God again astounds me. I wrote yesterday about feeling directionless, wondering where God wanted me to go. This has been bothering me on and off for a long time, but seemed to come to a head during the past couple days. Yesterday I asked for His help, and before noon, He cleared up my fog.
We had a visiting pastor (our senior pastor is away) who started his sermon talking about Global Positioning technology and how triangulation works to pinpoint locations. Then he offered three questions to help us understand where we are spiritually, using Hebrews 11:27 to frame them.
By the time he was finished, God clarified my deepest attachments, what I am willing to forsake, how I must handle the stress of life (even the stress of feeling directionless), and what I must focus on to keep me going. While every Christian will have struggles, God wants to keep us in the right position so we can live for Him and glorify Him. This sermon was incredibly affirming.
As I think about my perplexities and God’s simple answers, I’m reminded that the Christian life is a battle. The points of this sermon covered things I already knew, but for a few days prior, I felt as if they had been yanked from me. Who is doing that? Why do I have to fight for what I already know?
Ephesians 6 says our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against evil forces in the spiritual realm. Of course the commander-in-chief of these forces is the liar and destroyer, Satan. He wants my faith to falter and me to fail, so he has his cohorts feed me lies. I’m supposed to spot them and resist. Sounds easy, but not so. He is subtle and very good at undermining God’s people.
Not only that, spiritual battles require spiritual weapons. Ephesians 6 is quite clear that my weapons are from the Lord and I must “put on” the armor that He gives me, never thinking I can overcome this enemy with my own resources. I’m aware that I cannot do this alone, and my perplexity and God’s solution to it prove that this is true.
This is another principle of battle and is illustrated in a scene from 2 Chronicles 20. The current king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, is facing a great enemy army. He was afraid and “set himself to seek the Lord.” In fact, he and all of Judah gathered together before the Lord, even “their little ones, their wives, and their children.”
This is a picture for me. When I am struggling with something, perhaps an army of lies or a perplexing situation, I need to go to the Lord with all that I am, in full force. All of me must seek and want the answer. As Scripture says, we find God when we “seek Him with all our heart.”
When Jehoshaphat did this, one of the prophets gave him God’s answer, “Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s. . . . You will not need to fight in the battle. Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, who is with you, O Judah and Jerusalem! Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, for the Lord is with you.”
In my battle against uncertainty, God proved again that He is in the battle with me. While my task is to seek His face, wait on Him for the answers, ask for truth to help fight the enemies lies and partial lies, He also fights with me and for me.
This time, He sent a man from another church, with a message that I needed to hear, on the very day that I needed to hear it, and the enemy is defeated.
How amazing is that!
No comments:
Post a Comment