April 26, 2010

Empowerment: that is the word that comes to me through the readings today, and yesterday's too (I'm sure you've noticed, I'm not writing on Sundays).  I see the theme of God rising up through His faithful people to come against evil and oppression.  "For He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with His truth." Psalm 96:13  Yes, Jesus is coming again as the Righteous Judge and King!  Come quickly, Lord!  In the meantime, He does call people to rise up and lead people to fight against wickedness, as we see in Gideon, and yesterday, in Deborah.

I often wonder how often the Church is responsible for what goes on in the world.  How many times is it our turning away from God that allows evil to work, and how often is it our prayerlessness and lack of vigilance that allows evil to continue?  Righteouness and judgment are part of God's nature.  How does that affect us?  Whenever the Israelites started serving other gods, they got overrun and oppressed by enemies.  When they called out to God in repentance, they were given judges to help them overcome.  You never know-- you might end up to be a Deborah or a Gideon whom the Lord might call and empower to fight evil.  And like Jael, you might be a stay-at-home mom who the Lord uses to fight evil, right there in her own home!

It is so significant that Gideon's revelation of God was Jehovah-Shalom:  The Lord is Peace.  Did it ever occur to you that Jesus, always knowing what was in people's hearts and what would happen, told the disciples to bring swords so that He could teach them (even while He was being arrested) that God's battles are not fought with human strength, and that we must seek His strategies.  Peter's lack of internal peace caused him to act impulsively out of fear and anger, cutting off a servant's ear.  Without this on-the-field training, he could have become the next anti-Roman revolutionary. [A bonus spiritual insight:  if we speak, even the Word of God, impulsively and without a love motivation and the leading of the Spirit, we can wound people and hinder them from being able to hear God's voice for themselves]. 

I've noticed two particular extremes of thought and behavior: 1) activists who want to take on every evil they see, and seem to do it passionately and with every means possible, righteous or not; and 2) "separatists" who want to think only of our future in heaven and who don't pay any attention to what is going on here.  I really don't see the leading of the Spirit too much in either of these stances.  The way I see it, if you're stuck in a "program", it's the program leading you, not the Lord.  Our mindset needs to be: know the Lord and do what He says. 

I'm not trying to get into a debate about war here, and I'm not answering questions about whether nations should go to war or not.  What I'm talking about is individuals and their response to God.  I'm talking about spiritual warfare, not natural.  It should be clear, by now, that the Israel in the Old Testament was a living parable about spiritual things.  God's not telling you to take a tent peg and hammer it through somebody's temple!  He's not telling you to bomb an abortion clinic or to assassinate someone.  But that doesn't mean we're supposed to sit around and do nothing.  "And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?" Luke 18: 7-8

Jesus went to the cross because mankind needed to be delivered from the power of darkness.  He now sits on the right hand of God, in power and authority.  Satan is defeated, and yet, he seems to be running rampant in the world.  What to do?  What to do?

I don't claim to have answers for everything.  I know that there are end-time things that are happening, absolutes that have been prophesied and cannot be changed.  Satan will be allowed to do things, and we won't be given power to stop him, not until the Lord comes back and we fight Satan together.  However, one thing I know:  we, each and every Christian, have been given authority to put an end to all demonic activity and oppression in our own life.  If every Christian alive on earth never allowed Satan to do anything in their own areas of dominion, starting first and foremost in their own mind, what would this do on Earth? 

This is one goal of mine, after being led at all times by the Spirit of Truth, and that is not to give the devil a single opportunity.  If every Christian walked free, as Christ means for us to do, the level of freedom in each of our nations would rise as well.  If we desire to fight spiritual wickedness in high places-- principalities and powers that have a hold over many areas of influence, people and nations-- we must first win on the personal front.

Gideon was not expecting the visitation he received.  Gideon had never been to war as far as I know-- he was a farm-boy.  Yet the angel of the Lord greeted him, "The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior."  Gideon saw himself, in the natural, as a weak nobody.  But he could apparently hear God, and maybe he was an intercessor.  "Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel." 

Do you think of yourself as weak, or a nobody?  God sees you differently!  If you have received Christ and are born-again, then you have the Spirit of God in you!  You have the Word, the Sword of the Spirit!  Jesus, the King, is mighty in you!    Your next battlefield is whatever comes up in your life that fights against the Truth!  God has called you to be an overcomer.  And whatever you overcome in your own life will be what God can work through you in to deliver others.  No need to use a fleece.  You've got more than Gideon did: you've got a new nature, and the internal leading of the Spirit!  Go in this might of yours and conquer!