My husband has a very cool job. He is a Colonel in the U.S. Army, and his current job is to oversee the design, manufacturing and fielding of equipment for all the Army’s soldiers. Pretty much everything a soldier uses, except for his weapon, comes through his office. Helmets, boots, armored plates, uniforms – he’s your man for all that stuff. Pretty cool, huh?
The military is constantly trying to make all this equipment better, lighter, less expensive, more comfortable for soldiers to wear and use and carry. But the bottom line is always about safety. It is absolutely essential that this equipment will keep soldiers safe and enable them to stay alive when they are in a combat situation.
Last week as we sat at our kitchen table, I noticed my husband’s expression change when he viewed some mail sitting to the side. I knew that expression immediately, and I could tell he was mad! I asked him what was wrong, and he showed me a picture of a magazine with an American soldier on the front. He was in Afghanistan. He was wearing the same equipment my husband oversees every day. And he was wearing it incorrectly. He showed me, because his armored plates were loose and not being used properly, that if he was shot in the chest, he would most likely be gravely injured because he hadn’t taken the time to put on his vest correctly. Millions of dollars went into designing and manufacturing those vests and armored plates, countless man hours by some of the smartest and brightest people in the world were able to produce a protection system that could stop any bullet on the battlefield. But it wouldn’t do that soldier a bit of good if he didn’t take the time to use the equipment properly.
This made me think about how God must feel when we don’t wear our equipment properly. As Christians, we know by reading God’s Word that there is a very real enemy against us. Our enemy is crafty, and he has some pretty powerful weapons in his arsenal. But we need not fear, because God has given us an even more powerful supply of defensive equipment – the belt of Truth, the breastplate of righteousness, boots to enable us to take the gospel of peace, the helmet of salvation, and our weapons – the Sword of the Spirit (which is the Word of God) and prayer. (Ephesians 6:10-17) The very first command of this passage tells us to put on the whole armor of God, that we can withstand the evil that may come our way. I think often as believers we believe that as long as we have on our helmet (of salvation) we don’t need to worry about all the rest. And we wonder why we are injured by the bullets that come our way.
It’s usually because we just didn’t take the time to put on the rest of our equipment, or that we just put it on haphazardly.
No comments:
Post a Comment