This verse not only teaches us to be sheltered by God’s wings, as we learned about in yesterday’s devotion, but also to be shielded by God’s truth. 

God’s truth provides us with double armor. It is both a shield and buckler; that is, body armor. Deflected by the shield of truth, every fiery dart of doubt falls harmlessly to the ground. No weapon forged against us can penetrate the buckler of God’s impenetrable truth to inflict us with a mortal wound. 

In his New Testament description of the armor of God, which must be donned in defense of ourselves against the manifold devices of the devil, Paul describes faith as our shield and righteousness as our breastplate (Ephesians 6:13-16). But what of truth? It, according to the great apostle, is the belt that keeps all of our armor intact. Without truth, all of our protection fails and we are left exposed to ever evil.

In His High Priestly prayer, Jesus taught us that God’s Word is truth (John 17:17). In other words, truth is simply what God says. To be protected by the truth, therefore, requires you to be both a pupil and practitioner of God’s Word—the Bible. Otherwise, you’ll be susceptible to spiritual deception and defenseless against every sinister danger.

Tragically, in today’s America, most Americans are not shielding themselves with the truth of God’s Word, but shielding themselves from it. Instead of seeing the Bible as an essential part of their defensive armor, they, to their own peril, discard it as an antiquated old relic without relevance in a modern-day sophisticated world. Unbeknownst to them, their refusal to take up the Scripture—the sword of the Spirit—leaves them totally unarmed in these terrifying and unsafe times (Ephesians 6:17).