Choices

Putting on the armor of the Lord sounds like a special event, but it’s meant to be an everyday part of Christian life. How do we become the courageous, honest, reliable people of good character that God created us to be if we act like something else most days?

C.S. Lewis described the importance of our everyday choices in this passage from his book Mere Christianity:

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

Putting on the armor of God is way of choosing the path towards becoming a creature in harmony with God and others. Each moment, we choose Christ or not.  As we choose Christ, our character becomes more like His. We are transformed in to the courageous, forthright, and glorious creatures He intended us to be.

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Putting on the armor of Christ is one of many topics geared for young men in our new book Forged which is available for purchase now at www.woveninhislove.org.