Now, let’s take a moment with Jesus; let’s let Him help us consider wrong things that are trying to get into our lives; they are things that we and He don’t want in there. The full armor of God only deals with external things; AND, it only deals with external things WE don’t WANT coming into our lives. If we don’t see anything wrong with something, Jesus and our armor WILL let it in. That is why we needed to FIRST allow Jesus to deal with wrong things we were WILLINGLY allowing to enter our life. Until we were empowered to get a better grasp of what Jesus wanted in our life, our full armor of God was constantly failing us.

In our first study, Jesus dealt with closing the doors of our God-given will to wrong things. Then in the second study, He dealt with getting things out that were already in us. And now He is taking us into the third part of His study. He will teach us how to WILLINGLY keep our lives clean and pure from external contaminations. This will be accomplished by Him empowering and teaching us how to WILLINGLY put on, keep on, and use the full armor of God skillfully.

The armor of God is made up of the things of Jesus. As we submit our will and ourselves to Him, we increase the effectiveness, power, and quality of our resistive armor. Except for the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, the armor automatically resists the efforts of Satan against us. If our relationship with Jesus is awesome, then the armor will do an awesome job of warding off the flaming arrows of Satan.

Most parts of the armor are stationary. They are especially stationary when the objective is to stand. We don’t have to DO anything with them; all we have to do is put them on and leave them on. Letting them increase and wearing them is our only responsibility. Jesus will show us that He just wants us to do everything necessary to stand.

Eph 6:11 (NIV) PUT ON the full armor of God SO THAT you can take your STAND against the devil’s schemes. Our objective isn’t to run, walk, or dodge. We are to wear the armor and stay right where we are. We are standing on the provisions and victory of Jesus. We aren’t trying to defeat Satan; He has already been defeated. We aren’t trying to get the victory over Satan; we already have that. Heb 2:14 (NIV) Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might DESTROY him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil. As long as we are standing with our armor on through Jesus, we are standing in complete victory over Satan.

1 Cor 15:55-58 (NIV) “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. LET NOTHING MOVE YOU. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

We are the Victory Enforcement Team (VET); we are standing on the victory. If we move, we move off of the victory. Satan tries to steal our victory. The resistance is for maintaining our position in Christ Jesus. We are being asked to believe in the provisions, positions, and victories we already have in Jesus.

Hope is based on future events. Our hope is in the fact that Jesus will resurrect us and take us to live with Him; that hasn’t happened yet. But, our warfare against Satan is dealing with a victory we already possess in Jesus. That is why we have a shield of faith rather than a shield of hope. That is why we are standing rather than attacking.

The moving parts are the sword of the Spirit and the shield of faith. Using these two moveable parts, we will always start the action with submission to Jesus. We never want to do anything without first establishing our submission to Him. Then as we and Jesus resist, we automatically send Satan in the opposite direction of our life and ministry.