Shields Up!
Written By: Mary Ann Pope, College Station, Texas
In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. Ephesians 6:16
I’m not sure at what moment I realized I was in the thick of the battle. All my life I have been a preacher’s kid or a preacher’s wife. My parents instilled in me a strong faith. Through the years, their faith developed into my own faith. I dealt with temptations. Most I avoided. Those that I didn’t, I repented of. I knew who my adversary was, but I was naïve about the lengths he would go to attack me.
The enemy is real. Satan is constantly seeking out those whom he can devour (1 Peter 5:8). He already has the world. It’s those of us who belong to Christ that he is after. Just like Pharoah, who pursued the Israelites to take them back into slavery (Exodus 14:5-12), Satan wants to once again enslave us to sin after we have been freed by the blood of Jesus Christ. In military strategy, perhaps one of the most basic of all rules is that you never underestimate your enemy (Ephesians 6:12).
No wonder God uses military metaphors to describe our fight against Satan. God is equipping us with the things we need to successfully fight this battle in the Armor of God described in Ephesians 6. Satan knows where you are vulnerable and attacks there. He is powerful, but Paul declares that the shield of faith is sufficient to put out the fiery arrows that he attacks us with.
The reference to using faith as a shield is a powerful one. In the Old Testament, God Himself is the shield for those who trust Him (Proverbs 30:5). In every battle won by the Israelites, it was God who gave them the victory. In 2 Chronicles 32, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded Judah. Hezekiah encouraged the people to “be strong and courageous” because “the one with us is greater than the one with him. With him is only an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” They knew they weren’t powerful enough to defeat the Assyrians. They put their trust in God. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57).
Faith is an unshakable belief in the promises of God. It allows us to see beyond how things are right now and focus on what they will be one day. Faith allows us to trust that a God we can’t see will fulfill His promise to establish a future we can’t imagine (Hebrews 11:1). God has “rescued us from the domain of darkness (Satan’s domain), and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). The scriptures are full of examples of God rescuing those who trust and obey Him.
The shield was the Roman soldier’s first line of defense. It was slightly curved and large enough to protect his whole body. In ancient warfare a commander would order “shields up!” to direct his soldiers to raise their shields in defense. Paul tells us that the shield of faith is something we must take up, something we are required to raise. Just strapping it on our arm won’t do any good at all if we don’t make the effort to hold it up and use it.
We are given wonderful examples of faith in Hebrews 11. These examples are of people whose conviction caused them to endure under very difficult circumstances. This is followed in chapter 12 where we are told to fix our eyes on Jesus who endured so that we will not grow weary and lose heart.
In 2018, as my father lay dying, my husband came home from South Africa with a flesh-eating bacteria. He arrived home on Tuesday and was immediately hospitalized; my father died on Friday, part of my husband’s foot was amputated on Monday, and we had a funeral on Tuesday. My husband was not able to walk for six months and required my constant care. During this period, we found out that our daughter’s marriage was falling apart. We were being attacked on several fronts, but because of our shield of faith, we were able to endure those attacks, and there were signs of hope that our daughter’s marriage would survive.
As time progressed, my husband’s foot healed, and my attention turned to caring for my widowed mother. But signs of hope were disappearing for my daughter’s marriage. In 2020, in the midst of Covid lockdown, we received the call that the marriage was over, and our daughter had left the Lord. She laid down her shield and joined the enemy. Satan had used her difficult marriage to attack her faith. He will use her to win over her children. We are still prayerful that she will “shield up” again.
We were devastated and sitting at home alone without our brethren. Satan loves to divide and conquer us. This has been the most difficult thing we have ever had to endure (and there have been many more than I have mentioned here). When our faith in God’s power and care is strong, it is impossible for Satan to break through our shield and land an attack. But when we allow doubt to creep in, as Peter did when distracted by the waves, we will start to sink. I began to have such painful thoughts and to doubt whether I had been fit to be a mother. What could I have done to keep this from happening? I struggled with sleep and with controlling my emotions. But because of my faith I was drawn to God’s word. It was a hunger and thirst that I couldn’t quench. As a result, my faith grew even stronger (Romans 10:17).
The Roman military came up with what they called the testudo, or “tortoise” formation. When the enemy would attack with a flurry of arrows, the soldiers would close ranks. Those on the outside would use their shields to create a wall around the perimeter. Then those in the middle would raise their shields over their heads to block the airborne arrows. The result was a formidable human defense.
In Ephesians 4 Paul talks about the body of Christ. He tells us to attain the unity of faith in Christ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. When the Roman army joined its shields together, it became an almost unstoppable force. And if we in God’s church join our shields—that is, strengthen each other with our faith, building up and serving within the Body—we will become an unstoppable force able to take on any challenge.
“Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith (be anchored, convicted of your beliefs), act like men (be courageous), be strong (increase in faith)” (1 Corinthians 16:13). “But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). Shields up, ladies!