This week, Michael writes
that it's important to spend time alone with the Lord. We believe in a Sovereign
God, who has a design for his people. However, the devil also has schemes
and designs to ensnare God's men and women. We have a choice in the spiritual
battle. Our job is to keep our eyes fixed on our Lord Jesus
Christ.
These are the times that try
people's souls. Paul's letter to Timothy contains God's revelation about
men and women in the last days. According to 2 Timothy 3:2-5, “For men shall be lovers of their own
selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents,
unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false
accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors,
heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a
form of godliness, but denying the power thereof”. How do we combat
the enemy's spiritual army? The answer is in the next phrase: "from such turn away." We must
turn away from the powers of the darkness of this world and unto the light of our
Lord Jesus Christ. This sounds like today's generation. The darker
the night, the brighter the light of the Word of God shines. In the midst of
the spiritual battle, we can choose either to fight the good fight or to
acquiesce to the devil's evil schemes and become casualties of war. Casual
Christians are casualties in the spiritual battle.
The devil's design is to
take Christians off the spiritual battlefield. The devil's ploy is to shoot
fiery darts into the hearts of God's spiritual warriors. According to Ephesians 6, the defensive armor is the
shield of believing faith whereby we are able to quench the fiery darts of the
wicked one. The devil's fiery darts are fear, doubt, anxiety, guilt, and
discouragement. The battlefield is in the mind. These fiery darts are designed
to break down spiritual strongholds through unbelief. However, the weapons
of our warfare are not carnal (of the flesh) but spiritual to the defense of spiritual
strongholds. According to the Word of God, we must defend the spiritual
strongholds of our minds by believing faith; casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself
against the knowledge of God (according to His Word), bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
The devil is the deceiver world
and the accuser of the Brethren. His ploy is to focus on the stragglers
in God's flock. He picks off the sheep who separate themselves from the
flock. Our fellowship of Believers is designed to strengthen one another
with the connection of brotherhood/sisterhood within the body of
believers. The devil has convinced men and women of this world that they
are worthless, insignificant, relegated and marginalized... that they don't
really matter and are worthy of guilt, shame, fear and death. The devil's
ploy is to defeat America as a God-fearing nation. The God-rejecting world
says that America is falling apart. However the Lord is sovereign over all. From
God's perspective, things aren't falling apart; they are falling into
place.
If America looses her Judea
Christian foundation, then America will disintegrate from within. This is the
fulfillment of Paul's prophecy in 2 Timothy 3 “When men and women turn their hearts away
from God and become lovers of self instead of lovers of God, they will proceed
down the path of the devil's destruction.”
Let's continue Michael's message on the real spiritual warfare we fight daily as Christians.
In Christ, Brian
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