Successful Spiritual Warfare

Prayer is our lifeline to the Trinity. We continually communicate with God in prayer through each moment of the day (Matthew 7:8). We do not need a quiet place to kneel and pray.

We pray through the storms of life, the serene times of play, the busyness of our own making and the unforeseeable issues, which life unexpectedly throws at us.

Prayer changes us, the people we pray for, the circumstances surrounding us and the spiritual principalities and powers all around us.

In chapters nine and ten, the Bible records Daniel's experience concerning answers to his prayer. One was a quick response and the other a delay of about three weeks.

In the later, when God's archangel finally broke through Satan's lines of hindrance drawn in high places to prevent the answer from being delivered, he explained all of this to Daniel in detail.

These are some of the most amazing verses in the Old Testament. It enables us to realize the spiritual warfare going on around us as a reality and an entity to take seriously.

These verses encourage us to "pray-through" in every situation and to persevere until God delivers His answer, rather than to give up after a weak attempt to petition our Deliverer.

Sometimes, our prayers are carnal and self-centered; designed too heap on our self the riches of this world (James 4:3). God does not always provide what we want, especially if He knows it is not for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28).

Yet, at other times, Satan steps up his resistance in order to discourage us from believing in God, trusting Him with our life and walking in His order for our day.

God inspired James to tell us that if we submit to God's will and resist the devil, he has no option but to flee from our presence (James 4:7-9). This is the secret to successful spiritual warfare.

Prayer:

Father God, thank You for deigning to form an intimate, personal relationship with us - the Creator with the created. You desire our continual fellowship while we live on this earth and look forward to our death when we come to abide in Your presence forever (Psalm 116:15).

Your angels rejoice when one sinner repents and crosses over from eternal death into life, adding yet another Saint to Your Kingdom (Luke 15:7). You rejoice over us with singing and You love us with an everlasting love (Zephaniah 3:17). We can barely grasp the full meaning of this relationship, which You offer to everyone ever born on this earth. 

Thought for the Day:

Most people never avail our self the opportunity to enter into this intimate union with our Creator and King, because we despise the shame of the cross and resist the opportunity to totally surrender our will to His.

Let God Be God

 Read: Titus 3:3-7

"The Lord is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will wait for Him." The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good to hope silently for the salvation of the Lord. - Lamentations 3:24-26

We all adopt survival techniques from birth, which we carry with us into adulthood. Even though our caretakers did their best in most cases, they were not always available to make sure that we had what we needed at the time that we needed it. This caused us to grow up relying on and protecting our self.

Therefore, we try, by the sheer power of our will, to hold everything together. We think that we have to handle our problems on our own. We search, often in vain, for any sense of security in life. We use all of our might to hang on, to fix it, to change it, to manage it or to try to make it right. God wants us to LET GO and to admit that we are powerless and that we need His power in our life.

One reason that people are reluctant to trust God is that they blame God for the bad things that happen in life. This launches us into a lifestyle of controlling. Controlling life puts a tremendous amount of stress on us. We suffer mentally, emotionally and physically because we try to hold everything together. We carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. We think that keeping our self and our loved ones safe is up to us.

We forget that God created paradise as His will for our lives. Actually, sin in our life and the lives of everyone around us causes negative situations to occur. The key to remember is that when we surrender to God, He always works everything out for our good, even the negative things (Romans 8:28).

God knows everything from the beginning to the end of our life. He sees the pitfalls and He knows the joys, which He prepared for each of us. Only as we surrender our will to His can we know the true riches of life on this earth (Romans 8: 28; Jeremiah 29:11). Admitting we are powerless and that we need Him is the first step toward serenity and healing. Let God be God in your life.

God wants us to completely surrender our will to His and to stand defenseless before Him. To surrender means to cease resistance and to submit to authority. That may sound like walking into bondage, but surrender is actually the doorway to freedom. This is called “dying to self.” Pride will not surrender. Self-righteousness will not surrender. Fear will not surrender. Only those who are totally broken are ready to surrender and to live with total dependence upon God. God does not take our free will away from us. He simply asks us to surrender our will to His.

When we surrender to God, we say, “Go ahead, Lord, and have Your way with me.” We allow Him to humble our pride and to stop our reliance on our self as we put our life into His capable hands. He will then restore us to the person He intends for us to be, free of mental and emotional pain and guilt and equipped to serve Him in His chosen ministry for us.

Trying to control our life usually produces the OPPOSITE effect of what we want. Our dependency on anything other than God - addictions, people, places, jobs, things, animals - puts us into bondage to them. Only God’s love produces true freedom.

WHEN I AM WEAK, THEN I AM STRONG (2 Corinthians 12:10). When we stop trying to control life and give our control over to God, we allow Him to provide for and to protect us. His mighty power starts working in us and through us. When we surrender our life to Him, He accomplishes infinitely more in and through our life than we could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3: 20).

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, I want to get off the throne of my life and relinquish control of my life to You. Life is chaotic when I am on the throne. Life is peaceful and calm when You are on the throne, and only then can I live and walk in true serenity.

Thought for the Day:

Surrender each moment of your day to the Lord and rejoice evermore.



(Many thanks to Donny Roberston for his photo.)