Put It On

You’ve Got to Put It On II

GNLCC 9/30/2001 2 Chronicles 26:11-15 1 Corin. 9:24-27

How many of you have ever had the experience of being ready to dash outside only to hear your mother or grandmother yell out to you, “put on your coat before you go out”? Many of us responded at times, “I don’t need a coat, its okay outside.” But later on, we were glad that we had listened to her and “put it on.”

I can still recall the last time I played hardball baseball. We were having a pick up game in the neighborhood. For a batter’s hat, we were using a metal construction worker’s hat. As I approached the batter’s box, somebody told me to put on the hat. I said, “I do not need it because it will get in my way.” Somebody said, “Put it on anyways”, and reluctantly I did. A pitch came down streaking at me, and I realized it was going to hit me. I dropped to the ground, but not soon enough. The force of the ball, left a great indentation in the side of the metal hat that I did not want to put on. I am certain, without that hat’s protection, I would have had my skull fractured. Being obedient, even reluctantly by putting on that hat, made all the difference in the world.

When it comes to fighting a battle, what you do before the battle starts and during the battle will be. The end of our New Testament reading today informed us that we are engaged in a spiritual battle and are being attacked by evil, demonic forces from the heavenly realm. Based on the context of the passage, the primary battlefield chosen by the enemy is our home and our places of work. That’s why we feel at times as though we are driving each other crazy?

After the bible tells us how to get along with each other, it warns us that this is not going to be easy because of the reality of the spiritual battle taking place. The purpose of the passage is to let us that there are certain things we need to put on in order to be successful in battle. There are many believers who think that the Lord is simply going to deliver them out of their battles with little or no effort on their part. They are like the children whose parents told them “now put on your coat” but they were convinced they did not need them and left home without them ,only to return home with colds and pneumonia. Only for believers something far greater is at stake than few sniffles.

When God tell us to “put on something”, there is a reason for it. If you tell someone to “put on some pants”, why are you probably telling it to them? They either do not have on any thing but underwear, or the situation they are going to be facing demands a change of clothing. Whatever they have on, is inadequate for what they are about to face. So when God tells us to put on something, He sees that we are not adequately prepared to handle the situation we are about to face. How foolish to disagree with God.

Let’s look at Ephesians chapter 6 beginning at verse 10. Ephes. 6:10-11”Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” Now we can all pray “Lord, I want to be strong in you and have your mighty power.” It’s good to pray that, put prayer without some action is not going to do us a lot of good at times. Suppose you saw a big dog running toward you, and you cried out “Lord help me.” Immediately you saw a big stick within your grasp. What are you going to do? You can either pick up that big stick, and stop the dog from coming, or you can continue to pray “Lord help me” and probably get bit.

To be strong in the Lord, we must put on the full armor of God so that we can take our stand against the devil’s schemes. God will not put the armor on us, anymore that He will pick up the stick and put it in our hands. The reason for the armor, is that we are going to be attacked as a Christian. Satan hates the fact that we have chosen to live for God. He has a scheme in mind to make us want to change our mind, to get us off course, to make us think God does not really care about us. He wants to isolate us from the rest of the army so that we become easy prey. He can get to any of us, if we do not put on the full armor of God. Keep in Satan is the master of deception, so rarely do we even know he’s the one behind the scheme. There are reasons certain things simply seem to just fall into our lives. In order to take our stand, we’ve got to be properly dressed in God’s armor.