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Well, good morning, Echoes Church. We alive? We well this morning?
And always good to get to be with you. If we have not had the chance to meet yet, my name is Daniel. I'm the lead pastor here, and this weekend is a significant weekend for a couple reasons. The the first one is yesterday marked seventeen years and my wife has put up with me for seventeen years of marriage and
it's a big deal, and I would like the record to say that was seventeen years in a row, okay, consecutively, which that matters. But also,
we are opening up an overflow space that you might not have seen today but I wanted to draw your attention to it. It's out in the hallway that's here because again, God's been doing something pretty unprecedented
but we can't do any more than four services here. We gotta be out of here at a certain time. So to create more space, we've opened up an overflow space that gives us about another 100 seats. We had a little overflow space out in the lobby, but it was right next to the bathroom. It was not an ideal situation, but we're we're working within the parameters that we have. And so if you haven't seen it, I can't encourage you enough to check it out. Great venue. Again, if you've got little kids, hear me. Like, kids are welcome to be in church. Kids are supposed to make noise. All of that stuff is totally welcome. But if at some point during the service, you find it like I I think Daniel's staring at me. I am. K. I'm trying to get your attention. That at some point if kids start to be a little bit distracting, just know we have a venue that they can they can run around in, but it's not just for families with little kids. It's just an awesome space that'll facilitate,
what we believe God is gonna continue to do over the next couple years until we get into what I can't wait to share with you in the coming weeks is a permanent facility that is coming together to the glory of God, okay? But you gotta come back in a couple weeks and I'll share all about that.
Literal miracle story after miracle story but it is it is officially in the works. So today, we are continuing in a series we started four weeks ago, walking through Ephesians chapter six, putting on the spiritual armor of God. The bible reminds us that it's not flesh and bones that we wage war with but it's spirits and principalities
and we are in a fight, we are in a war whether you realize it or not and so if you got a bible, join me in Ephesians chapter six. We're gonna look at today the fourth piece of God's armor that we gotta learn to put on. It says this in Ephesians six verse 13,
it says, therefore put on every piece of God's armor so that you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. It says, then after the battle you will still be standing firm.
Friends, let me just level with you and make sure we know what we're talking about. The Bible says that there's a day that's coming that's gonna be evil. Again, I believe that we are in that day. Says you're gonna be in a battle whether you realize it or not but the opportunities if you can learn how to prepare for that battle, you can get through the battle and you can still be standing. You do not have to be destroyed in the spiritual battle that we are in if you look and you learn how to do what Paul says. Verse 14,
to stand your ground. Put on the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the good news so that you will be fully prepared. Verse 16 is where we get our piece of the armor today. Says, in addition to all of these,
hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. I wanna talk to you this morning about the shield of faith.
Shield of faith. Would you pray with me father? We thank you, God for your word. We thank you for your spirit. We thank you for your people and we ask that you would take all of those, put them together to allow us to be transformed from the inside out today. That we would walk out of here different
than we walked in here. That we would we would have faith rise up in us again. It is in Jesus name all God's people said, amen and amen. My my family moved to Phoenix from San Diego originally in 2018,
we did it twice, it's a story for another day but I'm still trying to figure out the theology because as I read the Bible, people go from the from the desert to the promised land. We went from the promised land to the desert but it's again a sermon for another day. We knew that God was calling us to Phoenix. It was very clear, God confirmed in multiple ways but there's some things that I wish I had known then that I know now. Well, if you're new to Phoenix, I'm gonna put you on to some game. Okay? The the first one is that there's these things called scorpions. They're like little demons and if you're not careful, they'll get you. Secondly,
if you have not put on your insurance, your car insurance yet, what's called a windshield rider. You gotta call your insurance company when you leave today because you're gonna go through windshields out here like crazy, right? Because there's there's rocks all over the place. Nobody nobody prepared me for it. So a couple months into being here, we're driving behind this truck and this truck kicks up this boulder that I I swear to you was like the size of a city, like this thing was massive. My life is flashing before my eyes. All I can see is this thing that's gonna hit me in the face but praise God, it doesn't hit me, it hits the windshield,
shatters the windshield, bounces off, terrifies us, we pull over, I call my insurance and then I find out that I don't have the insurance rider so I had to pay for that windshield out of pocket but to the glory of God, the two or three windshields we've gone through since then, I had the insurance for, right?
Here here's why I I start there. It's just one of the easiest ways to visualize what I think Paul is talking about today. The reason that our cars have windshields on them that don't that don't shatter but they splinter, they they absorb whatever it is that's outside that is that is hurled into them is because your windshield literally is the barrier between you and the world. Much like that, Paul is saying in the physical battle that or the spiritual battle that we are in, we need to realize that we need something that's gonna be our barrier between us and the devil and the attacks that he's gonna come at us. What we've got to learn today, what Paul is teaching us is how to raise what he calls the shield of faith. Now again, I got this shield on Amazon, amazing what you get on Amazon for $29.
This thing is not cool. Like I'm not sitting here like, hey, if you want it at the end of the 12:00, you can have this shield. If you're like, man, that thing is that thing is fire, it is yours. Okay? Don't say I never gave you nothing but a Roman soldier
shield would have looked nothing like this but I couldn't find one that was close enough. Okay? A Roman soldier shield would be four feet tall, two and a half feet wide, weighed somewhere in the 40 to 50 pound region. It was it was massive. It wasn't just a weapon that they could use defensively,
but if needed, they could also use it offensively and Paul is teaching us through a Roman soldiers wardrobe how to prepare ourselves for the spiritual battle that we are in and he tells us, you and I need a barrier that will protect us against the attacks of the enemy.
What is the shield that we have to learn this morning to to lift up, to hold up? He calls it a shield of of faith. The question this morning for you and I is what is faith?
Because if you ask 10 people what faith is, you'll get 10 different answers. But if we're gonna talk about how to have faith as followers of Jesus, I think the best definition for faith comes from the Bible itself. K. The Bible defines faith this way, Hebrews chapter 11 verse one, it says, now faith is confidence in what we hope for and it's assurance
about what we do not see. Paul says, here's what faith is, faith is it's confidence in what we're hoping for and it's an assurance about what we don't see. What he's saying is that there's a way to operate not based on sight, you won't always be able to see it but you can have confidence
to walk in the promises of God that you've received. Now again, you gotta you gotta remember, the the the armor of God is something that is progressive.
It kind of builds on itself. Why does Paul start with the belt of truth? Because if you don't have truth, you lose everything. You don't have righteousness, you don't have a way to protect your vital organs. The breastplate of righteousness you have to be you have to put on but righteousness comes from the truth of the word of God that the peace that we put on his shoes,
it comes from the gospel. All of it is kind of a setup. What Paul is saying is that faith at some point is learning to take the truth
that we've wrapped around our lives with the word of God and the person of God and now we're we're making it practical. Now again, you gotta remember this morning that that you are whether you realize it or not, you are a person of faith.
My assignment this morning is not to convince you to have faith. You already have it. My question is is do you have faith in the right things? I can prove it to you a little bit. K. When Ian got done singing and he's a beautiful angel and it's amazing every time he sings, I I love I love it. I love Ian. But when he got done singing, he told you, hey, you can take a seat as we continue in our services. And you notice what you did?
You just sat down in a chair and expected these old chairs in this old auditorium to support you. Why?
I don't know because you didn't really think about it. There's something about how we're wired to go, well, I've sat in the chairs before so I have past history with them. I have a basic understanding of how chairs work, therefore, everything in me didn't question,
I didn't stop and analyze the seat, I just pulled the seat down and I sat in it expecting it to carry my weight. Friends, I'm telling you, you are a person of faith whether you realize it or not. If you're one of those people that walks into a gas station and you walk out with sushi from a gas station,
can I tell you, you've got more faith than the rest of us? Alright?
Supernatural faith. If you go to Mexico, which I again, I love Mexico and I love the food, but if a guy walks up to you and says, hey, do you want a parasail and you say yes, you have some supernatural faith like, I'm good. I don't wanna die today. If you go to a state fair and you ride the rides of a state fair that was put together by a carny three days before,
Supernatural faith. What I'm trying to get you to see today is it's not do you have faith? The real question is do you have faith in the right things? The bible talks about this idea of faith a lot in the New Testament. 250
times it will use this word in the Greek for faith. You're gonna think I'm cussing when I tell you the word but I promise you I'm not. In Greek, the word faith is is pistis. Okay? Pistis is the word faith in the Greek but the definition is different than how we understand things. The definition is acting on the truth.
When the bible is talking about faith, it's not blind faith, it's faith that is connected to truth that we've already agreed upon because we have the belt of truth on, right? Truth is not, it's not relative, truth is absolute, it can be known, truth is a person named Jesus and when you know truth, you can begin to operate
by faith but it tells me something.
Faith is not what a lot of people think that it is. A lot of people think following Jesus is like you just you gotta feel it and things things feel good and you get the right vibe and you get the right energy and that's what I come to church for is I hope that they play the the right music in the right order and they pick the songs that I like and I just walk out and go, man, everything feels amazing.
That's not faith. That's some hyper emotionalism thing that is not what the bible says. Friends, you gotta understand this morning that faith is not. It's not a feeling, it's not feelings.
Faith is much deeper than that, it's much more powerful than that. It's not based on something that is circumstantial that's going to change. No, the scriptures implore us to figure out how to do second Corinthians chapter five, to live by faith and not by sight.
To operate not based on feelings but on something that is anchored to and rooted in in truth.
A W Tozer wrote an amazing book called The Knowledge of the Holy talking about the life of faith, following Jesus, it's an amazing book if you haven't read it yet but he says in there, he says that any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses, it's not real faith.
He's not saying that feelings and emotions are bad but they cannot be the lead indicator of your life. They cannot be the thing that drives your life, why? Because feelings are in their very nature, they're circumstantial. They're gonna change. How you feel today is not how you're gonna feel tomorrow
and the problem is is the world will tell you that what you should do is you should trust your feelings and when the bank account is full, then you can feel secure. When the relationship is strong, then you can have joy. No no, I'm here this morning to remind you that faith biblically is a choice
and if you and I are going to survive the attacks that the enemy is gonna throw at us, we at some point have to we have to make a choice. We have to choose to not trust what we can see but we trust the very character and the nature of who God is. Now what's interesting, this why you gotta read your bible slowly,
is in Ephesians six what we just read, every other piece of the armor of God, Paul says you put it on which means every day you've gotta put on the belt of truth. Every day you've gotta put on the breastplate of righteousness. Every day you've gotta put on the shoes of peace that comes from the good news that is found in the gospel.
But with the shield of faith, he changes he changes the adjective. He changes the adverb that he invites us into. He doesn't say you put it on, he says you you hold it up. What it tells me is that you and I don't we don't live lives
completely hidden behind a shield of faith, why? Because it would be weird to go to Starbucks and have a conversation with somebody like this, right?
But there are going to be critical seasons of your life where you will have to learn to hold up the shield of faith. There are going to be critical moments in your marriage journey where you will have to learn to hold a shield of faith over your marriage.
There will be seasons where the attack against your kids is so intense that if you have not learned how to hold up the shield of faith, I'm telling you, you will lose the battle. There are seasons where anxiety will be so overwhelming
that if you don't learn how to hold up the shield of faith, you will buckle under the pressure, but here here's what I want you to see this morning, that there is a way that you can put a protective barrier between you and the attacks of the enemy. It's called it's called faith. Friends, faith is the barrier. It's the protective barrier between us and the attacks of Satan.
So the logical question this morning is how do we get more faith? What does faith look like? Three things I wanna show you from the bible that you gotta you gotta see about faith. The first thing is that faith must be received.
This is part of the tension of how the bible talks about faith is there isn't necessarily a three step process to get more faith. The bible actually talks about faith being a gift that you've gotta receive. It's something that God has to give you.
So if the thing that we need more than anything else is faith and it's something that is a gift from God, how do we how do we get more of it? Well, Romans chapter 10 verse 17 gives us a little bit of a hint of how we receive more faith. It says the faith comes from hearing, that is hearing the good news about Christ.
Paul to the church in Rome gives us a little bit of an insight in how do you receive more faith. You put yourself intentionally in environments where you're hearing
about the things of God, where you are listening to worship music, where what is going into your mind is not the trash of this world but it's the it is the word of God being proclaimed. It's the promises of God that is being spoken
which tells me that every single thing that we listen to, everything that we allow into our ears, into our eyes and into our mind, it is either forming us more into the image of Christ or it is deforming us into the image of this world. The question is is what are the things that you're consuming?
What are they doing to you? Because I promise you, there's nothing neutral. I'm always mind blown when I go stay with my wife's grandparents
that this it's a generational thing for sure, but I always I I laugh at them because the first thing that they do when they wake up in the morning before they get coffee, before they do anything is they turn the TV on and then the very first thing they do is they turn to Fox News and for the next fifteen hours,
all they do is listen to Fox News and I'm like, dear God, how do you listen to this all day? Like, I we're all gonna die from COVID again. Iran's gonna blow us all up again. Like, we're it's just nonstop
and I'm like, I just can't literally, I feel like I have to guard my heart and my mind when I'm in their home because everything is trying to form you in this world and I know for you it might not be Fox News, but you realize that the average adult today is spending somewhere between seven and eight hours a day
on social media and my fear is that what is discipling, what is forming, what is shaping a generation is the lies that the enemy is telling us through through a scream.
All that to say, if you want if you want faith to come out of you, you've got to wonder what are you putting into you? How do you how do you allow faith to be received in your life? You you put yourselves in environments where that is what's being proclaimed.
It tells me being in church is a big deal. It means getting our kids in the kids church and getting them to youth group, it matters more than you realize.
Why? Because all of those environments where the gospel is being preached, seeds are being planted and there are times if your kids are like mine that you will be tempted to wonder if God is doing anything because I I pick up my son from youth group sometimes and I'm like, hi, bro, how did it go? What did you learn? He's like, I don't know. I'm like, alright. Well, what what bible story did they talk about? They didn't use the bible at all. I'm like, dude, I'm the pastor of the church, bro, like I promised you, I know the curriculum.
They read the Bible. Like, were you that checked out? Like, I don't think they used the Bible. I'm like, that's the one thing we do there. We worship and we read the Bible. You're like, are they listening to anything? Right? Pick You your kids up from kid's church, like what'd you learn? Like I don't know, colored a picture. You're like, what are we doing?
I'm here this morning to remind you friends, do not discount what is happening inside of the hearts of us and in the hearts of our children when you are putting them in environments where the word of God is being proclaimed. You've gotta realize that the scriptures tell us about a principle that says when we listen to trash, what you're doing is you're depositing doubt inside of your soul, inside of your heart, and inside of your mind and our default wiring as humans is doubt.
It is not it is not hard to grow in doubt. It is not hard to sow seeds of fear. The world is constantly preaching you a message of be afraid, but when you listen to truth, what happens is you start to deposit faith inside of your heart.
Therefore, you're driving, maybe turn off a podcast and instead turn on a sermon. Listen to worship music, put put the gospel
into your heart, into your mind, into your ears and watch what it will do. Isaiah chapter 55 verse 11 says that the word goes out from my mouth and it will not return to me empty but it will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. The promise of scripture itself is that when God's word is preached, it will never return void.
It's doing something even when you can't see it. How do you when when the attacks of the enemy come against you, how do you make sure you have enough faith in you to lift up the shield of faith? You make sure that what is being planted in your heart Monday through Friday is seeds of faith that eventually
you will be able to pull from. The second thing you gotta do is you gotta realize that faith isn't just received,
faith is also something that has to grow. Faith is not it's not stagnant. You are not going to stumble your way into a life of strong faith. You have to make daily decisions to grow your faith, to exercise your faith. Your faith is is either getting stronger or it's getting weaker but it is not neutral.
It's why Jesus' half brother James says this in James chapter two verse 17. He says, so so you see faith by itself, it isn't enough unless it produces good deeds, it's actually dead and useless.
See you and I would be tempted to read James two and think that what he's doing is he's preaching a different message than the rest of the gospel writers because Paul,
Matthew, these guys talk about the fact that the faith is something that you receive as a free gift you can't earn but James is saying, no, no, you've got to work for it. Faith isn't enough. He's not preaching a different gospel,
he's actually preaching a continuation of the same gospel and what he's telling us is that friends, if all you do is allow faith to be something that you receive and then you never put it into practice,
you never exercise your faith, you never stretch your faith, you never grow your faith, eventually what is going to happen to that seed of faith is it's gonna die. It's going to slowly become anemic and when you reach into your pocket to pull from faith in seasons where it's hard,
there's not gonna be much to pull from. Faith is like anything else in your life. It's a muscle that is either declining or it's developing based on what decisions you're choosing to take and make throughout the week. Again, I mostly put this point in there so that I could tell everybody that this week I benched 315
pounds in the gym, so come at me somebody, alright? We can cheer for that. It's exciting.
True true story. I failed doing three zero five a couple months ago. My buddy was like, we should push it and go to three fifteen. I was like, you're crazy, man. So I do two seventy five and I like, alright, that felt pretty good, you know? So I'm like, whatever. Let's go for and I I was like legitimately
nervous. I take this thing off and it goes down, I'm like and somehow I was able to get it back up, immediately regretted that I didn't ask somebody to videotape it, you know, so I could flex on everybody but
here's the reason that I tell you for real. It it's amazing to me to see what is what is tangible in the gym that isn't always as tangible in the spiritual realm. See five or six years ago, I made a decision that I was gonna try to get back into shape. I remember walking into the gym how how terrified I was to do certain things, how weak I felt and you see it in the gym, When you stay consistent, you get stronger, and there are moments where you will see I'm not as weak as I thought I was. I'm actually stronger than I think that I am, but here's the part that's hard. The only way you get stronger in the gym is by making a decision to push yourself, to stretch yourself, and actually allow your muscles to be broken
so that they can be rebuilt stronger. Friends, I'm telling you, it is the exact same thing that is true in the spiritual realm as well. But it tells me that maybe when we find ourselves in seasons of intense opposition,
when we feel like we are carrying weight that we think is going to break us, that if you can begin to step into and tap into the power source that is God, the thing that you think is gonna break you, it might be the very thing that is actually gonna make you stronger.
Some of you, I felt like God wanted me to tell you you're stronger than you think you are. You will get through this. This thing that you think is gonna break you, I'm telling you, you will get through it. But if faith is not something that you exercise,
why? Why do you think you're just gonna be able to pull out these these radical steps of faith when when you haven't been doing anything for months? You haven't been doing anything for years just like being in the gym and being terrified of heavier thing. I can vividly still remember
the room that I was in, the people I was in a circle with when I was asked to for the first time as a new follower of Jesus to pray out loud for somebody. It was a men's bible study. At the very end, they circled up and said, okay, we're all gonna pray for the person to our right. From that point forward, I didn't hear anything else anybody said. I basically blacked out and the person in my left got done talking and I was like, dear God, I have to start speaking now. And I'm telling you, if it was recorded,
that prayer was so bad, the dude to my right could have been begging to get to heaven and I probably talked him out of it, right? Like,
it was not good. I can remember how hard, how difficult, how scared I was to pray out loud for the first time. But here's the truth, twenty years in, I'm praying with any one of you after church right here, right now. Why? I've had twenty years of exercising the muscle of faith. I've gotten stronger in the supernatural. I've gotten stronger when it comes to faith. I can still remember the room that I was in, the first time I made a decision to trust God with my finances. I genuinely can remember the moment I put the money into the bucket and then how I watched the bucket as I went through the rest of the room and tried to figure out how do I intercept the bucket and get my money back because I was broke and now I'm just broker. Like, I had no idea that I was gonna trust God, but what's amazing is is twenty years of slowly
taking steps of faith, trusting God with small steps have slowly over time become bigger steps, and I don't say this at all as a flex, but I say this to tell you my wife and I give way more than 10% of our money every single year. Why? Because I've had twenty years of watching the faithfulness of God move in my finances. I can tell you today with all confidence that you cannot out give God. When the scriptures say that it's more blessed to give than it is to receive, I say yes and amen and I'm trying to help somebody this morning see, you have to learn to stretch
your faith. I don't know where it is that God is asking you to stretch but faith does not just grow on its own. It's not just through the preaching of God's word. At some point
at some point, you gotta put it into practice. At some point, you gotta take it and put it into action. Here's my question for you. When is the last time that you really exercised your faith? When is the last time you did something really scary? Risks
sounding crazy and telling your coworker, I feel like God told me to pray for you. Handing somebody a $100 bill going, I don't know what it is, but feel like God told me to invest into your life.
Coming to church and going, man, I'm gonna trust God with my money. Where is it where your faith is being exercised? If not, I'm telling you, when the attack comes, don't think you will know how to put up the shield of faith to protect your mind and protect your home, to protect your marriage, but if faith if faith can be received and faith can grow, you can do this thing. Here's the last one I have for you. Here's the last thing the Bible tells us is that faith, it's not just received, it's not just something that has to grow but it also something that has to be activated at some point. I think this is the question I was plagued with this whole week is how do we activate faith?
What does it look like for faith to move from an ethereal,
logical thing and begin to be practical, actionable thing in our life? There's only a few ways I've ever learned to put faith into action. The first one is that you gotta realize that faith is activated by speaking God's word. Think one of the most declarative, one of the most powerful things that you can do in your life is learn to take the promises recorded in scripture
and begin to speak them and declare them over your life. Second Corinthians chapter four says that it is written, therefore I I believe, therefore I have spoken.
Notice the connection. It says, yes, I've believed and now I'm learning to take my belief and I'm translating it into my language. It's a sense we have the same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore we speak.
Here's what the bible's telling us, you and I to to lift up the shield of faith over our lives, sometimes it is as simple
as when the enemy's attacks are coming knowing how to counter them. Remember Jesus when he was in the desert? Three times Satan tried to distort the word of God back to Jesus, get him to fall, get him to to settle into temptation. What did Jesus do? Three times he said, no, no, no, it is written and he took the word of God, he spoke it back to the devil and he was able to overcome
the enemy's attack in his life. Let me give you some weapons this morning. Friends, if you are here today and your family is under intense spiritual opposition, let me tell you Joshua chapter 24 verse 15 is a shield that you can lift up that says, as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.
It's not just some words on a page. It was a prophetic declaration for a leader at the end of his life making a decision in a decree over his family for the next two generations to come. The bible says they followed
God because of Joshua's faithfulness because he learned to take the promises and speak them over his life. If you're here today and you've got children that are far from God, they're in the throes of addiction, you look at their life and you go, man, they strayed from God, the enemy has them. No, no. Proverbs 22 verse six is a shield that you lift over your home. It says if you direct your children onto the right path when they are older, they will not leave it. Enemy will tell you that they're defeated. I'm here to tell you that no, no, older might be 45,
heck, it might be 65 but the promise of God over your children's life is yes and amen.
Do not let the enemy fear you into thinking that God's plan is yet to come. If you're here today and your your family's falling apart, your marriage is on the the brink of failure, let me remind you Philippians chapter one verse six that I am certain, not wondering,
I am certain that God who began a good work within you, he will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. He didn't bring you this far to drop you. What God has started, I'm telling you, he's gonna bring it to completion.
When you get a bad report from the doctor, you go, man, I don't know how to get through this and your mind starts racing. You go, I'm just gonna have to settle into what happened to my mom. The same thing is happening. The generational cycles are playing out again. No. No. No. You remember Isaiah 53 that says, but he he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him
and by his wounds, we are healed in the name of Jesus. Dealing with anxiety, let me give you one of the greatest verses and one I have to reach into in certain seasons of my life. Isaiah 26 verse three says that you will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you.
Friends, it's not just words on a screen, it's a shield you lift up. Says, devil, you got the wrong person. There's no reason for me to have anxiety because I'm I'm held in perfect peace. Jesus has me. I know you're sitting here like, yeah, but you don't know what I'm walking through.
You don't know how bad it really is and you're right, I don't, but I do know Isaiah 54 that no weapon formed against you will prosper
and that you have promises that if you can learn to speak these things over your life, they can become more than words on a on a page, they can become promises that you can begin to step into. First Corinthians chapter 15 says that I I give thanks to God that he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
He who is in you, I'm telling you, he is greater than he who is in this world. Friends, at some point, you've gotta begin to lift up the shield of faith over your life. You've gotta activate faith by speaking God's word. Secondly, I think one of the most practical things that we can do to lift up a shield of faith, to activate faith in our life is we have to activate faith by surrounding ourselves with people of faith.
The reason that we need each other is because there are moments where you are going to have no faith at all. I wish I could tell you in every season as a pastor that I'm always operating in great faith. I've had seasons where I've believed God for some great things.
I've also had some seasons where it's taken everything in me to have any bit of faith that God can still use somebody like me. And in those moments, I've learned over the years, you know what I do when my faith is weak? I call some of my really good friends that I trust.
I call some of my friends that I'm allowed to admit, hey, I don't always have it all together,
and I go, hey, can I borrow your faith? And what my friends do is they link arms with me, and all all of a sudden, I borrow their faith for a season. I don't have to be weak because I feel weak. What's amazing to me, again, the illustration that Paul is using,
the Romans were the most powerful fighting force in the history of the world. They conquered more of the the known world than any army, any any any empire in the history of the world at that point. It's because they had battle tactics that nobody else used. They were smarter. They were more strategic.
They knew when to come together. They knew when to advance alone. And one of the things that the Roman soldier would do with their shield when the enemy's opposition was was overwhelming to them, when they felt like they were under significant attack, they would call what was called turtle formation.
They need a cooler name. That just doesn't sound very tough and bad. It'd be like turtle formation, you know, but it's incredible how it worked. What they would do you've seen the photo. You've seen it in Gladiator. You've seen the movie like Troy. What they would do is they would take their shields that were individual
that were powerful by themselves, but they would link them together. And these shields linked together would do a couple things. It would make it to where the the arrows that had a place to attack them before had no way to get in. But secondly, when one soldier was weak,
they could almost stop lifting their shield and it would rest on the shields of the friends that were with them in battle. Friends, I need you to hear me today. Why do we push crew so much? Why do we challenge you to get onto a team? Why do we challenge men? Go to Echo's essentials. Find your place in the kingdom of God
because Christianity has never been. It was never supposed to be a solo sport, and you will not make it in this life. You will not get through the struggle that is spiritual alone. You are going to need some brothers. You're gonna need some sisters that you can lock shields with. When your faith is weak,
there's some faith that you can borrow. Why do we have a prayer team down here every single Sunday after service? Because we have people up here who are prayed full, who are standing in faith, and you can borrow theirs if you need to. Friends, we we need each other. And if you're gonna activate faith, you've gotta speak the word of God. You've gotta link arms with the people of God. And the last thing I would encourage you to do is one of again, it's a discipline you will have to learn to to exercise.
You won't default to it, but you have to activate faith by keeping my eyes on Jesus. This is one of those things we have to train ourselves to do because here's what's natural when you're under attack, is it will be the only thing that you focus on. When finances are are are are tough,
when our marriage is difficult, it becomes the singular focus and the enemy hones in. And all of sudden, you can't sleep because it becomes the only thing that you think about. It becomes the thing that gets all of your attention. You see everything through the lens of that thing.
And I'm telling you, think about it practically. If I were to shoot an arrow at you, the absolute worst thing you could do is just stare at it and go, man, that thing's coming real fast at my face. It's on fire. That thing is crazy.
You stare at it long enough, what's it gonna do? It's gonna hit you right in the forehead. Right? But what the scriptures implore us to do is not not without attack, not in the absence of a fight, but right in the middle of the battle, right in the middle of the anxiety, right in the middle of the marital tension
to not focus on the problem, but instead look at the one who can do something about your problem. Hebrews chapter 12 verse two says, we do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus. Jesus. The champion who initiates and perfects our faith because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross disregarding
its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God's throne. Here's what the scripture says. I know you're under attack. Know I there's a lot of things that are pressing you right now in this season,
but here's what you can do by faith. You can take your attention off of them and you can again look to Jesus and remember that he who is in you is greater than he who is in this world. And I don't understand how you're gonna stop this arrow, but I trust that you do. And you are working when I can't see it, and my job my job is is to understand it all. My job is to act based on truth and to walk in faith. And so here's what I'm gonna ask you to do this morning. I'm gonna ask every single one of you would stand to your feet with me. We're gonna make this really practical right now.
You realize one of the only things that we do where we take all three of these things that we that we learn to activate our faith through and we do them simultaneously
is when we sing songs of worship together. What are we doing? We're declaring the truth of God to be yes and amen. We're speaking scripture over our lives. Most worship songs that we sing are just scriptures that we put music music to. We're linking arms with the people of God. We're asking worship to borrow people's faith. We for just a few moments are are blocking the noise and the chaos of life and going for just a few minutes in an atmosphere of faith. Collectively, we're gonna take our eyes off the problem,
and we're gonna put our eyes back on our savior. We're gonna remember that we don't see how, we trust that he's good and that he's working.