Almost seventy years ago, five missionaries entered the Ecuadorian jungle in an attempt to establish contact with the Waorani. As Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian prepared to embark, they worshiped together by singing the hymn “We Rest on Thee, Our Shield and Our Defender.” They knew the journey ahead was filled with earthly peril, yet their faith was fully in God as their shield and defender.

The men would never return from the journey. Instead, they passed “through the gates of pearly splendor” when they were killed on a sandbar on the Curaray River.

The “Ecuador Five” (as they came to be called) may be the most famous missionary martyrs of the last century, but they aren’t the only ones. The missionary endeavor, especially in the hardest-to-reach areas of the world, is fraught with danger. What compels men and women to sacrifice their safety for the gospel? What gives them the courage to risk their very lives? And what can give us non-missionaries similar courage to risk comfort and security for the name of Christ?

Only faith in the one “who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).

Taking Up the Shield

Taking up the “shield of faith” is necessary for every Christian, not only for missionaries in foreign and dangerous lands (Ephesians 6:16). Paul is careful to say we should take up the shield “in all circumstances,” whether good or bad. A soldier who left his shield behind was susceptible to attack, even when the battle wasn’t raging and all seemed well. A good soldier is prepared for attack at any time.

The Christian life is riddled with trials and persecutions. Our salvation does not exclude us from the temporal difficulties of a fallen world. In fact, trials and persecutions only increase as we seek to live a faithful Christian life. Wise Christians, then, are always prepared for an attack from the enemy.

When Paul tells us to take up our shields, he calls us to continually and actively place our faith in God and all he has promised to us in Christ. This is not a passive faith. It is neither lazy nor fatalistic. This faith leads Christians, in the words of William Carey, to “expect great things, attempt great things.” Knowing that our God is sovereign and that he will establish his kingdom allows us to walk boldly in the face of opposition. This is the faith that has led many Christians to take bold risks for the sake of the gospel, some of them even losing their lives in the process.

What Is the Shield of Faith?

A soldier’s trust in his shield is insufficient, however, if the shield itself is faulty. A shield made of feathers isn’t dependable. Regardless of the soldier’s own action of picking up the shield, the substance of the shield really matters. So, what is our shield?

The shield of faith is God himself — it is he who thwarts the plans of the evil one. As Iain Duguid writes, “Paul is not saying that faith in itself has remarkable defensive power against Satan. Rather, he is saying that faith protects us from Satan’s attacks because faith takes hold of the power and protection of God himself.”

“The Christian’s shield is nothing less than the omnipotent God of the universe.”

The Christian’s shield is nothing less than the omnipotent God of the universe: he who spoke the world into being and who now upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3; 11:3). Neither “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword” can separate you, Christian, from God’s love (Romans 8:35).

Every Arrow Extinguished

Notice also the shield’s efficacy. The shield doesn’t just deflect the enemy’s flaming darts. It extinguishes them (Ephesians 6:16). It renders them impotent and obsolete. The sovereign God of the universe, the object of our faith, extinguishes the hell-bent attacks of Satan.

The world, and more specifically Satan, the prince of the power of the air, want to take you off course and tempt you to return to the trespasses in sins in which you once walked (Ephesians 2:1–2). Whether you’re tempted to be disunified, drunk, bitter, sexually immoral, selfish in your marriage, or angry with your children — all temptations Paul addresses in Ephesians — trust that the God who has saved you will sustain you and protect you from the enemy. When tempted to wander, cling to the shield of faith and believe that “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

Christian, the enemy’s attacks will never ultimately prevail — even if he takes our lives. When God says he will do something, he will surely do it — and he has promised that the full number of the elect will be brought into his kingdom. This assurance leads us to lay down our lives for the sake of the gospel. And when God uses even the death of his saints to gather his chosen people and expand his kingdom, evil is extinguished.

The death of the Ecuador Five was the spark that led to the eventual conversion of a number of Waorani. Those precious believers would one day pass through the gates of splendor and live forever with the very men who were killed so that they might be reached with the gospel. Flaming darts — extinguished!

Taking the Shield Together

When God calls us to put on his armor, he doesn’t expect us to do so alone. Just as an isolated soldier is prone to attack, so is a Christian separated from his community, the local church. I remember watching a movie in which a number of soldiers were surrounded by a far superior number of enemies. The soldiers locked their shields together and covered themselves from all angles — front, back, and even above. The soldiers were stronger together. If one soldier dropped his shield, the others would adjust their shields to ensure the group was covered.

We sometimes grow weary from the battle. We often need others to lock arms with us for reinforcement. When we gather in our local churches, we sing together, pray together, read the Scriptures together, and sit under the preaching of those Scriptures together. We hold each other accountable and take part in the ordinances together. We worship God together and confess our sins together. We remind each other to take up our shields of faith and put our trust in the God who saved us and united us to his Son. Like the missionaries, we sing,

Thine is the battle, thine shall be the praise;When passing through the gates of pearly splendor,Victors, we rest with thee, through endless day.

The Ecuador Five knew that they were not promised safety and security in this life. But they did know they were promised safety and security for eternity. The spears of men may have taken their earthly life, but their active faith in God carried them through the gates of splendor to rest with Christ for all eternity.

A recent experience stirred in me a desire to share a word for fathers. I have fathers of younger children particularly in mind, those on the front end of their fathering days, when a man is seeking to establish godly habits so that, by his example, his children might see the shadow of their heavenly Father. This word, however, is also relevant to fathers of teens and young adults, like me, as well as for elderly fathers whose children are well into adulthood. I hope even those in situations where a father is absent will be able to draw out applications for themselves.

But before I unpack this threefold word of biblical counsel, allow me to share my recent experience with you, since it both inspired and illustrates what I have to say.

Because I Love You

One Friday morning a few months back, I sent a text to my sixteen-year-old daughter, Moriah. Before sharing the text, let me share a bit of context.

I began giving each of my five children a weekly allowance when they were around the age of seven. Then, at different points as they grew older, I sought to help them put age-appropriate budget structures in place to equip them to handle money well. When each approached age sixteen, I let them know that their allowance would end when they were old enough to be employed.

A few days before I sent my text, Moriah began her first job, which meant it was her last allowance week. So, early that Friday morning, I transferred the funds into her account. I wasn’t at all prepared for the tears. Why was I crying? I tried to capture why in this (slightly edited) text I sent to her shortly after:

I just transferred your allowance into your account. In the little memo window, I typed “Mo’s final allowance payment,” and suddenly a wave of emotion hit me, catching me by surprise. I’m standing here at my desk, alone in the office, my eyes full of tears, swallowing down sobs. Another chapter closed, another little step in letting you go. A decade of slipping you these small provisions each week to, yes, try and teach you how to handle money (not sure how well I’ve done in that department), but also, and far more so (when it comes to this father’s heart), out of the joy of just making you happy in some small way. At bottom, that’s what it’s been for me: a weekly joy of having this small way of saying, “I love you.” I’ll miss it. Because I love you.

I still can’t read that without tearing up. I so enjoy every chance I get to give my children joy. As I stood there, trying to pull myself together, a Scripture text quickly came to mind:

Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9–11)

And as I pondered this passage, I thought of some friends who are fathers of young children and jotted down three lessons I wanted to share with them.

Pursue Your Pleasure for God’s Sake

God means for you to taste the great pleasure it gives him to make his children happy through how much pleasure it gives you to make your children happy.

“Fathers, become a student of what gives your children joy.”

So, pursue your pleasure in making your children happy! Give them good things — things they value as good and really want. And really, authentically enjoy doing it. It has God’s endorsement, since he too takes great pleasure in giving good gifts to his children.

What’s wonderful about this pleasurable experience is that, for a Christian father, it is multidimensional: we get the joy of blessing our children and the joy of tasting our heavenly Father’s joy in blessing us. This becomes an opportunity to exercise what C.S. Lewis called “transposition” (in his essay by that name in The Weight of Glory) — we see and savor the higher, richer pleasure of God in the natural pleasure of giving pleasure to our children.

Pursue Your Children’s Pleasure

God means for your children to taste how much pleasure it gives him to make his children happy through how much pleasure it gives you to make them happy.

So, pursue your children’s pleasure in making your children happy! Become, through your joyful, affectionate generosity, an opportunity for your children to experience transposition too — to see and savor the higher, richer pleasure of God in the natural pleasure of their father giving good gifts to them.

Become a student of what gives them joy. Watch for those few opportunities during their childhood to bless them with a lifetime memory (think Ralphie’s Red Ryder BB rifle in A Christmas Story). But know that often it’s the simple, smaller good gifts in regular doses that make the biggest, longest impact. Because the most lasting impression of any of the good things you give your children will be how much you enjoyed giving it to them.

This is important, because when, out of love for them, you must discipline them or make a decision that displeases them, or some significant disagreement arises between you, and they’re tempted to doubt that you care about their happiness, your history of consistent, simple, memorable good gifts, given because you love to do them good, can remind them that even now you are pursuing their joy. It can become an echo of Jesus’s words: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). And it will model for them that God too really does take joy in their joy, even when his discipline is “painful rather than pleasant,” since later it will yield “the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

“Often it’s the simple, smaller good gifts in regular doses that make the biggest, longest impact.”

If your children experience their father’s good pleasure in giving them joy, what is likely to stay with them, long after the good gifts are gone, is this: the gift you were to them. The real treasure wasn’t their father’s good things; it was their father. And in this is an invaluable parable, if our children have eyes to see.

Let Your Pleasure Speak for Itself

God means for your pleasure in giving your children pleasure to first speak for itself.

One last brief word of practical counsel. For the most part, avoid immediately turning the moments you give gifts to your kids into a teaching moment. Don’t explain right then that what you’re doing is an illustration of Matthew 7:9–11. Let your pleasure in giving them pleasure speak for itself, and allow them the magic moment when the Holy Spirit helps them make the connection.

In fact, don’t talk too much to them about your experience as such. Wait for meaningful moments, and then take them when they come. Like an early Friday morning text message to your sentimental sixteen-year-old while she’s sitting in a crowded high school classroom, forcing her to text back, “Stop! ur gonna make me cry!”

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