So today's a little Bible study. So if you have scripture, we're going to open to the book of Ephesians chapter 6.

You've got it on a smartphone that works fine. If you want to see it on a page, you can scoot over to your neighbor.

We're going to obviously put some of the passages on the screen as we go along.

We're coming down to the end of our Word series and the book of Ephesians.

And I've sort of gotten a mixed vote on that as I've asked people. Some people said we're glad it's ending.

Let's just get to the finish. Let's move on to something else. And other people have said,

no, no, no, no, we're getting down to the good stuff in chapter 6 and the armor of God.

Let's dig in and take as long as you want. So obviously I can't please everybody.

But I want to take another shot at looking at the armor of God in specific today.

We're talking about the shield of faith. So today we're talking about how faith is operational in our lives.

Not just the faith of it. A certain point in time I prayed a prayer and I put my faith in Jesus and I became a Christian.

Not that faith. But the enduring kind of faith that we walk in, that we stand in, that we live in every single day of our lives.

So that we can endure to the finish still believing in God and believing in God's purposes for our lives.

What faith is is pretty clear. If we look at Ephesians, we see the shield of faith.

But if we look back at Hebrews 111, we see the definition of faith.

And I want us to take a moment to back up and understand what faith is before we think about taking up the shield of faith and how that works in our lives every day.

Ephesians says, take up the shield of faith, but Hebrews 111 says this is faith.

It says faith is the confidence in things that we hope for.

It's the assurance of things that are not seen.

Faith is the confidence of the things that we're hoping for.

Not just sort of a vain hope in life. I hope one day this happens to me or I hope one day this works out.

But the spiritual hope we have in our relationship with Christ.

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