Archive for the ‘Spiritual Warfare’ Category
When I was a very young minister (more years ago than I care to think about) I was pastoring a tiny pioneer church in Wollongong, on the south coast of New South Wales. In the congregation was a young couple whom I had joined in marriage just a few months before, and who were very new Christians.
One day the young husband approached me, looking very concerned. “Pastor Lynn,” he said, squirming awkwardly. “Someone told me the other day that we should put the “blood line” around our property. How do we do that? Do we need to kill a chicken or something?… ” Trying hard to suppress a chuckle at his innocence, I explained to him about the blood of Jesus.
People who have not been brought up in Christianity find it bizarre when we talk about the blood. Some have even accused the Christian faith of being a “butcher shop” religion. Sadly, even within the Church some find the blood too hard a concept to handle. I was recently visiting a church for their Sunday night service. The pastor talked about the sinless life of Jesus, and said that we are saved by that life. “Jesus looks at Fred,” he said, “and says, ‘Father, I like him’, so Father God says, “O.K., he can come in.” This was a most dreadful perversion of the Gospel, and I left vowing never to go to that church again.
The truth is, we are not saved by Jesus’ life. Jesus’ life demonstrates to us how man can and should live, if he is filled with and dependent upon the Holy Spirit. But if Jesus had just lived on earth for a time, and then been caught back to heaven without passing through death, His life would have been to us much as the Law was to the people of Israel in the Old Testament: a pointer to an unattainable standard which offered us nothing that would enable us to reach that standard.
Something else was needed first, and that something was death, the shedding of blood. God had set the death penalty for sin, and His justice demanded that penalty be paid. We are not saved by Jesus’ perfect life, but by the fact that He went to the Cross, shed His blood, and paid that death penalty on our behalf. Because of His shed blood, our sins are forgiven. Because our sins are forgiven we are reconnected with the life of God, and He sends the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts. When we have the Holy Spirit living within – and only then – we are able to live as Jesus lived, by allowing the Spirit to live His life through us.
So, what about my young friend and the blood line? In the Old Testament, at the Passover, the people were told to kill a lamb. Some of the lamb’s blood was to be daubed on the door posts and lintels of their home, and they were to eat the lamb inside the house. When the angel of death came through the land to kill all the firstborn – the final plague that God brought against the Egyptians to convince them to let the Israelites go – he would see the blood and pass over that house.
This sacrifice was symbolic of the far greater sacrifice that was to come, that of Christ on the Cross. Just as the blood of the Passover lamb provided protection for the people of Israel, so the blood of Jesus provides protection for anyone who will receive Him. It protects us from the attack of the devil, when he comes and accuses us, because we can now tell him that the sins he is trying to dredge up have been forgiven because of the blood of Jesus.
It also protects us from the kind of demonic attacks that would try to harm us or damage our property, because the blood of Jesus has brought us into covenant relationship with God. That covenant relationship means that God has committed Himself to defending us.
When we “place the blood line” around a property, we are simply declaring that this territory is under God’s protection, because the blood of Jesus has been shed for us. The blood of Jesus is the only antidote to sin, and is the source of our authority over the enemy.
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This blog is © copyright Lynn Fowler.
There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:51 Timothy 2:5
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5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
WP-Bible plugin)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9Colossians 2:9
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9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,
WP-Bible plugin)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11Philippians 2:9-11
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9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name;
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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This blog was in the Christian Carnival at http://rodneyolsen.net/2008/10/christian-carnival-247.html
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Eph. 6:12Eph. 6:12
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12 For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
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Often in our Christian walk we find people are opposed to us. They may ridicule us or ostracize us. They may thwart our plans and make our lives difficult. If we live in one of the countries where Christians are in a minority, they may do far worse, denying us employment or education, even throwing us into prison and killing us.
As we face that opposition, however mild or severe it may be, we need to understand that our primary problem is not the people, but the forces that lie behind them. Certainly, the people have a free will and have chosen to align themselves with those forces. But having made that choice, they are now captives. (What, you’ve never made a wrong choice in your life?)
What lies behind them is nothing less than the army of satan – an army which has its generals and commanders, and ranks right down to the lowest private (demon). This army is highly organized, mercilessly disciplined, and bent on just one thing: world domination. In the effort to achieve that end, its forces will manipulate and maneuver the people who are available to it to attack the people of God in every possible way.
The closer we get to the return of Jesus, the more active the forces of satan are in the world. I see it as I read the news from the persecuted church: more Christians are suffering torture, imprisonment and death for their faith today than have at any other time in church history.
If we try only to deal with the human side of the equation, we are only putting Band-aids on a cancer. The truth is, Jesus Christ defeated satan at the Cross. Satan continues to get away with his attack on God’s people only because we are silly enough to waste our time battling with people, instead of standing in the victory that Jesus has already won for us, taking up the Sword of the Spirit, and tearing down the demonic strongholds that are our real opponents.
Called to Battle Spiritual Warfare Seminar
Find it at http://christianspiritualwarfaregtk.com
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There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:51 Timothy 2:5
English: World English Bible - WEB
5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
WP-Bible plugin)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9Colossians 2:9
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,
WP-Bible plugin)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11Philippians 2:9-11
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name;
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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“Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6:10Matthew 6:10
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10 Let your Kingdom come. Let your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
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We all know these words so well. Many of us pray them every day – in some cases, several times a day – as part of what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. Yet I wonder whether we really think about what we are saying.
Jesus made it quite clear that He had come to establish a kingdom. His ministry was ushered in by John the Baptist, proclaiming “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” (Matt 3:2Matt 3:2
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2 “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”
WP-Bible plugin), and Jesus began His own ministry with those same words (Matt 4:17Matt 4:17
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17 From that time, Jesus began to preach, and to say, “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
WP-Bible plugin). He was crucified, albeit mockingly, as “King of the Jews.” In between, He lived the lifestyle and taught the precepts of a Kingdom unlike any the world has ever seen.
What is a kingdom? Very simply, it is a group of people governed by a king. It is not subject to geographical boundaries, for wherever the people of the kingdom remain under the king’s government, there is the kingdom. It is only when the people of the kingdom submit themselves to a different government, that they cease to be part of the kingdom, and the kingdom ceases to be represented.
Jesus showed us clearly what the Kingdom of God is about in the second part of this verse: it is about God’s will. God’s Kingdom is a people who live according to God’s will. Every inhabitant of heaven lives perfectly according to God’s will in every area. That is the ideal, also, for this earth. The more closely God’s people here on earth live to that ideal, the more fully God’s Kingdom is established on earth.
So what is God’s will? It is not something arbitrary, outside of God Himself, but is tied to His character. God is holy, so His will is that His people should live in holiness. He is love, so His will is that His people should live in love. This much is obvious.
Perhaps it is not so obvious that Kingship is also part of God’s nature. Kingship is not something that was bestowed upon Him. He did not inherit it through a line of succession. Nor was He voted in to the position of King. To be King is part of His nature – if He were not King, He would not be God.
His Kingship was further enforced and established by Jesus victory at Calvary.
That means that He rules over everything. Every being, every power, every force in heaven, earth and hell must bow the knee before Him. What is the significance of that in the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth, for which Jesus commanded us to pray? Simply this: satan and all his forces are subject to God as King. They have been once and all defeated at the Cross. Every time we allow the enemy to prevail in any area of our lives or the lives of those around us, we are failing to establish God’s Kingdom in that situation.
If we want to know what the Kingdom of God should look like on earth, then we need only look at heaven. Is there injustice in heaven? Is there oppression? Poverty? Sickness? If not, then it has no place in the Kingdom on earth. We need to take up our spiritual weapons, and the authority that has been given to us in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and enforce the victory of Jesus over the spirit of injustice, oppression, poverty, sickness, and whatever else defies the rule of the King of kings.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Called to Battle Spiritual Warfare Seminar
Find it at http://christianspiritualwarfaregtk.com
Free e-course: Put on the Armor of God
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There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:51 Timothy 2:5
English: World English Bible - WEB
5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
WP-Bible plugin)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9Colossians 2:9
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,
WP-Bible plugin)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11Philippians 2:9-11
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name;
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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A couple of days ago I was listening to a DVD lent to me by a friend. I won’t give the speaker’s name, but I was greatly disturbed by what he had to say.
Let me start by saying that, as long as he kept to the role of teacher, he was quite good. Unfortunately, he was not prepared to remain in that role, and kept trying to venture into the office of prophet: and every time he did, he became an accuser of the brethren.
In the two messages I watched (there were five more in the series, which I didn’t even bother with) he repeatedly named both individuals and organizations that he claimed were away from God. He did this giving very little reason for his judgments, and in the few cases where he did give explanations they frequently related to events in the individual’s life before he or she was born again.
Now I am the first to acknowledge that there are many things in the church today that are not according to the Word of God, and that should not be acceptable to the people of God. I am also the first to say that, in relation to the “revivals” of the last fifteen years or so, there has been much accompanying them that has not been of God. In fact, for a while I left the Pentecostal movement because of the excesses that came with the Toronto revival. And yes, I very definitely believe that we should be willing to expose false teaching and ungodly practice.
That does not, however, mean that we can write off entire movements as “not of God”. The fact that there are counterfeits and excesses may actually be evidence that the movement itself is of God – you can only counterfeit that which is real. (Ever seen a counterfeit $99 note? Nope – because there are no real $99 notes!)
Nor does it mean that we have the right to attack individuals. Something about “judge not lest you also be judged”! There is a great difference between saying that what someone is doing or teaching is wrong, and saying that the person himself is not of God or is unsaved.
What does this have to do with spiritual warfare? Simply this: the Word tells us that the devil is the accuser of the brethren. (Rev. 12:10Rev. 12:10
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10 I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now is come the salvation, the power, and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ; for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night.
WP-Bible plugin) When we accuse the brethren, we are standing on the devil’s side against the Body of Christ. We cannot be on both sides of the battle at once: either we are in God’s army, or we are in the devil’s.
Satan does his job as accuser very well. He really does not need the Body of Christ to help him with it. In our warfare we should be seeking to pull our brothers and sisters out of the devil’s clutches, not condemn them to hell with him. By all means, denounce ungodly practices and false teaching; but when it comes to our brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t tear them down – just pray for them that God will bring them into truth.
Called to Battle Spiritual Warfare Seminar
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There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:51 Timothy 2:5
English: World English Bible - WEB
5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
WP-Bible plugin)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9Colossians 2:9
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,
WP-Bible plugin)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11Philippians 2:9-11
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name;
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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The fledgling church had gathered in Jerusalem following the ascension of the Lord into heaven. Their first order of business was to appoint someone to stand with the twelve apostles, replacing Judas. Speaking to the assembled group, Peter told them that the one appointed had to be someone who had been with Jesus throughout the time of His earthly ministry, and that the purpose of the appointment was that he should be, with them, a witness to the resurrection of Christ.
Whilst this was specific to the appointment of the twelfth apostle, it is also applicable to us. We, living two thousand years after, cannot claim to have physically witnessed the great event of the resurrection. Yet our very existence as Christians is witness to it. Imagine if the Biblical account closed with the placing of Jesus’ body in the tomb! What we would have would be no more than a particularly sad, and particularly inspiring, martyrdom. Other than stirring our hearts, it would not have the power to change us. We would have no assurance that Christ’s death was in our place, or if it was that it had been acceptable to the Father. We would never have heard, either individually or corporately, those words, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” It would be like a man who won a victory over his enemy, but died before he could tell anyone about his triumph.
Fortunately, the Bible does not leave us at the cross, or even at the tomb. It takes us on to Easter morning, and from there to the ascension and Pentecost. We know that through His death Jesus bore all our sins, paid in full the price of our redemption, and defeated satan and all his hordes. We know it because the resurrection proves it. The resurrection tells us that our God is alive, and that we are safe to put our trust in Him.
So why is it that so many Christians live at the cross? Don’t get me wrong. The cross is and always will be central to our faith. I love all those old hymns – The Old Rugged Cross, Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross, Lead Me to Calvary – the ones we very rarely sing these days, even in churches where they sing hymns rather than choruses. Yet the cross is only half the story. The cross dealt with our death, but the resurrection assures us of life. Not only life, but a totally different dimension of life. After Jesus’ resurrection, He was recognizably the same person. But He was also recognizably different. He still had “flesh and bones”, but He could walk through walls.
When we live with an attitude that the best we can expect from our Christian life is an endless cycle of sin-repentance-forgiveness; when we accept regular rhythms of defeat and picking ourselves up to start again; when we regard powerlessness as normal; we are living on the wrong side of the resurrection. That’s bad for us, but it’s even worse for the world to which we are supposed to be witnesses of the resurrection.
That world is all-to-familiar with dead, powerless gods. They need to see that our God – the true God – is alive, victorious and powerful. They will only see it, as they see it in us.
Some time ago, as we were praying over Glory to the King Ministries International and the Apostolic Network, the Lord gave us a word that He wanted to release over the Network an anointing of a martyr heart. He gave us the Scripture from Revelation 12:11Revelation 12:11
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11 They overcame him because of the Lamb’s blood, and because of the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their life, even to death.
WP-Bible plugin, “They overcame him (satan) by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death.” I saw a great army rising up, an army which is the end time church, an army which will be absolutely unstoppable because they have nothing left to lose.
What is a martyr heart? In our world today there are those of some world religions who call themselves martyrs, but they are not really so. Their heart is not a willingness to lay down their own lives, but a desire to destroy the lives of others – and if, in doing that, they have to lose their own lives, then they are willing.
The martyr heart which the Lord wants to give us – not just GTK Apostolic Network, but the whole end time church – is very different. We must be willing to lay down our lives, not in order to destroy as many others as we can with us, but to bear witness to our Lord and Saviour. We are to be martyrs not to bring death, but to bring life.
To have a martyr heart does not just mean being willing to face physical death. Some will face that ultimate decision, many will not. All of us need to have the same kind of heart that Jesus had. Before Jesus ever faced the Sanhedrin, before He endured the whip and the thorns, before the nails secured Him to the cross, He had entered repeated levels of death.
Just being born, for Jesus, was a form of death. For all eternity He had enjoyed the love and fellowship of the Father and the Holy Spirit. He had rejoiced in infinite power, infinite knowledge and infinite holiness. He had filled all of existence, unlimited in space or time. From the beginning of creation He had been acclaimed, honored and worshiped by the host of heaven and the creatures of the earth. Yet to rescue the one species on earth that did not serve Him faithfully – man – He laid all that aside, died to all His power and prerogatives, and became a helpless infant. He did not love His life as God so much that He was unwilling to lay it down. That’s a martyr heart.
Do we have position, power, privilege? Do we reason that it has been given to us by God, and therefore we should not have to let it go? Do we cling to it, offended that anyone would even suggest that we may need to step down? God wants to give us a heart which will willingly lay aside all that is ours, in order that we may rescue those who are perishing without Christ.
In coming to earth, Jesus left the perfect world with which He was so familiar, to come into a world which was totally alien to Him. A world made filthy by sin. A world made ugly by man’s hate and greed. A world thrown into chaos by man’s disobedience. Have you ever pondered how uncomfortable this world must have been for the sinless Son of God? How difficult it must have been for Him to live with the attitudes and behaviors of even the best of His friends and acquaintances, never mind those who blatantly opposed Him? He had to die to His own comfort, in a sense even to His own standards of acceptability – not that those standards were ever lowered.
Do we hold on to our comfort, clinging to what is familiar? Do we feel it would be beneath our dignity to walk among those who do not conform to our standards? Do we have trouble tolerating the shortcomings of others? God wants to give us a heart which is willing to die to those things we hold most dear, in order to reach those very people.
Scripture tells us that Jesus “became obedient.” Not that He had ever been disobedient, but because He had never before known what it was to have to obey. There was no disharmony between Him and the Father, so His life in eternity had not been a matter of obedience. With the Father and the Spirit, He had framed the laws by which the universe operated. From the beginning of creation, He had been the one who was obeyed. Now, He was placed in a position of subjection, not only to the Father, but to His earthly mother and stepfather, and to the governing authorities of both Israel and Rome. He had to learn to choose to follow the will of another, even when that will was contrary to His own, even when He knew that what was being asked of Him was mistaken, or foolish, or unnecessary. That obedience reached its ultimate conclusion at Gethsemane when, with every fibre of His human nature screaming that it should not be so, He nonetheless bowed before the Father’s will and accepted the cup of human sin and guilt. That was a death far more potent than the physical death which He was about to face.
Do we cling fiercely to our own will? Do we want to “do it our way”? God wants to give us a heart which will be totally submitted to Him, willing to accept His will, plans and purposes for our lives even when everything in us wants something different.
In short, God wants a people who are dead: dead to their own power and privilege, dead to their own comfort, dead to their own will. When we come to that point, the question of whether we are willing to face physical death becomes a non-issue.
There is a story of a young man in the 19th Century who was going as a missionary to one of the wild countries of Africa. Some of his friends were horrified, and tried hard to dissuade him. “You could be killed!” they told him. His reply was simple: “I am already dead. I died when I came to Christ. Whether He chooses to allow this body to continue on earth or not, is His prerogative.” That’s a martyr’s heart.
Have you ever noticed how, even though our friendships may be filled with fun and laughter, we grow closest to those with whom we have walked through difficulties? Suffering, whether our own or that of someone close to us, has the ability to strip away all the trivialities and focus on the things that really matter.
We can be sure that Christianity was never meant to be a “long-faced religion.” Joy is one of the fruit of the Spirit, and when we consider the incredible gift of salvation that is ours in Christ, we have more reason than any people on the face of the earth to rejoice.
However, there is a difference between joy and frivolity. Sadly many in the Church today seem to have embraced a version of Christianity that is all froth and bubble, with little or no substance beneath the foam. Much of the modern understanding of God confuses Him with Santa Claus – a benign grandfatherly figure whose function in life is to provide us with whatever we want. It is a concept far removed from the God of the Bible.
In fact, there is even a difference between joy and happiness. Happiness depends on the things that happen to us. It is ephemeral, here one moment and gone the next. Joy, on the contrary, has substance. It is firmly tied to our relationship with the Lord, and does not desert us just because things don’t happen to be going the way we would like them to go.
It is this substance that makes joy big enough to accommodate the reality of suffering. We can know that no matter what things we may have to walk through, our joy will remain in tact because it is not centered on those things but on the Lord.
More than that, our relationship with the Lord can make it a joy to actually embrace suffering for His sake.
Paul wrote, “I want to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His suffering…” (Phil 3:10Phil 3:10
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10 that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed to his death;
WP-Bible plugin) Most of us today would agree wholeheartedly with the first two sentiments. We want to know Christ – Christ the Saviour, Christ the Healer, Christ the Deliverer, Christ the Comforter. We want to experience the power of His resurrection in our lives – the power of victory over satan, death and destruction, the power of a new beginning.
Yet Paul pressed toward something deeper. He wanted that kind of relationship which comes only from having stood with another through pain and anguish. That relationship may come as a result of us standing with another in his suffering, of another standing with us in our pain, or of us standing together through the fire.
Likewise that deeper level of fellowship with the Lord can come in several ways. It can come by a revelation of the Holy Spirit, making Jesus’ sufferings powerfully real to us. I remember a day 15 years ago on a beach in Brighton, England, when the Spirit caused me to walk through the whole of Christ’s human experience, from the time He laid aside His divine power and prerogatives to take on human flesh, to the time when He ascended again to be enthroned at the Father’s right hand. At every point the emphasis came: “He did this for me! He did this for me!”
It may come through intercession, as the Lord allows you to feel a tiny part of His suffering on behalf of man, and at the same time to feel the suffering of man in need of God, and as it were to bring the two together in your own body.
It may come as you personally suffer for your faith, choosing to stand for Christ rather that back down and save yourself from persecution. I recently read of a brother in one of the countries where Christians suffer persecution. A convert from another religion, he had been beaten severely over an extended period of time. Seeking out the missionaries through whom he had found Christ, he told them joyfully that, whereas he had previously thought that he was a disciple of Christ, now he knew he was because His Saviour had allowed him the great privilege of suffering for Him!
What sort of relationship do you want with the Lord? Are you content with a “fair-weather friendship”? Or would you prefer something deeper, something with substance, something which can never be shaken? If your answer is the latter, then join Paul in his plea to share in “the fellowship of His sufferings.”
We have been doing some cleaning up around the hall where we meet for church. An old Scout hall, it has been sadly neglected for a long time, and what were once garden beds are very much overgrown weed patches. Unfortunately, predominant among the weeds is blackberry.
Blackberry is a particularly aggressive weed. Most garden plants – and even most weeds – are content to sit where they are, going through their life cycle in one spot, and relying on their seeds to spread their presence further afield. Not blackberry. It grows rapidly, and can put down a new set of roots just about anywhere where a stalk touches the ground. It can take over whole gardens in no time at all. There are stories of people finding complete buildings buried under massive blackberry patches.
When I was a kid, I thought blackberries were wonderful. We would dress up in our oldest, thickest clothes and our sturdiest shoes, and set off with buckets for the blackberry patches in the local bushland. I knew of a couple of particularly fruitful ones, and it was very rarely that we came back with anything less than a bucket of berries – often, we had several buckets.
Sure, we had scratches galore, and the odd embedded thorn, but the feast of those luscious berries was, to our young minds, more than worth the price.
Strange how our perspectives change. I still love the taste of blackberries, but as I attacked those thorn bushes this morning, I saw them as nothing but very annoying weeds. I saw them also as something of a metaphor for the work of sin in the world.
Like blackberry, sin bears fruit that, to the immature, seems wonderfully attractive. Yes, we may recognize that the very thing we find so attractive is hurting and scarring us, but the price seems little compared to the pleasure.
But, like blackberry, sin is an aggressive weed in our lives. It is not content to sit in one spot and “bloom where it is planted.” No, it spreads out, ever claiming more ground in our lives, and turning what had been fruitful areas into unproductive prickle patches.
Blackberry is particularly difficult to eradicate. This morning the best I could do was to cut it back, chasing the prickly stems back to the ground and chopping them off. It is only a stop-gap measure, and very soon the blackberry will begin to grow back. Pulling them out by the roots is just about impossible. Apart from their very tenacious hold on the soil, even one small bit of root left in the ground will soon send forth shoots to begin a whole new blackberry patch.
No, the only way to deal with blackberry is to poison it.
Sin is much the same. We chop it back in one area of our lives, and next thing we know it has popped up somewhere else. Before we can even turn around again, the sin that we cut back is again beginning to sprout. Likewise, pulling sin out by the roots is an almost impossible task. We just don’t have the strength to do it, and even if we have some measure of success, in no time we find that old root is again beginning to send forth shoots.
Sin, like blackberry, needs to be poisoned.
What is poison to sin? The blood of Jesus, for a start. It prevents sin from setting its fruits of destruction. Then there is the Word of God. When we commit ourselves, as Jesus did, to live according to the Word no matter what, we put a covering over our lives that makes it impossible for sin to spread and put down new roots. There is the powerful poison of repentance. It goes right to the root of sin and makes it shrivel in the ground. Prayer and the life of the Spirit work together to remove sin and replace it with the character of God.
It’s hard work clearing blackberry, but far better than seeing a whole garden disappear under a prickle patch. It’s even harder work clearing the sin from our lives, but infinitely more satisfying.
Stress – it’s the buzz word of our modern society. It seems everyone suffers from it, from the busy executive working 70 hour weeks to the housewife coping with the demands of children and husband to the student overpressured by homework and exams. Many of our modern diseases are, if not caused, then certainly exacerbated by stress.
Yet stress is not really new. In 2 Cor. 1:82 Cor. 1:8
English: World English Bible - WEB
8 For we don’t desire to have you uninformed, brothers, The word for “brothers” here and where context allows may also be correctly translated “brothers and sisters” or “siblings.” concerning our affliction which happened to us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, so much that we despaired even of life.
WP-Bible plugin, the apostle Paul writes “We were under great stress, far beyond our ability to cope. We despaired even of life.” Paul’s stressors, of course, were very different from ours – his were shipwrecks, beatings, persecutions, imprisonments (somehow I think I prefer mine!) However, Paul rose above them, and in doing so he gave us a way to rise above our own.
Firstly, Paul acknowledged that he couldn’t cope. There are things which we simply can’t handle on our own. To acknowledge this is not a sign of weakness. In order to tap into God’s power, the first thing we have to do is to need it. (If we think we can stand on our own, God will let us try till we find we can’t.) In fact, Paul said that the pressure came to stop him from relying on himself and cause him to rely on God (v.9).
Secondly, Paul declared that in spite of all appearances, God’s promises stand. (v20). What God has said He is, He is. What God has said He will do, He will do. No matter if the world is falling apart around us, no matter if God seems to have retreated to the outermost corner of the universe, no matter if every man on earth and every demon in hell is against us, God has said He will never leave us nor forsake us, so He will not.
Sometimes we simply have to cling to that truth in blind faith.
Thirdly, Paul acknowledged that the battle is already won. In Chapter 2 vs 14 he gives a picture of a Roman triumphal procession. Now, this did not happen as the army was going out to wage war. It happened as they returned home, victory won and the spoils in their possession. Jesus is not going to win the battle with Satan at some time in the future – He has already won it at Calvary. We are already victors in Him – we simply have to enforce that victory in our circumstances.
The skirmishes we fight today are much like the small enclaves of Japanese soldiers who, for years after the end of World War II, were being found on isolated islands. They had no idea that the war was over and they had lost. In holding their positions they could, and sometimes did, inflict casualties, but they could never win the war. The devil is in exactly the same position with Christians today.
Finally, Paul tells us to keep an eternal perspective. It always amazes me that in Chapter 4 vs 17 he can describe his troubles as “light and momentary”, but he is looking beyond this world. In all the ups and downs of life, one thought has kept me going more than any other: “this too will pass”. If there are bad times, there will eventually be light at the end of the tunnel – even if we have to dodge a few oncoming trains along the way. If there are good times, they too will pass – so we shouldn’t get too comfortable.
Most importantly of all, in a thousand years time very little of what we are experiencing today will matter at all. What will matter is the relationship with Jesus Christ that sustains us through it.