The Shoes of Peace: Standing Strong in Spiritual Warfare
in essence Jesus is saying don’t be ungrateful for the provision that you have you cannot be fighting for the Lord while not trusting him for the very basic things that he’s promised you can’t go out into combat and be a warrior for the Lord Jesus Christ while at the same time you’re distrusting his very basic concern and care for you as one of his children and he asked this question don’t be ungrateful for the provision you have be confident in what God has done for you if you don’t have the peace that comes from trusting God
for the very visions of your life you will be unable to fight in the war and what is it that God has done I always like to say this he’s given us food to put in a shelter to put over clothes to put on and that’s basically what we need isn’t it he’s given us everything that we need and so if you read this passage and you think about what peace means in the spiritual warfare you can’t fight spiritual warfare if you do not trust the one who has promised to care for for you we have been studying from the book of Ephesians in the 6th chapter what in
the world does it mean that we’re to put on the whole armor of God so that we can enter into spiritual warfare and be successful in Ephesians chapter 6: 14 and 15 we read these words stand therefore having girded your waist with truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace stuever is a former Green Beret captain and he writes about the importance of our shoes if we’re in the military he said historically far more soldiers on the battlefield have been
immobilized by foot problems than have gone down from bullets this was certainly true in Vietnam many a platoon sergeant in those jungles felt the most critical part of his job was to be a foot care specialist sometimes he felt more like a nurse or a mother than he did a leader of a lean mean fighting machine change your socks boys became the regular Mantra take your boots off dry your feet powder them up or you’re no good to this unit feet were important in the Vietnam War the Roman soldier from which this whole analogy comes wore
thick sold hob nailed shoes or sandals and the sandals were held on his feet by thick leather straps on the bottom of the soles were spikes made of little pieces of metal enabling the soldier to be surefooted in battle and even on the slickest ground they could stand in hand-to-hand combat and not slip back so Paul using this analogy from the roman armor took from the context of Roman Warfare the concept of having a good foundation so that when we go into the battle we have the opportunity to win and we are told in the context that the
