Wielding the Sword of the Spirit

When I was a teen, I basically lived for one thing and one thing alone. Basketball.

I started playing basketball when I was three years old. I started playing when I was three years old, and by the time I was in seventh grade, I played seven days of the week. I wasn't in the church at that time, so I had the ability to play, and I played seven days a week. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we'd have training. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we'd have practice. And on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we would play in a tournament, and we would play in different tournaments all around the world. Not the world, sorry, we played all around the country. I had the blessing, though, and the opportunity to travel to California twice a year, and I was able to play against teams from all around the world. I played against teams from Germany, Japan. I played teams from California all around the country.

I played a ton of basketball, and it was such an honor and such an awesome time. So in high school, I played varsity three out of the four years. My sophomore year, we won the state championship. I didn't really play very much, but I was on the team, so I won the state championship, and that was awesome. But by the time my senior year came around, I was able to be the captain of the varsity team, and I was really excited. We did pretty well my senior year, and so we were kind of moving forward, and I was trying to figure out where am I going to play basketball in college. I really, really wanted to play basketball in college, and I was working towards that each and every step of my journey that way, and that's why I was playing basketball so much. What happened was, as I was getting ready to do one of my first practices as I was playing in AAU, I went to go save the ball, and I planted my foot, and my knee just buckled out right underneath my foot, and I had no idea what happened, but I was able to get right up, I played the rest of practice, and I was good. I was like, this is awesome. I didn't actually hurt myself. But when I woke up the next morning, and I tried to take some steps down the stairs, I realized pretty fast that something had happened. And so I went to the doctor's and got an X-ray, nothing.

I went to get an MRI, and it turned out that when I was born, the top of my foot was born fused to the heel of my foot. And so when I had landed on my foot, what had happened is I had pushed on that bone, and I had started to flare up. And so the doctor told me that the only way that I can fully, ever fully recover was if I had that bone removed out of my foot. And so I was this 18-year-old in my senior year trying to decide, do I go to school for education, or do I go to school for basketball? And I had to make a decision.

And so after 15 years of playing basketball competitively, I made the decision to give it up. I decided to give it up. I went to school, I ended up going to the University of Connecticut, and it was one of the hardest things I had ever done. And it left me with a huge hole in my life. And ultimately, at that time, my life began to spiral. During my freshman year of college, living away from home for the first time, you get away, you go live on the campus, and you're living away from home. And I dove head first into the social scene. I started to go hang out with friends and do different things, not really prioritizing my schooling. And it was a really rough, rough first year.

I was not doing well in my classes, and my parents were really disappointed in me. And so they kind of threatened me. They said, if you don't get your stuff together, we're not going to help you with going to college. You're going to be going to community college and figuring it out for yourself. And so instead of doing that, they gave me another grace period. They said, we'll give you one more year, but instead this time we're going to send you 30 minutes off of campus. We're going to get you away from all of the social things. We're going to stop, try to prevent you from being distracted.

And it didn't necessarily work. I was less distracted. I was less distracted for sure. You don't have all these college kids all around you. But during that time when I had moved off of campus, without basketball and not living on campus, things change in a big way. Because I had picked up these really bad habits. I had formed these really bad habits, and I had lost kind of all the ones that, the good ones that kept me doing the right thing and living the right life and being in a good mental state.

Basketball kept me from getting involved with the wrong crowds and hanging out with the wrong people. It kept me on the straight and narrow. And I had lost all of those good habits that basketball had helped me form. And as time slowly went on and I was struggling, I felt depressed. And I didn't really know why. I didn't even know I was depressed. I just had this feeling of lack of meaning. I spent all of my time trying to figure out what can I do that's going to help me find meaning. I'm not playing basketball as much anymore.

I tried video games. That didn't work. I still play them, but it didn't really do anything for me. I went out with friends, tried to do stuff like that. That didn't work at all. And I didn't want to study, so I decided to not do that either. And that didn't work for me. So I was really struggling at the time. And I was kind of just floating through life, trying to keep my head above water.

I was struggling, and I was wrestling against these distractions and these temptations and the lack of meaning that the world kind of gives to young people at the young age when they don't have something to necessarily fill that gap in their life. And deep down, I think we have all felt this way in some way, shape, or form. We live in a world where we are constantly being bombarded and confronted with things that go against God's way. And sometimes, that influence can be so overwhelming, either in these multitude of things that just feel like they're hitting you from every single direction or in just this one big thing that just knocks you off your feet and you don't know what you're doing, and the world just attacks relentlessly.

And sometimes it feels like we're fighting for our lives. Somehow trying to navigate this battlefield of life while living the life of someone that God would be proud of. And it's hard because, especially for me at that time, I was a 20-year-old kid trying to fight against the world, and I had no idea what I was doing. I had no clue. I had nothing but myself, and I was losing. And now, looking back, what I was struggling with is exactly what Paul is talking about when he introduces the armor of God, which is the theme of this weekend.

When Paul introduces the armor of God, what he says first is this. In Ephesians, Paul says, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, and against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. And the thing is, whether you know it or not, whether they know it or not, whether the world knows it or not, we all are fighting a spiritual battle. And so the question that we have to ask ourselves is, how do we fight this battle?

And the answer that Paul gives us is right in that next verse. He urges us to put on the whole armor of God, which is such a cool part of Scripture. I'm a nerd about the Bible, like was mentioned in the introduction. It's such a cool part of the Bible because it takes these pieces of this Roman armor and it connects it to these spiritual components of our walk with Christ and our walk with God. And it's such a cool imagery that he's building there, which is why I'm so grateful that that's our theme this weekend. But it's such a cool thing. And so for my message today, I'd like to specifically focus about the sword of the Spirit.

In Ephesians, Paul calls it the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, right? The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, which starts to build this deep image where we kind of connect this physical object of a sword through the Spirit and into the Word of God. If I have my Bible up right now, I would shake it around like we normally do in messages. But over and over throughout Scripture, it's so cool because even though Paul touches on this theme, over and over, we see, you know, we see these Scriptures of the Word of God being used in a sword-like manner. We see Christ being tempted in the wilderness in this epic battle where Satan tempts him and attacks him three times, and three times Christ responds directly, quoting the Word of God. We also see in this awesome and powerful battle scene that when Christ returns to destroy and judge the nations and collapse the system of Babylon, he returns with this sword coming out of his mouth, this crazy picture of a sword coming out of his mouth, ready to strike the nations, right? Over and over throughout Scripture, we see these references of the Word of God in the sword-like manner, all illustrating the true power behind the Bible and the Word of God. And it's that power that when I was that 20-year-old kid, and when I finally decided to open up my Bible, and I finally started studying and reading, I started looking into the Bible. It changed my life. It changed my life. I fell in love with the Bible. I spent hours trying to understand this amazing book that God provided us. I started keeping the Sabbath every single week, trying to learn, trying to grow, trying to become just a better person. I listened to sermon after sermon after sermon, just trying to understand as much as I could. I even binge read Herbert W. Armstrong's Mystery of the Ages till like 4 in the morning one night because I was really trying to understand the plan of God and really trying to understand the promises that he gave us. I spent hours reading that book, trying to grasp things, and God's Word gave me a meaning and a purpose unlike anything I'd have in my entire life. And I think one of the best parts that I need to make sure that I say is that I still love basketball.

And the beautiful part behind the Bible and loving the Bible and the Word of God is that it allows you to love other things. But the key point there that I want to bring out is that I don't find my meaning in those things. I don't find my meaning in the Bible. I don't find my meaning in basketball anymore. It's just something that I enjoy and I love to do. And it's such a blessing that that is something that God has allowed us to have. And we all are here and so many of us played sports. And it's such an awesome thing to be able to have the Word of God and have the different activities and allow those things to kind of blend together. And so my life decided to change, or my life started to change from the inside out. My life had changed so much that I started to tell everyone that I loved God and I told them about the Bible. I was starting to try to explain them the plan of God and understand the Holy Days. And I went out and I was talking to all of my friends. I was like, I found the... You guys don't even know you're fighting a battle, but you are! You're fighting this battle and I have the weapon and I have the answer for you. And I told them, like, I didn't tell them those words, but I tried my best to tell them these things. And what I realized was that instead of helping my friends move closer to the answers that they needed, I was actually turning them away. I was actually turning them away because I was using this powerful weapon, thinking that I was fighting valiantly, trying to help them fight this battle, when instead I was cutting up my relationships with the people that I loved the most. And I think sometimes we have this misconception when it comes to the Word of God as a sword. Because we see this raging battle happening in the world around us. We think we can go out into the world and just attack, almost like we can defeat all of the evil and just... if we just attack hard enough, we could just defeat all the evil in the world. And we get passionate, we get assertive, and we get aggressive because we are so upset with the things that we see in the world around us. And we don't understand, how can people be so wrong? How can they be so wrong? Or how can they believe the things that they do or live the lives that they do? And we just sometimes don't understand because it's just we struggle with that. And I think that's sometimes the perception that I dealt with when I first came into the church.

But I think the key is that if we don't spend the time truly trying to understand God's Word and internalizing it and learning how to use it, we can become like a child with a sharp knife.

The Bible is a powerful tool and an effective weapon. But if we don't know how to use it, we're gonna hurt someone with it. We need to be careful that our relationship with God and the Bible enacts real change within us. And to make sure that we're not just learning scriptures to hit people over the head with them. Because I think that's a crucial part, because we can cause people to turn away from the answers they truly need, just like my friends did.

And so before we go out into the world and conquer it with this sword, we need to let it change us internally. Which is what I started to realize. I realized that the more I internalized the Bible and allowed it to cut to my own heart and defeat my own struggles, the more at peace I felt. And the less I felt this pressure of an external battle that I was fighting with and wrestling with. And it had this proof, it had this awesome impact on my life, because the more I dove into the Bible and learned and grew, the more comfortable I was in my faith.

I was now able to have awesome conversations with people who hold a range of different beliefs, whether it was Muslim or Mormons or mainstream Christianity. I was able to just have these awesome conversations with people, because I was no longer trying to cut them away by telling them how wrong they were, but I was trying to have a conversation and viewing them as individuals who are just trying to figure this crazy life out without the appropriate tools.

They just don't have the appropriate armor and the Word of God that is so powerful.

Now, I don't want to deny that there's an evil battle externally that we must understand, and we must understand that it's there and how it works. But in large part, I think the battle that God calls us to and the sword that God gives us to use is often intended for an internal purpose. The writer of Hebrews says, For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. The process of conversion is one of allowing God's words to cut to our own hearts and to allow it to sink into our own minds.

And in order to defeat the principalities and the rulers of the darkness of this age and to use the Word of God in an effective manner, we must internalize it first. We must allow it to cut deep into our own hearts, minds, and souls and allow it to discern our thoughts and the intents of our hearts. So the question I have for today is, how can we become these master swordsmen and truly allow the Word of God, the sword of the spirit, to cut deep into our hearts and discern our thoughts and our attentions? And so today, for the rest of my message, I'd like to share three ways that can help us deepen our relationship with God through His word over the course of our lives.

My first point is this. Make it personal. There are a ton of studies done if you have a personal interest in something, then you will ultimately be more engaged and invested in it. And the beautiful part about the Bible is that it has such an amazing diversity. It has so many different components to it and pieces of it, and it fits so many different people in so many different ways.

And so one thing that I'd like for people to try to do is to find a biblical character that you connect to and resonate with and read about them and do research. That meme is a good one. I thought it was applicable to this. When I first came into the church, Solomon really resonated with me, and it was for a good reason. Because when I first came into the church, I began to read the Bible.

The books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs really resonated with me because everything that I had seen in the world around me growing up outside of the church and knowing all these people, he was just hitting these lessons that run so antithetical to those things and attack those things head-on. And it was so powerful, and it just hit me in my heart, and it's still one of my favorite characters. Another thing that you could do is find a favorite book, a chapter, and a verse that makes a personal impact on you and your life. Maybe it's something that connects to the phase of life you're in right now or reminds you of something that you went through or a time when God was with you. Another thing that you could do is find a specific genre that you're interested in. There's so many different things. The Bible is filled with history, poetry, prophecy, wisdom. There's even these different literary tools like chiasms and what's the other one?

Chiasms and typology. I've been reading all about it. I'm a nerd. I said that. But there's so many different genres and things within the Bible that we can study, and so find one that you enjoy and make the Bible personal. Every year at camp, I have my campers, and I have conversations with them, and I ask them, what's your favorite book in the Bible? What's a scripture that you like?

I challenge them to come up with something that they relate to. We tell them Bible stories every night, or we try to, and we tell them stories that we think they can relate to. The more that I think we make it personal, the more we make the Bible personal, the more our relationship with God becomes personal. The cool thing is, as we all know, and for people who've been doing this for a long time, as we grow and change in life, you might find that there are new characters or new verses or new books that resonate with you that didn't necessarily resonate with you at a different phase of life. And so take the time at this phase of life or wherever you are in life to find someone that resonates with you now, and I think that's something that we should do. Now, for my second point, we should ask ourselves, how do I honestly measure up? The Bible is a powerful tool that has all of these standards that God has set for us and expectations that we have, and throughout scriptures we see the commandments like the Ten Commandments, the Holy Days, clean and unclean meats, and those are things that we should absolutely do. But besides those things, we're expected to produce the fruits of the Spirit. We're commanded that we should love God with all of our hearts, minds, and souls, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We're told to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us, and we're expected to put God first in our lives no matter how busy we are. And so ask yourselves, how do I honestly measure up to those standards honestly? Because by diving into God's words and His commandments and understanding what God wants from us, we will then start to know who God is and understand all the places that we fall short. Then we can focus on those things and grow in those areas, but we can only do that by truly spending the time both reading and reflecting honestly. And I emphasize honestly there because sometimes—and it's an important part of the step because sometimes—the truth hurts.

Sometimes it's tough to be honest with, how am I actually measuring up against those standards?

But it is so effective to take the time and go through the description and say, how do I measure up? And so we should seek out God's standards that He has set forth in His Bible and honestly ask ourselves the question, how do I measure up? Now, for my third point, my third point is to challenge yourself. We live in a world filled with tons of information that we can get from all over the internet, a world where people are being able to communicate faster than any time before, which leads to a lot of people having a lot of different beliefs and a lot of different things that they hold as their values and their morals, including us. We have our own beliefs that we are extremely unique in. And so what I would say is to challenge yourself. If you grew up in the church—sorry, before I get there—part of the challenge is to not just stand by and passively believe the things that you were taught and learned. If you grew up in the church, don't be here just because it's comfortable. Get deep in the Bible and prove your beliefs to yourself, even if it's uncomfortable at first. Study your Bible. Build the best argument for something that you believe in.

And then you can do research and listen to other people's arguments against it and challenge yourself to prove it again why you believe what you believe. There's so many different arguments out there, and the more you challenge yourself, the stronger your beliefs will be. If you don't have a good argument, you should go and find something. Then study it and prove it and build a good argument against whatever you don't have an argument against. I know I'm saying argument a lot, but you should talk to your church family in doing this process. You have so many resources to tap into. You can talk to a church family. You can do research online. You can look into the context of the Scripture. You can use the church's website that they've been working so hard on. You can ask an elder as services. Find a UCG sermon. There are so many tools that you can use to develop all of your beliefs more deeply. But make sure—and this is important—that you keep working on it until you find an argument that you're satisfied with. Because sometimes it might take what feels like forever, and you might be having to study and think about it and research and talking to a bunch of people and cross-referencing. But make sure you're satisfied with your beliefs. Make sure you've proven it to yourself, because if you don't, then it's not going to be personal to you.

You might even want to take a break and come back to it. I've done that. I've had to take a second and recalibrate, and I learned something as I grew up. And then it made sense to me to think that I didn't understand before. But what I challenge you to do is to test everything and hold fast to what is good and keep pursuing the truth.

Five years ago, I was a junior in college looking for meaning and not finding it. It felt like I was living life just trying to stay alive. I was fighting a battle, and I didn't even know it.

I had no spiritual armor and no spiritual weapons, and it felt like the world was trying to drown me.

But God, through the Bible, changed my life. Not in some ethereal, abstract, or hard-to-understand way, but in a real, tangible way. I saw it change my life, and so I challenge you all to allow it to change yours. Whether you grew up in the church or not, whether you've been in the church for five months or for 50 years, I challenge you to dive into the Bible more than ever before and to allow God's Word to change your life. Let's not be complacent. Develop your personal relationship in a way that is specific to you today. If you haven't yet, challenge yourself to solidify your beliefs. It might be uncomfortable, and that's okay, because if you do it correctly, you will be armed to answer any argument against what the Bible teaches. Not to prove and convince someone that they are wrong, but to show them the truth that God has provided you with and has blessed you to understand with a calm and loving manner. You do not have to be afraid of the Bible not holding up, because it does, and it truly has the power from God to change us from the inside out, which ultimately will help us to grow into a true son or daughter of God, one who loves God and loves his neighbor, one who produces the fruit of the Spirit, one who is striving for perfection, one who doesn't live in fear because they have the powerful word of God at their fingertips and in their heart. And so as a church, let's dive into the power of the word of God, the sword of the Spirit, like never before, and let it change us from the inside out.