I volunteer to help with CV SEEDS English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. During the current six-week session, I have been helping with childcare on Tuesday nights and teaching a Level 4 ESL class on Thursday nights. In the hours leading up to childcare or class, I can sometimes feel like I want a break to just be at home and rest. Of course, these are not 100% feelings. We always have mixed feelings, don’t we? But after each evening has concluded, I’m so glad I was able to help out.
My point is this: we don’t always feel motivated to be faithful. As I suggested in the previous post, faith sometimes follows faithfulness. Therefore, we would do well to keep pressing on in faithfulness, and sometimes we will find faith growing in the wake of our faithfulness. So when Paul writes, “Take up the Shield of Faith,” in Ephesians 6:16, I believe he is primarily speaking about a living an intentional, consistent life of faithfulness.
Another important way to take up the Shield of Faith is remembering that you are not alone. You are part of a phalanx. A phalanx was a formation in ancient warfare where soldiers would stand shoulder to shoulder, holding up their shields in tight formation, essentially creating a wall of shields. There is a power in togetherness.
We all practice faith together. In those moments when one of us feeling like our faith is faltering, or that we don’t want to be faithful, when we are in close community with one another, we can help lift one another up.
This is why faith is best practiced not individually, but as individual and together with others. We need to be in small groups where we can check in on one another, having honest conversations about faith and faithfulness.
In conclusion, when Paul writes “take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one,” what do we actually do?
We strive to live like Jesus did, in obedience even when we don’t always want to, knowing that his ways are good, that he is for us, and wants the best for us. This might mean taking measures to help us defeat temptation. Jesus once said, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. … And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.” Jesus’ point is figurative. Take serious action to defeat temptation. Use filters and blockers on your devices that are connected to the internet to help you avoid seeing tempting images.
That said, we live in a world in which it is highly unlikely we will avoid all those images. Using the shield of faith, then, means asking Spirit for strengthen us. We pray to him, asking him for the strength we need to be faithful from one moment to the next.
Using the shield of faith means we also connect with others. Reminding us that we are not alone and should not try to go it alone when it comes to living out our faith. That is how we pick up our shield of faith. It is active, not just an idea in our mind. Faith and faithfulness will help us in the battles we face each day.
And that reminds of something that happened at a recent ESL class, something that helped me understand the connection between faith and faithfulness, and what it means to take up the Shield of Faith. The evening started out very typically for me. I was battling those mixed motivations I mentioned above. The students are wonderful, and I enjoy teaching. But I was also tired and had some desire to be home and rest. I had committed to teach, and my wife directs the program, so it would not be good on multiple levels if I decided to stay home.
That evening, as I was teaching class, I felt our curriculum and discussion was going well. When we had five minutes left in class, I felt that wasn’t enough time to start a new section of the curriculum. My class has students from Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Congo, all people who have moved to our school district in recent years, so I asked them all to tell the class what careers they had been involved in in their home countries. They are all quite accomplished: banking, poultry farming, industrial engineering, law, and media.
Then one asked me about my profession! After saying I am a pastor of the church we were sitting in as Faith Church hosts the classes, they asked me how I became a pastor. I had the privilege of telling the story of how God worked in my life. And to think that before class, I was wishing I could have a night off. I left class with a vivid reminder that taking up the Shield of Faith sometimes means that faith follows faithfulness.
Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 