The Right Armor

Sunday I started teaching a new series in Kids Church. It is called Faith Case: Armor of God. It is a great set of lessons about what it means to operate with the help of the Holy Spirit and what it looks like to put on the full armor of God. The DVD-based series follows a girl named Regina into a new school where she will need to use her armor to fend off the attacks of The Spoiler.

One of the things that the kids will learn over the 10-week period is Ephesians 6:10-18:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 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 with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

Now, I don’t know about you, but memorization is hard for me. And if I am asking kids to memorize these nine verses, I need to memorize them, too. Give me a script for a play that has back and forth lines or lyrics to a song and I can memorize them, but for some reason (because I don’t have to? because I am not motivated to?) memorizing scripture is much harder for me. I know it is important. After all, one of the right pieces of armor is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Jesus Himself even modeled that for us as he fought off temptation by quoting scripture to Satan (Matthew 4).

I want to know more scripture. I want to be more like Christ. And to be more like Christ, I need to have more of His Word deep in my heart. So I’m going to work on it, beginning with these nine verses and then going from there.

And I am challenging you to do the same. Are you up for it?