Tools of the Trade

A fairly popular, trending social media post is the “Tell me you are a ___ or have a ___ without telling me.” I could easily post half a dozen photos and tell you this is a farm without saying it’s a farm! Really strange items in the dish drain, muddy boots at every door (is that mud?) and all sorts of random items, like bottles, syringes, etc on every counter and in drawers! One of the items that really points out the fact that this is a farm house to me, is the stack of boxes in the big pantry. That stack of boxes are tools of the trade around this farm!

What’s in those boxes you ask? Well one is our bull bander. It has all the items needed to castrate bulls, young ones and older ones! One of those boxes is our calf box. When a calf is born, we take it out to the pasture and it holds everything we need to tag and tattoo a new calf. The big cardboard box is one we use when working cattle. It holds syringes and needles and one of the small styrofoam coolers, if needed. We can pack that box up at the house and head out to work cattle, and everything we might need is in one place.

There are lots of boxes like that on our farm and all of them hold the tools for a particular job. There is a fence box that someone can grab and it should have everything needed to fix fence. We also have all of the typical “tool” boxes that hold every type of wrench and screwdriver ever made! Tool boxes in trucks, on trucks and in the barn and laying around the barn….tools, tools everywhere!

I would love to say that all these tools of the trade got me to thinking and God spoke, but this time it was the other way around. I have been neck deep in spiritual warfare. In praying and reading and digging in for the fight, and I have really been focusing on the tools of our warfare. Ephesians 6 is all about the Whole Armor of God.

Without the proper equipment, we can’t fight the enemy. Without the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth and the shoes of peace, we are naked and exposed in all of the wrong places. If we don’t have the tools we need, we will be weak and vulnerable and won’t have the ability to win the fight.

We had a calf last week while husband was out of town, of course. My boys came home after work to help me weigh and tag the calf since the new mom was a bit nervous. We got the scales and instead of grabbing the calf box, in a hurry I grabbed everything we would need and ran out the door to get the job done as quick as possible. As we are standing there with the calf and the somewhat antsy cow, we realize that I had not brought everything we needed. One person ran to the house while we waited.

Time wouldn’t have been wasted and the calf could have been returned to its mom faster, if I had just brought the box. But instead, I got caught out in the pasture without the proper tools! We were facing a job to do without the proper equipment!

Spiritual warfare is no different. We cannot be caught out in this battle without the proper equipment! If you don’t have faith, what is blocking those fiery darts of the enemy? Without that breastplate of His righteousness, we have nothing to protect our heart! In battle, the helmet it key. If we don’t have salvation, we might as well not fight. Every piece of the armor is important and if even one item is missing, we can find ourselves on the defense instead of the offense; or worse, we can find ourselves wounded and defeated.

Do you have the tools of the trade? Do you have your sword? Is God’s Word with you and in you? Have you spent time in prayer, wrapping His truth around you and putting on His Peace? We need His armor on us not just in the major times of war, we need it EVERYDAY!

Today, SUIT UP! Get all your gear on and get ready! Our kids need us to be ready. Our spouses need us to be prepared! Our churches, pastors, friends, family members, THIS WORLD, needs us to have all of the tools of the Christian warrior that we can have. Let’s get geared up and fight! We have a job to do and we can’t do it without the tools of the trade!