In this episode of the "No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe" podcast, host Greg Ryan continues his multi‑part series on the Armor of God, focusing on the shield of faith (Ephesians 6:16). He explains that faith is essential for pleasing God (Hebrews 11:6) and uses the image of a child learning to walk to illustrate God’s encouraging stance toward believers. Ryan describes the spiritual battle against Satan, who fires "fiery darts" that can cause anger, fear, doubt, and other sins, and emphasizes that the shield of faith—grounded in Scripture and the Holy Spirit—protects believers from these attacks. He shares personal anecdotes about the many "arrows" he has endured, the importance of repentance, prayer, and continual engagement with the Word to cleanse and heal. Throughout, he urges listeners to consciously "grab" the shield of faith daily, rely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and anticipate future lessons on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. The episode ends with a call to action to hold up the shield, trust in God’s love, and look forward to the next teaching.
Welcome to episode 67, In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.
Welcome to episode 67. If this is your first time here, you've missed a lot of the party. We are 16 episodes or 16 parts into the armor of God. The first few parts were of course getting prepared to put the armor on and being in the right position to receive from God. And now we are in the process of placing the armor on, but in this episode we're going to talk about the shield of faith. And we're in Ephesians 6:16. Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. Now the shield of faith, with the whole concept of faith, is probably going to be a multiple day series, maybe weeks, 3 or 4 weeks, as I talk about faith. When Paul said in I think it's in 1 Corinthians, I wanna say 13, at the end of 13, where it says, "Now these three abide: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love." Each one of those, faith, hope, and love, those three, I think each one probably needs a series of itself to kinda explain how I see it and what I think. There's nothing really to put on today. This is something that we need to grab, that we're gonna grab, we're gonna hold up the shield of faith, an idea, just something to think on today while you're working out or while you're driving or going to work or in between or whatever. When you're listening to this, I just want one kind of concept that you can be thinking about, and I want you to think about this shield of faith. And in Hebrews 11:6, the writer says, But without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. And if you remember way back at the beginning of the whole podcast, all of the episodes that I started, I wanted to remind you that God is not angry at you. The— God's not mad, and God doesn't have his arms folded with his eyes squinted and just looking for you, waiting for you to mess up. That's not God. God is not mad. God is love, and he is not looking to mash you. He is looking to lead you and to teach you and to train you as a perfect father. He's trying to teach you that you have to have faith. And so with what the writer is saying here, that it is impossible to please God without faith, He's trying to urge you, like I've talked in another episode, he's trying to urge you, like you've seen babies when they start learning to walk, you know, they take their first step and then they fall down, and then they'll take a couple of steps. Well, that was how when my son started taking his first steps, I remember calling my mom and saying, hey, Mom, Seth is walking. Well, he wasn't really walking. I mean, he took a step, maybe two, and then he busted his butt. But I, you know, I wasn't counting how many times he fell. I was counting the steps. And I knew that this process, as he kept moving forward and kept trying and was rewarded over and over, that he would continue to take steps and he would continue to make progress if I kept encouraging him to. You know how you stand with your arms out for a little child and they start walking and waddling or whatever, however you want to— if you can picture a little child walking, well, that's kind of how I picture God with him saying it's impossible to please God without faith, he's not— he doesn't have his arms folded. I want you to see God with his arms open, and he's encouraging you to take the next step. You got to take the next step of faith, and it's difficult that, you know, this Christian walk in believing the Bible is simple. It's just not easy. You can read the word, but then to start meditating on it and to dig it out and then to use faith to get what the meaning is or to apply it to your life, it takes some effort. Because again, we have an enemy, the punk, who's gonna come and he's here to steal, to kill, and destroy. Well, he's trying to destroy any kind of faith that you have. He's trying to steal any kind of seed that has been planted into your heart. Remember the seed parable where the birds, if it lays on the hard ground, the birds come and swoop down and take that seed. Satan is coming to steal your faith, and I believe in this world that he's done a wonderful job. He's got everybody, a lot of people distracted. He's got a lot of people that are not in the Word, and I hope that's not you, but I would encourage you for the umpteenth time, get in the Bible. You can fight Satan with the Word. Jesus fought Satan with the Word of God. When Satan came against Jesus, if you remember in the wilderness, Jesus said 3 times, "It is written." Jesus, God himself, if that's how he fights Satan, that's how we need to fight Satan. And we need to have the faith the word of God has power. And that's where the shield of faith comes from. And the other thing I want you to recognize in this, he says, "Above all." I don't know that Paul or the writer or whoever it is, I don't know that they meant to put this much emphasis on the shield of faith. Above all. That means to me, above all these other items that I'm talking about, grab the shield of faith. With the shield of faith, you will be able to quench all of the fiery darts of the enemy. And I just want you to picture, if you have not been putting— I've talking to a friend of mine the other day or a few weeks ago, and we were talking about faith, and we were talking about the arrows that are coming. And if you have not put on the armor every day and you haven't grabbed the shield of faith every day, and I, I can be honest, I have not done it every day. I mean, I've been doing it pretty religiously for the past few months, but you know, there's days that I would forget. And if we don't have the shield of faith up, how can we block all of the fiery darts? That don't mean, you know, just because we didn't grab the faith doesn't mean that Satan's not firing his fiery darts at us. So just think about that for a minute, that if you haven't been— I want you to think about that for a minute. If you have not been grabbing your shield of faith and you haven't been putting on the whole armor of God you have taken some fiery darts from the enemy. And sometimes, you know, that can give you a little bit of a limp, or it can give you, you know, whatever the dart is. You know, maybe you got anger, maybe you've got the fear, maybe you've got doubt, unbelief, you know, all of these things that, that, you know, division, all of these things come. Satan is very good at what he does, and he's firing these darts. And there, if you don't have something to block it and you haven't put the armor, they've probably— a few of them probably have landed. Or maybe multiple have landed. And so what we need to do is we need to get in the word. We need to ask God, hey, help us with this. Let's get these fiery darts, let's get them out of our soul. Cleanse us, repent, or whatever it is, and say, God, I've been hit with— Holy Spirit, help me to get this out of me. God loves that sort of thing because why? Because one, you're talking to him, and two, you're using faith because you got to believe that, look, God's listening, and that I'm in this spirit realm, and I've taken a fiery dart from my enemy, and I need to start digging this stuff out. And so I need to start healing up. And that's what I want to encourage. That's what the word of God— that's what the Holy Spirit's there. Then you got the praise and worship, and then you got prayer. I mean, there's all kind of the four foundations of the church. We're going to get into that probably in the next teaching after the armor of God, but we're gonna— we're gonna get into the word, and we're going to ask with— by faith to help heal me. I know I've taken arrows. I know I have. In this life, I've taken so many arrows, it's probably hard to count how many arrows that I took. And when I first got saved, you know, for the first 29 years, that's all I probably did. I just had arrow after arrow hitting me. And that's why when I— the first 2 or 3 years after salvation, I was always up at the altar asking God, God, forgive me. You know, the preaching of the word kind of brought, brought to my remembrance, man, you did this and you did that. So I stood there in front of God and everyone, and I knelt at the altar and asked God to cleanse me of all of that. So it, it's a process. And so this is not going to be anything that happens overnight, but I want to encourage you to grab that shield of faith because that's how we're going to block any more of the fire, any of the fiery— he had— your enemy has not quit firing at you. So grab your shield of faith and hold it up and know that God is with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. When I've told you multiple times, one of the most powerful scriptures is when Jesus said, it's to your advantage that I leave, because I— if I didn't go, I wouldn't send you the Helper. Well, he's gone and the Helper is here. You have the Holy Spirit here with you. He is there. He is leading you if you will allow him to do that. Remember, Jesus is the Good Shepherd. So he, you know, if you're going to get out in front of him, he may have to take that staff and kind of whap you with the rod or the staff, but he'll grab you and maybe pull you back. But if you'll just allow the Holy Spirit to lead you, your life will be so much more calm and so much more peaceful. You won't be in such a hurried state because that's where Satan wants He wants you in this world and worrying and rushing and going just like gangbusters at the next project. And I think if you'll just slow down and listen to God and listen to his word, what he's saying, and use some faith, we'll start calming this whole thing down. And that's that shield of faith. It's blocking all of the fiery darts. And we're not going to talk about all the fire. You can probably imagine all the fiery darts, but I've just looked at my clock and I'm getting— I'm starting to get a little bit long. But this is a, this is a big deal. The shield of faith above all. Take the shield of faith. So this is a big deal. We need to grab it. We need to be holding on to the shield of faith. In the next episode, we'll talk about the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit because it's in the same, it's in the same verse. So I think we're going to do kind of a combo lesson tomorrow. But anyway, I want to thank you for being a part of this, and I want to thank you for making it all the way to the end, and I look forward to talking to you in the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
