Polishing your Breastplate After You’ve Stumbled

“Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me...then I will teach.” Psalms 51:10-13

To be honest, I have been putting off writing this article for months now. This is a hard topic to discuss with so many women I do not know personally, but one I feel desperately needs to be shared as David states in the verse noted above. 

I will not go into the ways I’ve stumbled over the past few years, but what I will say is I entered a challenging time in my life with my breastplate of righteousness not securely fastened. To be perfectly honest, I think I tried to lay it aside. And where did that leave me? It left me woefully unprepared to enter the battles we all face in our lives. The battles I faced throughout this time shook me to my core. I felt like I had been knocked off what I thought was a solid foundation. Everything in my life felt like it was spinning out of control. Subsequently, I then entered into the deepest depression I have ever dealt with. 

As I stated, this article is not going to be about the ways I’ve stumbled, or a list of all the things I’ve dealt with the last 2 years. We all have hard years, and if we are honest with ourselves, we all have stumbled at one point or another in our lives. This article is going to focus on how to stand back up, dust yourself off, and how to polish and tighten up your breastplate for the next battle.

If Peter could show his face again after he denied Jesus so publicly, so can we.

If Paul could overcome the guilt he surely felt from his past, so can we.

If David could pick himself back up after everything, so can we. 

So how do we polish and tighten our breastplate, so that we don’t walk into the next battle unprotected?

First, I think we need to realize, our breastplates were never comprised of our own righteousness to begin with. Our breastplate of righteousness is to be comprised of HIS righteousness. I think that’s where so many of us get it wrong. We think it’s made up of our good deeds. If so, no wonder it can be full of holes, crack, and eventually slip off. No matter what we do, we could never craft a breastplate of so many righteous deeds that it would protect us in battle. 

But to put on a breastplate of HIS righteousness? Now, that is the safety and security we all long for. My favorite image of this is found in Psalms 91:4.
“He shall cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield.”

This verse helped carry me through so many hard times over the last 2 years - when the world felt like it was falling apart, when I was suffering heartbreak and betrayal beyond what I imagined possible, and when I needed to gird myself up to lead my team in the face of so many challenges all while feeling like I was mentally falling apart. I clung to this verse. I learned how to truly cling to Him and not trust in my own “righteousness”, but  rather, how to allow Him to cover me with His feathers and to take refuge under His wings. As an independent, oldest child, this has been a (very) hard lesson for me to learn. That I am not now nor will I ever be in control. That I can’t foresee every threat and protect myself from it. 

But He can, and we can take refuge in Him and His righteousness and truth. His breastplate of righteousness is something we have all been freely offered if we will just put it on.

Once we realize our breastplate of righteousness was never built through our own righteous deeds but His, we can then move on to the next step, which is figuring out how we polish up our breastplate and tighten up those straps to make sure we are prepared for the next battle. 

We take out the polish and the scrubber, and we get to work.

Just like the Roman soldiers, we need to constantly clean our armor. A good soldier would NEVER have been caught with dirty armor. They took great pride in it’s care, as they knew how important it was to have well functioning armor. They cleaned and polished it constantly. They checked it for cracks and signs of weakness. They tightened the straps often to ensure it was properly fitted. This was not something they put on once and forgot about. Proper armor care and maintenance was the difference between life and death. 

How do we take proper care of our breastplate of righteousness? 

We clean and purify it by cleaning up our minds and our hearts. We check ourselves for cracks and signs of weakness. When we stumble, it often isn’t one giant step we have taken - it is made up of several smaller ones. So we must be on the lookout for that. Tighten your straps to ensure it’s properly fitted. We do this by growing ever closer to our God, reading His word, and spending time with His people. 

Make sure you are properly caring for and maintaining your armor. Just as it was with the physical armor of the Romans, it is the difference between spiritual life and death. 

I have prayed the same prayer as David in Psalms 51:10 more times than I can count over the last 6 months, and it is my prayer that by sharing my struggles,  I can help you realize 1. you aren’t alone, and 2. you don’t have to despair. 

You just need to get out the polish.

“Finally, brothers (sisters), whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8