The Joy In FallingSample

 Preparing For Battle

If there is one thing that you learn about me during this process it's that I am a control freak. (Hopefully I'm not the only one out there!) I enjoy being ready and prepared for whatever it is that life is going to throw at me. If you are an athlete, I'm sure you can comprehend a little bit of what I'm about talking here. Athletes spend hours training to perfect their skill so that when the time comes and the pressure is on they can perform at their highest level successfully. As you can imagine skateboarding is the same way. For contests, we practice the same routine over and over, if we're shooting a photo for a magazine we’ve more than likely practiced that same trick before the shoot. The more time we spend focused on God, the more prepared we are for the spiritual battles at hand.

In Ephesians 6:13, we read about the full armor of God. Our Father has given us the ultimate resource to combat the constant attack on His children. The sad thing is most of us are 'too busy' to take time out of our day and invest in that resource. Can you imagine if you were given a GPS to navigate through the dark days of your life? You've already been given it! Our God was willing to sacrifice His only Son to save us. Most of the time we aren't even willing to sacrifice five minutes of our time to Him. It's difficult for us to be prepared for battle when we are spending more time on Instagram than in our bibles. What if we spent less time going through the motions and more intentional time in our bibles? What if we spent less time on a soapbox and more time in our prayer closets? I've been guilty of having an outward appearance of the 'perfect Christian' and being unprepared for a spiritual battle.  The enemy doesn't care about our outward appearance. He has come to steal, kill, and destroy. If we are not preparing ourselves for battle, we've already chosen to fall.

Focus: I really want to encourage you today to go deeper with Our Father. We need to be prepared for battle at all times. Take some extra time today and spend it with The Lord. Ask Him to take you past the superficial and prepare you for His work and His will.