How To Pray On the Full Armour of God (Proper 21b)

 Welcome to graduate school of spiritual warfare. This teaching on how and why we must - not may; pray on the Full Armour of God, may shock you. Jesus teaching in John 6 on feeding our spiritual life is so important we have been repeating much of it for the last 3 weeks. It includes something I had not noticed in 30 years of preaching - “no one may come to Me unless the Father has enabled him”:

• Calvinists interpret tis as predestination
• I interpret it as God sending the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth to  guide and protect us 
• Paul urges us to put on the full spiritual armour of God so we can “take our stand against the the devil’s schemes”
• Struggle is against the spiritual “Rulers” “authorities”,“powers and forces of evil” in the spiritual dimension
• Example: Principality over Calgary blocking healing ministry

PRAYER OF SPIRITUAL PROTECTION

Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom (Proper 20b)

 This quote from Psalm 111.10 could be a summary of the whole Old Testament. Whenever the rulers and people submitted to the will of God things went well and whenever they failed to submit to the will of God things went very badly. Fear has more than one interpretation. Some churches have sadly used fear of eternal punishment to frighten and control people. A better interpretation is fear in the sense of fearing the loss of:

• Our love relationship with God 
• Covenant of forgiveness, Holy Spirit and eternal life. 
• Holy Spirit giving us a life of wisdom 

1. Holy Spirit Gives Us a Life of Wisdom

Whoever Feeds On This Bread Will Live Forever (Proper 19)

Many people in our time have lost their “belief in Jesus”. This puts clergy doing funerals in an awkward position. We try to be kind and pastoral and leave mourners with the comforting hope the deceased are in heaven. It would be unkind to share the Biblical teachings that only believers who feed on the body of Jesus and walk in love have eternal spiritual life. The Readings help us understand:

• What is eternal life?
• How the body of Jesus feeds our spiritual life?
• How do we walk in a spiritual life of love?

1. What is eternal spiritual life?