Day 7 - Hope as a Defense

Child of Hope: An Advent Devotional

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Hope as a Defense

But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and hope of salvation as a helmet.
I Thessalonians 5:8

After the attack, which seriously wounded his only real friend, Michael calmly announced that he had had no say in the matter. There had been a voice inside his head, telling him to take and use the knife. He had heard it repeatedly. He felt that he could not refuse. He didn’t do it – it was the voice in his head.

Although we are, sometimes, rightly skeptical about those who have a convenient voice to blame, we must still acknowledge that, on occasions, we all pay too much attention to the ideas that others put in our heads. Don’t believe me? Try this. Spend time with a group that behaves in a particular manner, and you will be more likely to fall into their way of speaking and thinking. Recently, an Englishman was appointed to an important job in the Netherlands. When he was interviewed on television, just a few months later, he had developed a pronounced Dutch accent! There are other ways in which the opinions of others can get inside our heads. It’s not just our accents that can change. We can, for example, become more cynical, less thoughtful, less careful of our language or our morals.

That’s why Scripture says that we must wear hope as a helmet. We are to put on faith and love as a breastplate: faith in God, which protects us inwardly, and love for others which protects us outwardly. The third element in our defense is the hope of salvation – the settled confidence that God has saved us both now and forever. Hope’s function is to protect our minds. When our hope is fixed upon God, the passing fancies and the evil voices of our day can never hold us.

Prayer for the Day
Lord God,
protect us by Your Word
from the temptations that assail us.
May our hope be secure and sincere,
since it depends upon Your Word, which will never fail.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.