Posted by: jakinnan | September 12, 2013

Identifying the Real Enemy

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“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).

Sometimes in the heat of battle we might lose perspective on who the real enemy is. Ephesians 6:12 reminds us that our struggle isn’t against sinful people, but against the evil system and the supernatural forces that influence their attitudes and actions.

In his assault on the kingdom of God, Satan has assembled a highly organized army of fallen angels. Paul categorized them as “rulers . . . powers . . . world forces of this darkness . . . spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).

That isn’t a detailed description of Satan’s hierarchy but simply a general indication of its power and sophistication. Apparently “rulers” and “powers” are high- ranking demons. “World forces of this darkness” are possibly demons who infiltrate various political systems of the world, attempting to direct human leaders to oppose God’s plans. An example is a demon called “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” in Daniel 10:13. He withstood God’s angelic messenger to Daniel until Michael the archangel came to the rescue.

“Spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” perhaps refers to demons involved in the most vile and perverted kinds of sins: gross immorality, occultic practices, Satan worship, and the like.

Those who reject Christ and God are unwitting prisoners of war–captured and mobilized by the enemy to accomplish his purposes. Tragically, when he’s finished with them he’ll abandon them to an eternal hell.

You probably know unbelievers who enjoy ridiculing your faith and making life difficult for you. Although that is hard to take, be patient and don’t become embittered toward them. Ask God to make you an instrument of His love as you reach out to them. Also pray that God will remove their spiritual blindness so they can see beyond Satan’s lies and recognize their need for a Savior.

Suggestions for Prayer:

 

  • Praise God for delivering you from the domain of darkness and transferring you into the kingdom of His beloved Son (Col. 1:13).
  • Ask Him to use you today to break through Satan’s deception in someone’s life.

– John MacArthur

Photo: Tami A. Heilemann

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 12, 2013

The Worst of all Possible Reactions

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The heart, as Pascal said, “has its reasons that reason knows not of.” Something in us longs, or hopes, maybe even at times believes that this is not the way things were supposed to be. Our desire fights the assault of death upon life. And so people with terminal illnesses get married. Prisoners in a concentration camp plant flowers. Lovers long divorced still reach out in the night to embrace one who is no longer there. Its like the phantom pain experienced by those who have lost a limb. Feelings still emanate from that region where once was a crucial part of them, and they will sometimes find themselves being careful not to bang the corner of a table or slam the car door on a leg or arm long since removed. Our hearts know a similar reality. At some deep level, we refuse to accept the fact that this is the way things are, or must be, or always will be.

Simone Weil was right, there are only two things that pierce the human heart: beauty and affliction. Moments we wish would last forever and moments we wish had never begun. What are we to make of these messengers? How are we to interpret what they are saying? As the playwright Christopher Fry wrote,

The inescapable dramatic situation for us all is that we have no idea what our situation is. We may be mortal. What then? We may be immortal. What then? We are plunged into an existence fantastic to the point of nightmare, and however hard we rationalize, or however firm our religious faith, however closely we dog the heels of science or wheel among the starts of mysticism, we cannot really make head or tail of it.

And what does Fry say we do with our dilemma? The worst of all possible reactions:

We get used to it. We get broken into it so gradually we scarcely notice it.

– John Eldredge, Desire

Photo: K. Cieszkiewicz

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 12, 2013

09/12/2013 Scripture

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I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together with the same purpose. And both will be rewarded for their own hard work. For we are both God’s workers. And you are God’s field. You are God’s building.

-1 Corinthians 3:6-9 NLT

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 11, 2013

It Will Be Messy

Storm.

The family is…like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy.

Chesterton could have been talking about a little fellowship (our true family, because it is the Family of God). It is a royal mess. I will not whitewash this. It is disruptive. Going to church with hundreds of other people to sit and hear a sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That’s why most folks prefer it. Because community will. It will reveal where you have yet to become holy, right at the very moment you are so keenly aware of how they have yet to become holy. It will bring you close and you will be seen and you will be known and therein lies the power and therein lies the danger. Aren’t there moments when all those little companies, in all those stories, hang by a thread? Galadriel says to Frodo, “Your quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.”

We’ve experienced incredible disappointments in our fellowship. We have, every last one of us, hurt one another. Sometimes deeply. Last year there was a night when Stasi and I laid out a vision for where we thought things should be going – our life-long dream for redemptive community. We hoped the Company would leap to it with loud “Hurrahs! Hurrah for John and Stasi!” Far from it. Their response was more on the level of blank stares. Our dream was mishandled – badly. Stasi was sick to her stomach; she wanted to leave the room and throw up. I was…stunned. Disappointed. I felt the dive towards a total loss of heart. The following day I could feel my heart being pulled towards resentment. It’s moments like that which usually toll the beginning of the end for most attempts at community.

– John Eldredge, Waking the Dead

Photo: Chris Crabtree

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 11, 2013

Experience God’s Peace

Green River

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
–Philippians 4:5-7

Notice the two areas of peaceful protection we can expect from our Heavenly Father: our hearts and our minds. God will guard those two parts of us, eighteen inches apart, which seem to conspire against us. If our hearts are troubled, it won’t be long before our minds will be in turmoil. If our thoughts are headed in the wrong direction, our hearts will soon follow. But God’s peace, the assurance of His control, can guard both heart and mind no matter what we are facing.

Right now, there are Christians going through unbelievable things with God’s peace. Their assurance in the face of evil and pain is a testimony that brings glory to God, for it is clear to those watching that something which surpasses all understanding is going on. These Christians are getting supernatural help! Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they are in the furnace, but they are still walking around.

Almost 700 years before Paul wrote to the Philippians, Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were living out this passage in the face of great opposition. They were rejoicing in the Lord always, letting their reasonableness be known to everyone, recognizing the Lord was at hand, and experiencing the peace that far surpassed King Nebuchadnezzar’s understanding. That is, until he saw how God showed up in the furnace!

Think of those young Jewish men standing near a roaring furnace, knowing they were about to be fed to the flames (see Daniel 3:8–30). They weren’t sure they wouldn’t die. Their peace came from being sure that no matter what happened, God would deliver them.

No doubt you long for that calm confidence in your heart. But do you believe that no matter what you are going through, God is in control and working all things for your good? Peace is easy to understand when everything is going well, but not so easy when circumstances get hard. God’s peace is always available, and He wants you to rest in it—especially in seasons of darkness and difficulty. The peace thatsurpasses all understanding is one of the best gifts God has to give!

Remember, you don’t get to choose your furnaces. But you can choose to live rejoicing in the Lord. You can choose to get along with others and practice anxiety-free days as you turn everything over to God with thanksgiving. Even if you don’t fully understand how to go through challenges with a calm, quiet confidence, this will not prohibit God’s ability to give you the gift of peace. And that peace is a powerful way to draw others to the God who has graciously given it.

– James MacDonald

Photo: Connie Haycock

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 11, 2013

09/11/2013 Scripture

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So don’t make judgments about anyone ahead of time—before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is due. For what gives you the right to make such a judgment? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?

-1 Corinthians 4:5 & 7 NLT

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 10, 2013

Vanity Fair

 

12" Powder day in the Teton Village Backcountry

“Don’t be afraid of embracing the disappointment you feel, old or new. Don’t be scared of the unreasonable joy either. They’re the highway markers home.”

We snort with disdain at such quaint sentiments, and our choice made, strike off down the straight highway of discipline and duty. All goes well for a while, sometimes for years, until we begin to realize that we’re really not feeling much anymore. We find ourselves struggling to weep with those who weep or even rejoice with those who rejoice. Mostly we don’t bother looking people in the eye. They may want to engage us and nothing much inside feels very engaged. Our passions begin to show up in inappropriate fantasies and longings interspersed with depression, anxieties, and anger we thought we had left behind. With a start, we realize our heart has stolen away in the baggage. It is taking the journey with us but under protest.

We redouble our efforts at discipline to get it to knuckle under but it refuses. Some of us finally kill it well enough that it no longer speaks as long as we’re occupied. Any quasiredemptive busyness will do. We look as if we’re still believing. Others of us decide the deadness is too high a price to pay and agree to let our heart have a secret life on the side. We even try to be passionate about our faith but the fiery embers that once sustained it have turned to cool gray ash, the evidence that life was indeed once present.

We find ourselves at the same place of heart resignation we left so many years ago before we were Christians. We arrive at the Vanity Fair that John Bunyan describes inThe Pilgrim’s Progress. It is a familiar city populated with many of the companions we had hoped to leave behind: deadness of spirit, lack of loving-kindness, lust, pride, anger, and others. Nonetheless, having been out on the Christian journey for a number of years by now, we assume that this is as close to the Celestial City as we’re ever going to get. We set up housekeeping and entertain ourselves as well as possible at the booths in the Fair that sell a variety of soul curiosities, games, and anesthetics.

The curiosities sold at the fair are endless in their diversity, many of them good in and of themselves: Bible study, community service, religious seminars, hobbies we try to convince ourselves are eternally transcendent (e.g., “Wow, I can’t wait to ski deep powder!”), service to our church, going out to dinner. But we find ourselves doing them more and more to quiet the heart voice that tells us we have given up what is most important to us.

– John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance

Photo: Mark Fisher

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 10, 2013

Communion with God on the Mountain

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And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. – Mark 3:13

Here was sovereignty. Impatient spirits may fret and fume because they are not called to the highest places in ministry; but, reader, learn to rejoice that Jesus calls those He desires. If He leaves me as a doorkeeper in His house, I will cheerfully bless Him for His grace in allowing me to do anything in His service. The call of Christ’s servants comes from above. Jesus stands on the mountain, forever above the world in holiness, zeal, love, and power. Those whom He calls must go up the mountain to Him; they must seek to rise to His level by living in constant communion with Him. They may not be able to achieve classic honors or attain scholastic eminence, but they must, like Moses, go up to the mountain of God and experience intimate communion with the unseen God if they are ever to be fit to proclaim the Gospel of peace.

Jesus went away to hold high fellowship with the Father, and we must enter into the same divine companionship if we want to bless our fellowmen. No wonder that the apostles were clothed with power when they came down fresh from the mountain where Jesus was. This morning we must endeavor to ascend the mount of communion, so that we may be ordained to the lifework for which we are set apart. Let us not see the face of man today until we have met with Jesus. Time spent with Him is time well spent. We will cast out devils and work wonders if we go down into the world clothed with that divine energy that only Christ can give. It is no use going to the Lord’s battle until we are armed with heavenly weapons. We must see Jesus; this is essential. At the mercy-seat we will linger until He makes Himself known to us and until we can truthfully say, “We were with Him on the Holy Mountain.”

– Alistair Begg

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 10, 2013

09/10/2013 Scripture

artisan-bread

Your boasting about this is terrible. Don’t you realize that this sin is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old “yeast” by removing this wicked person from among you. Then you will be like a fresh batch of dough made without yeast, which is what you really are. Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. So let us celebrate the festival, not with the old bread of wickedness and evil, but with the new bread of sincerity and truth.

-1 Corinthians 5:6-8 NLT

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Posted by: jakinnan | September 9, 2013

Perfection Isn’t the Goal. Jesus Is.

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Jesus is inviting us to relax into the beauty he has bestowed upon us and cease striving to attain a level of smooth perfection that looks wonderful on a doll or on a magazine cover but is not attainable in the living, breathing realm of humanity. God does not tell us that the goal is perfection. Perfection in any vital area of our life is not going to happen. There, I said it. Now, we can improve. We can grow. We can become more loving, more grace filled, more merciful. We are no longer bound to sin, slaves to its din of temptation. We are still going to sin. But we don’t have to. The secret is Jesus.

Our hope doesn’t rest on our finally getting it together. Our hope rests in Jesus. Jesus in us. It’s Christ in us, the hope of glory. Paul says, “To them God chose to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). We won’t be perfect on this side of heaven. But Jesus is perfect. Always. We are becoming more holy and true. Jesus already is. His name isn’t “Becoming.” It is “I AM.” Perfection isn’t the goal. Jesus is.

– Stasi Eldredge, Becoming Myself

Photo: T. Schwartz

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