Before I share what God has opened my eyes and heart too I want to thank everyone who has supported me both prayerfully and financially. The amount of Love I have felt from all of you is amazing and means more than you know. I am so excited to go on this journey with all of you!
The past few months have been a very difficult and strange point in my life. Everything going on right now is so different from the way my life used to be. This is the first time ever I have not been in school, I am moved out, I am fundraising and working, and I am preparing for 9 months on the mission field. Through all of this, It has been pretty incredible to see how much God has worked through this crazy time of my life. My eyes and heart have been opened up to so many amazing things about what following Jesus is like. How cool is it that we have a God that during the craziest and weirdest time of my life, I am growing more than I ever have. Falling more and more in love with Jesus, than I ever have. And even crazier, feeling more comfortable than I ever have.
I will say though, during this time of unbelievable growth, the Devil has been attacking me like never before. This has left me with no choice but to run to the Lord and let me tell ya, he is victorious EVERY TIME.
“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” Ephesians 6:11
As I was reading through Ephesians I came across this saying of, the full armor of God, and although I have heard it before I really wanted to know what exactly the FULL armor of God is. A few verses later it named everything that it is,
“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the Shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.” Ephesians 6:14-17
First off, you could write about a years worth of sermons just on those four verses right there! I mean wow… This is some goooddd stufff right here. I am so stoked to dive deeper into everything about this full armor of God, but my little brain was blown away by all of this. I mean this is gonna take me weeks if not months to fully understand. After going over this passage several times and praying for the Lord to open my eyes and heart, one thing stood out to me. the Sword of the spirit
Just think about how important the sword is to a knight. A knight without a sword is completely useless. The knight can have the strongest armor in the world, but without his sword all he can do is take blows. He can’t fight back and be victorious! What this means is, without the spirit we can’t live victoriously. Yes, if we have every other piece of armor, even if we only have one or two of the pieces, we will live victorious lives eternally in Heaven, but we won’t live victorious lives hear on earth. I could go on and on about how important the spirit is in our lives today, but really what I want to do is challenge other believers and myself to yield to the Holy Spirit more. Wake up earlier than you usually do and start your day in the word and in prayer. And if you already do that, wake up even earlier and do more of it! Lets all live victoriously together.
Thank you so much for reading what God has put on my heart. Like I said, the Love I have felt through this process is amazing! God has placed some amazing people in my lives and I am so grateful for EVERYBODY who took the time to read this.
God Bless,
Layton
A.K.A, Lay Lay, Late dawg, loch ness hahnster, Laytonious, etc
