Outflanking the Enemy

 

	“Endure hardship like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”
	—2 Timothy 2:3

Most Christians don’t often consider the spiritual battle waged against them. Yes, they would say that Satan exists and prompts evil in the world. But, when it comes to understanding the ceaseless battle he wages against their lives, they usually don’t see it.

Here’s how Joni Eareckson Tada explains it:

The King’s most trusted officer turns renegade and gathers a powerful army around him to lead a rebellion. Through treachery and deceit, the rebel leader usurps the authority of the King and sets up his own rival government, enslaving the citizens of the kingdom. In order to free the captives, the King sends His own Son into the heart of enemy territory with a battle plan more shocking than anyone could imagine. ¹

Not only does the “rebel leader”—Satan—want to tempt us to sin, he also works hard to defeat us in our Christian walk and in our work on behalf of God’s Kingdom here on earth. Satan endeavors to discourage us and tempt us to turn back. He generally does everything he can to disrupt our lives in any way that he can. When we pray in Jesus’ name against the weapons Satan uses, we can successfully upset his battle plan—we can outflank his attack on us.

Jesus took on this enemy at the cross. As Colossians 2:15 tells us:

“…having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

And with the overcoming power that Jesus gives to us, we can fight against the war that Satan will continue to instigate until Jesus comes back.

God has not left us alone to live defeated lives. Instead, He has armed His people with the weapons we need: prayer and His Word. Here’s how 2 Corinthians 10:3-4 puts it:

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.”

When we pray in Jesus’ name, we join with Him in defeating the powers and authorities of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil. He already disarmed them on the cross. But, when we pray, we appropriate that power into our own lives.

When we see evil around us and feel it coming at us from every side, we have Christ and His power as our strong defense. He gives us the opportunity to outflank the enemy and win the skirmishes. And one day, our Captain—Christ Jesus—will return to end the battle completely.

Praise His name!

______________________

1 Tada, Joni Eareckson. Diamonds in the Dust. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing Company, 2010. Devotional for April 9th.

 

 

Teamwork

 

I have given skill to all the craftsmen to make everything I have commanded you: the Tent of Meeting, the ark of the Testimony with the atonement cover on it, and all the other furnishings of the tent—the table and its articles, the pure gold lampstand and all its accessories, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, the basin with its stand— and also the woven garments, both the sacred garments for Aaron the priest and the garments for his sons when they serve as priests, and the anointing oil and fragrant incense for the Holy Place. They are to make them just as I commanded you.

—Exodus 31:6-11

You’ve probably heard this definition of a camel: “A camel is a horse built by a committee!” In some sense, that can aptly describe the way some churches function. However, from the beginning, God had plans to use many people—with different personalities, different skill sets, different talents and abilities, different perspectives, and different passions—to do His work within His Church. We all have intensely different roles, even as we retain our individuality.

In reading the account of the 1936 American Olympic crew team, I came across this quote:¹

Even as rowers must subsume their often fierce sense of independence and self-reliance, at the same time they must hold true to their individuality, their unique capabilities as oarsmen or oarswomen or, for that matter, as human beings.

Just as His chosen people, whom God called together to use their gifts for the building of the Tent of Meeting (the Tabernacle) in the wilderness, He has called us and our fellow church members to work together for the building up of His Kingdom. He must have realized how difficult we would find that intention. The more individual our gifts, the harder time we have in setting aside our selfish impulses and obediently offering those gifts up to Him for the benefit of all.

The Olympic crew learned this as they practiced and rowed together.²

But the demands of rowing are such that every man or woman in a racing shell depends on his or her crewmates to perform almost flawlessly with each and every pull of the oar. The movements of each rower are so intimately intertwined, so precisely synchronized with the movements of all the others, that any one rower’s mistake or subpar performance can throw off the tempo of the stroke, the balance of the boat, and ultimately the success of the whole crew.

In rowing, as well as in giving our service to the church, we soon learn that pride, jealousy, selfishness, self-righteousness, and a host of other negative qualities simply must have no place. To have the success that our Captain desires, we must put aside our selfishness for the greater good—the good of showing forth the glory of God in our teamwork.

This concept in the New Testament uses the illustrations of a building “fit together” and of a body with various functions working together. In 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, the Apostle Paul writes about this, as follows:

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of languages, and to still another the interpretation of languages. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

We see here that God hasn’t gifted us for our own benefit. He gave gifts to us for the good and benefit of the whole church.

Soon, the impact on our lives of this COVID-19 Pandemic will undoubtedly end. We must ask ourselves these questions:

• Have we prepared ourselves to go back to serve God in our churches with others who might have strong opinions different from ours, with immature believers who have outrageous ideas, and with possibilities galore of misunderstandings and slights?
  
  
• Have we given ourselves so completely to God that we can obediently give our gifts to Him for His disposal?
  
  
• Are we willing, if God so desires, to have Him put us on a shelf for a time, where we will not be able to exercise our best gifts?

Let us prepare ourselves in prayer and in sincere humility solely for the purposes God has planned for us. And, let us open our eyes to see new ways He wishes to use the unique gifts He has given us.

______________________

1 Brown, Daniel James. The Boys in the Boat. New York: Penguin Books, 2013. p. 179.

2 Ibid. p. 89.

 

 

Wishy Washy

 

Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

—1 Kings 18:20

The Prophet Elijah had the right idea. He was bold and was always prepared to speak God’s word and do God’s business.

In this story found in 1 Kings 18, from which we quote the verse at the beginning of this blog post, we read how Elijah came to the God-fearing Obadiah, servant of the evil King Ahab and Ahab’s wife Jezebel. Both Obadiah and Elijah knew that Ahab intended to kill the Lord’s prophets, in order to set up the thousand or more prophets of Baal over the people of Israel. Elijah came prepared to challenge Ahab, through Obadiah and through the test that would lead all the people to testify, “The Lord, He is God!” Elijah exemplified strength in the face of a weak and wishy-washy nation.

The people of Israel knew that they belonged to God. Down through the generations they had been taught that God had chosen them out of all the people on earth. Some Israelites even intended to worship only God. But sadly, too often good intentions go awry, causing those who think they will never fall to bitterly fail.

Peter intended to follow Jesus, said he would give his life for his Master. But, when it came to the test, Peter denied Jesus. You can read the story of Peter’s denials “before the rooster crowed” in Matthew 26:69-75.

In the Book of Romans, the powerful Apostle Paul admits to this wishy-washy attitude at work in him. We read in Romans 7:21-23:

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

I love the way Puritan writer Stephen Charnock puts it:¹

In the fall, man was wounded in his head and heart; the wound in the head made him unstable in the truth, and that in his heart, unsteadfast in his affections… We waver between God and Baal. While we are resolving, we look back at Sodom… Our resolutions are like letters written on water. With John we love Christ today, and as Judas tomorrow we betray him… How hard it is to make our thoughts and affections keep their stand! Place them on a good object, and they will be flying from it like a bird from branch to branch.

Like the Apostle Paul, we can thank God and fully rest our unstable nature on God’s unchangeable grace. He knows our weakness. And, when we acknowledge it like Peter did, we can know His forgiveness and His empowering boldness in the face of our inadequacy.

Like Elijah, we can know God’s power to strengthen us before incredible odds. We have hope because we have Christ! Let us bow in our weakness before our Lord Almighty and pray with words of hymn-writer Robert Robinson:²

O, to grace how great a debtor
    daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter,
    bind my wand’ring heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it;
    prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;
    seal it for Thy courts above.

______________________

1 Charnock, Stephen (author) and Richard Rushing, editor. Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Reading – Volume 2. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2016. p. 278.

2 Robinson, Robert. “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” Public Domain. Stanza three.

 

 

Disinfectant

 

You are the salt of the earth.

—Matthew 5:13a

What flies off the pharmacy and supermarket shelves faster than any other product during this pandemic? Based on panicked reports earlier in the year, we might be tempted to say paper products. But, I believe disinfectant products have probably gone faster and remain the most sought after necessities. We all want to use something that will kill 99 percent of all germs and other pathogens, thus effectively protecting us from this dreaded COVID-19 coronavirus.

Thousands of years ago in Bible times, people used salt to kill impurities and stamp out the effects of lingering poisons, particularly on food. As stated in the verse at the beginning of this blog post, Jesus used salt to illustrate the role of Christians in an ungodly culture.

We know from Scripture that every human being carries the stain of original sin into the world, inherited from Adam and passed down to us from our parents. To allow that sin to fully germinate would mean that the total depravity of human society would remain unabated. Only the blood sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross can cleanse and purify us from our sins and transform us into a people acceptable to the holiness of God. This grants to us two important roles in life.

First of all, in Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”—found in Matthew 5, 6, and 7—He tells us that we believers in Christ and in His sacrifice have a function in this world of permeating and disinfecting the culture from total ruin. Reading from Rev. Dr. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones on this subject, he writes:¹

What does being the “salt of the earth” imply? It clearly implies rottenness in the earth; it implies a tendency to pollution and to becoming foul and offensive… It is fallen, sinful and bad. Its tendency is to evil and to wars. It is like meat which has a tendency to putrefy and to become polluted. It is like something which can only be kept wholesome by means of a preservative or antiseptic… The world, left to itself, is something that tends to fester. There are these germs of evil, these microbes, these infective agents and organisms in the very body of humanity, and unless checked, they cause disease.

Secondly, Christians, like salt, also possess other functions. Similar to a pleasant-smelling disinfectant in the air, and a savory shake of salt on food, God expects us to emit His winsomeness wherever we go. Also, as citizens of a particular country, we can indirectly affect the culture through our work, through our loving and caring for our neighbors, and through innumerable other ways.

Yet, in the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus didn’t stop after merely telling us how He expects us to fulfill our God-given role. In the remainder of verse 13, He also shares His concern, as follows:

“But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”

Would a manufacturing company that produces a disinfectant proudly put out a product that no longer had the qualities for which it was created? If the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could no longer verify that the manufacturer’s liquid would kill germs, would they allow it to advertise its benefits against this COVID-19 coronavirus?

Likewise, Jesus is concerned that His people potently serve Him as a deterrent to sin in this wicked world. If we, as His followers, look like white crystals of spiritual salt, but have no power to benefit society, we miss the mark in serving Christ. God truly expects those of us who faithfully follow His precious Son, Jesus, to serve as a disinfectant against the soul-damaging ravages of sin in our world.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones continued:²

May God give us grace to examine ourselves in the light of this simple proposition… Let the individual Christian be certain that this essential quality of saltness is in him (of her), that because he (or she) is what he (or she) is, he (or she) is a check, a control, an antiseptic in society preserving it from unspeakable foulness, preserving it perhaps, from a return to a dark age… Is not our whole generation going down visibly? It is you and I and others like us, Christian people, who alone can prevent that. God give us grace to do so. God stir up the gift within us, and make us such that we shall indeed be like the Son of God Himself and influence all who come into contact with us.

______________________

1 Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co./Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1971. Pp. 151-158.

2 Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. Ibid. Pp. 151-158.

 

 

Staying in Affliction

 

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage.

—Jeremiah 29:4-6

The godly people of Israel, who had been carried off with those who had rebelled against God’s Kingdom, must have wondered what God meant for them in Babylon. They may have prayed and searched for years for their nation to give up its idols and return to the God of their history. But still, most of the people refused to obey. God carried out against them what He had promised, by way of a punishing exile to an ungodly nation far away from their homeland.

Yet, God knew His people who had remained faithful to Him. He sent His beloved prophet, Jeremiah, to them by way of a letter. In it, as recorded in Jeremiah 29: 4-7, God told them to build, and plant and settle down. Then He had Jeremiah write these words of instruction:

Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

This seemed like a strange piece of guidance. Can you hear them questioning God’s wisdom? He was asking them to live in this strange land as a blessing to the inhabitants there. Perhaps this did sound impossibly difficult at first. But then God, speaking through Jeremiah, added this in verses 10-14.

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Perhaps you are feeling that this COVID-19 Pandemic and the “captivity” you feel by staying at home rather than doing and going will never end. Yet, if we look at this time through the window of God’s dealings with Israel and His promise to His dearly loved people, we see that He will bring it all to an end in His time. He promises good to His people and He will never fail them.

It is very possible that the COVID-19 Pandemic is the least of your trials. Perhaps your own “exile” into another foreign situation weighs on you day after day.

No matter what our individual circumstances, may the admonitions of Jeremiah, and the promises God sends give us peace and purpose. May He assure us that He will cause “increase” and “prosperity” to come into our lives, and that He sees the end from the beginning far better than we could ever possibly see.

Let us all sincerely take heart. And, let us settle down and determine to do good in whatever circumstance He has placed us, as we await His blessing.

 

 

Too Close to See

 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

—Isaiah 55:8-9

We arrived very late to the movie theater and peered into the main room and found it crowded with hardly an empty seat. At last, in the dark, we stumbled on two seats together in the very front row. This newest blockbuster of a movie, Superman, portrayed a hero who was bigger than life—but no one saw him any bigger than we did! We were sitting so close that it became overwhelming. We could not see the whole screen at one time without turning our heads.

Sometimes, looking at fine works of art reminds me of that experience. If we stand too close, we may see a rich color, but we don’t see the full mosaic until we step back—way back.

Living through this COVID-19 Pandemic seems a bit like standing too close to a mosaic picture. We live every day and we begin to think that we see a beautiful color in life we’ve never observed before: maybe more time to spend with family, or more time to spend on a new hobby, or more time to pray, or more time to observe a new beauty in nature. But in these confusing days, even when we resort to doing all we can—and even when we see some promising signs that it might actually become resolved—we have no idea of the whole picture.

What if God is preparing for us a beautiful mosaic door through which He wants us to walk when this is over? We may see it as a glorious wall, but not realize it will open and present to us a new aspect of His will for our lives, or a new chapter in the life of the Church in this world. His thoughts are higher than ours. And, His thoughts always take in the whole picture.

When Ruth gave birth to her son Obed, did she have any idea that this beautiful gift to her and Boaz would become the grandfather of King David in the line of Christ, the Messiah? Of course not. God never shared that secret with her. From her vantage point, she only saw a small part of the whole story that God would unfold.

We never know what God plans. Even so, He wants for us to remain vigilant and faithful to Him, taking one day at a time until we make it through the long days of waiting for this COVID-19 Pandemic to be over.

We need to praise Him for the new doors He has already arranged to open for us. We need to thank Him for the new vistas He will allow us to eventually see. We need to determinedly trust Him to provide the very best for us, even though we don’t yet see the full picture.

 

 

Rattling Bones

 

The Lord set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones… And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.

—Ezekiel 37:1,7

Talk about bizarre! Perhaps, by the time Ezekiel had the vision of the valley of dry bones, he had experienced the Lord’s visions enough times to not completely freak out. Here he sat, among the exiles from Israel in Babylon, with a message from God and the hand of the Lord upon him. The Jews had been captive there for more than thirty years and, according to God’s timeline given to other prophets, they had forty more years left in their captivity.

The people around Ezekiel appeared as those dry bones—lifeless and ignorant of the God who was ordering their nation’s woes. Yet here, in the most forsaken place, God was giving Ezekiel a message of hope using this strange vision.

Ezekiel, the obedient prophet, did as God commanded. In response to the vision, Ezekiel preached to these dry, lifeless bones. Surprisingly, he heard the sound of the rattling skeletons and saw them come together and reconnect with flesh surrounding them.

Next, God commanded Ezekiel to preach to the wind and ask for breath to come again and revive those dead bones. In obedience, Ezekiel did as God asked. As he watched, Ezekiel saw a huge army of people and he heard them confessing that they were dry and without hope. God responded by bringing a message of hope to all of them, by promising that, with His Spirit upon them, they would live and go back to their own land!

What hope this must have brought the prophet and, as he recounted his vision, to the people! God had not forgotten them. In fact, He acted in their behalf to restore them to life.

Sometimes, when we look at our country in the midst of this pandemic and with the political and cultural unrest all around us, it must feel like we lie in a valley full of dry bones. Can God cause us to live again? What must we do to see that happen? Like Israel, we need to confess that we lie dead without hope and without obedience to the living God.

But, not only does our culture look dry, dead, and useless. Oftentimes, we also look at our churches and see that they carry on without the “life” of the Holy Spirit moving them and giving them health and strength to serve God. We ask, “Can these bones live again?” Once again, can we stand like a mighty army and with renewed energy serve Him? In Robert Coleman’s book on revival from the 1960’s, he writes:¹

Yet there is hope. Dry bones can live again. In other days of crises when catastrophe has threatened, men have turned unto the Lord and found in him deliverance and strength. In fact, our greatest spiritual awakenings have come during the darkest periods of church history. Perhaps again the peril of the age may bring us to our senses.

The church uses the term “revival” as “the return of something to its true nature and purpose.” Certainly, dry bones need to form skeletons, and skeletons need not only flesh and blood, but life breathed in, as God did when He created Adam. From Coleman again:²

In the Old Testament, the word revival comes from a root meaning “to live,” which originally conveyed the idea of “breathing,” inasmuch as breath is the expression of life in all animate beings.

Hence, the word to the prophet in Ezekiel 37:5 refers to this kind of reviving power:

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.”

Let us listen for the rattling of the bones. As it did at Pentecost, let us pray to see the wind of the Holy Spirit come into our own dry existence, into the life of our churches, and into our lifeless culture. Then, may the Holy Spirit’s power within us and our churches accomplish all that God wants to accomplish, to the glory of His Holy Name!

______________________

1 Coleman, Robert E. Dry Bones Can Live Again. Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1969. Pp. 7-8.

2 Ibid. Pp. 11-12.