Ephesians 6:10-20 (The Message) Ephesians 6:10-20 (NIV)
Being a Christ-Follower is about being strong. It’s not about our own strength but being strong from the inside out, from within, from the Spirit of God alive within us. It’s about allowing God to strengthen, guide, direct and preserve us in our journey of faith. Serving the Lord is a life long pursuit, a life long battle; a battle of spirit and truth. And the good news is that God wants to equip us with the spiritual weapons we need to live in faith, hope, love, and truth…
“God’s Word is an indispensable weapon” we read in the Message translation. Prayer is vitally important, “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”
How’s your battle going? Are you reading the scriptures, saying your prayers, worshipping with your church family, serving as God so leads? In your battle of faith do you find the joy which Jesus said would be within his followers?
Fight well this day, from the inside out!
First Pres Joliet 
January 31, 2015 at 1:30 pm
The time of the Reformation (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc.) and Renaissance happened at nearly the same time in Western Europe. One might say that this was a coincidence. Or, one might say that both were attributable to a society that was awakened from it’s slumber towards God. It depend on one’s faith which is chosen.
From the Reformation was born the Protestantism (Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Pietists, Puritans, and Moravian). These movements were away from a Church centered faith to a faith where the individual had direct access to God rather than going through a Roman Church intermediary. These movements led to asceticism; that is acting and speaking in such a way that was known to please God not because one felt like living that way. I believe this is what our text today (Gal. 6:10-20) is mostly about. This “act” that brought renewed civilization societies that embraced it and prosperity, especially to the Calvinists and Puritans.
The conspicuous Calvinists and Puritans fervently believed in the controversial, at that time and now, doctrine of predestination. That is that the God of this universe had specifically chosen and equipped them to further His Kingdom on earth and reside with Him forever in heaven. To begin with, Calvinists and Puritans did better than any other religious grouping in Western Europe and later in America. They embraced their being “called out” by God. They worked harder and more intelligently than others and thus became more wealthy and prosperous than most of the others.
They believed the good results to their living to be their most effective witness, to other religious groups and a lost world, to the truth of their beliefs. This way of living is what, along with less important factors, gave capitalism it’s birth. My, how peoples perceptions have changed over time.
“Calvinists believers were psychologically isolated. Their distance from God could only be precariously bridged, and their inner tensions only partially relieved, by unstinting, purposeful labor.”
– Max Weber, “The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism