand in the position before God that Jesus died to give me!  And I use self-talk to remind myself of what He did for me – I bring that up from the well of scripture I’ve hidden inside me. Personally, I paraphrase those scriptures all the time!  Like I said it is not an incantation but a relationship with SomeOne Who helps me. I am also using my shield whenever I pray, ‘help, help,’ because I’m looking to Him to come to my aid and help me. This shield is always about USING my faith that He will look after me and help me.

It is an offensive weapon not just a defensive one. Faith is about the way we regard our relationship with Almighty God – it’s about sonship, who He says WE ARE to Him. The shield of faith is also the defensive weapon we use to repel the enemy’s darts of accusation, bitterness, confusion, resentment, sorrow, slander etc. This means we’ve made a quality decision to rely upon His Word and not our feelings or man-made solutions to any situation that attack us. 

Misunderstanding of the way to use God’s word has been the downfall of many God-fearing Christians. They don’t understand how to USE the Bible as a shield.  Reading and agreeing with it is the BEGINNING, but we have to go past the beginning into the practical – by applying what it says to the way we think and act. That’s called renewing your mind. So a verse comes into my mind and that becomes my faith sword to use against the stuff that is swirling about inside and outside. I use it until the attack stops, but I don’t put it down. My faith shield stays on my ARM ready to use.

Every other piece of armour in Ephesians relies upon using our shield – our faith. EG: I get an opportunity to talk about how much I love Jesus and so I tell the other person what I know about Him. That’s the shoes of the Gospel of peace. Those shoes bring peace, because His Gospel is all about peace with God. They help us walk through our days. Maybe I let some bad situation bubble away, instead of going to the other person to fix it. Now I have let my sin go from my mouth or thoughts, into my heart. That means I don’t have my breastplate of righteousness on, anymore – because it covers my heart. Repent and fix it. Nothing is worth losing that breastplate. People have lost their salvation because they didn’t look after their breastplate. 

Our faith is the overall spiritual protection we use to shield us from all the enemy’s fiery darts. We don’t just say this stuff or agree with it  – we live this way. And if we forget, then we repent, fix it  and go back to living that way again. It takes practice. A soldier has to practice how to learn to accurately shoot a rifle. The shield of faith is a learned process that we refuse to give up because our faith is the protection God has given us against the stuff that happens in this life – it helps us MOVE FORWARD.  👋🏻