Fiery darts

Ephesians 6:16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

What are the devil’s fiery darts?  These are the devil’s wiles and devices he uses against the believer.   His fiery darts include things like lies, temptations, circumstances he creates to cause doubts, and enticing the lust of our flesh.  These are all fiery darts from the devil that we need the shield of faith to quench.  If you know what these darts are, you can be prepared to use your shield of faith against them.  Without the shield of faith, you are in trouble.  You need your faith to resist these arrows the devil is throwing at you; we are told to resist the devil steadfast in the faith (1 Peter 5:9).  Let’s look at some of these fiery darts that we are told to use our shield against.

First, the lies the devil constantly presents us with.  We must know he is a liar; Jesus called him the Father of lies (John 8:44).  The devil is the originator of all lies.  The devil has shown that he is a master liar by how he deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden.  In 2 Corinthians 11:3 it says, “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”  When someone is beguiled, they have been deceived, mislead, deluded, and led astray, usually by underhandedness.  The devil deceived Eve, a perfect human being, and he is still trying to beguile the saved sons of God to this day.

Second, a dart the devil uses quite effectively is temptations.  James 1:14 says, “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.”  The devil uses things that tempt our flesh.  The temptation is something we resist with the shield of faith.  This dart comes to your flesh and mind, usually with feelings and intense thoughts and imaginations.  We cannot always keep these thoughts and feelings from coming, but you and I can resist every one of them.  The lusts of your flesh are real.  Everyone may have different things they battle, but as long as you are on the Earth, you will have a flesh to deal with, so you must do what the Apostle Paul said and keep your body under and crucify your flesh every day.

The last thing I want to cover is the circumstances the devil brings.  The devil is the god of this world.  He has control of this seen realm and can manipulate circumstances to confound us.  These circumstances are meant to cause us to put down our shield of faith.  The devil will bring circumstances to try and overwhelm us with what we see, hear, feel, and all that goes on in the sense realm. We must understand that these circumstances are from the enemy and need to be resisted.  If not, we will sink, just like Peter did right in the middle of a miracle.  The fiery darts are real.  They can’t be ignored.  They must be quenched; and the only way you quench these darts that are meant to explode when they hit your body and mind, is by faith.  I want you to understand the devil is not playing, and the Lord would like us to stop playing and get serious about these fiery darts the devil sends.  Fiery darts are meant to explode when they hit; that is why Paul calls them “fiery darts” or “fiery arrows,” instead of just saying darts or arrows.  In warfare, this special dart, or arrow, would be set on fire and made to explode on contact.  That’s the kind of enemy we are dealing with.  The devil is not casual about trying to destroy us, and we can’t be casual about keeping him out of our lives.