Friday, August 29, 2014

TAKE UP THE WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD

  

Over the last several weeks I have been strongly impressed to read and reread Ephesians 6:10-20—Paul’s famous teaching about putting on the whole armor of God. There are several key points to which I want to direct your attention.

Three times in this passage we are exhorted to “stand” (verses 11, 13 and 14). Also in verse 13 we are told to “take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.” Paul uses military terminology throughout this passage. The context of his writing is that he is living in a world dominated by the Roman army, so the terminology is very familiar to the Ephesian church and to all the other churches that Paul was connected to. In the original language, the word stand (histemi) speaks of being steadfast, immovable.

In verse 15 Paul tells us to pay attention to the shoes we wear. He is referring to the Roman soldier who wore into battle shoes that had spikes on the bottom. The spikes allowed the soldier to find firm footing when in hand-to-hand combat and this was especially important when the ground became slippery with blood or water. We are living in dangerously slippery times and I trust that your feet are properly shod and firmly set!

In verse 13 the Greek word that is used for withstand is from the same root as stand and in this verse it is the word from which we derive “antihistamine.” This word suggests a vigorous opposing, to put a block on something, standing face to face with your adversary and not giving any ground. Or as the crazy TV newsman in the movie “Network” yelled out the window, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Some of you need to get in a window of your life and yell at the devil, “I’m mad and in the Name of Jesus I’m not going to take this anymore.”

We are told to take up the whole armor of God, and that takes conscious action on our part. We need to be in clear relationship with the Lord through our communication with Him in prayer, study, worship and fellowship. When we are in open communication with Him and living our lives in a manner that is pleasing Him, we are putting on His armor and it is protecting us. By the way, putting on the armor is a one-time act and from then on we should regularly make sure that it is properly in place. Some folks feel the need to daily put on the armor and if that’s you, it’s okay, but it really is not necessary. Why is it that you have to put it on daily? Does it fall off when you sleep? Is the armor of God, the grace of God, so fragile that it falls off when you least expect it? I think not!

“In all circumstances take up the shield of faith” (verse 16). Again, we do this by our faith in Him and our declaration of that faith in prayer, in worship and in speaking forth His Word. Carol and I often pray this way, “Lord, we raise up the shield of faith over and around our family—the shield of faith that quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked one.” 

Now let me help you understand what Paul was saying when he uttered these words about the shield of faith.

What Paul had in mind was much like the shield that a Roman soldier carried. It was about four and half feet long and two feet wide. The Romans introduced a strategy into warfare that, at its time, revolutionized the way they fought. A Roman company of about 150 men, each carrying a sword or spear and shield, would go into battle in a tight rectangular formation. When they came under attack they would each put his shield into place: some to the side, some to the front, some to the back and some over the top. The company then became a solid block covered on all sides and over the top and then they would move forward or backward in unison. This maneuver had never been seen before, and by using it the Roman legions devastated enemy armies everywhere they went.

The shields were wooden but were covered in leather. Before the Romans went into battle, they would soak their shields in water so that when the enemy shot fiery arrows at them the wet leather would not burn. When the Romans introduced these tactics to their armies, it revolutionized warfare.

In times of stress, when we feel like we are being attacked, we are to take up the shield of faith and know that the fiery darts of the enemy are being extinguished. It may not always look like it but the victory is ours!

More about the shield and how we are to use it in the next two blogs.






Friday, August 22, 2014

THE CONNECTION


(I was going to entitle this “Getting Hooked Up” but my wife’s good sense prevailed over my childish and slightly risqué attempt at humor.)
Several years ago Carol and I were in West Texas for a weekend of ministry. We had not driven   Interstate 20 west of Dallas for close to twenty-five years. We enjoyed the drive out and back and especially the time of ministry at the Dream Center in Odessa, TX. Our friend Jimmy Dennis is doing a great work in that area. The Dream Center is reaching a lot of people for Christ; they have a men’s home; they are touching the community with Christian love and service; and God is building a great church there.
On the drive out I was fascinated to see the huge wind farms that have been built in the last several decades. There were hundreds and hundreds of giant wind turbines, their massive blades driven by the invisible force of the wind. Each of the majestic turbines is connected to a local power grid that either uses the electric power locally or feeds it on to a regional power grid. From the regional power grid, electricity is then distributed sometimes nationally and who knows where. Maybe just a little of the power that perked your coffee this morning came from West Texas.
Harvesting energy from the wind seems to have a very bright future. Wind power is environmentally friendly, there is a phenomenal supply of wind worldwide, and new technology is continually bringing down the price of generating power from this source. Some countries, like Denmark, are already getting nearly 20 percent of their electrical power from the wind.
I understand that one of the difficulties facing the harvesting of wind for power is that you cannot just find a windy place and build a turbine and poof, you have usable electricity. Unless the turbine is put near a local user such as a home or a business or is plugged into a grid where the electrical power can be sent, then the turbine, while perfectly good and capable of producing lots of usable power, is not usable.
The bottom line is that without the availability of an outlet, the majestic wind turbine is nothing but a rotating piece of art generating power with nowhere to go!
The fastest growing segment of Christianity in the world is the Pentecostal/Charismatic community. While modern Pentecostalism is just slightly over 100 years old, it has experienced phenomenal growth that shows no sign of slowing down. It is estimated that at least 600 million people are now “Pentecostal/Charismatic” Christians and some surveys indicate that close to 40 percent of all Christians (globally) are Pentecostal/Charismatic. The greatest growth presently is in Asia and Africa.
The cornerstone scripture for most “Spirit-filled” Christians is Acts 1:8:
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; AND you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
How many dozens of messages have you heard preached on the power of the Holy Spirit?
How many messages have you heard about being witnesses in your local community and beyond?
How many messages have you ever heard on the word “and”? 
What pulls these two powerful concepts/truths together is the often overlooked word “and.”  “And” is a conjunction, a connector; it hooks the two truths together and makes them the hallmark statement of New Testament Christianity.
If Pentecost is all about power and that’s all it’s about for us, then we are missing the point! The word “and” takes the power of Pentecost and joins it to an outlet of meaningful service and witness. “And” is the connection that takes the lethal elements of the power of the Holy Spirit and joins them into the grid of powerful service; it brings to life the purpose of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Too much of the modern New Testament church is nothing more than an exercise of wasted power. The majestic turbine of the church is standing in the midst of the roaring wind of Pentecost and is spilling its power on the ground because it is plugged into nothing, it has no outlet. It has taken the power of God and engaged in spiritual self-gratification.
The power of Pentecost is to be connected to the grid of outreach, service and missions. Pentecost is not a plan to empower the individual believer for personal gain and enjoyment of spiritual highs. The power of Pentecost is to be connected to the grid of the whole of God’s eternal plan for the church and if it is not, then it is simply a waste of “the power.” “And you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
(Whoops, I used the word “hook” a few paragraphs back and I think I see my wife coming this way with an eraser in her hand!)


Friday, August 15, 2014

TERRORIST MISSILES, THE IRON DOME AND THE HAND OF GOD


Below is a news story that I came across on an Internet news source on August 7. This is not the type of news you will ever find in the liberal, mainstream media. The liberal media is preoccupied with demeaning Israel and Christianity and downplaying the savage intent of Muslim/Islamic terrorists.
In reading this story, please keep in mind:

  1. The nation of Israel exists because God established an everlasting covenant with the Jewish people (see Genesis 12:7 and 13:15).
  2. The terrorists are not battling to drive the Jewish people from the Middle East! The battle is demonically driven and its goal is to eradicate all of God’s people from the face of the earth—and that means both Jews and Christians. Islamic radicals have recently stated that they intend to raise their flag over the White House. What we are seeing in Israel, Iraq, Iran, Somalia and numerous other places around the world are battles leading up to Armageddon.
  3. God promises to protect His people.
“I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies” (Psalm 18:1-3, ESV).
 
In this wonderful passage David says, “The Lord is . . . my shield.” The Hebrew word used here for shield comes from a root word that means “like a mother bird hovering with wings protectively spread over her young in the nest.” The meaning demonstrates God’s faithfulness to His promises and His might to deliver and protect His people.
Now here is the excerpt from the Internet news; there is a link to the original article at the bottom of the article. Please keep the above points in mind as you read.

“HAND OF GOD SENT MISSILE INTO SEA”
Iron Dome operator: “I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes.”

JOE KOVACS  - WND (WorldNetDaily)
More claims of divine intervention are being reported in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, with an operator of Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system saying he personally witnessed “the hand of God” diverting an incoming rocket out of harm’s way.
Israel Today translated a report from a Hebrew-language news site, which noted the Iron Dome battery failed three times to intercept an incoming rocket headed toward Tel Aviv last week.
The commander recalled: “A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome precisely calculated [its trajectory]. We know where these missiles are going to land down to a radius of 200 meters. This particular missile was going to hit either the Azrieli Towers, the Kirya (Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon) or [a central Tel Aviv railway station]. Hundreds could have died.
“We fired the first [interceptor]. It missed. Second [interceptor]. It missed. This is very rare. I was in shock. At this point we had just four seconds until the missile lands. We had already notified emergency services to converge on the target location and had warned of a mass-casualty incident.
“Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that … sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a God!’
“I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of God send that missile into the sea.”
The commander’s account is reminiscent of a recent newspaper headline which trumpeted the possibility of supernatural protection.


This was the headline in the July 18 edition of The Jewish Telegraph.
It was a partial quote from Barbara Ordman, who lives in Ma’ale Adumim on the West Bank.
Her exact quotation was: “As one of the terrorists from Gaza was reported to say when asked why they couldn’t aim their rockets more effectively: ‘We do aim them, but their God changes their path in mid-air.’”
She opened her piece by noting: “In October 1956, [Israeli Prime Minister] David Ben Gurion was interviewed by CBS. He stated: ‘In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.’”
Meanwhile, The Times of Israel reported that a senior officer in Israel’s army said divine miracles protected his soldiers during fighting in the Gaza Strip. Givati Brigade commander Col. Ofer Winter told the weekly publication Mishpacha that he “witnessed a miraculous occurrence, the likes of which he had never seen before during his military career.”
Winter indicated a predawn raid intended to use darkness as cover was delayed, forcing the soldiers to move toward their objective as sunrise was approaching.
With the troops in danger of being exposed at daybreak, Winter explained how heavy fog quickly descended to shroud their movements until their mission was accomplished.
“Suddenly a cloud protected us,” he said, referring to clouds the Bible says guided the ancient Israelites as they wandered in the desert. “Clouds of glory.”
Winter said that only when the soldiers were in a secure position, the fog finally lifted.
“It really was a fulfillment of the verse ‘For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to give you victory,’” he said, quoting Deuteronomy (see Deuteronomy 1:30).


Friday, August 8, 2014

MIGHTY MAN OF VALOR

 

And the angel of the Lord appeared to [Gideon], and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor’” (Judges 6:12, ESV). The angel uttered these words and for a moment the earth stopped in its orbit. The wind died, the birds stopped chirping, and the world went silent and still. This was an angel of heaven talking to the frightened man down in the hole in the ground and calling him a “mighty man of valor.” All of nature knew that something was going on here, because in the natural Gideon was about as far removed from being a “mighty man of valor” as one could be.

The year was about 1256 B.C. and the Midianites were making life miserable for the Jewish nation. In the roughly 200 years since Joshua had led the victorious nation into the Promised Land, Israel had turned from their wholehearted devotion to God and become stubborn, rebellious and compromised. Israel was given opportunity after opportunity to make things rights and like farm animals, they returned to the mud and grime of disobedient living.

Because of the disobedience of Israel, God allowed them to be oppressed by their enemies. Out of the desert came a raiding tribe of nomads, the Midianites. They were cruel, relentless raiders who were so persistent in devastating the Jews that they finally drove them into hiding where they lived in constant fear.

It was during this time of oppression that Gideon was in a winepress (essentially a large hole in the ground) trying to thresh enough wheat to feed his family. To thresh wheat by hand required a little wind so that as the kernels of wheat were separated from the stock, they would fall to the ground and the chaff would be blown away by the wind. A simple lesson of life is that you do not thresh wheat where there is no possibility of wind but, in fear, that is what Gideon was trying to do.

I think that when the angel uttered the words about valor, the angel had to stifle a laugh because the scene before him was not that of Davy Crockett at the Alamo or General George Patton charging up his troops for the push into Germany in WWII. It was more like Pee Wee Herman playing in a sandbox. The incongruity of the depiction of Gideon as a “mighty man of valor” and the obvious timidity and fright of the man in the winepress (hole in the ground) was startling.

When I graduated from college I had no idea where I would fit for service in God’s Kingdom. It seemed like I learned to find where God wanted me to be by listening to the no’s that came to me from heaven. Several churches extended invitations for us to join their staff but as we prayed, heaven would say, “No, that’s not for you.” Eventually an opportunity appeared that God approved and in naked obedience we responded positively. We were on our way toward what God had in store for our lives in the ministry. Of all the invitations we received, the one God told us to say yes to seemed to have the least possibility. Our yes was made in obedience and it was that act that opened the door to our future. Exactly one year later we received an invitation from David Wilkerson to move to New York and join him in his fledgling crusade ministry.

Did you know that God already has a chapter in His book on you? “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed” (Psalm 139:16, NLT). I believe there are three pictures of you in that chapter in His book. One is a picture of you before you came to Christ; one is a picture of you now and one is a picture of you in the future. The future picture is the fulfillment of what God has in mind for you and for your life as you walk in harmony with Him and His will.

When the angel stood on the edge of the hole and looked down at Pee Wee threshing wheat, covered in dust, dirt and sweat, that is not what he saw. Yes, that was what was standing in the hole but what the angel saw, by faith, was the man that God would use to lead Israel out of the pit they were in and into freedom. God didn’t need a John Wayne type who was filled with false bravado, who relied on his own strength and smarts. God wanted a man who had no confidence in his flesh and simply wanted to please the Lord. That was the man that the angel saw in the hole.

God sees us not as we are but as we can be!

“God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise.  And He chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28, NLT).

That’s how God used Gideon and that means God can use me, He can use you—He can use all of us!



Friday, August 1, 2014

DIG A LITTLE DEEPER


Soon after the old miner died, some of his relatives came to collect whatever he had of value. They arrived to find a simple miner’s shack with a primitive outhouse behind it deep in the mountains of Colorado. There was no electricity and no running water. Inside the shack was his mining equipment along other basics: a table and chair; single bed; pot-bellied stove; coffeepot;  cooking pot; a few clothes; a few books; a small supply of groceries; and a well-used kerosene lamp.

The family gathered up the miner’s simple possessions and loaded them into a truck. As they prepared to leave, one of the man’s old friends stopped by and asked if he might take something from the shack that would remind him of his friend. The family responded that they had retrieved everything but if there was anything left that he wanted to take, he was welcome to do so.

After the family left, the man slowly made his way to his deceased friend’s worn-out little cabin. He stood in the doorway for a time looking inside and remembering all the time he had spent there. He glanced around and then made his way over to a corner of the room. Bending down, he pried up several boards and then, from the space beneath the floor, he lifted out many small bags of gold that his friend had mined over the previous decades. The bags held a treasure worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For years the deceased miner had worked his claim and with patience and dogged persistence he pursued gold. Some days he returned to his shack with a smile on his face, a spring in his step, and an ounce or two of gold in the little sack in his pocket. But more often than not he returned to the shack with very few or no nuggets. Whenever he found gold, however, it went into one of his little sacks and was carefully hidden away. Only his best friend knew where the treasure was stored.

Mining was not easy work, certainly not like panning for gold in a stream. This was digging into the side of a mountain and searching for the gold that was locked away in solid rock from where it had to be extracted. 
Mining for gold like this is very much like digging for truth in Scripture. If the old Colorado mountain miner had settled only for what gold lay on the surface, he never would have left a fortune.

Matthew 7:7: “Keep on seeking, and you will find” (NLT). “Seek” means to strive, to earnestly search for something that is lost or hidden.
  
The miner’s family came, cleaned out what they found in his cabin and then left. In the same way, many Christians are satisfied with what they find in casual reading of Scripture, with what is on the surface. Yes, there is some really good truth lying there but there is more, much more if we take the time to dig, to meditate, to linger in the Word and in God’s presence.

This Book of the Law (the Word of God) shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8, ESV). Why do you think God instructed Joshua the way He did?

We see Paul’s instruction to Timothy: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15, ESV).

And then there was Solomon’s instruction: “Whoever gives thought to the word (listens to instruction) will discover good (will prosper)” (Proverbs 16:20, ESV).

One day all Christians will stand before the Lord, not to be judged but to receive the rewards He will disperse to those who followed Him. Symbolically, the floorboards of our life will be lifted up and whatever nuggets we have stored there will be displayed. The apostle Paul referred to these as evidence of our life as Christ followers in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15:

“Anyone who builds on [the foundation of Jesus Christ] may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames” (NLT).

What is beneath the floorboards of your life? Will it survive the fire of His scrutiny?