Jesus the Commander-in-Chief and His War Policy
No follower of Christ would ever deny that we are in a spiritual war. One thing we can comfort ourselves in is that we will win this war; praise be to the Lord Jesus! To stop there is spiritual shallowness. My heart is troubled with the number of casualties that the war will inflict. In a war, there are usually more than one battle.Many wars were won and lost because of one important battle. Yes we will win the war. Should winning or losing the war be our only concern? I do not think so. The Good Shepard Jesus cares about each battle and not just the outcome of the war. He cares about each soldier. And He will not be happy if we win the war but have even one casualty. For the Scriptures say:
For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. "What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. (Matthew 18:11-14)
Jesus is a Shepard and not a hireling or a rancher. Ranchers and hirelings are OK with some losses as long as they make a profit at the end. Shepards are not happy if one of their animals is lost.
Since we have such a Commander-in-chief, Jesus Christ, we must look at each battle in this war in light of who the Commander is. He wants us to win every battle with no casualties. And that is an order!
Now I see that there is one battle in which we are not doing well (I'm sure there are a lot more, but God has not caused me to see everything). That battle is where compromise and integrity according to faith clash.
The Battle of Compromise vs Integrity
Many of us secretly wish that our church was like the churches in the book of Acts; healing the sick, preaching the Gospel to the entire region of Asia (not just countries), raising the dead, building shaking when people pray, imposters falling dead at the alter, great manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and the list goes on. And we look at our churches; once in a while a person with a cold gets healed, many false conversions, barely reaching out to a few people we know with the Gospel, nearly non-existent prayer meetings, freedom from one or two drug addiction as the only form of the manifestation of the Spirit, and so on.Then we train ourselves to think that we are to be content with where we are. We think "the Christians in the book of Acts can't be that much different than who we are. The difference comes from God. He is sovereign. He must not be willing to do much these days." There is much temptation to think this way. If we can attribute all of this difference to the Lord, we will not be responsible for the difference. We will not have to ask ourselves the hard question "Are we missing something really important?" This mentality is much like the Pharisees' when they encountered Jesus and His disciples.
As they went out, behold, they brought to Him a man, mute and demon-possessed. And when the demon was cast out, the mute spoke. And the multitudes marveled, saying, "it was never seen like this in Israel!" But the Pharisees said, "He casts out demons by the rulers of the demons." (Matthew 9:32-34)
Notice that the multitudes reported their honest report of what was happening. They knew that they had never possessed anything like what Jesus was offering to Israel; the unlimited power of the Holy Spirit. However, the Pharisees wanted to attribute the miracle to the power of "the rulers of the demons." In other words, they were saying "We have everything that is good and necessary for us. If we are shown anything we have never seen before, then that must be from an evil source. Because we are complete! We cannot be possibly missing anything!"
As we now look back on their history, we know that this spiritual arrogance led to the Pharisees missing out in the New Covenant. How tragic. Yet so many Christians are repeating the same thing today. It was well said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it (George Santayana)." That is another good reason we all should familiarize ourselves with the Scriptures, which contain much history.
Enemy's Tactics
Today, we have made ourselves content with our spiritual impotency as our enemy would desire. As the evil one hoped, we are indifferent to the compromise we have made in order to be content with the present condition. However, sooner or later, a watchman in the Body of Christ will raise his voice and cry out "Compromise!" To make that awakening call ineffective, the enemy has deployed another weapon, and that is the main point I want to make in this post. That weapon is what I call "Counterfeit to make the genuine counterfeit."In the last few decades, there has been a movement called "Word of Faith." It is a counterfeit movement that teaches that whatever you say you believe, you can have it. It appeals to our materialistic nature. Most of us already know that this movement is false due to its witchcraft-like manner in which so-called faith is practiced and due to their materialistic fruit.
As a result, many main-stream ministers shied away from anything that remotely sound like Word of Faith doctrines. In fact, I have not heard any preacher on the radio teach on verses like "whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them (Mark 11:24)" without the disclaimer "Well, Jesus didn't exactly mean what He said. He meant if you pray for things that also happen to be what He wants, then He will give it to you."
I, in the Holy Spirit, am tired of people apologizing for what the Lord said and trying to reconcile His message with the people (the people are supposed to reconcile with God and His Word, not the other way around). But this is what happens when we are not watchful and sober. We see the counterfeit, in a noble effort to counter the counterfeit, we go to the other extreme, the place where we don't recognize the genuine any more.
Winning Strategy: Faith according to the Truth
The truth is, we lack in faith because our mentality has been tainted by the compromise and we lack the presence of the Holy Spirit among us. Those two are related for the Scripture says:If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him! (Luke 11:13)
And how do we ask the heavenly Father? By faith!
Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them. (Mark 11:24)
Notice He says "believe.... and you will have them." He does not say "believe.... and you've got them." That means there is a time gap between when you ask and when you receive. When you read Psalms, there are many occasions where the psalmists speak of "waiting on the Lord." Why is this? It is because when we ask our faithful and good Father, we are to wait for Him to respond. We are to wait by faith!
Let us ask the Lord for annointing and empowerment by the Holy Spirit for our church in the West! For we do not have the glory that the church in the book of Acts had. Yet the Scripture says "the end of a thing is better than than the beginning (Ecclesiastes 7:8)" and "The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former (Hagai 2:9)." We have lost so much since the Church started 2000 years ago. Yet the Scripture says:
[Jesus] whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. (Acts 3:21)
We know from the above verse that Jesus must remain in Heaven until the times of restoration of all things. We know that Jesus is not going to remain in Heaven, but will come back to earth. That means.... Yes the glory of the temple (Body of Christ) will be restored completely to be ready for the Bridegroom's return! Do you believe this? That is the important question. Let the Word of God speak to your heart. As the Holy Spirit cleanses you of the compromise you have made. Let anything that leads you to doubt God's miraculous plan for us be dead in your mind and heart.
Remember that we are in a war. Remember also that there is a battle of compromise versus integrity according to godly faith. Unless you are armed with this faith, you will suffer loss. As it is written:
above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one (Ephesians 6:16)
Now the darts that the apostle Paul is speaking of are not like those darts we use when we play darts! According to the Strong's Greek dictionary, the Greek word translated "darts" means " a missile, that is, spear or arrow." These are potentially fatal spears, arrows, and missiles that the wicked one is firing. We need the shield of faith with which we will be able to quench all such attacks. Halleluja!
As we soberly admit our poor spiritual condition, we will have restoration taking place among us to the point where by-standers will be able to see that the kingdom of God is among us. Just as Jesus said:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3)
Fellow soldiers in Christ, take up the shield of faith. Let us trust in the Lord for the restoration of the church and never doubt. As the Lord's return approaches, we will heal the sick, preach the Gospel to the poor, and make disciples of Jesus throughout the earth! Praise the Lord!
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