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Overcoming the World: Part 10–Be Still and Know

God is our protection and our strength. He always helps in times of trouble. So we will not be afraid even if the earth shakes, or the mountains fall into the sea. God says, “Be still and know that I am God. I will be praised in all the nations;
I will be praised throughout the earth.” The Lord All-Powerful is with us; the God of Jacob is our defender. (Psalm 46: 1-2, 10-11 NCV)

(Originally published March 15, 2017.)

Been an interesting few months, hasn’t it? Our nation is as divided as it has been in a century and a half. This is taking a toll on our families too. Truth is nowhere to be found in our government, our media or our culture. This has created an atmosphere of distrust so thick and noxious that even if this country were to somehow raise up a Truthseeker as a leader, who would even believe him or her?

Good News!

God is still God. It’s hard to find evidence in these troubled times that He is still on His throne. But where else would He be? He does not change, no matter what happens down here. When we say that the world is “out of control,” we mean that it’s out of our control. It is never out of His.

However difficult this truth can be to hold onto when our lives are in turmoil, we must persevere in doing so. Whenever our way of life is threatened because of what’s going on in the world around us, we have to remember that this way of life was never meant to last anyway. We are looking forward to life eternal that will not pass away. For this reason, we fix our eyes and our faith on the things that don’t move.

Bad days are going to happen. Sometimes we will have seasons of life that could last months or years when we don’t feel God’s presence. We may doubt His goodness, or even His existence. However, whenever I find myself in such a spiritual funk, I always come back to what Peter said to Jesus in John 6:68, after Jesus asked the Twelve if they were going to desert Him, as many other disciples were doing:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

I couldn’t go back to my old life if I wanted to, and there have been days where I wanted to. There are days when it just doesn’t seem worth the effort or the sacrifice that it takes to live the Christian life, because I can’t see the reward from here. When my fear outweighs my faith, I forget what God has already done, throughout history, and in my life personally. Some days I just want to chuck it all, but then I always find myself face to face with the question, “OK, then what?”

One thing that I have done for myself, and that I highly recommend for others, is to keep a journal of some sort listing every answer to prayer, every unexpected blessing, any time you have seen scripture fulfilled, any change in your life that can only be attributed to the power of the Holy Spirit. Keep this in an easily accessible place. I have mine as a document on the desktop of my computer.

When times get difficult, or if you’re just in a dry season of doubt, open that up and read it. Satan can’t get a foothold in your mind if you keep your memories fresh of what God has done for you. Staying in scripture every day is a good weapon, but it can be even more effective to regularly make the personal connection of where you’ve seen God at work in your life and the lives of those close to you.

If you do this, expect there to be some gaps in this journal. It is not likely that you are going to experience a bona fide miracle every day of your life. This doesn’t mean that God’s ignoring you. Learning to trust His timing. A day always comes when things fall neatly into place, and you can look back and see the progress that led to that point. You very rarely notice that progress while it’s happening, though. So when it does, put that in your journal with a note of thanksgiving and praise that God was in control of the situation from the very beginning. Remember, He can see the end of things long before you get there.

It is also critical to remember that God doesn’t always ride in and “save us” whenever we think we need saving. Sometimes, He lets us go through things for reasons that we aren’t aware of yet. Sometimes we never learn why in this life. If we have faith that all of our questions will be answered in heaven, that can help our outlook somewhat. Remember, God doesn’t come around to our way of thinking; therefore, we must do our best to learn His.

The only way to conquer fear is to practice faith. It has to be exercised just like our bodies. If you are one of the many who has bought a health club membership, but not lost any weight or inches off your midsection, then you already know that your situation might improve if you actually went to the health club. Owning the membership doesn’t create actual change. Owning a Bible without reading it has the same effect. Knowing about the power of prayer without actually praying—ditto.

In the same way, we must keep renewing our minds by reminding ourselves constantly that God does not change. He does not move. He is with us and He is for us. And He always will be.

Be still, and know that.

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Overcoming the World: Part 9–The Armor of God

Therefore, put on the complete armor of God, so that you will be able to [successfully] resist and stand your ground in the evil day [of danger], and having done everything [that the crisis demands], to stand firm [in your place, fully prepared, immovable, victorious]. Ephesians 6:13 (AMP)

First and foremost, remember that the devil is a created being. Though he would much like to tell you that he is equal with God, or even superior to Him, he isn’t. Nevertheless, being spirit, he is more powerful than we are in our flesh by ourselves. This is why we need to call on the power of the Lord to defend us.

In Ephesians 6: 14-17, Paul uses the imagery of a Roman soldier by telling us to “put on the full armor of God,” meaning that we need to make use of every resource that God makes available to us to win this struggle. These are the examples that he lists:

The Belt of Truth. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know this is my biggie. The first four tenets of the Truth Mission Statement lay this out. Acknowledge Truth, recognize it for what it is, give credit to the Source of Truth, and never stop seeking it.
The Breastplate of Righteousness. True righteousness is a right standing with God that is given by His grace, not earned through our efforts. Knowledge of this righteousness that is imputed to us helps us to do the right thing and to keep our word, among other things.
Feet fitted with the Gospel of Peace. A good pair of running shoes provides you with stability and speed. So it is with the Gospel. It is the foundation upon which you stand to face the enemy, and the Good News you take out into the world to foil his plans.
Shield of Faith. Faith is more than just belief. Even Satan believes in God; he has seen Him face to face! It is only when you firmly rely on God and His strength that you are able to deflect the devil’s attacks.
Helmet of Salvation. It’s your head the devil tries to get into. Cover it with the knowledge that God has already accepted you and has no intention of giving you back.
Sword of the Spirit. This is referring to scripture itself. Hebrews 4:12 says: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” This is the double-edged sword that Revelation depicts coming from the mouth of Jesus at the Second Coming, when Satan is defeated forever. Guess what? You have access to that very same Word. It is the most powerful offensive weapon you have in fighting against the devil.

With all of these items in place, now you’re ready to pray like you mean it. That is what vanquishes Satan. A person who prays while knowing the One being prayed to, knowing that He’s listening and most of all, knowing that He will honor that prayer with His protection—such a person is unstoppable in spiritual warfare.

So what is it that actually goes on in the spiritual realm when we pray? Hard to say, as most of us can’t see it. Some people do have that gift, but I am not one of them.

Author Frank Peretti burst onto the Christian Fiction scene in 1986 with his book This Present Darkness, which vividly addressed this very issue. In the book, angels are constantly engaged in battles with demons over the souls of people. Prayer is like a caffeine rush to the angels. When people put on the armor of God and pray, the angels drive back the demons. But when prayer falters, the demons have the upper hand.

Now I don’t know if that’s how it actually goes down (many theologians argue that it isn’t), but it’s a neat picture (and a highly entertaining read as well).

The important thing to remember is, like the soldier, we must always be on our guard. Satan and his minions do not sleep. Ever. They’ll keep coming back, no matter how many times you pray them away. This doesn’t mean your prayers aren’t effective or that God isn’t listening. This is just what demons do. It’s their nature.

(For some final words of encouragement, come back for the conclusion in Part 10: Be Still and Know.)

Overcoming the World: Part 2–Calling for Backup

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13 NLT)

Everyone has up days and down days. Christians are no exception. When we are in a desert faith-wise, as I have been for a while, it is so important to have people around us that can build us back up. Also, we should remember the example that these people set for us, so that when we’re back on the mountaintop, we can lift somebody else up who needs it.

Unfortunately, the tendency in these dry seasons of the soul (especially for a cave-dwelling introvert like me) is to pull away from people. We get used to our misery, and it seems that we would rather prolong it than to have someone tell us what we need to hear.

The problem with that is that when we pull away from people, we pull even further away from God than we were already feeling. That’s when the old bad habits start rearing their ugly heads again. One of my biggest fears since accepting Christ is that someone is going to encounter me during one of these bad times and associate what they see in me with Christianity in general. What if I’m standing at the throne at the End of Days giving an account of my life, and I find out that someone missed out on the Kingdom because of something I said or did that turned him or her away?

But fears like this can actually accelerate the downward spiral. We might figure, “If I avoid people entirely, then I won’t run the risk of blowing my witness and staining the name of Jesus.” So we pull even further away, not just from society, but even from the hand that feeds us.

Girl sitting alone on bed, apparently isolated in her apartment — COVID has made a bad situation much worse with people isolating that don’t even want to.

Another manifestation of getting into a spiritual funk like this is that we stop reading the Bible. Everything we need to adjust our attitudes is right there, and the Holy Spirit is only too willing to illuminate the verses that we need to hear, but again, we are too comfortable in our misery to put forth the effort of opening a book. I am so grateful to have a wife that will put scriptures in front of me when I am not going to them myself.

Do you have someone in your life that cares enough about you to give you a lift like this whether you want it or not? If you don’t, then find one. The best place that I have found for this type of community is in a small group (sometimes called “life groups” or “cell groups”) in a church. If you are not familiar with this concept, it’s a group usually of 8-15 people that meet regularly to go deeper together in their faith than they would get by only going to church on Sunday morning.

What we need to remember is that we were set apart from the world to be WITH God and His people, not to be hermits in a cabin in the mountains (not that there’s anything wrong with mountains!).

As I mentioned in Part 1, a normal life involves difficulties. For a Christian, those difficulties include enduring people who mock the Name of Jesus. Sometimes it seems that life would be easier if we didn’t have to put up with that, but we have to remember that this life is not all there is. The next one is a lot longer.

God’s joy and peace are there for the having. You just have to want it. But sometimes, you need somebody to remind you that you want it. So don’t ever be afraid to call for backup.

(For the next step, please join us for Part 3–Living
by the Spirit)

The Kids Aren’t All Right: Part 1–What We’re Up Against

Lord, save our children.

When did it become not OK for kids to be kids? There is hardly a child now that by the age of 14 hasn’t either cut themselves, questioned their sexuality or rejected God. Anyone that tries to lead them to Truth is labeled intolerant, hateful, an ignorant bigot, or worse.

We are even accused of trying to indoctrinate our own children, but only because our parenting gets in the way of the attempts at indoctrination by our accusers. And they want to call US hypocrites!

How fortunate then, that God already has a plan for these people. He will have the last word, as he told His prophet Isaiah:

I stop the highbrow intellectuals in their tracks,
and I show the fault of their reasoning.
But I stand behind the words of My servants,
and I accomplish what they predict. (Isaiah 44:25b-26a VOICE)

We must endure. As righteous as our anger may be toward our antagonists, we must remember these things:

In our anger, we must not sin.(Ephesians 4:26)
Vengeance is the Lord’s not ours. (Romans 12:19)
We do have a real enemy, but it is not a human enemy (2 Thessalonians 3:15, 1 Peter 5:8)

Our job is to spread the Gospel. We can’t praise the name of Jesus and sully it at the same time. If we take our eyes off of Jesus and start worrying about what other people are doing, then we lose sight of our mission. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his book, Strength to Love:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence, you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence, you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Our job is to bring the light of Jesus to a darkened world that does not know it is in darkness.

We shouldn’t be surprised when we encounter opposition to the Truth. This has been going on since day one. Jesus was crucified, the apostles were persecuted and martyred, and on and on through the centuries. There may soon come a day when preaching the word of God becomes illegal in this country, as it is in many communist and Muslim countries.

But here’s the thing. Even if they put us in prison, God’s word can not be bound. As Paul wrote in his second letter to Timothy:

Remember always, as the centre of everything, Jesus Christ, a man of human ancestry, yet raised by God from the dead according to my Gospel. For preaching this I am having to endure being chained in prison as if I were some sort of a criminal. But they cannot chain the Word of God, and I can endure all these things for the sake of those whom God is calling, so that they too may receive the salvation of Jesus Christ, and its complement of glory after the world of time. (2 Timothy 2: 8-10 PHILLIPS)

We are called to persevere under trial and not to give up. Even if we get tired and weak, God won’t. So if we trust Him to carry us when we can’t go on, He will be faithful to do it.

We must stand firm, not only for our children’s sake, but also for our own. Will you join me in praying for our youth today to be Truthseekers and not herd followers?

Your Will Be Done

Then they arrived at a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to the disciples, “Sit down here while I pray.”

He took with him Peter, James and John, and began to be horror-stricken and desperately depressed.

“My heart is nearly breaking,” he told them. “Stay here and keep watch for me.” (Mark 14:32-34 PHILLIPS)

It’s hard to imagine Jesus, the Son of God and Savior of the world, being “horror-stricken and desperately depressed.” And yet, it happened. Jesus was facing the greatest test of His time on earth, and He was facing it as a human being.

It’s difficult to wrap your brain around the concept of Jesus being both fully divine and fully human, rather than being some sort of a spiritual half-breed.

But if there are any doubts about Jesus being fully human, his anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane should put those to rest. He knew what He was about to face, and He needed strength to get through it. Matthew’s account of this episode words it this way:

He took Peter with him and Zebedee’s two sons James and John, and began to be filled with anguish and despair.

Then he told them, “My soul is crushed with horror and sadness to the point of death. . . stay here. . . stay awake with me.” (Matthew 26:37-38 TLB)

Despair.

The One who was the Light of the World, who came to bring hope to everyone in it, was filled with . . . despair.

So considering this, is it any great wonder that we can feel despair when we face our moments of greatest testing?

And to take that one step further, usually when we are having our moments of fear and torment, the worst thing that we are facing is the unknown. We are scared, because we wonder what is going to happen. Will I have the strength to endure this trial? What will people think of me if I fail? What am I about to lose? Do I really want to know the answers to these questions?

Jesus didn’t have the luxury of fearing the unknown. He knew EXACTLY what was about to happen. And it scared Him. A lot.

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Let’s be clear about this. Jesus, the Son of God, knew why He had come to earth. He knew He had work to do, and He knew He had to finish that work.

But Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph said this:

“Father, if it is your will, take this cup of suffering away from me. However, your will must be done, not mine.” (Luke 22:42 GW)

Jesus knew going into this time of prayer what God’s answer was going to be. He knew what He had to do, but He was NOT excited about it.

Nevertheless, He submitted to His Father’s will. He did not want to go through with His arrest, torture and execution, but more than that, He did not want to go against His Father’s will.

The Greek word regarding God’s will in this sentence is ginomai. This signifies that Jesus is not only saying that God’s will must be done, but that it must be. In other words, God’s will is eternal, just as God is eternal.

In light of His knowledge of this, Jesus really didn’t have any illusion that His prayer was going to be answered with a “yes.” And yet, He prayed for God to let Him off the hook anyway.

Perhaps this knowing was the greatest reason for His despair? He knew He wasn’t getting out of this. I can’t even imagine what He must have felt like in the garden.

And yet, He remained submissive, because He never lost focus on what His greatest mission was. And that was simply for God’s will to be done. Jesus was sincere about completing His work. He isn’t just saying “Your will be done,” to sound pious, like it’s the right thing to say while praying.

It is, of course, the right thing to say, but it is also the right thing, period.

Because God’s will wasn’t about Jesus the man doing something He didn’t want to do. It was about Jesus the Savior bring God’s plan of salvation to fulfillment:

Jesus Christ did the things God wanted him to do. And because of that, we are made holy through the sacrifice of Christ’s body. Christ made that sacrifice one time—enough for all time. (Hebrews 10:10 ERV)

This sacrifice began not on the cross, but in the garden, when Jesus made up His mind to be in agreement with God’s will. Because of this resolution, and the confirmation of His purpose that it signified, we are able to approach God today as His adopted children.

But this is about more than our salvation. Heaven will be awesome, of course, but what about the here and now?

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Do you ever have situations that you know you won’t be strong enough to face by yourself? Isn’t it helpful to know, then, that even Jesus needed to be strengthened not only by angels and the Holy Spirit, but also His three best buds? It is much less difficult to say to God, “Your will be done” when you have your closest friends surrounding and supporting you.

It is not likely that any of us will ever have to face a crucifixion, and we DEFINITELY won’t ever have the weight of the sins of the world upon our own shoulders.

Nevertheless, when I am faced with something I really don’t want to do, and fear is holding me back, it helps at least to know that the God to whom I pray knows a thing or two about fear and apprehension.

But it helps me even more to know that He still got the job done.

Deliverance

No, not THAT kind of Deliverance!

(Yeah, that’s more like it.)

Have you ever found yourself in a situation that seemed hopeless? Did you pray to God for deliverance? I have found myself in that place on numerous occasions.

God always answers prayers for deliverance, but sometimes it’s not the answer we were expecting. We have a tendency to treat God like an ATM—swipe our prayer card, and out come the blessings.

But sometimes the answer is “no.” And sometimes it’s “not yet.” And sometimes, it’s “Yes, but not the way you’re thinking.”

God wants us to live life to the full; however, He is always more interested in our holiness than our happiness. We would love for our deliverance from trials and tribulations to be as quick and painless as possible.

But more often than not, God’s plan is to deliver us through the trial, rather than from it. And painless isn’t always part of the plan. In fact, sometimes the pain is the plan.

The trials we undergo may seem like the end of the world while they’re happening, and yet, we always come out the other side, maybe not totally unscathed, but still standing nonetheless. We may have some scar tissue, but we also frequently have a sense of liberation. We got THROUGH this! And it didn’t kill us!

Here’s the thing about deliverance though. The process of being delivered through a trial is supposed to be a lesson about reliance on God’s strength when our own is failing.

After all, why did we cry out to Him in the first place? Because we knew that we were at the end of ourselves and it was only His strength that could deliver us.

So naturally, what do we do first when the next trial comes along? That’s right, we try to fix our own problems and rely on our own strength. Again. Although we know we should never take God’s deliverance for granted, we do it anyway, because it is in our nature to forget things like that.

Fortunately God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, anticipates this, and is always there to pick up the pieces AGAIN (and again, and again). What a great thing it is to know that we can always fall back on His patience and mercy!

Still, I think we ought to make more of an intentional effort to remember why God delivers us in the first place—because He is with us, and He is for us. If He was in our corner the last time we had a problem, and we know that He doesn’t change, then it makes sense that He will go to bat for us again the next time we have a problem.

So instead of having a high-speed come-apart the next time life beats us down or backs us up against the wall, we should approach our trial with confidence, knowing that we will be delivered, and that we won’t have to rely on our own strength to get it done.