In my boy’s bible study group I taught a lesson on the Armor of God. I brought my little brother's play armor set as a visual for the kids. I touched on each important piece and saved the sward for last. When it came time to place the only weapon a Christian has in to the volunteer knight’s hand I handed him only the handle of the busted sward and said “Jacob, how would you feel if a roaring lion came attacking you?” The class got a big kick out of that and rightly so. What good is a knight without a weapon? That was a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a question in which the answer is implied. The answer is a knight would be no good at all. He would be completely useless to his king. Fortunately, we as Christians do have a sward that is sharper than any two-edged sward. It is the bible. I am reminded of when I ordered my knife from this police catalog. The company is called Galls for all you tactical people out there. In the picture it looked like a small, light weight, flip knife just like my co-worker has. On the description it said assisted-auto opening. I did not know what that meant but that did not matter to me. When the knife showed up I was shocked when I unboxed a huge blade! It was an inch longer than I expected folded! It felt a pound heaver as well! But the real shocker was when I opened it. I found that auto-opening meant that it was spring loaded! I was terrified and almost dropped it. I know that sounds dumb, but that is how it happened. The next few days I spent practicing on opening and closing the knife. It would drive my dad crazy hearing loud clicks all day. Soon I started to get the hang of it and I am proud to say that I am now an efficient switchblade carrier. At first the switchblade was not much good to me. It was not the switchblades fault it was completely capable of being useful to someone that could use it. I was the problem! I needed training. That training was important because if I did not train myself I would have never have been able to use it when I needed it. I would have hurt myself or someone with it or just never used it at all. Hey man, you know what? The same thing could be happening in your Christian life. Can you find books of Bible? Using you Bible could you show an unsaved person that being good will not get him to heaven? Could you defend your belief that Jesus is God? Could you fight temptation with scripture that would fit that particular situation? If not, you are like Jacob. You are just about worthless to your King. You know what? The bible is important to a Christian. A police officer would never start his shift without knowing how to use his sidearm. A knight would not charge into a battle with a sward he was not skilled at using. I would never use my switchblade at work if I did not know how to use it. Neither should a Christian charge into the spiritual battle without knowing what his bible says. This is not to say that you are useless to God until you have a PH.D in Bible. That is not true at all. But it is true that if you don’t know you bible basics you are unlikely to stand like a Bright Knight should.

If you are not bible fluent you should be concerned.

If you are always reading your bible and have verses memorized you are learning how to use that sward. Good job! Now we go back to Jacob. After the boys stopped laughing I was able to share the point I just shared with you. The image of a knight with no sward was I think a great touch. It is a great reminder to me, I am sure it was to them and I hope you too.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner.  One thing that I am going to try to be more thankful for is the answer to prayer.

I don't know about your family but mine prayed very earnestly that the gas prices would come down. My mom was very specific.  She prayed that gas would be below $2.00 a gallon again. At the time, that seamed impossible. I thought "that never will happen". Well, it happened. Our reaction should be to praise Him at least as earnestly as we prayed for the reduction of the fuel costs. To be honest, so far I have failed terribly at this. I plan on being more thankful to God for the answer to prayer not just this time of year but all year. I hope you will too.

Just a side note...

Can our prayer change things?? It seams to me that if you held to the Calvinistic ideals you would have to say "no".

If you don't know what a Calvinist is that's ok and it is probably a good thing.

Well, there you have it. I tried to make it short, sweet, and to the point.

You have on idea how much I enjoy comments. I sit at my computer all day long and wait for the comments to trickle in. My heat leaps when I get the e-mail notice saying that someone has commented.

OK.... for real now folks. I don't sit at the computer all day waiting for the e-mails but you get the point.

I do enjoy getting feed back. It makes all the work worth it. And if you have a blog of your own you know what I mean by work. At least I sure hope you do or are I the only one out hear that thinks using your brain is work?

Any way I better get to sleep I could go on all night. That would be irresponsible of me.

Andy

Just giving this a try. This is something I always wanted to do. I can't think of anything intelligent to write right now.

But I'll write soon!

Andy