God is our refuge and strength; He is near to us in trouble - here are the words of Psalm 31:
1 In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. 2 Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. 3 Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. 4 Free me from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge. We can rely on the Lord to protect us and sustain us - He has given us His Word as a tool so that we might not be led astray by Satan, and as we hide our lives in Him, we can know Him as our mighty fortress...we are in a spiritual battle, but we can be equipped with God's resources, so that we can experience His victory, regardless of the circumstances around us.
Ephesians 6 outlines the armor of God:
13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions
I really like the imagery here...there's an exhibit in Columbia, South Carolina called "Through Fiery Trials: Religion in the Civil War" at the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, featuring a variety of artifacts from the Civil War period
"The more we read firsthand accounts, the more we learned how important religion was in sustaining people and reconciling them afterwards," said Museum Curator of Education Joe Long.
The exhibit includes Bibles belonging to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, a Bible that is the first English translation of the Hebrew Bible, and one belonging to Walter Counts of the 13th South Carolina Infantry. It has a bullet embedded in it.
Long tells WMBF News that "...this poor Lutheran fellow from Lexington (SC), was killed and we don't know if that bible saved his life on one occasion, or merely stopped one bullet from the volley that killed him,"
Well, we do know that literally one bullet was stopped by God's Word, and figuratively, we recognize the protect that the Word of God can give us. In the list of the components of the armor of God in Ephesians 6, we think of the Sword of the Spirit as an offensive weapon against the schemes of the enemy, but the Word also plays a part in the construction of the defensive components of the army - the belt of truth, for instance: His Word tells us what is truth and helps us to separate His truth from the fiction that the world would attempt to put in play. The helmet of salvation represents the renewing of our minds, which is done by planting the Scriptures in our consciousness through study and meditation. The breastplate of righteousness reminds us to guard our hearts and depend on God's Word to protect our hearts from the deception of the devil, who would seek to distract and destroy us. And, the shield of faith will extinguish the fiery darts of the evil one - faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
Walter Counts' Bible took a bullet for him during the Civil War; our Bible can take bullet after bullet shot by an unrelenting enemy and provide valuable protection as we seek to effectively live the Christian life.
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