So what's going on, everybody?

Hey, everybody.

We are back for week four.

Week four of spiritual warfare.

Yeah, Yeah, I think last week was good.

I think we had a really great conversation last week about the belt of truth.

The foundational, you know, aspect of the armor kind of holds everything together.

So it was.

It was good.

It was fun.

We've got quite a few views on it too.

There was a lot of people that.

Came out to support clickety clicks.

Yeah, we like that.

Keep it.

Keep it clicking.

Keep it coming.

I'm Matt.

I'm Derek.

And this is gonna be the breastplate of righteousness week.

We're going on to this next thing that is just this chess piece, you know, so hang on to your belt buckle and welcome to the truth response.

You want to pray today?

Yeah, I'll pray today.

All right.

Father, thank you for this day.

Just the love that you continue to give us ways to work alongside you and.

And your kingdom to help bring glory to your name.

Lord, just guide our conversation and the ear of all our listeners that the impact that you want made is made through all of this and that we can be as helpful as we can be and perhaps even clever, but all to your will in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.

So when you hear the word righteousness.

Righteous, righteous.

That'S the thoughts and the feelings that comes into your mind, huh?

What comes to your mind when we're talking in this context about righteousness?

It's like, okay, so obviously I just quoted the turtle from Finding Nemo.

I'm going to say, although totally one of the first things that pops in my head too.

So, I mean, righteousness is like just doing it right.

It's doing it right.

That's the best way of saying it, doing it right.

You know, because, like, I don't know.

It's proper is what it is.

You know, when you see something and it's just like perfect, like, that's proper, that's righteous, that's good.

And to live that way, you're living proper, living the way you're supposed to, you're living right.

Righteousness.

Righteousness, yeah.

I'm still trying to figure out whether or not you can actually use that in the definition.

I think it's pretty good anyway.

I mean, that's basically what I'd say is living right.

You want to live right.

There's a lot of people who were said to be righteous in the Bible.

I remember even Job.

Now, Job's not one that you would think of because he got everything reverse handed to him as in, like, lost, everything reversed.

But he was introduced.

Yeah.

Reverse.

Yeah.

But, you know, but he was introduced to us as he was a righteous man.

He was living rightly.

He wasn't introduced as a perfect man, but someone who was living rightly so.

But even he could be attacked.

So spiritual warfare.

He's a prime example right there, man.

He got hit.

Oh, yeah.

So, I mean, he's kind of the example for spiritual warfare.

I mean, he's front runner.

Yeah.

He's a tough guy.

He went through it all.

And then still praise the Lord when God's like, this is the guy, if you want an example, who can survive.

And the idea that he really did nothing wrong.

He did nothing wrong.

And, I mean, it's so hard sometimes to get away from that concept of, like, what did I do?

Why is this happening to me?

What did I do to make this happen to me?

And sometimes that's just not the thing, you know, Sometimes you can be living rightly, and that's what brings on the spiritual warfare.

So that's good.

That's good.

I like it.

I love a lot.

I'm gonna put my hat back on.

All right.

I was feeling a little, you know, exposed.

Hatless.

That's what you get when you missing a piece of armor, I'm telling you.

Yep.

So we are in Ephesians 6, talking about the.

The armor of God today, and we're.

Breaking down every piece.

Yep.

As you know, like we said earlier, we.

We started last week with the belt of truth.

And you discussed how the belt holds it all together.

Yeah, it's.

It's.

It's a vital piece of the armor.

Without it, it all falls apart.

You got to be living on the truth.

We went into that a lot last week.

We are hoping that as we go through the series that you are kind of reading along with us.

It's not a hard read, necessarily, when it comes to length of time, but as we unpack this, hopefully it is impactful for you as well.

So we're hoping that you're going through Ephesians 6 with us.

And so it starts out, and we started last week in Ephesians 6:14, the first half of it, or I guess sometimes it would be, like, considered 6 14a.

Right.

And this would be 6 14b.

Right.

If you're breaking it, I mean, we are breaking.

When you break it down, so.

And so this.

We're talking about Ephesians 6:14.

And having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Now, unless you have your belt on, you get the breastplate of righteousness in place.

Yeah.

And so, historically, what did that look like?

Well, there's a fun.

Not so fun word as far as the Romans or this thing, right.

This chest armor.

And it is pronounced queerus.

Queerus.

It.

I call it a curious.

It's not a curious, but I know I can't pronounce it.

It's curious how you can't say the word.

That's what it is.

And I cannot pronounce it.

I'm so bad at pronouncing that word.

It's quoras.

Some Kuros.

Yeah.

I don't know.

But it's basically this.

This chess piece that.

That is made of sometimes leather, sometimes metal.

Just kind of depends on what army.

Yeah.

And the whole purpose of it was to.

To guard against your vital organs getting hit.

Right.

Like.

Yeah.

You don't want your.

Your guts to spill all over the battlefield.

You don't want your heart being struck.

You don't want your lungs being struck.

All the vitals.

All the vital organs.

Not that other things aren't also vital, but those are the main three.

That's gonna be real hard to, like, come back.

Keep going.

Yeah.

In battle, you know, so that's the.

That's the big thing right there for it.

The heart, lungs, and other vital organs made of bronze or iron, usually.

Some.

A lot of times you'll see leather, though, too, covering the front and the back.

So it's both sides, front and the.

Well, that was for comfort, as well as.

That was not for comfort.

Wow.

That was totally.

So that you didn't get stabbed in the back or shot in the back with an arrow.

Because battlefields are crazy.

Sometimes it's chaos.

I mean, it's not necessarily like, oh, we're just marching in, and our guys are always facing this way, and your guys are always facing our way.

I mean, think about it.

The leather, I mean, that would have been comfortable, you know, leather.

Maybe practical.

Maybe comfortable.

Stylish.

After it was, like, stretched, like, maybe.

I'm just being goofy now.

So.

Yeah.

So protected all the vital things.

We're told in the Bible to guard our hearts.

That's one of those vital organs, above all things, guard the heart.

That's an interesting one.

In scripture, the heart is talked about in two very different ways.

And what's funny is, for that reason, they're one and the same.

Like, one on one hand, you know, like you just said, scripture tells us to guard our hearts.

Right.

And then on the other hand, it says that the heart is wicked, you know, like, so what's interesting about that though is that the two of those are literally made for one another.

Like you.

You can.

Maybe not literally, but you have to guard your heart so that the evil doesn't slip in or out.

Right.

Like that's what is it.

James tells us that it's our evil desires that we are enticed by and that lead to death.

It's not necessarily something from the outside.

So.

Yeah, just interesting.

I don't know.

Yeah, I think it's like.

To put it practically, the two come into to a balance when you.

When you think about like maybe a kid or a friend who's just always going to be prone to making bad decisions.

And so you just kind of try to protect him from himself or a kid.

You know, they're like, if I let this kid run wild, he's gonna like run, hit his head on something or something.

I have to protect this kid from himself.

Our hearts are the same way.

You got to protect your heart because your heart can be deceitful to you and sometimes doesn't know that some of the things it yearns for aren't good things.

And so you have to be in front of it.

You have to play offense here and be in front of it.

Yeah.

And what's interesting too is like there's two different ways to guard your heart.

Like you need to feed it the right thing.

Right.

You don't want the sickness that comes with.

With evil or a poison being injected into you.

You know, if you're not wearing your curious.

Your breastplate.

Like if you're not wearing that.

Like it's easy to have the poison.

Right.

I mean that slow death even injected into you.

So like there's the guarding, the guarding of.

Of it by keeping it healthy, but then there's also the guarding of it by.

By doing the right things.

Yeah.

Holding the carry or wearing the right.

Yeah.

Things.

But I mean, so we're told to go in our heart because it's the wellspring of life.

That's.

You know, our lives are going to come from how we allow our hearts to interact with this world.

And so you got to be careful.

And let's go even beyond the heart.

Remember this.

This does protect the heart.

It also protects the lungs, it protects the organs, all the vital things, the vitals that we need to survive.

I mean the heart's a great one to focus on, but you also want to protect everything about your body.

Like we want to be good stewards of our body as well.

There's something to be said for trying to take good care of yourself, exercise, you know, you've been working out a lot, Mr.

Gonna be super Buff Man.

But, like, there's something about, you know, make sure on proper diets you're not being gluttonous or a drunker or even, you know, heavy smokers.

You know, like, there's all kinds of things.

Like, not everything is terrible unless.

But in excess, a lot of things are really terrible.

And so you really want to try to just protect the whole thing.

And so a righteous living is correct living is not a gluttonous living is not a drunkard living.

It's very balanced, very controlled.

You're trying to protect and make sure it's in a good place.

And so that's.

That's one of the things you can think about there.

But righteousness and what we're talking about here, though, there's.

There's two sides of it, right?

Yeah, yeah.

There is a.

Like a positional righteousness and a practical righteousness.

Yeah.

Positional righteousness is given us to.

Given us to us through faith in Jesus.

So it is.

So we are the righteousness in God, in Christ, from 2 Corinthians 5, 21.

Okay.

It's given to us through faith.

This is the salvation.

It's the justification where we are made right from him.

So a buddy of mine who passed away two years ago this last week, he had this idea.

And he's not the first one to come up with it, but he was really.

He had a good way of describing this idea.

And it's the concept of dual justification.

And that's just a big way of saying we're made right and justified right here and now as we give our life to Christ.

Yeah.

But then someday when we go before the Father, Jesus is going to stand up for us and we're going to be made right permanently through the Father.

So the way that he.

The example that he used was on the battlefield.

If there's those rare times where mercy might be shown to someone who helps the opposing side, and they are justified through the commanding officer or the general or the prince or whoever's leading the army.

And then when it's all said and done, they will be justified again, like permanently within the kingdom.

Think Rahab.

Rahab was not on the right side until the right side needed to be chosen.

You know what I mean?

She had an opportunity to help spare some lives of some spies of the Israel of Israel.

And she did it without.

Without a caution to what could happen to her family.

And God made her Right.

And justified her family through that.

Yeah.

So let's talk about that first.

End of that.

We talked about.

You talked about Christ and then the Father.

So Christ wise though, this is his forgiveness, this is God's forgiveness given to us through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, which is important.

Why is this important in spiritual warfare?

Well, as a breastplate guards our hearts as well as our vital organs, our enemy loves to try to condemn us and make us feel unworthy.

And it can be hard to guard your heart against that.

It can be really hard to take on those attacks again and again and again.

But one of the things, things that makes the breastplate of righteousness so amazing is that it is the forgiveness of Christ and it covers all.

So those things that the enemy tries to attack us with, those things that he wants to bring up from your past, they're already covered.

They're already done.

And so his attack is going to.

When you can stand firmly in the forgiveness of Christ, the grace that was given to us through his sacrifice.

And you can really, I mean, the more you can pull that into your heart and protect your heart with that, the more that those attacks are not going to be able to hurt you.

You want to really embrace that with everything you can.

And the best part about this is that it's not positional relying on us.

This is reliant on Christ, but it is partially.

It is partially relying on us from the position of.

Yes, but we didn't earn it kneeling, right?

No, no, no, no.

We're bowing to.

They're bowing and accepting the authority and the lordship of our Jesus, of our.

Of our Christ.

Okay, so that, that is, that's important.

Yes, absolutely.

But this isn't something we did.

We didn't do something to earn this.

Right.

This wasn't, as it says in works, this wasn't something that we could do.

There's no boasting here.

There's no achieving.

There's no unlocking this level.

Right.

Okay.

There is just accepting this gift.

And when that.

And it covers everything.

That's one of the most amazing parts of justification of salvation, is that we can just accept it.

I mean, yes, we bend the knee when we do, because we.

It's one of the part.

There's parts of that that are so important.

And we talked a little bit about this when it comes to the truth, but like, recognizing who Jesus is is vital and what he's done for you.

And if you can then accept who he is and what he's done for you, you get to then get the gift that comes with it, which is.

He covers it all.

Yeah.

A verse that I like to use whenever we get into the argument over, you know, judging versus condemning, is this is it.

This is where.

I mean, this is where it most applies.

And that is, you know, for those who believe they're not condemned, but for those who don't believe they're condemned already.

So like that breastplate of righteousness, that position that we've taken the knee that Christ has done something that we can't do, that covers the sin that we have, makes us no longer condemned.

Yeah, and you hit on something there.

I just want to pull it out just a bit further because you said those who don't believe are condemned already.

They're not being condemned because they're already condemned.

Right.

So that's something that people have a hard time with and sometimes gets a little muddled in the water by not accepting it doesn't then condemn you.

We are already condemned.

Right.

We enter into this life, we become.

We have a sin nature about us.

We walk into a world where we fall short of all, fall short of God's standard.

So we're already condemned, but we can be free of that when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, when we accept what he did for us on the cross, that's how we are no longer condemned.

It's not a.

This is the decision.

This is the moment where it's condemned or not condemned.

You're already there until you except Jesus.

Right.

And the cool thing about the whole, it's not our works, but Christ's work that was done on the cross.

It leads to this transformation in us, which leads to the second type of righteousness, and that's practical righteousness, which is the big word for that is sanctification.

Sanctification.

And that is something that I always love to point out, something very important.

Salvation has three parts.

What?

It has three parts.

Sanctification.

No, no.

There's justification, sanctification and glorification.

Okay, hold on.

Don't get ahead of me now.

Okay.

But there's a big difference when it comes to sanctification and salvation.

The 2s words.

Sure.

Salvation is instant.

Salvation is something that you get when you accept Jesus, when you invite him into your life, when you confess your sins to him, when you make him the Lord of your life.

That's salvation.

That is an instant thing that's now yours.

Sanctification is a different thing.

And people mix these two things up.

People think that as soon as you're saved that you are now sanctified completely clean in your life.

And I wish that that was the case.

But what sanctification is, is the process of getting more and more like Christ as we go.

That is how Jesus.

That is our walk in our faith.

So as we.

It's the works.

It is the works that come from our faith, not faith.

That's where I was going.

Works that then get us to our faith.

The first part gives us that transformation.

Absolutely.

To where we want to work out.

Yeah.

This is what James means when he says faith without works is dead.

If you're.

If your faith isn't doing something to you, changing you from the inside, making you walk closer to Christ and producing these good fruits in your life, then he says it is instead.

So this is the process where you wake up every day and you try to do a little better every day when you recognize, yeah, I messed up today, but you know what?

I'm going to try to not do that again.

I'm going to go to the Lord and confess that I was wrong and I'm asking for his help, and I'm going to try not to ever live that way.

And recognizing the things that we do that are wrong and what God's will really is for our lives.

And the better we get at that, the closer we walk to Christ, the more we get knowledge of the Bible, the more we get our lives more in tune with the will of God.

That is the sanctification process.

And the reason I bring up the big differences about this is, and I think it's important is that some people, for lack of a better term, get a little bit legalistic about this.

They think that, you know, if you've come to Christ and you're acting perfect constantly, then are you really saved?

And it's a scary thing to place on someone, and it's a very heavy burden to put on someone.

And although I get kind of where they're at, that there should be some fruits, that you're seeing positive changes in their life.

To put a heavy burden on the front end of someone so that if they feel like if they mess up, they're suddenly lost everything is, I think, the wrong thing to do.

I think.

I guess on the front end, I would say that's true, but I think we give too much of the love Jesus, the Jesus love, and not enough of the.

Yeah, and Jesus balance.

Right.

God is balanced.

There is that balance of wrath that's coming.

There is what he says we need to do.

And I think that too often we don't.

We don't warn against the discipline, you know, by training people up.

And I'm not.

There's, there's good ways to go about it.

Right.

Like there's, there's best practices to go about it, but at the same time, like it's not just willy nilly, like it was never meant to be, whatever.

You know, it should be getting better.

But I'm saying a lot of times whenever we say, you know, like whenever we get too far down the road, you're talking about, which is that other balance, like the other off balance.

Right.

I just, I'm trying to explain that fine balance that you're talking about.

It's a path in one direction and it's messy at first.

It's like a cone if you think about it.

It's real messy at the front end.

And then it starts to get better and better and finer.

And that is literally what sanctification is, working out your salvation.

Exactly.

Is that getting it where I am being transformed and I am changing to where I'm being.

Coming more like Christ.

Yeah.

I think if you see that in the path of a believer, whether you can see those things happening slowly or largely, it's a wonderful thing.

I think for some people though, they get a little scary when they meet someone like, well, you know, they are the judge of where that person's path is.

Like, are you seeing growth or not?

Like, if you're seeing growth, you see them trying, if you see them doing these things, they're on the right path.

Keep helping them and encouraging them.

Don't condemn them because they made a mistake.

You know what I mean?

That's kind of where I was going with that.

But anyway, so that's a practical righteousness.

It's the way you actually live it out.

That's what makes it practical.

You're living out your faith in front of well into the world.

Really.

Yeah, yeah.

Obedience and integrity are the biggest, biggest things that you're going to be looked at for.

Because obedience is one thing you can control in your integrity.

You're the only one who can control your integrity.

And that will help resisting the devil in general and resisting temptation.

The more that you.

I love the word.

I mean, that's what disciple means, is discipline.

The more you get more into the disciplines of following Christ, the easier it is to fend off those temptations, to fend off the things that we know that we're not supposed to do.

It's kind of like if you practice, practicing for the big game, for all the sports players that might be listening you know, you don't go into a game, doesn't matter what sport you're playing, you don't go in without practicing because then you're not prepared.

You don't start at the very beginning of practicing with the routines that you're going to have at the end of practicing.

No, you got to start little.

Exactly.

Little bits at a time, small goals and build up over time.

If you're weightlifting or you're, or just trying to get back in shape or even if you're playing a, a high end sport, there takes stuff you have to get done before you can get to the next step that you want to do.

And so you just kind of want to keep practicing and push yourself a little further and a little further.

And so what.

Basically the idea here is that the more you put the practice in and start to discipline yourselves to read your scripture and try to follow Jesus and recognize the things in your lives.

And sometimes I've seen people that they are recognizing things in their lives that they need to work on and then suddenly this thing pops up that they haven't been paying attention to.

And I think, and then they're like, oh man, I gotta work on this.

And I think that's the grace of God, is that he doesn't overload us to the point where we're like, we just can't do any of it.

Well.

And I was gonna say, yeah, that's a great, that's great.

Because one thing that we do to ourselves a lot is overload ourselves.

And like the other day, Friday, I was in, working out, I was doing the flies, right?

Oh yeah.

And laying back on the bench and I was going out to about here and then back in and I was, I was doing, you know, 35 pound dumbbells or whatever.

And Nick comes in and he's like, yo, dude, you got to get all the way out.

Like you're going to have to drop, you're going to have to drop weight.

And at first that feels really terrible because I'm like, oh, I've got to go down weight.

But then, and I'll get there.

But like, so then I was able to do all the way out and then come back up and back down and do the, do the exercise the way that it's supposed to be done.

And I'll tell you what, I felt it, I felt it and it was exciting, it was painful, it was encouraging.

Whereas it would have just been meh, had I done it the wrong way.

And I think we have to remember that sometimes we need to slow down, I think.

Also, I love.

There's a great thing that you just said, but you didn't say the word.

But sometimes we need those little humbling moments, right?

Yeah.

We get a little ahead of ourselves.

Oh, yeah.

And all it took for you was a friend to come along.

In this case, it was Nick to just come and go, hey, man, if you come down a little bit, you'll be able to do more, right?

And sometimes we need to be humbled, like you're doing this.

Not just more, but better and better.

The right things.

God comes along, either sends somebody or does something and lets us realize that, you know, that's not what I'm supposed to be doing, is taking this.

And sometimes it feels like a step back, but he's like, I'm going to do way more.

You're going to be able to do way more doing it this way than if you keep trying to do it the way you're doing it.

Sometimes we've got to be told you're doing it wrong, Brian.

Yeah.

You know, if you caught that, you caught that.

But living right matters.

And so sometimes we've got to go back to the basics and go back to the simple and go back to the little things so that we're doing those things right.

Because if we get off track on the simple, basic little things, the big things that we're trying to do are going to be off track.

You know, most.

Most people who work in any kind of construction or fabrication or anything like that, they're trying to get it as close to perfect as possible.

And there is whatever increment that they're working with that is acceptable, you know, of deviation, but that's it, you know, otherwise they trash it and start over.

And so, like, I think that we need to.

We need to focus on trying to get that those basics, make sure the basics are always solid and we're doing the right things with the basic things so that when we're doing the big things, leading men's ministry, leading the youth group, you know, if you're not doing the right things in your own personal walk, you're gonna be off base with the.

Leading the youth group, you know, or myself in eldership or whatever.

So as long as we keep going back to those basics and making sure that we are doing the right things at the basics, God will take care of the big stuff.

You know what I mean?

So sometimes we gotta humble, be humbled.

We gotta humble ourselves and step back and.

And take a breath and make sure we're Doing the right things, the right ways.

Yeah, it can be.

It's not an embarrass, it doesn't have to be embarrassing thing.

It doesn't need to be a shot to our egos.

Sometimes it's just good to just actually, sometimes it's like good to just let it go and release that at least that little pressure that we put on ourselves.

Right, yeah.

So how has understanding both positional and practical righteousness encouraged you personally?

Okay.

Well, when it comes to the positional, I would say the fact that coming into a better understanding over the years of God's grace for myself has been amazing.

Just knowing how much it's been life changing.

On understanding more of the depth and the breadth of God's love for me and that it really is bigger than anything that I've done, that's been tremendous.

I have such a.

My theologies are on a bedrock of grace because of it, because I see how much I've.

I understand who I was without him and I understand how much then that he's brought me out of.

And that's been phenomenal.

So on a practical righteousness way, though, coming into more understanding of what that means for me has been helpful where I give myself more grace when I know that, okay, yeah, I'm not good at this part yet.

But then if you take a look around and you take a step back and go, but you know what?

I used to be bad here and I've gotten much better at this.

And now I feel that maybe God's working with me on this.

And what's interesting is that sometimes, and some people, our longtime listeners have heard me talk about some things, sometimes I even need to get smacked across the head by God sometimes, go, hey, you're doing this thing again.

You know, we've worked on this, you know, this thing that I told you that you needed to trust me with.

You're basically doing the same thing again.

And it's awesome to have that relationship with God where I can continue to keep working on that and try to remember better the fall forward instead of back.

Yeah, for me, it's that whole one side of the coin reminds me that it's nothing that I did.

I didn't have to do anything in order to become right.

Yeah.

But the other side of the coin reminds me that I have a responsibility to continue doing what's right.

And it gives me a drive and a purpose, you know, and it allows me to have some responsibility in my walk.

So I love it.

Love it.

Yeah.

So.

So you talked a little Bit earlier about Satan's strategy of accusation.

I think you had brought it up.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

So he comes to us and he tries to.

Well, he wants us to question our salvation, but he wants us to also feel condemned.

He's the great accuser.

And so he's going to look at the things we've done and he's going to say, this is why you're not worthy.

You're not saved.

He's trying to negate the things that Christ has done for us in our lives.

When he does that, he hits us in our hearts.

Because these are the things that.

Especially if you're trying to follow Jesus and I pray everyone, is that as you develop your love for Jesus, your heart yearns to want to please him.

Just like a child.

A child wants to please their parents.

They might act up and they might do some things, sometimes for attention, sometimes for other reasons, but ultimately they're not trying to displease their parents.

They want to please their parents because they love their parents in the same way.

As we come into further love with Jesus, we want to please him.

When the devil accuses us and tries to condemn us and the things that we've done, even if it's not something we've done in the late past, but a while back, he can still try to put that on us.

Like, you don't deserve his love.

You did this.

What Christ is saying is, yeah, I've got that, too.

It's all.

It's all good.

I mean, I got that.

You having me.

Don't worry about that.

We're gonna do better.

That's what we're gonna do.

And it's amazing.

Yeah, it's good.

That's good.

With that attack of the heart, the accusation of things in the past or things in the present, comes guilt.

And guilt is heavy.

And that.

That's.

I mean, talk about hanging a millstone around your neck.

Sometimes it feels like you're just going to be tossed to the bottom of the sea.

The cool thing is the fact that since Christ was the one that did all the work and I just accepted the gift that he was giving me, like, it silences that accusation.

It's like, okay.

And it has no weight.

It has no bearing.

It's no longer that.

That can hold me down, you know, I guess Jesus is like my flotation device.

Yeah.

I can hold as much weight as needed.

Yeah.

Just when you're like, this is gonna.

Be it, you're like, nah, no, check this out.

I got a little.

You know, I got Jesus, Jesus around my neck.

Oh, my goodness.

So, yeah.

So got our seatbelts on.

Now we're getting our flotation device.

Yeah.

So also ready to crash.

Trying to live in a righteous way helps protect us so that we don't open doors for the devil to try to get in.

No footholds in his life.

So it's kind of like I talk about sometimes what you're ingesting.

I talk this to, especially with the students.

I say this a lot.

The kind of people that you put yourselves around, the kind of places you put yourselves in, what you ingest.

If you spend a lot of time chasing Jesus and reading scripture and living in good ways with good people in good places, it's going to help protect you.

Your heart's going to be full of that and there will be less room for these other things.

But if you're ingesting a lot of worldly things, if you are ingesting a lot of negative things, you know, that's the things that are going to go into your heart, and then that's what the things are going to come out of your heart.

Yeah.

If you like to hang out in shady places with shady people, the darkness is going to filter in.

Oh, yeah.

So you got to, you got to be careful, stay prayed up, keep your eyes on the prize.

You know, it's interesting.

This kind of thinking actually negates even arguments within the church realm.

So I'll give you one.

And we're not going to talk about.

We're not going to get into that argument.

But I'm just making a point.

But okay, so if you're following Jesus, if that's your focus is I want to follow Jesus, then certain arguments, even inside the church, are ridiculous.

So, for instance, there's a question, is it true that you're once saved, only saved, or can people fall away?

That argument is destroyed and doesn't make any difference in your life if all you're focusing on is following Jesus.

If you're following Jesus like that, you don't have to worry about if you can or not, because you're not going to see what I'm saying.

So.

And that's as much as that.

I'm.

I would even go as far as saying, like, even if you're, like, asking yourself those questions like, am I, am I following Jesus enough?

Then I would say you're on the right track.

You're good.

Like, just keep, keep, keep doing that.

Like, there's a lot of people who get into that questioning phase and then they get Sucked into that rabbit hole of like, well, if I'm questioning, is that.

And it can become a stumbling block.

I can't be a believer if I'm questioning.

Right.

And no, I mean, if you're constantly checking yourself, but you're also constantly seeking after Jesus.

Yeah.

You know, give yourself some grace.

Right.

Yeah.

It's true.

I mean, and doubts in faith are not a bad thing.

I mean, people.

It's.

Presumably, it's presented often as not a good thing.

But the thing is, to have a doubt in your faith and to have questions that you want to ask of God, if you want to ask of the people that around you, that's a healthy thing, is to try to help work on your faith.

You can deepen your faith in incredible ways because you asked the question, because you explored the doubt and you went and you took it to the scripture and you took it to God, and maybe you took it to your pastor and you're like, okay, so I have this thing now that I've been struggling with.

Where is this?

You can find answers.

God is not trying to hide from you.

He wants you to seek him, and he wants to be found by you when you do.

When these things come up, don't look at it as a chink in the armor.

Look at it as something where you're looking to strengthen your armor.

There's a big difference in mental state there.

Yeah.

All right.

So have you seen how obedience and integrity have protected you from spiritual attack and unnecessary trouble?

Hmm.

It's a good question.

I can say yes.

For me, like, it has led to, I had some purity issues, you know, where I had some accountability partners that pushed me on to be obedient and to regain my integrity in that area and put safeguards in place to protect me from those things.

I mean, we're human and we've each got a different thing, and some of us the same things that we struggle with.

And so I had a group of guys that were there for me that pushed me on to.

To really guarding my heart with.

With some real practical applications.

Yeah.

How has it gotten unnecessary trouble?

It's hard to know what kind of unnecessary trouble I've avoided.

That's what I was trying to think of.

Is there anything I know for a fact I avoid it.

The only way I can see it is, like, is things that you've run into in the past and have put something in the place, or maybe there's just been something that you've put in place that you can't run into, you know, that Sort of thing.

You know, I think I will say this, walking in obedience with Christ and starting to learn more of his heart.

As I said earlier, getting to know the grace and the love that I was given has changed me in a way that it's made me more patient with people and more forgiving with people.

One of the things that I know that I've been able to do is there is a.

Probably more than I can think of right now.

But there's been many people that I've been able to let go of things that, I mean, I was once really angry at people and haven't given it a thought in a long time.

I forgave and moved on with my life.

And it's been incredible to be able to be even around people sometimes that once hurt me and be okay, you know what I mean?

And so that is something where I just, you know, my obedience to Jesus and how I perceive he wants me to love others has been.

Yeah, I mean, perhaps that has kept me from the anger, that resentment, that poison that really wasn't even poisoning them as much as it was poisoning me back then.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, that's definitely a practical way that I've been able to see in my life.

So talking about practical ways to do things, practical ways to wear your breastplate right is man, it's that accountability.

It's one of the biggest things that you can have is that confession of your struggles and repentance and trying to actually repent, turning around, going the opposite direction, correcting yourself.

And that's real hard to do if you're on your own, if you're trying to do it by yourself, that's not easy.

It's important also along the same lines of thinking that when you do recognize that you have fallen short of anything, you know, to go, I mean, first and foremost to God and go, listen, I'm sorry I did this whether I realized I was doing it or not.

And, you know, I don't want to live this way.

And I need your help.

And to have a group of people that can help you with that is going to take it to the next level where they can help especially good godly people that really are there for the best of intentions, that really want to help you.

They want to help you.

God puts those people in our lives.

If you don't feel like you do, pray for them.

Pray for God to give you those people.

They will be there.

They will come.

And don't forget, God calls us to be a part of that.

And you are wearing A breastplate that covers your backside, too.

Yeah.

For anything internal or external inside the quote unquote church.

Not the body of Christ, but the.

The people inside the church, the things that they do that could hurt you.

Christ covers that.

Christ covers that in his righteousness.

And so that breastplate is covering both the back and the front for all attacks that could come.

And we got to remember our enemy is not flesh and blood.

Yeah.

And then you want to pursue holiness, pursue righteousness in your life, where you are trying to live according to how God would want you to live your life.

One of the most important ways to do that.

I know we say this all the time, but it's so easy and it's so obvious that you have to read your scripture.

You don't have to have some of the same routines.

Some people get up early, read their Bible, start today that way.

Some people, the emphasis is more on prayer to start your day.

But the idea is that we're trying to start our day on the path of chasing Jesus as best we can do that.

I would challenge you.

If you have the ability to get up and at least pray before you start your day, do it.

If you have the ability to get up and read scripture and pray, that's.

That's incredible.

Especially because pray over the scripture you read that God uses it and helps you understand it throughout the day.

It's amazing how he can use what you're reading.

And like you said, like, we're not talking, like, get up an hour earlier, like five minutes, Start small, start somewhere.

Give yourself something.

Try to find that time to do that.

Also, I would say this.

Here's a little trick that I've had to use.

I cannot tell you how many times in my life, but sometimes when you recognize that things are a little out of place that day and you get better at recognizing it sooner before things get real crazy.

But find those moments where your emotions, so you can feel they're getting the best of you, or you're getting a little frustrated, or just the day's all in a wreck.

And I love to say, take a reset.

Take yourself away from it and spend some time in prayer and ask God to help you reset, reset your emotions, reset the day.

And obviously when you're saying that you don't fully expect him to wake you back up in your bed and start all over again.

This isn't Groundhog Day, Although that would be interesting.

It's more of, Lord, I need to reset right now.

I am off where I need to be.

I.

I feel like I'm not going to chase you right now.

I'm going to chase something else.

And I need your help to help center me in you, center me in my emotions and so that I can go about this the best way and represent the best way I can.

And that has a rippling effect into those around you.

I mean, when we're pursuing that holiness, that righteousness, we're not.

It's easy to run into that perfectionism.

Right.

Like, I am a perfectionist when it comes to, like, my artwork and stuff.

And so any little thing I see is a huge thing.

Right.

But we're not talking about pursuing perfection.

I mean, it's more Jesus.

If we're talking about pursuing Jesus, then we are.

Right?

We're pursuing him, but it's his perfection.

We just need that daily alignment.

Right?

Yes.

Think about it like a spiritual chiropractor.

Oh, there you go.

There you go.

You're trying to get everything back in line.

You know, you're.

You know, things are out of sorts.

You're feeling funky.

Lord, help straighten me out, quite literally.

So.

Right, that's good.

That's good.

So, all right.

Yeah, I think that.

I think that's pretty much what wraps it up.

I mean, the biggest things is righteousness guards our heart from accusation and corruption.

Right.

Both who we are and how we live in Christ and for Christ matter.

I think that is stuff that leads to both the belt.

Right.

Like the fact that it's what Christ did.

That truth is foundational.

Oh, yeah.

We're building everything up, but it's.

You see how it ties in.

You guys see how it ties in and.

And holds that.

That breastplate in place, you know, is that.

That's a foundational truth that's going to help hold that.

That breastplate on.

So next week, we're going to be talking about the shoes of the Gospel of Peace.

That's a mouthful.

The shoes we're going to lace up.

Lace up.

Do you remember.

Remember the Reeboks?

You could load the pumps.

I never had those.

I never had them.

I always thought it was weird.

I don't know.

I was like, is it cool?

I never got to try it, but it looked kind of cool.

I just love all the commercials.

Yeah.

Like, oh, hold on.

I gotta get pumped.

All right, I'm good.

I don't know.

I'm not even sure if I know how exactly how it worked.

I jumped into slip ons really quick.

All right, all right.

I became an old guy.

All right.

So you got any final thoughts on this topic?

Or spiritual warfare so far that we've talked about?

Yeah, I would say it's kind of a combination of what I was saying earlier.

But it really comes down to you can find protection and rest in what Christ has done for us in his completed work.

It's a finished work.

He finished it on the cross.

And you can find rest in that.

And what that's going to do, it's going to help twofold.

You're going to, number one, protect yourself from those attacks that try to condemn you, make you feel like you're not good enough.

That's important.

But also it's going to keep you from getting into too much of a performance works based faith where it's not a performance faith.

There's nobody in here with an aptitude test going.

Well, you know, you did this this day, but you didn't do that.

Rest that God has covered you and continue to just follow him in that and protect your heart there.

Make sure that you're not taking too much from either side then.

Yeah, yeah, I definitely, like, I'm thankful that I don't necessarily have to do the work to get there.

Right.

Christ did it.

But I also really appreciate the fact that like I, I have this mentality that I need to, I need to act as though I'm worthy of it too.

Not that that is the thing that matters, but just like I have that responsibility to where like I need to live.

Like it matters, you know, so that's, that's good.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, so we've gone over at this point, you know, Ephesians 6:14.

Yep.

Once again I hope that you are reading along with us.

I think it would be.

If you haven't done it, read the whole chapter on this and then you can kind of walk through it with us.

But this is a good verse to think about.

We've talked about what it is to have truth.

If you missed that one, please go back.

But truth, belt of truth.

Now we got the breastplate of righteousness.

Or is what you called it the curious?

But yeah, but we're building it on truth.

We've got the righteousness on.

Let's think about that this week.

Let's go into our Bibles.

Maybe we should, if there's something that hits you, maybe make a couple notes there.

If you're a journaler and I love journalers, I'm not as good as some other people and I admire them for it.

This is a great part to write on and leave notes for yourself on and really kind of explore this with God.

But yeah, we want you to be joining us with this and really try to experience it to the fullest.

And once again, if there's someone that you think, I think this person could really use this or I feel like I was just talking to somebody about this or something like that.

Share it, man.

Not just because we obviously we do love to grow our listenership and our outreach.

We're all about that.

But honestly, the reason we love doing that is because impact.

If this, you think this is going to positively impact someone, let's get it out there.

That's going to be the best part right there.

Yeah.

And we are open to conversation about what we've missed.

If we've missed anything in this stuff too, I mean, hold us to it.

I mean, we need accountability from you guys as well.

I mean, we're not perfect.

No, we're not.

Imagination.

I sometimes present as perfect, but I am easily quickly known to be not perfect.

So one thing I do want to leave everybody with is the reflection question for this week.

And that is, is there an area of your life where you need to step more fully into righteousness, either receiving Christ's righteousness or living it out more intentionally?

I know some of you guys kind of share it within your small groups or whatnot.

And so that question, dig into that one a little bit.

What area do you need to just, is it grace?

Is it the grace that Matt was talking about earlier?

Do you need to step more into that and allow yourself to give others more grace and more mercy?

Or is it just like soaking it in back in the basics, you know, do I need to step back into the simple things?

The, you know, just starting reading daily or just a little bit earlier in the morning prayer, like, what is it that you need to do?

What's your next step?

And for my Bible loving nerds, and I love you all, you're my people, I love all of you anyway.

But I love my Bible nerds.

If you guys want to go a little further into Bible scripture, you're looking for something that's a great companion to read to this right now.

I would recommend Romans 8.

It really is a great chapter, the whole thing.

It begins with, now there's no more condemnation.

And that is an important, important part.

But flesh through that, that is such an amazing chapter of the Bible, Romans 8.

Read that alongside of this this week.

I think it could make a great impact on you.

Leave comments by the way, we want to know how this is this episode.

We want to know how this series has been impacting you positively negatively.

We want to know it all, but especially when it comes to these questions and the readings.

Let us know how God's talking to you right now.

Yeah.

And send in your questions that you have for us throughout this whole series.

We're going to be wrapping it up on the last episode with a Q and A session where we'll take your cues and give you answers.

So thanks for joining us.

Don't forget, like, subscribe.

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Big party.

You guys are all invited.

Yep.

So thank you for all that you guys do and God bless.

Hey, thanks for joining us.

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