Hey, you're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the north side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley, and I'm Dan Breitwieser. Each week one of us will sit down with the person who gave Sunday's sermon to discuss their message.

Cut for Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday. Thanks for listening. All right.

Well, welcome back to another edition of Cut for Time, and I'm looking out my window and I see 80 inches of snow still out my window, but, you know, when you walk outside, it feels like it's like 55 degrees after the what we've been dealing with the last few weeks. And so, Nathan, how do you feel as that Wisconsin blood flows through your brain? Well, you've got it wrong, because I'm not from Wisconsin. I was only there for three years and I hated every minute of it.

Oh, well, I mean, once a Wisconsin blood, always a Wisconsin blood. I'm a southern blood. I'm from Tennessee, so I can deal with the heat. 

I can't deal with the cold. So, no, I've very much missed being able to get outside and just do anything outside. But here, you know, when we get to study God's Word and talk about it, you know, it just warms the soul. 

So that's all I need. There you go. That's right. 

Warmth is so much that I can sip on my iced coffee again. Yeah, there you go. Just enjoy it.

Yeah, it's great. It's great. Well, yes. 

Are you strengthened by your coffee or strengthened in your coffee? Sorry, I'm going to call it fueled by your coffee. That's right. That's right. 

Exactly right. Well, yes, Ambassador Nathan, thank you for joining us for this episode. As always, I would always prefer to have that, you know, intermarriage conversation that would go on between you and Claire.

But, you know, she always likes to defer. So I'm happy to take the reins for this week. So just walk us through this passage.

It was all about Ephesians chapter six, verses 10 through 18. And it was entitled Fit for the Fight. So kind of walk us through what you share with the congregation.

Yeah. So maybe even a double meaning of that title, Fit for the Fight, meaning we are, you know, equipped and fit. But also in Gen Z language, fit is short for outfit.

So if you think about the armor of God as the outfit we have been given, it is our, you know, slang term fit. So anyway, just a little background that I didn't get into on Sunday. I didn't catch that. 

Well done. Double meaning. But yeah, as Paul's bringing the letter of Ephesians to a close, he reminds who he's writing to of, you know, the war that we are in, that the battle we're in and who the real enemy is.

So the imperative that he repeats multiple times in this passage is to stand firm, being clear that what our job is as believers is to stand firm in what Christ has already won. But then he kind of, the way I divided it was looking at kind of four keys to standing firm in what Christ has won. And so that's what we spent much of Sunday unpacking.

We started with making sure that we are drawing strength from the right source, that we are identifying the right enemy, that we are equipping the right armor and engaging in the right strategy. So those are the four keys that we looked at and then just kind of went through some kind of big picture application points as well. Recognizing that we don't stumble our way into being prepared, that if we want to be prepared for the attacks and the accusations of our enemy, that we need to be prepared for that.

If we do that, we also recognize we're in this together. This is not a battle we fight alone. And going back to the beginning, we are already victors in Christ, that Christ has already won the victory.

It's already decided. And so we're not trying to win or take anything that hasn't already been won for us in Christ. I think it's, I love that finishing point, because it may not always feel like we're victors, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.

You know, it just, it's a different viewpoint. You know, we have a limited view, and so I think that's a really important thing for people to remember. Well, we do have a couple of things we talk about, including a question, which I always love.

But, you know, again, I always like to kind of connect that, the theoretical with the practical, and I only, you know, I just live here. I can't separate that. And so I do feel like at times, and a lot of people would say, you know, we're kind of in an unusual cultural moment.

And maybe there'll be some good connections between some of the culture of the New Testament as well as the culture we're currently dealing with. You know, it's a lot of us versus them, choosing a side, sometimes canceling the other side. You know, there's a fight mentality that kind of meshes with the armor of God, you know, metaphor that we're working in, in Ephesians.

And I even think about just the Super Bowl yesterday, and how even the halftime show can be something that can really bring out people's passions. And again, not a right or wrong, just, you know, that just shows how even that kind of thing can be a divisive thing. How do you see this passage fitting into our current cultural moment? Like, how do you, like, what are your thoughts about how that kind of fits in with what we're experiencing as Americans living in Indiana in this current moment? Yeah, well, I mean, to start with, the Word of God is living and active.

And so we know that the Word of God does speak to whatever moment we might find ourselves in, whatever situation, whether you're living in Indiana in 2026, or living in, you know, some other time and place. And so I think for this specific passage on the spiritual warfare that we experience and the armor of God we've been given, I don't know if, I mean, yes, there's always potential to misuse the Word of God. I think I kind of got to that a little bit yesterday that, yes, the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God is an offensive weapon that we've been given, but it's an offensive weapon against these spiritual forces, against the cosmic powers, right? It is not a spiritual weapon used by us to fight our own personal battles or hobby horses or things that we think are most important that, you know, maybe God's Word doesn't agree, right? So obviously there's potential for that.

But I think ultimately what we have to remind ourselves is what is, when it comes to how we do interact with other image bearers of God, whether they agree with us on politics or the Super Bowl halftime show or not, what we do have at our disposal, which we are commanded to do, is fit our feet with readiness that comes to proclaim the gospel of peace, right? Like that is, that should be our posture. That should be our attitude. That is what we should do is proclaim the gospel of peace, the peace of Jesus that brings peace between people and peace between fallen humans and God, a holy God.

And so, yeah, I mean, I think this passage has a lot to speak to our cultural moment as it has spoken to cultural moments for the last thousands of years. I don't think that now that we're experiencing things that are, oh, maybe different than we've experienced in our lifetime means that now all of a sudden this passage takes on, you know, maybe different meaning. And I'm not saying you're suggesting that.

I think it's just we have to recognize who the enemy is. And while we might like to attribute wickedness or evil plans or, oh, that person is being used by Satan or that person on the other side of the aisle, well, how could they be doing anything good? Of course, they're being influenced by spiritual powers. Well, maybe, but we're not the ones to say.

We're not judge, jury. You know, we are not the ones to be like, oh, this is a person who's influenced by spiritual powers. And I think the more we get into that, the more we try to scope out and identify and be like, oh, this person is not doing what they're supposed to be doing because they're being influenced by, you know, cosmic powers.

I think we're just going to be getting ourselves into trouble instead of focusing on what I think we should focus on, which is gospel proclamation. That was a long answer for maybe a long, convoluted question too. You know, sometimes the questions are convoluted, I can't help myself, but I do think also part of that is, one of the things that's very clear in scripture is we call it to love.

And so I think that also can, you know, are we loving that individual in the midst of that? What are some signs as you, I think you hit the nail on the head with, you know, identifying the enemy, what are some signs that we've misidentified the enemy and are fighting the wrong battle? You know, when it comes to us individually, you know, with members of our family, members of our social media feed, what are some of those signs that, you know, maybe we've misidentified the enemy? Yeah, I mean, I kind of gave a few casual examples yesterday in the sermon, but I think anytime we find ourselves getting worked up and angry or frustrated to the point of being led into sin, with specific people, whether we know who they are or not, I think we're in danger of not keeping our focus on the right enemy. So, I mean, I'll just speak bluntly here. When things that the, you know, president might do fills us with such rage that we are, you know, more prone to sin in our rage because of what, you know, the leader of our country has done.

I would push back to say like, yeah, maybe what he did was wrong. Maybe the decision he made was even, you could even say is wicked. Not just the president, but there's lots of wicked people in this world who do evil things.

Not to say that, you know, because the real enemy is spiritual forces that, you know, we are no longer held accountable for what we do. No, there are people who make bad decisions that harm and hurt others. And that should, you know, fill us with sorrow.

We should be, it's okay to be righteously angry. But I think so often we drift into, you know, whether it's someone cutting us off in traffic, it's the person on the HOA board that, you know, sends you another email about your lawn being not, you know, having too many dandelions in it or whatever. Like we find ways to be frustrated and angry with people.

And if that causes us or leads us to be more susceptible to attacks from the enemy, you know, and leads us to be more, I don't know, just prone to falling into sin because of our anger or because of our focus on, oh, this person would just do the right thing that I would be fine. Well, then we've misplaced where our focus should be. And, you know, we have the wrong attitude, especially when it comes to the people we do know to respond how Jesus would respond, which is with love and care and forgiveness and compassion and grace and mercy.

Do I do that perfectly? Of course not. Do I still get angry in traffic? Yeah. Like people make bad driving decisions and those affect me.

And that was, oh, that was dangerous. But we can never let ourselves drift into this space of looking at others as the enemy that we're fighting against. Because ultimately, they're image bearers of God, just like you and I are.

And with that comes an understanding that what truly undermines our enemy, what truly undermines wickedness is proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ that through His grace, you know, we have access to the Heavenly Father and have a relationship with Him. Yeah. But I think the only thing I would add to that is I think the anger that we can get can also affect those that we are interacting with and love.

You know, your anger at the president or political leaders, I mean, for me, it can affect my anger towards my friends and other people in that space that I know, you know? And so it's not just some distant figure that I'm upset at. It affects how I treat people in love too. So I think there's a real practical aspect to that as well.

Yeah. Well, we do have a question, which, again, I always love. This is connected to verse 17, which says, you know, take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And so this question, someone was just, what word of God was available to Paul's audience on an individual basis? And maybe, you know, people didn't have individual probably copies of Scripture in their house or these letters, so maybe just on a churchwide basis. But the question is, what word of God was available to people back then? Yeah. I think there's kind of a twofold answer to this.

One would be that, yeah, not everyone in the first century had their own Torah, right? Not everyone had access to that. But if you think about what was within the realm of possibility, it was to hear the word of God read aloud. It was to take time to meditate and memorize parts of the word of God from what we would call the Old Testament, right? But in addition to that, I think what Paul is even more so referring to, more than even just the Old Testament or the Torah or whatever, is the word of God is the good news of Jesus, right? That all of Scripture, right, all 66 books of it is one story, right? It's written by all these different human authors, but it's the word of God.

And it's the all-encompassing nature of the word of God that tells the story of Jesus, right? Why we need him, what God did in sending him to earth, what he did while he was on earth, why he had to die, why he did die, why he rose again, what happened after he rose again, what are the implications of the fact that Jesus died and rose again? More or less, that's kind of the story of the whole Bible. And so, yeah, while people in the first century might not have had, hey, well, let me pull out my scroll of Jonah I got here. Now I'm going to go pull out my scroll of Proverbs.

I think it does speak to the fact that we are a very, very privileged time, that we have countless translations and countless copies of the Bible. And we're blessed to have what we have, so we can always go back and check what we hear and say, does that match with what I remember reading in Scripture? I was having a conversation with someone after church yesterday on that very thing of, hey, if you're hearing things that don't match with what Scripture is saying, then you have opportunities to challenge that pastor at a different church and say, show me where in Scripture you're getting that, because I don't see that in Scripture. So I think that's one of the benefits of doing that.

Obviously doing that in humility, not doing it in an accusatory or angry way. But what a great privilege of having God's Word accessible to us at all times, even on our phones. Yes, yes, very much so.

Yeah, we do live in a unique part of history, and I'm thankful for it. One last sort of topic I wanted to chat with you about a little bit as well was just fasting. Actually, at the very end of the service, you kind of just talked about sort of the unique moment in our church history, as where the Pastoral Search Committee was right in the middle of interviewing a few candidates.

I mean, it was great to pray for it on Sunday morning, but also you talked a little bit about fasting for that. Actually, it led to a couple of conversations with my kids, because they were kind of curious, what is this all about? And trying to explain it to them as an adult is always fun. But let's talk about that a little bit, and just what is fasting, what is it not? And then we'll talk a little more about that, but kind of maybe this is a chance to maybe expound upon it and things that were cut for time.

Yeah, yeah, just I guess briefly then. So, a fast is refraining often from food for a time for specific focus or devoted time instead on prayer and bringing our requests to the Lord. So it happens, there are lots of different reasons for fasting as outlined in the Bible.

You know, Jesus talks about how the Pharisees fast, they do it in ways to bring attention to themselves. And so the first thing I would say about a fast is that you make sure you're entering into it with the right motives, right? That if you go on a fast and then you post about it on social media, hey, just so you know, I'm refraining from food today. Or when people announce on social media that they're leaving social media, that always strikes me as ironic.

If that's the reason why they're doing that. And so, yeah, I think more often than not fasts, if you're fasting from food are for, you know, 24 hours or maybe even sunup to sundown. But yeah, you're going to get hungry.

You know, if I'm fasting, you know, I'm already planning to fast on Thursday, which was kind of the invitation. I'm also planning to fast from coffee. That will be harder for me than fasting from food because I drink coffee every day and I enjoy coffee.

And so as I feel tired, as I might get a headache, as I feel hungry, those physical responses to not eating, not having coffee are just built in triggers to point me to wait, why am I doing this? Why am I feeling hungry? Why do I have a headache? Oh, it's because of this other purpose. Okay, I'm going to take a moment. I'm going to pause.

I'm going to go to Lord in prayer. And so I think, yeah, sometimes like I was once again, talking with someone after church yesterday about fasting, right? But man, it's, it's, it's hard to focus it. I get dizzy.

I don't feel good. And should I even do this? And it's like, yeah, there might be ways that when you fast, you feel weaker. You, when you fast, you don't feel like you have the mental capacity to even pray as you did before.

But I think in another way, fast help us to recognize our dependence on God that as we refrain from food, refrain from, you know, coffee or other drinks or whatever. It reminds us how dependent we are on God for everything we have, how thankful we are to him. But ultimately the purpose of a fast, regardless of how you undergo taking on a fast, it's for the purpose of prayer and growing in our relationship to God through practicing of a spiritual discipline.

There's a lot more I and many others probably could say about fasting, but I think that's kind of in short, just a very brief summary of why, why you might enter into a fast and, you know, why, why do that at all? Okay. Yeah. You kind of answered, I was gonna say, but I was gonna get into the specifics of it, but then you went to the why.

So that was definitely, I think, you know, the, the thing too, that's part of it is, I mean, you see in scripture where, you know, there's no prescriptive promise, but a lot of times where people, when people are fasting, the Lord shows up in a tangible way with answer and wisdom or things like that. And so I think there's a, I think that's why that's, that's part of assumed in a lot of places in scripture in terms of when you fast, right? I mean, is there a spiritual component to that as well? Yeah. Yeah.

So just to make sure the invitation is clear, the reason I mentioned the fast was to, you know, going back to the, one of the keys of the sermon, how do we stand firm? We engage the right strategy, which is prayer. So it was an invitation to, Hey, in this particular moment in our church's history in this season, just devoting a day to fasting and prayer for, for the pastoral search. And so it's an invitation for anyone who would like to participate.

It was kind of like, we're not saying, Hey, everyone, we're calling the church to do this. It was kind of just, Hey, I'm going to do this. There are others.

I know that are doing this. Join us as you feel led. And if Thursday doesn't work, pick another day.

But this is something like, it's hard for me to believe that if as a church, we spend a day or spend a week in fasting and prayer, that that's somehow we're going to come out behind, right? Like in the grand scheme of things, like this is going to be bad for us, right? No, like this is going to be beneficial. So that's my invitation. Very good.

Well, I appreciate that. I think it's a good thing for everyone to consider in that. Well, I feel like I'm totally out of the habit of being the host of this broadcast.

So I think I have actually yet to ask you, Pastor Nathan, was there anything you had to cut for time? I just like jumped right into it. You know, we got questions. I had things I was thinking about, but was there, I mean, I think you just did such a great job of thinking through this passage in a broad way and also looking at some of the individual implements to talk about in spiritual armor.

But what did you have to also cut from time for this? Yeah, I think the only thing that truly comes to mind, I probably could have cut more because I think I went a little long, but at one point, one of my favorite movies as a kid was The Emperor's New Groove. And there's a character in that movie, his name is Kronk, who has this like angel and demon that pops up on each shoulder from time to time. Anytime he's faced with a difficult decision, you know, the angel is trying to tell him to do the right thing.

And the demon is trying to tell him to do the fun thing or the wrong thing. And it's just this, you know, silly picture. But I think that's more or less how, you know, maybe outside of the church more than inside the church, people feel about good and bad forces, right? There's just kind of this back and forth, this equal opportunity.

Like, are you going to do the right thing and listen to the angel on your shoulder? Are you going to do the wrong thing and listen to the devil on your shoulder? And so I had thoughts of bringing that up at one point, you know, to point out the fact that that's not real. Like, that's not how these spiritual forces work. And like all these spiritual forces have been subjected to Christ, that he has power and dominion over them.

It's not a fair fight. In fact, the fight is already over. And so, yeah, for reasons you can probably already tell, I did not go there for the sake of time.

And then I think also even just with the armor of God, you know, I hit each element of the armor very briefly with just kind of a few sentences here and there. But I think you could have turned the, and probably people have turned that passage that I preached on in 35 minutes into a, you know, six or seven week, six, seven week series. So I saw what you did there.

Yeah. All done. Well, the only thing you gave the Lord of the Rings analogy, which was good, although I also was thinking of the king of Rohan, you know, and, you know, basically he's kind of over this, you know, he's got, he's been put under this spell of evil.

And at first, when, you know, the wizard is like, all right, let's, let's bring you back to life, really, you know, he's like, you have no power here. And then he suddenly realizes the evil has, has no power left. And so I just, that was, that was the, that was the Lord of the Rings moment I was thinking of.

You know, there's many to choose from. But, you know, there's no wrong answer in terms of using Lord of the Rings in a sermon illustration. So it would have illustrated two different points, but I think both are worth, worth pointing out.

Yeah. I like, yeah, no, there's no wrong answer when it comes to Lord of the Rings. Very good.

All right. Well, Nathan, anything else you'd like to talk about or maybe just preview? I know we're coming to the end of Ephesians. And so what will next week look like for our team? Yeah, we, we actually had, potentially we were going to have an extra week in Ephesians, but then when we had to cancel one Sunday for snow, it actually, we, it worked out great.

So Jeff is going to be wrapping up our series next week, taking us through the end of Ephesians and specifically going deeper in this issue of what does prayer look like for us as the people of God. So I'm excited to wrap this up. And then we're going to have Ash Wednesday in a little over a week and get right into Lent and looking towards Easter.

Okay. All right. Well, Pastor Nathan, thank you so much for, you know, bringing us, you know, the Word on Sunday.

And again, just a call out to our entire congregation in terms of thinking through what prayer and fasting might look like in this specific time for our church, you know, as we're looking for, you know, hiring of the, you know, main pastor for that. And that's all I have. So thank you so much for joining us on this edition of Cut for Time and, you know, get out there and enjoy the 30s and 40s that are out there that feel like, you know, 50s and 60s.

Yeah, maybe it does. Thanks, Dan. All right.

Take care. All right. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following Sunday's sermon, you can email them to podcast at faithchurchindy.com or text them into our Faith Church texting number and we'll do our best to cover them in next week's episode. If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others.

We'll be back again next week.