For some reason, as I haphazardly turned to look at a recent quote someone had sent me from Priscilla Shirer’s Instagram account, I took note of her “about me” information.
My account simply states my name and is followed by a link to this blog.
Hers gives a sentence that speaks volumes.
It’s only 6 words.
I loved it.
I found myself jealously wishing I’d been so creative.
Simply stated is all you need to know about this woman.
“Just a girl…with a sword.”
And…oh, how sharp that sword!
How wisely she wields it.
How well she uses it to rightly divide the Word of Truth.
She’s learned to inhale the God-breathed, inspired Scriptures and exhale them in such a way as to fill up lungs starved for oxygen.
As followers of Jesus, each of us should close out our descriptive sentences as she did…This is me…with a sword.
Here I am…ready in season and out…to declare the gospel of hope, the words of life, the useful truth that teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains in righteousness.
Here I am…just a girl…with a sword…always at my side.
Someone quoted CH Spurgeon recently:
“If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armor, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the knights of old In war time, we must sleep with our [armor] buckled on, for the arch deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear.”
When it comes to fighting off the “schemes of the devil (the liar, manipulator, the deceiver, the false accuser), we have only two weapons: the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and prayer…
This is our power…and one isn’t truly effective unless we combine it with the other.
The Word + Prayer (by this I mean, praying the actual Words of God over our situations) = victorious power (Greek Word, “dunamis,” where we get our word for “dynamite”). The same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead.
As I’m typing this, I’m sitting in an airport in Montana.
We’ve been away from home about ten days.
What a great trip, as we’ve enjoyed the beauty of South Dakota, Wyoming and Big Sky Country…
But, as we’ve travelled, I’m reminded again how rich in Biblical literature Americans are, but how impoverished in our knowledge of God’s truth.
His followers really aren’t “just children of the Lord…with swords.”
We’re content in our ignorance.
It’s perfectly OK with us if someone else does the “rightly dividing” of it on our behalf, without checking to make sure they are accurate.
So, once more, my heart throbs with the prayer that Jesus-followers rise up to do better…we can not live on bread alone…we need to ingest and digest every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
We need to sleep with our armor on and our swords at our side with a prayer ever on our lips.
For the enemy would love to take us down.
(from Petra, This Means War album)
He will come to us, as he did Jesus, most often during our wilderness struggles, trying to distract us from all God has for us…attempting to get us to doubt our God…to question His goodness…
Longing to strip us of the victorious, abundant life Jesus promises.
But, to be overcomers, we’ve got to know how to brandish our swords with skill…never hesitating, but quickly responding lest he trap us.
And, so, as I close, I echo other words from other WORD-WISE folks from out of the past and the present. We should hear their haunting voices begging us, urging us, to learn to use our swords to the best of our abilities.
“When the Church loses the Word of God it loses the very means by which God does his work. In its absence…a script is being written, however unwittingly, for the Church’s undoing…in a slow, inexorable slide made up of piece by tiny piece of daily dereliction.”David F. Wells
“There are 4 things we ought to do with the Word of God… Admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.” William Wilberforce
“I have never met a mature, fruitful, strong, spiritually discerning Christian who is not full of Scripture, devoted to regular meditation on Scripture, and given to storing it in the heart through Bible memorization — and that’s not a coincidence.” John Piper
‘The Holy Ghost rides in the chariot of Scripture,and not in the wagons of modern thought…” CH Spurgeon
“Never water down the Word of God, but speak it in its undiluted sternness and love…There must be unflinching faithfulness to the Word of God…but remember when you speak it to others that you are not some special being created in heaven, but a sinner saved by grace…” Oswald Chambers
