Spiritual Warfare — Part Five: Protecting Your Soft Spots.

Spiritual Warfare — Part Five
Protecting Your Soft Spots

Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: Spiritual Warfare — Part Five: Protecting Your Soft Spots. ------------------- Date: 3/18/2002
Keywords: "gospel" "peace" "righteousness" "truth"
Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation.

Passage: Ephesians 6:12-17*

12. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

13. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.

14. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,

15. and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

16. and in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

17. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Questions

1. Do you believe in absolute truth, or is truth relative, in your opinion?

2. What is righteousness?

3. How is the good news about Jesus dying for our sins related to peace?

4. What does pornography have to do with truth, righteousness and peace?

Practical help

When going into battle, be sure your belt is on real tight. Otherwise when you have to move, you might find yourself on the ground with it having slipped around your ankles. And when it comes to spiritual warfare, be sure you have a good handle on what is true. Expect the enemy to attempt to confuse you with clever arguments that sound good, but are in fact false. Expect as well that you will even attempt to rationalize indulging in pornography yourself. It isn’t always the devil that makes us sin. By knowing the truth about God, about sin — including pronography — and about Jesus Christ's reason for coming to earth, you will better be able to stand firm when temptations come.

To protect you from shots to your heart, put on the breastplate. Remember you are "in Christ" as a Christian and so the righteousness Paul is talking about is not your own, but that of Christ’s (Romans 3:22-24).

Finally, think about your relationship with Jesus Christ. Is He your Lord and Savior? If not, probably none of this makes a lot of sense to you. I would suggest you click here to learn more.

If you have, in fact, given your life to Christ, it is important that you continue to grow in knowledge. One way to do this is to write out your testimony (how your were saved and what it means to you personally) and reflect on it. Have you noticed that all salvation stories have in them an aspect of finding a peace in life that wasn’t there before? Pornography, on the other hand, contains no peace at all. It’s like a pathway strewn with sharp rocks. Reminding yourself that you have given your life to Jesus is like putting on a good pair of hiking boots. Again, it’s not about toughening our own feet to overcome sharp objects. It’s about putting Christ between ourselves and our temptations.

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*"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission."