THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4, ESV).

I cannot remember all the good sermons I have heard on this subject. And there are scores of books and articles teaching us about the weapons of spiritual warfare available to all God’s people. Most of this emphasis happened fifteen or twenty years ago; it seems the church has been eerily quiet on the subject for the last decade.

If the church is truly armed with mighty, God-empowered weapons, why is it that the culture is overtaking the church more quickly than the church is overtaking the culture? Instead of the church defining the culture, as it has down through history, the intrusion of culture is now redefining the church. As this new church “emerges,” in some cases what is emerging is more defined by business models and surveys than it is by the Word of God or anything that resembles the power and presence of God. Church services sometimes look and sound more like the world at a “pop” concert or a motivational seminar than they do a meeting of God’s people!

What has happened here? Is it a lack of quality teachers and preachers? Is it a lack of finances? I don’t think so! So, if the church is as armed and ready as we have been told we are, why are we just marking time and not making real progress?

Perhaps this story will help us to understand. In his book Men Against Fire, S.L.A. Marshall, a military historian, writes that on D-Day (June 6, 1944), by the best estimate, only one man in five (twenty percent) of the combat troops that landed on Omaha Beach actually consistently fired his weapon at the enemy. Here is a quote from Marshall’s book:

“Only five infantry companies (on Omaha Beachhead, June 6, 1944) were tactically effective. In these companies, one-fifth of the men fired their weapons during the day-long advance from the water’s edge to the first row of villages—a total of not more than 450 men firing consistently.”

Marshall’s interviews with the soldiers, and insights he gleaned, helped the U.S. military change its training and by the time the Korean War broke out in 1950, fifty percent of combat troops were using their weapons in fighting situations. But to bring about the change, the military had to acknowledge that it had a problem and then adjust their training accordingly.

In Texas, where I live, it is entirely possible to carry a concealed handgun legally. With just a few hours’ training, you can get a concealed handgun permit and are thereby allowed to carry it on your person. It is one thing to have a handgun and a permit and something else to actually use it when needed. If there is no will to use the gun, then you might as well have a banana in your holster! An undrawn weapon is not a threat except in a Hollywood fantasy.

Is it possible that with all our excellent teaching about “spiritual weapons,” we have forgotten to teach people that you actually have to point and fire? Have we forgotten to tell people that in order for the power of prayer to actually be released, you must pray? Have we forgotten to tell people that fasting involves more than skipping that extra helping of cake? The power of God is resident in God’s people but unless we actually acquire a target, take aim, and pull the trigger, the power remains “holstered”!

We seem to have come to a time when large segments of the church in North America have embraced the teaching about “the weapons of our warfare” and about our authority that He has given us as His followers, but they lack the will to use them.

I am constantly surprised at how few people pray “in the name of Jesus.” Jesus said to His disciples, “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you” (John 15:16, NKJV). Why are we so reluctant to pull the trigger on this truth?

Jesus gave us the authority to use His name, meaning He would back us up when we did so (see Mark 16:17). He did not tell us to carry it around on a necklace and show it off like a piece of cheap jewelry, nor did He suggest that we form a church with this as a name. He gave us permission to use His name because we are His disciples and the use of His name is a key part of our “weaponry” — along with prayer, the Holy Spirit and His Word!

As the church, we have been told that we are “armed and dangerous.” In theory we are and in practice, we should be! However, it is one thing to be armed and another to actually be inflicting damage on the enemy. An undrawn, unfired weapon is not going to do any damage; no strongholds will be torn down, no evil displaced. Nothing is going to happen! 

So why are we so reluctant to actually employ the weapons He has provided for us? This is a question that every believer has to come to grips with. If you are not using the weapons of your warfare — why not? What holds you back? It’s time to deal with our reluctance, take up our weapons, acquire a target and pull the trigger!

THE CALL OF GOD

I loved my years traveling with David Wilkerson as his Crusade Director. David had skyrocketed to fame as the founder of the Teen Challenge movement and the author of The Cross and the Switchblade. The book eventually sold somewhere beyond fifteen million copies. About a year after Carol and I moved to New York, production began on The Cross and the Switchblade movie, which was seen by nearly 50 million people worldwide. The success of the book and the movie definitely made it easier to draw crowds and fill auditoriums as we traveled conducting crusades.

One of the things I especially liked about traveling with David Wilkerson was the rather unorthodox way we went about doing the crusades. I’ll try to explain that as we take this unusual journey together.

When I first joined David in the traveling ministry, the entire crusade staff consisted of two people: David Wilkerson and me. And on the road I was the whole support staff. In the early days, about half our meetings were in large churches and the rest in auditoriums. We traveled hard and did a lot of one-night meetings but what kept us going was the large number of young people coming to the Lord. This was right in the beginning of the Jesus Movement when youth were turning to the Lord by the thousands, and David Wilkerson’s ministry was at the forefront of the evangelistic edge of this move of God.

Over the first couple of years, we began doing more crusades in larger auditoriums and arenas. The increase in auditorium meetings meant that the crusade staff needed to expand and we eventually grew by 33 percent. We added one person — a young musician named Dallas Holm. Dallas was a genuine gift from God, whose musical talent was and is unsurpassed. I was thrilled to have Dallas with us, as I was tired of being surprised by Crusade committees who thought that my request for music that would appeal to young people meant bringing in someone who played the musical saw. I kid you not! That actually happened.

Many things about David’s crusade ministry made it unorthodox and the small size of the crusade staff was just one. We were seeing as many people come to the Lord in our meetings as most evangelists who had teams of 10 or 15 full-time staff and spent much more than we did in advertising and promotion.

Another way our approach to crusades was unorthodox involved money and the local committees. I had been in Jacksonville, Florida, preparing for a crusade that was to be sponsored by a group of Spirit-filled churches. As I was waiting for the planning meeting to begin, I heard the pastors talking among themselves, and the drift of the conversation turned to the left-over bills from a previous crusade. The pastors did not seem noticeably upset; they just discussed ways they could help the much larger evangelical ministerial group pay off about $75,000 in unpaid bills from a crusade that had taken place a year earlier. The evangelist had received his honorarium and expenses and then had left the churches with unpaid bills from hotels, advertising, etc.

The next day I was back in New York and when I shared with Brother Dave what I had heard the pastors talking about, he paused for a moment and said, “David, whoever said that the churches should pay all the bills on a crusade? Let’s promise the sponsoring committee that if they do all they can to raise what is needed for the crusade, we will guarantee them that we’ll never leave an unpaid bill.” And right there, we formed a new crusade policy. In the eight years I was with David Wilkerson, as far as I know we never left an unpaid bill anywhere and we never left town without funds for our ministry.

Another unorthodox part of David Wilkerson’s crusade ministry was the subjects he preached on. When we would conduct a multi-day crusade, he often would preach on “The Call of God.” This was not a typical evangelistic, crusade-style message but, instead, was focused on how God calls people into their place in His service. Surprisingly, the response to this kind of preaching was electric and hundreds and hundreds of young people and adults responded when David asked those who were feeling the drawing of the Holy Spirit to come to the front for prayer.

To this day I still meet people whose lives were directly affected in those meetings when a message like that was preached. Just a couple of months ago a young man I met told me that his father, a pastor, had been called of God into ministry when he attended a David Wilkerson crusade in the early 1970's.

Evangelists are not just called of God to preach the gospel and win the lost. We read in Ephesians 4:11-12 that evangelists are also to participate in the "equipping" of the saints for the work of the ministry. God has called every believer into some phase of service. The word equipping that is used here is a Greek medical word that means to “set a bone that is out of place or broken.” In other words, the primary work of the pastor, teacher or evangelist is to help you find your “fit” in the body, your place of ministry. When you find that place, that “fit,” it will be a true “Eureka!” moment.

Being unorthodox does not always mean being out of the mainstream. Sometimes it means being the mainstream, and bringing the straying back to where they belong.

HOW IS YOUR FAITH TODAY?

A group of Christians wanted to change the way they greeted each other. Instead of using typical greetings such as “How are you?” or “How’s your day going?” they decided to adopt a greeting they felt was more encouraging for believers. Right or wrong, they felt that most of the typical greetings caused people to focus on their feelings but, as Christians, we should encourage each other in our faith. So the group adopted the greeting, “How’s your faith today?”

I rather like the idea of using a greeting like this. Instead of focusing on the latest news or weather and putting our attention there, using a greeting like this helps remind us that our view of life is not to be temporal. It reminds us that our life with Him is not guided by feelings but by faith, that we are called by Him to be people of faith.

One of the more intriguing characters in the Bible, at least to me, is Enoch. Why? Because of the very limited amount of information we are given about him. Some very challenging insights are contained in the few verses that speak of Enoch.

We first meet Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, in Genesis 5. The world was spiraling downward with the sin and corruption that would cause God to bring judgment on the entire world through the flood but Genesis 5:24 says that, “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (ESV). In other words, God caught him up and translated him from this world directly into His presence. According to the Word, this happened to only one other man, the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 2:11).

The Book of Hebrews gives us an additional brief insight into Enoch’s life: “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him.  Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5, ESV). The conduct of Enoch’s life was pleasing to God!

The New Living Translation puts that second sentence this way: “For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God.”

But then Scripture adds this qualifying statement that really helps us to understand how very important faith is and that it is only by faith that we can please God.

“And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him” (11:6, NLT).

I do not know what you want your life to accomplish, what your endgame goal really is, but I do know what mine is. There are a lot of things I want to do well: I want to be a good husband, a good father and grandfather, a good leader, a good friend, a good witness. I think all of these are important, but more than anything else, I want to finish my life knowing that I have pleased God!

My fondest hope is that when I get to heaven Jesus will look to see who is coming next, see me, and exclaim with a smile, “Well done, well done! Come over here and sit down; we have lots to talk about.” I want Him to be pleased by the way I lived my life and sought after Him.

“And it is impossible to please God without faith.” What does it mean “to please God”? I think we are given the most important understanding of this in the first passage that we looked at in Genesis: “Enoch walked with God.” It does not say that God walked with Enoch or God was “my co-pilot.” No, it says that “Enoch walked with God,” meaning that Enoch understood the direction that God was going and he walked in harmony with Him, he got in step with Him. More than once I have messed up by asking God to get in step with the way I was going rather than being open and obedient and following His direction.

Far too often our human desire is to have God do things our way instead of understanding that to please Him we must seek Him, we must understand what He wants to do. When we do this, that understanding then becomes our marching orders.

I believe that in order to please the Lord, we must:

• Be focused on Him: “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2, NKJV).
• We must be committed to and obedient to His Word (Romans 10:17).
• We must allow the Holy Spirit to be active in our lives — leading us, teaching us, revealing the Word to us and allowing Him to pray through us when we don’t know how to pray (John 16:13-15).
• We must be firm in our faith — “pleasing faith” stands firm in the face of all challenges (1 Corinthians 16:13).
• We must not stop worshiping, no matter how difficult the trial. Worship is an act of faith and leads the way to victory (Philippians 4:4-6).

So in closing, “How’s your faith today?”

DANGER, DO NOT ENTER!

DANGER, DO NOT ENTER!

Land mines became accepted weapons of war in WWII. In the last 70 years, millions of land mines have been used in conflict to kill and maim the enemy. Armies use land mines in specific areas and then as the conflict moves on, often the land mines are left in place.

Mines are indiscriminate in their destruction. Once they are put down, it doesn’t matter to the device who gets killed or maimed: an enemy, a friend, an adult, a child — whoever triggers the device has to cope with the resulting explosion.

It is estimated that over 100 million land mines have been left in areas of previous conflict. Portions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Balkans have tens of millions of unexploded mines that have yet to be discovered. Hundreds of innocents are killed and maimed every year because they accidentally step on one of the explosive devices.

When a left-over land mine is discovered and before it is removed, a warning sign goes up to keep everyone away. The sign is a reasonable and appropriate way to let all know: “DANGER! DO NOT ENTER THIS AREA!”

Paul tells the church, “I am writing to warn you of some things that can totally ruin your journey of faith. We were taught these by studying the exodus of the children of Israel and learning from their example” (see 1 Corinthians 10:6 and 11). Paul likens the exodus from Egypt to our journey of faith and suggests that we can totally mess up our life in Him if we don’t pay attention to the warning signs that have been planted by the Holy Spirit. He lists five things that will blow up in our face if we trigger them.

 Here is the danger list:

     1.      Lust

This is not primarily sexual lust; it is selfishness and attempting to gratify oneself at the expense of someone else. In other places, Paul refers to this as coveting (Romans 7:7), which is to desire something that belongs to someone else. In the context of Paul’s Corinthian letter, he is speaking of the intense craving of the Jews in the wilderness to return to the pleasures of Egypt (1 Corinthians 10:6).

Lust is a “spiritual land mine” and if you step on it, it will trigger a response!

     2.      Idolatry

Idolatry means that we have replaced God as primary in our lives and put something else in His place. Idolatry can take the form of material things (home, business, money); it can be another person, or it can be a fantasy, such as television, the movies or pornography. Education, intellectual pursuits or one’s place in society also can become idolatrous (10:7).

     3.      Sexual Immorality

Immorality is so rampant in our society that I know this paragraph will not be well received by many in the church. In an attempt to “modernize” the Scriptures, recently there has come an argument that says, “Paul and the other New Testament writers were writing from a first century perspective and what they have to say has to be translated into the cultural language of the twenty-first century.” Okay, let’s do that! Here is what the Scripture has to say about immorality in the twenty-first century: “All sex outside of marriage is sin! Homosexuality is not an alternative lifestyle—it is sin!”

To suggest that God’s Word is outdated is not an attack on the Word, it is an attack on the Lord God Almighty who is eternal. His Word, as we have it in written form, does not come from a first century perspective but from the heart of our God who speaks to us from eternity and, therefore, His truths are timeless (10:8).

     4.      Testing The Lord

Testing the Lord is demanding that God do what is contrary to His will or inconsistent with His character. The person who lies and cheats in a relationship or in business and then demands that God bless him is “testing the Lord.” Positive confession in the extreme is dangerously close to “testing the Lord.” Testing the Lord is pushing the boundaries to see just how far you can go, to see how far God’s longsuffering reaches (10:9).

     5.      Grumbling/Murmuring

Complaining about God’s plan and the leaders God has raised up is nothing less than an act of rebellion, and stepping on this will trigger a response.

Sowing discord among the brethren is a sin. The children of Israel in the wilderness were complaining/grumbling because instead of being taken immediately into the “Promised Land,” they were taken through the wilderness and like spoiled, rebellious children they wanted to go back to Egypt. Murmuring has its roots in unbelief and is a denial of the goodness and mercy of God (10:10).

When the children of Israel ignored the warning signs and stepped into these forbidden areas on their way to Canaan, a response from God was triggered.

Paul wrote these verses in 1 Corinthians to alert us to an existing minefield. His words are a giant warning sign that says, “DANGER! DO NOT STEP HERE!”