Put On The Armor Of Light By Kenneth Copeland

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There is a place of protection in the Lord Jesus Christ and in His Anointing where the devil cannot get to you. And I’m not talking about after you go to heaven, but right here on this earth.
The Apostle Paul tells us about this in Romans 13:11-12. He says: “It is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.”
Notice that Paul thought it was very important for us to put on this protection—he said this in no uncertain terms: “Wake up! Cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
Just as Paul wrote, it is also high time for our generation to cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Armor is something that covers not just one side like a shield, but rather it’s a full suit of protection that covers the front, back, sides and top. When we have on this armor, we are completely covered.

However, in far too many cases believers are finding themselves subject to the works of darkness. They are suffering from the same demonic attacks as unbelievers—they are getting sick, their marriages are being ravaged by divorce, they are being injured in accidents, and they are walking in fear like everyone else. Sad to say, these kinds of things are happening to some Christians even though they are confessing the promises of God’s protection!

How can that be? How is it that the enemy can get through a believer’s line of protection?
It can happen if a person is violating a higher law than the promises he or she is confessing.
And Paul tells us exactly what that violation is in the verses preceding what we just read: “For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:9-10).

Love, when it is exercised and allowed to be perfected in our lives, flushes out fear (1 John 4:18). But if we violate the love commandment, the enemy will quickly run around our confessions of protection. He can even kill us. How? When we violate that commandment, fear enters in and the light withdraws. When the light withdraws, we are without our armor—we are spiritually naked.

To violate the love command is to go against our true reborn nature and authority. That is why 2 Corinthians 4:6 is so thrilling to the believer: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

When the earth was without form and void and filled with chaos, God said: “Light be.” He pulled that command out of His innermost being and instantly caused the image of this universe that was on the inside of Him to be slung at the speed of light into being. Love spoke it. Light Himself said it…and it was so.

And the same God who said: “Light be,” has shined in our hearts. Love Himself has shined in our hearts. The greatest power in the universe has been born in us and is standing ready to be turned loose in our lives.

For us to experience all that God has planned for us, it is absolutely vital we keep the love command before our every thought and action. Only then can we exercise dominion over those things that would pull us back into darkness. John, the apostle of love, said it this way:
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us (1 John 1:7-10).

Here we are given the key to the declaration the Apostle Paul made in Romans 6:14: “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” We walk in dominion over sin the same way Jesus did. “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:10).

Jesus satisfied the whole law and never sinned. He took the hundreds, even thousands of commandments and boiled them down to two: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). Jesus kept all the law by keeping the greatest law, the law of love.

Sloppy love won’t cut it here. This isn’t talking about loving others just when you feel like it. It is not saying you can love God one minute, then turn around and hate your brother: “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 2:9; 4:20-21).

This is talking about loving on purpose—all the time. It is a commandment. And the reason it is a commandment is to keep us in the armor of light where the enemy can’t get to us.
What does darkness have to do in the presence of light? It must flee. Resist the devil, and he must flee—every time.

Walking in the Armor

John walked in this armor, and according to church tradition, the Roman government could not kill the “apostle of love.” They boiled him in oil but he just wouldn't die. He was in the armor of light.

Neither could they kill the Apostle Paul, author of 1 Corinthians 13 the “love chapter.”

Remember he’s also the guy who wrote about the Hebrews who “were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection” (Hebrews 11:35). Clothed in the armor of light, Paul willingly offered up his own life for a better resurrection (2 Timothy 4:6-8).
In that armor, Jesus was taken to the brow of a hill by an angry crowd in His own hometown. They were threatening to push Him over the side of the cliff. The next thing we know, He “passing through the midst of them went his way” (Luke 4:29-30). Can’t you just see that crowd scratching their heads and asking: “Where did he go? Where did he go?”

On another occasion, “Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by” (John 8:59).

It’s Still Working Today

David Wilkerson, among other things, is the founder of Teen Challenge. He ministered to drug addicts and gang members in Bedford-Stuyvesant near Brooklyn back in the 1960s when it was one of the meanest places on earth.

One teenage gang member Nicky Cruz took out his switchblade and said, “I am going to kill you now.”

“I'll tell you right now,” Dave said, “if you cut me into a thousand pieces, all the pieces of me laying here on this sidewalk will be crying out to God, ‘I love Nicky. I love you, Nicky. I love you, Nicky. Jesus loves you.’”

Nicky told me he was furious and tried to swing his knife, but as he did, “Something grabbed me by the arm and I couldn't stick him,” he said. “I tried and tried and I tried, but I couldn't touch him.”

David Wilkerson had taken his place in love, in the marvelous light, and he looked death in the face with no fear—the enemy couldn't touch him.

First Peter 2:9 says: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

Think about what it means to be in His marvelous light. Marvelous means it causes people to marvel. The manifestation of His marvelous light is an obvious and awesome display of God’s glory: “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes” (Psalm 118:23; Mark 12:11). To the unbeliever such an occurrence would be a sign and a wonder. To the believer, it would be a miracle.

No doubt to David Wilkerson what happened was a miracle. And to Nicky, his assailant, it was a wonder that caused him to give his life to Jesus!

The Wicked One Touches Him Not

First John 5:18 gives us key information about staying in the light, in that place of protection. It says: “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.”

No, he’s not talking about human perfection. He’s talking about keeping ourselves in the love walk, keeping ourselves in the light.

If you do sin, don’t run from God, run to Him. Confess that sin immediately. Get right back in the light. Nobody can lay hands on you and just pray over you to get this done. You have to keep yourself in the love of God. You have to keep yourself over in the area of repentance. No one else can turn that light on for you. No one else can say for you, “Let there be light.” You have to keep yourself in it.

As you obey the commandment to love your Father and your neighbor, remember also to build yourself up in the fact that you are born of Love, and He loves you. Lay hold of the confession of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 3:16 that the Holy Spirit will strengthen you in your inner man. Confess that you will be “rooted and grounded in love” and made “able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (verses 17-19).

This is intimate, working knowledge of the very words Love Himself has said. We can put those words into our mouths knowing Jesus as the High Priest over them will see that they come to pass. This is the power that has been restored to the born-again man. And when that power, when that Light, is working in the place and at the level it's supposed to be, when we lay hands on the sick, they'll recover. When we lay hands on the dead, they'll rise up.

The devil cannot stand against believers who walk in the Light like that. He can’t touch us in that armor. He has only one assignment in the presence of that Light—he must flee. The armor of Light drives him out wherever we go.

That’s his destiny.

And clothed in the armor of Light, we are the enforcers.

Courtesy of: Kenneth and Gloria Copeland (KCM.org)