Fortification

There is a walled city, a fortress.
In this fortress lives the High King.
This High King loves His people and does everything He can to keep his people safe from the enemy without. But for some strange reason His people keep leaving the gates to the city open, or sometimes they don’t keep up their part of the wall and it falls into disrepair.
The King longs to see all of His people safe, but His people just keep letting the enemy in.
The King tells them what to do, how to close the gates, how to keep up the walls, in fact He gives them a whole instruction manual on how it is done, but still the enemy keeps getting in.
Why is this?
Maybe it is because the people don’t realize the danger they are in until it is too late. They don’t even realize that they are leaving the gates open and the walls in disrepair, that they are either letting happen or causing the “breaches”. Then when the enemy slips in through the cracks and wrecks havoc on their lives the people turn to the King and say “How could you let this happen? You are supposed to be our protector!”
The King looks out at His people with sorrow and says “How can I protect those who won’t be protected? Who won’t even close the doors to the enemy?”
I don’t know about you, but this hits a little close to home for me.
I don’t know how many times I have let Satan squeeze through the door or the cracks in the walls, without ever realizing it.
What causes these “breaches”?
Sin, unforgiveness, letting in or pondering things that are not of God, ect.
Essentially, us feeding the flesh and listening and buying the lies of Satan.
What combats these lies and fills in the breaches? Jesus Christ.
Through the power and truth of His Word. Through His Spirit indwelling and enabling us to see these breaches for what they truly are. Through the realization of knowing what we have and what we need and wrestling until the braking of day for the fulfillment of that need.
By gaining a true understanding for what a breach is we can began to see the things of God and the things that He wants to accomplish through us.
God does not want us to be bandied-about by the enemy.
There is a time to lay down one’s life, but even then we are not laying it down before the enemy, but before God Almighty. For His Kingdom and His glory.
So how do we tell when something is from Satan and not form God, and therefore a breach?
Well these are some of the things that we know are from the enemy and we need to stand against:
Fear, Anxiety, Depression, Guilt, Confusion, Insecurity, Family Problems, Spiritual Defeat…
These are thing that we know are not form God. Therefore we resist them. We say “NO” to the lies the enemy tries to pass off as truth.
We are not to fall under any of these things. That is not how the triumphant Christian life works.
We submit ourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee. (Jam 4:27)
God has a plan for our lives and I believe He wants to work this fortification in us so that we can turn and help others with the same vulnerabilities as we had.
Jesus has a perfect plan. Let’s seek and find Him.

To Tremble

The sacred task of handling the Word of God

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” John 1:1-3

The Bible is the holy word of GOD. The God of ALL. The God, who created all, knows all and was here before all. He has all power and all authority. With one WORD He can create or destroy.
He is ALL IN ALL.
Our puny minds fail to grasp even a small portion of this truth. It is far beyond our wildest imagination.
We serve a BIG God (and that’s a HUGE understatement).
If we could only grasp a small fragment of this, then what would our reaction be to the Word of God?
We certainly would not allow it to be twisted, reshaped, molded to fit human thoughts and agendas, and trampled in the dirt like it is being today.
We would stand up and fight for it. Give our lives for it. IT IS THE WORD OF GOD!
The Bible is very clear on how we should treat it:

"Whoso despises the word shall be destroyed: but he that fears the commandment shall be rewarded." Proverbs 13:13

For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my word . . . Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word;
Isaiah 66;2,5
And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost:
1 Thessalonians 1:6

Not only are we supposed to heed the Word in text, but we are to bend to the Word in person.
John 1:14, 17 says “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth... For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

Jesus Christ is the Word of God!

He is the one we bend to. To Him belongs all glory, praise, worship and adoration.
We must fight to keep the word in text because when we mess with the word of God in text, we mess with the Word of God in person.

In Pilgrims Progress- Christiana
There is a scene where Christiana and her sons and their companions are in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. They come to what appears to be a huge chasm. A ways down birds appear to be drift slowly two and fro. Far across the other side of the yawning chasm is the Narrow Way. What are they to do?
Wait! What is this? As they look closer they realize that it is only painting on the rock. There isn’t really a chasm at all. It was all a trick of the enemy to throw them off of the right path.

This is what is happening to the Word of God today.
We are allowing it to be tampered with. At first it may just seem like a little bit of harmless paint, but it’s not. We are allowing the Rock to be tampered with.
If we truly believe that the Bible is what it says it is, the Truth, The Word of God, then we must stand up for this truth and fight for it as if it truly is the Word of God.
We must also take every word in it seriously. We do not mold the Word of God to fit us and our agenda; we bend our will to the Word of God.
If we continue to let the Rock be tampered with more and more people are going to be turned away from the true Narrow Way. And the Lord will not receive the glory that is His due.

"And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he does judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God."
Revelation 19:10-13

This is our God. This is His word. Tremble before it. Reverence it. Obey it. Fight for it!

The Battle Still Rages On

There are two Kingdoms, Darkness and Light.
These two Kingdoms are at war and they have been for thousands of years.
The outcome is already determined, the victory already ours, yet the battle still rages on.
Why is this?
Well I think God gives us a pretty good picture of this proclaimed victory that still requires a battle, in the story of the children of Israel and the Exodus out of Egypt
In Exo 4:21 it says “And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.”

The Lord purposely hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
Why did He do that?
To make things harder on poor Moses? He didn’t even want to go in the first place.
Why didn’t God just make Pharaoh let the Children of Israel go? He can do it He’s God, right? I mean, shouldn’t He at least be softening Pharaoh’s heart?

The LORD gives His reason in Exo 14: 4 (As if He even needs to. He’s GOD. He can do what He wants. But He’s good and He loves us and wants us to know Him)
“And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.”

The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart because He had a plan. Not to make Moses and Aaron’s lives more difficult. He hardened Pharaoh’s heart that He might receive honor and that the Egyptians might know that He is the LORD.

Moses and Aaron were asked to fight the battle with Pharaoh for God’s glory. Yet in themselves they did not fight. God fought for them, they simply obeyed.

This is the same kind of battle God is calling us to fight. The battle that has already been won. The battle to bring glory and honor to the name of our King; that all the earth may know that He is LORD, for He is worthy to be praised.

In order to fight this wonderful, impossible-without-God, battle we must be willing to leave all that we have, Just as Moses left his home in Midian, and fallow the commands of the LORD.
We must obey the commands of God when He tells us to “throw down our rod”; even if we’re not sure that He will let us pick it up again.
We have to be willing to step out in faith and stretch out our hand, believing that God truly will part the red sea.

And just like He did with Moses, Aaron, and the children of Israel, He will be faithful to deliver us from the hands of the enemy.
Not only will He deliver us, but if we believe, He will fill us with His Spirit. So that we might be used (like Moses and Aaron) as tools in the great plan to set the captives free from the bondage of the enemy.
He will dwell in and trough us and enable us to go forth, and by the power of His Spirit living through us, set the captives free.

“Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven.”~Mat 6:10
It’s already done in heaven. Let us fight to see it done here on earth.
For the Kingdom and His Glory!