Month: September 2019

Ephesians 6

10 Last of all I want to remind you that your strength must come from the Lord’s mighty power within you.

11 Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand safe against all strategies and wiles of Satan.

13 So use every piece of God’s armor to resist the enemy whenever he attacks, and when it is all over, you will still be standing up.

18 Pray all the time. Ask God for anything in line with the Holy Spirit’s wishes. Plead with him, reminding him of your needs, and keep praying earnestly for all Christians everywhere.

In these verses Paul gives us two critical ingredients to battle against the wiles of the devil.  While the wiles of the devil include many things, the thing he seems to be most wiley about is prayer.  Why is prayer so difficult for Christians? I have yet met one (including me) who wishes his or her prayer life was better, and that includes some pretty positive pray-ers.  One of the keys to a more powerful prayer life might be found in these verses.

First of all, there is a strong and powerful relationship between putting on the armor of God and praying. They are dependent on each other and if we lack either, we will be lacking.  Putting on the armor is an active step in our thought life. It is what we do before the battle, not after. It is difficult to armor up during the battle and it is, of course, fruitless to armor up after the battle is over.

So often I have heard (and have even said myself) that the best way to improve our prayer life is to use the Nike motto, “Just do it.”  There is some truth to that because we cannot get better at anything without “doing it.” But if the act of praying automatically improves our prayer life, why do so many (even those who pray frequently) feel their prayer life is inadequate?  Some of us try so hard and use lists and apps and programs and methods but still feel our private prayer time is woefully feeble.

The apostle does not say pray then put on the armor of God. Prayer follows armoring up.  It should be a natural outgrowth of “gearing up.”  In verses 14-17 of the same chapter of Ephesians, Paul tells us what frame of mind we must get ourselves into before stepping onto the battlefield of prayer. We should think about the things of God everyday because Satan is battling us right now.  He does not want us to even step onto the battlefield, but if we do, he wants us to be as naked as possible, leaving all of God’s protection in the locker room.  I saw a cartoon once that showed a bunch of medieval soldiers and one of them is saying to the other, “What?  We have to be skins again?”  That is how we often step into battle against satan.  He tells us we are skins and we believe him.

Paul tells us we need to have His truth, His righteousness, His preparedness to share the gospel, His faithfulness, His salvation, His Spirit, and His Word already with us before we challenge satan on the battlefield he hates the most- the prayer field.  Satan knows we stand the tallest when we are on our knees and he hates that stance.  But if he can get us on our knees superficially, just going through the motions because we feel we have to or because we hope to get something out of it or because it fulfills our duty of the day, he will have kept us weak and wanting.

What, then, is needed? We should thoughtfully commit our hearts to God before we pray.  We should look at each part of the armor and ask ourselves if we really think the armor of God is important.  We must ask, are we missing something important that will hurt us in our prayer battle. Have we received His salvation, are we filled with the Spirit, do we carry His Word with us?  Each of these things (and more) are necessary to have with us before we can have a powerful prayer life. These add depth, meaning, and significance to our prayers. Suddenly our prayers become pointed and purposeful rather than meaningless and mechanical.

Prayer is conversation with God and putting on the armor of God lets us examine the full implications of our faith and we can then talk to God about it. We then know how to prayer because we are better equipped to understand God, ourselves, and the world around us. “Just doing it” is not very effective if we are just going through the motions. If we armor up before prayer we won’t have to be “skins again” and satan will have his hands full with an army of prayer warriors prepared and ready to go!

Have a great Thursday. 

“You have turned my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.”  Psalms 30:11-12

What a great promise we have here.  God can turn our mourning into dancing.  He takes our sadness and can clothe us in gladness.  He is the transformer of emotions and the producer of joy. This is a wonderful truth to keep in mind when we go through those tough times that will always come.

I have known many who have had to stop  a bad habit.  That habit could be anything from smoking to over eating to inappropriate language.  It seems that in every case the habit must be replaced by something positive to really effect a change in behavior.  If we quit something, there is a void left and if we don’t fill it with something, it will get filled on its own, sometimes with something just as bad.  For instance, today many people try to quit smoking by using e-cigarettes. Recent studies show that e-cigarettes might be bringing a new host of problems themselves.  It is one problem replaced by another.

When my dad quit smoking after 30 years, I saw him do something I had never seen him do before- he chewed gum.  Before he quit it that was hard for him to do because chewing gum with a cigarette in your mouth is pretty difficult, if not dangerous.  Even though he told me that he never craved a cigarette from the day he made the decision to quit, the habits of using his hands to hold something, having something in his mouth, feeling relaxed, and others still had to be filled.  The main thing he did was pray.  The day he quit he made the drive from Portland to Grants Pass and he said he prayed the whole way and had never done that before.  He replaced the bad with something good.

God knows that if we are in mourning, that mourning cannot be just taken away- it must be replaced with something.  The verses in Psalms tell us that God doesn’t simply remove our mourning and make it go away, He replaces it with something better. We won’t just stop mourning, we will eventually start dancing.  That means that we will move beyond the pain and actually feel whole again.

I have a friend who lost his daughter to a sixteen year battle with cancer.  He is still grieves her loss a year later.  Understandably, because there may be no harder hurt than losing a child. How can such a tragedy be replaced with peace?  I think a story that FB Meyer’s tells might hold they key.One day he met a miserable-looking woman who shared that she had recently lost her crippled daughter who she had cared for for years. She was the joy of her life.  The mother was now alone and  home was not “home” anymore. Meyer gave her wise counsel. “When you get home and put the key in the door,” he said, “say aloud, ‘Jesus, I know You are here!’ and be ready to greet Him directly when you open the door. And as you light the fire tell Him what has happened during the day; if anybody has been kind, tell Him; if anybody has been unkind, tell Him, just as you would have told your daughter. At night stretch out your hand in the darkness and say, ‘Jesus, I know You are here!'” Months later, Meyer was back in that neighborhood and met the woman again, but he did not recognize her. Her face radiated joy instead of announcing misery. “I did as you told me,” she said, “and it has made all the difference in my life, and now I feel I know Him.”  This woman had replaced the loss of a daughter with the love of the Father.

We will experience times of sadness- we are surrounded by it, but God can remove that and replace it with something good. He might do that through His Word, an encouraging song from the radio, or even a phone call from a friend.  He knows our hurt and knows how much we can take.  He is watching and waiting for our call and is poised to have a replacement handy.

I had a friend once who had a real potty mouth.  After he was saved, he lost about 50% of his vocabulary.  He had to make some real changes, but it was hard because his old habit was right on the tip of his tongue.  He came up with a safe alternative to swearing.  Every time he felt a profanity raising its ugly head, he would clear his throat. This gave him time to think about what he was doing.  It was the equivalent of counting to ten before doing something.  Admittedly, at the beginning everyone thought he had a chronic cough.  But as he got more control of his tongue, the less he had to clear his throat.  He substituted something good (or at least neutral) for something bad. Pretty soon he had cleared out the inclination to swear and could stop clearing out his throat.

We need to think about what these verses mean to us. Our sorrows, disappointments, tragedies and failures are very real — but they are also “raw material” for a transformation that God will accomplish in us if we allow Him to.  And we WILL dance! God will do it. He has picked out the steps already.  When we dance, we will sing to Him and the circle of healing will be complete. Our part is simply to wait…believe…and cling tightly to this wonderful promise!

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

There are many questions that Christians face, but I suppose one of the hardest questions to answer is: “Why do we have to deal with so much adversity?” Ironically, the other morning when I was walking Buddy and listening to Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis he related a dog walking analogy that gave a pretty good answer. Lewis likened God’s use of adversity to walking a dog. If the dog gets its leash wrapped around a pole and tries to continue running forward, he will only tighten the leash more. Both the dog and the owner are after the same end: going forward. But the owner must resist the dog by pulling him opposite of the direction that he wants to go. The master, sharing the same intention, but understanding better than the dog where he really wants to go, takes an action precisely opposite to that of the dog’s will. It is in this way that God uses adversity!

We really don’t like being pulled and corrected by the Lord — but when we understand there’s a greater purpose involved, then we can pass through adversity with hope, expectation and steadfastness knowing these events are for a greater good! Unlike the dog, who often has no understanding of this pulling and tugging, we can learn from our trials and tribulations and not fight God so much as he tries to direct us for our own good. “Enduring trials faithfully will produce perseverance, character, and hope. And hope will not disappoint us for the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”  Romans 5:4-5 We truly can trust in the God who loves us with an everlasting love because He knows the direction we need to go, AND He knows exactly how to get us there.

If we are struggling with our difficulties it is good for us to remember that these same difficulties can strengthen us . We are in a battle against the enemy and God prepares us for bigger and bigger battles through His protection and His training. The Lord’s weapons are spiritual; they include a knowledge of the scriptures, the power of the Holy Spirit which increases with a devoted prayer life, the courage which comes only with deep trust, and His wisdom which reveals His strategy for our present situation. We will never grow short of these weapons unless we fail to avail ourselves to them.

In the 1940’s, the world fought against the greatest evil it had ever seen, Adolf Hitler and his terrible regime. In the midst of this war, Winston Churchill said, “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear — is fear itself!”

Even though those are well-known quotes, probably the most famous quote of the war was just one word, “Nuts.” Gen. Anthony Clement McAuliffe and the American troops had been holding the Belgian town of Bastogne “at all costs,” and on Dec. 22, Gen. McAuliffe received the encouraging news that the 4th Armored Division was beginning its drive north to relieve the 101st. They just needed to hang on a few more days. Later that morning, they saw four Germans coming up the road carrying a white flag. Everyone hoped they were offering surrender, but instead they presented two pages demanding the Americans’ surrender: “To the USA Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne…There is only one possibility…the honorable surrender of the encircled town.”

McAuliffe glanced at the message and said, “Aw, nuts!” When trying to decide how to respond, the consensus of the officers was to send back McAuliffe’s first response. Everyone laughed as a sergeant typed up the succinct response: “To the German Commander: ‘Nuts!’ The American Commander.”  Between this stoic reply, Patton’s troops from the south, and a change in the weather that allowed air reinforcements, the 101st was able to hold Bastogne for the needed time. These actions helped assure the final defeat of the Germans.

McAuliffe’s response became a lasting symbol of American courage and determination under fire. His response was basically a one word answer that meant “We will not surrender at any cost and you can go hang yourself.” We are constantly getting surrender demands from the enemy. Satan and the world try to goad us into giving up. They promise that survival will be the result and if we don’t surrender we face annihilation. But surrendering is not an option. We have reinforcements poised and in position. We have a commander who sees our situation. If we just remain strong, He will relieve us. When we feel wrapped around a pole or trapped within our soul, God has not abandoned us. We can stand firm and send the message back to the enemy, “Nuts.” Let’s recognize that in truth victory is already ours because ”Greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world!” We will be stronger than we were before because we will have tapped into the power of God and used it to defeat the enemy. Keep battling- We win- I have read the Book.