Weapons of warfare

P 3070 The person who knows they cannot lose is not afraid to die.

/ DVH

We need to stop thinking that using our faith only means moving mountains, healing the sick, raising the dead, or talking to someone else about Jesus. Of course those things matter. But actually, controlling my temper also takes faith. I need faith Jesus’ ability to help me close my mouth and quieten my heart! My internal default position needs to learn from Him how to live in love. Otherwise my faith will fade away and I will wonder why it is weak. Romans, Galatians and Hebrews all say: “The just shall LIVE by faith.”

As I said yesterday, we learn faith incrementally. What I mean by that is, faith grows, it hardly ever just falls on you! When it falls on you it is the gift that 1 Corinthians 12:9 talks about. But we have been given spiritual equipment and we must use it daily. And at the same time, we are learning to walk in faith and die to self. You may have a job, or a family, but you are permanently His kid, His representative in this world. This new life Jesus died to give us, takes dedication and time. We actually begin by taking daily faith steps, so that if we need to fight Goliath we will run at him!

Chasing off devils is great, do it – as He leads you. But allowing His Grace to flow through each one of us in these chaotic, difficult times, is about daily walking with Him. Very few people receive the gift of faith, it simply rises up within them. Most of us need the fruit of self-control far more than we realise. BTW, self-control is a fruit, not a discipline. Jesus wants to grow His kind of fruit. David ran at Goliath. That guy was huge, but David’s faith was bigger! He had already experienced what God could do through his life. Later on he was able to maintain a good attitude toward Saul, because he kept continually building the faith he already had, by his daily choices.

We are growing fruit at the same time as we learn to use the gifts. Otherwise we will lurch along like Frankenstein – in the Spirit one minute, and in the flesh the next.  All Frankenstein had was dead flesh, and electrical input! But we have the glorious Holy Spirit Who made us in our mother’s womb!! He was Jesus’ Personal Helper and the Lord sent Him back to help us. The Holy Spirit knows our weaknesses and flaws, and He wants to help us walk us through this life filled with His power and grace for others. 

Over to God’s equipment in Ephesians 6:10-19. 

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.  In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests …”

We usually start out talking about God’s armour by naming the bits. Great! Do it. But Paul’s actual exhortation begins with verse 10!“BE STRONG IN THE LORD AND IN HIS MIGHTY POWER.” Can you see how much that verse changes every other verse in this scripture? Paul goes on to explain why it is essential to begin with verse 10 … we are going to come up against demonic authorities and they have power and authority in this world etc. We train for the bigger fights by dealing with our own flaws and foibles – the ungodly stuff that is holding us back. That happens one faith step at a time. It is just plain stupid to fight with the guy who has your back in the battle!

This life is not a cake walk. It is an eternal struggle between the forces that control this world and the Kingdom of God. We all know Who won …but wisdom exhorts us to be prepared for the battle. All we need to do is stand our ground, and the enemy will fall to Jesus’ power. This is why we need to be daily concentrating on how to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. We can learn to overcome the Goliaths that occur, by participating in our day to day battles and dealing with our own flesh.

The verses that follow verse 10 explain HOW! Know God’s truth – inside out, upside down, backwards and frontwards. Read it, sing it, say it, study it, refer to it, obey it, and defer to it. God’s sovereign act of Grace is our only righteousness. Always be prepared to be the one who ushers in peace. This means we are at peace with God and our fellow man on the inside of our hearts. “Owe no man anything but LOVE.” And always keep the cross ever-present in our minds and heart. The cross is our sign of ultimate victory!

Our faith needs to be strong – we have to know that no matter how things look – God has not run off and left us at the mercy of some evil thing or other. Bad things happen, even to God’s kids:  but the person who knows he cannot lose is not afraid to die. This is why we give our faith a daily work out. So when temptation, or a challenge comes, we will have Godly skills, stamina and strength. Bye 🗡️. 

P 2754 A most valuable tool.

/ DVH

One of the most useful tools in my interpersonal toolbox is the one that says: “my response is my responsibility.”  I have found it can be much too easy to blame the way I am responding, or reacting, onto someone else’s actions. Maybe someone ticks me off, and instead of doing something (prayerfully) about it, I let it go because I am busy and I don’t have time to poke about in my feelings, or sort out your not-so-nice attitude toward me. What’s inside me, that has been stored up – so to speak, and it will eventually come out … usually at another person!

Unfortunately that kind of neglect buries any difficulties – it does not clear them up. Buried things have a tendency to rot away and stink! The next time you do something that ticks me off, I will have a less tolerant attitude toward your actions. If you keep on bumping into my ever increasing irritation, eventually – I could feel justified to snipe back at you. However, there is no ownership in those actions. I have unrealistically, farmed out my responsibility for my emotions onto you, because I am expecting you to pull up your socks and stop ticking me off! 

The only person in charge of the way I respond is ME! I would be far better off handing my irritation over to the Lord, and asking Him to help me with it, instead of stuffing it down inside me … making it a time bomb waiting to go off. I don’t have to say anything to you unless He says I should… I simply talk to Him and ask Him to adjust my inner ‘dial’ so that I am not so sensitive to the argy bargy stuff that happens in this life. I ask Him for more love and less impatience, and could He please show me what is actually going on inside me?

Babies are a perfect example of uncontrolled emotions. They cry and crank, mainly because they don’t have any language for how they feel. So someone comes and picks them up to soothe them. We have a society full of people who do not know how to handle their own emotions and soothe themselves. They keep waiting for someone else to do it, or they will throw blame everywhere. These people shrug off their own responsibility to manage their anger, rage, whinging, weeping, irritation and plonk it onto the people who are annoying them. It might be the wife and kids, it could be the government, or a neighbour, but I can guarantee that if you ask them, it  will always be someone else’s fault they are angry, full of rage, or sad etc. It will never be their fault. 

This life has bad things in it. People do truly dreadful things to each other and they are not only not sorry – they’ve let the aforementioned storm inside them build up to gigantic uncontrollable levels. We need to learn, with God’s help – how to manage our own responses and reactions. 

Repentance and ownership of my own flaws and faults must be like breathing. The bible clearly tells us that we don’t have to feel bad, or even less than somebody else;   because we know Jesus died for ALL our sins. And I’m not better than them either. I am not perfect myself, and, despite my feelings, I am not as excessively fragile as I think.

God put a fighter in all of us – we are designed for transformation, so we will have to fight our own human inclination to retaliate. I need to use His weapons of warfare. Those weapons I choose will transform my inner life so that it is not a litany of other people’s faults playing over and over and over again. That’s why I read the Bible, I am looking for Him, plus my own sin, not yours!

Today I want to look at those two men who were crucified right alongside Jesus. One man was bitter, the other became bigger. That second man was also suffering but he made hard choices at an incredibly difficult time. BTW, they both deserved their punishment.  

Luke 23:32, 33: “Two others, both criminals, were led out to be executed with Him. When they came to a place called The Skull  they nailed Him to the cross. And the criminals were also crucified—one on His right and one on His left… … 39-42 “One of the criminals hanging beside Him scoffed, “So You’re the Messiah, are You? Prove it by saving Yourself—and us, too, while You’re at it!” But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into your Kingdom.”

Ownership of our own faults is imperative to becoming a mature Christian. We must transform our self-talk by digesting the bible. Instead of dismissing ourselves as innocent, we need to remind ourselves that there is nothing that happens to us that is not Father-filtered. We need to ask for more FAITH to overcome our human inclinations. 1 Corinthians 13 is not a dream … it is a reality, ready to enter our lives, if we live prepared to press in and value the tools He has given us. If I truly want to be free I will deal with ME. Bye 👋