Spiritual Warfare- Your Weapon of Choice

In the medieval days, knights were given swords, those who had proven skill with bows were given bows and a quiver full of arrows, and then there were weapons such as maces, clubs, crossbows, and different swords; each used for different things. In modern times, different types of weapons (grenades, sniper rifles, machine guns, pistols) are given to different soldiers according to their rank and purpose. I don’t know the ins-and-outs of weapons, but I know that shotguns are big strong guns, but they are extremely loud. I also know that sniper rifles are big strong guns, but they are quieter. So you wouldn’t use a shotgun if your mission required stealth, right? In this article, we will focus mainly on what each weapon does; that way, we can be better equipped when it comes time to select and use a weapon.

     

More than likely, you knew everything I just said (and may even be pointing out technical flaws), and you may be wondering just how that relates to the Bible. The Bible is the ultimate armory for spiritual warfare. Look at Hebrews 4:12. I’m not typing out the verse here for a reason, so go and grab your Bible if you didn’t when I just asked you to look up Hebrews 4:12. Now, once you’ve read the verse, fan through the pages of your Bible, not necessarily reading anything, but just noticing the words in it. Think of the Bible as an armory with different weapons in it. Whenever we face a trial, it is like we have been ambushed by the enemy. Which weapon are you going to pull out at that point?

     

When I talk of the different weapons, I mean a verse or a passage that will help you fight the temptation, along with prayer. Did you see all of those pages in your Bible when you (if you) flipped through your Bible? Well, we have a lot of options, so how do we choose?* Just to illustrate my answer to this question, read this illustration:

     

A man walks through the jungle, on guard duty during the Vietnam War. He has two pistols, a grenade, and a knife strapped to his belt and a rifle strapped to his back. He is suddenly ambushed. What does he do? Well, he has several options, and none of them are really “better” than the other.

     

Despite all of his weapons, I’m going to say that he basically has three options:

1. Fight

2. Call for help

3. Both

     

In the article entitled “Spiritual Warfare-Making Allies”, we will talk a bit more about these options, and how we should handle it. For now, just imagine that he chose to fight instead of option two or three. You’re probably scrolling down on your computer or iPad to see how much longer this article is*. Not much longer. Did you catch what I was trying to say with that illustration? No weapon is “better” than another, but I’m going to leave you with a cliff hanger here and say that how we choose our weapon is based on three things:

1. Where you are in your battle

2. What weapon the enemy is using

3. What each weapon does

*Please note that not all passages will apply to us or at least not to where we are in life, but most are applicable in different situations.

*I do that too J

Spiritual Warfare

     Our hearts are the biggest battleground ever. The battle going on there is not between Axis and Allies, but it is a spiritual battle between God and Satan. In the next several articles, I just want you to picture this as a real battle, because even though we cannot see it, it is more real and more important than any war ever fought on earth. I’m just going to run through and give you a quick run-down on the topics of my next few blog articles.

Spiritual Warfare-Your Weapon of Choice

     We are blessed with an entire armory full of weapons for any situation; the Bible. None are necessarily “better” than the others, but it all depends on what you need at that moment. We will just do a quick overview of your weapon choices and other “add-ons”.

Spiritual Warfare-Knowing Your Weapon

     In this article, we’ll look at how to use each one effectively and at the right times. We’ll also have some practical examples of how to use the weapons, and look at what weapons work best in whatever situation you may be in right now.

Spiritual Warfare-Knowing Your Enemy

     We don’t even need a spy to figure out our enemy’s plans, because we have a book of all of his tactics, weapons, and how he uses his tools. With this, we can know how to counter him using our tools.

Spiritual Warfare-Making Allies

     If you are a Christian, the commander of your army is God, and your fellow infantry men (and women) are other Christians, but you have to make close allies, and this means accountability partners, Bible study groups, and the like, which help you in your spiritual fight.

Spiritual Warfare-Fighting the Battle

     How many years old are you? Well your battle has been going on for that long. But how well are you doing in your battle? It won’t be over until you die. So how do we effectively use the tools we have to fight the battle?

     This five-part series will hopefully put a slight dent in the issue of spiritual warfare. The literal sense of warfare helps us picture this a bit more practically, and that is why I have chosen that form. 

Character Qualities of a Christian- Faith

I like starting off my articles with simple questions that turn out to be not so simple, so I mustn’t stop now. What is faith? These three words have challenged me recently to discover the answer to this seemingly simple question. Jim Cymbala describes faith as “total dependence upon God that becomes supernatural in its working”¹. Just to give you a couple visuals, think of faith as an invisible bridge over a canyon that you must leap out onto. If you take that leap, that is faith. For me, it’d take a whole lot of faith to jump out of a plane in the sport known as skydiving. I’d be trusting the guide who was with me, but more importantly the parachute holding me up.

            The popular band Kutless released a song in 2011 called “What Faith Can Do”, and it is just a vivid description of the power of faith. That is just one example of many, many songs written about faith, and even in secular circles, the word and concept of faith is popular. Everybody has faith in something, in fact, we often have faith without even knowing it. Imagine you are out running and get a painful cramp, so you decide to sit down for a moment on a park bench. Stop. Did you see what you just did? You didn’t even examine the park bench to make sure that it was assembled correctly, with every screw in the correct place, you just plopped down on it. Pastor Johnny Aseltine uses this equation to describe faith: faith=dependence.

            Open up your Bible to Hebrews 11, a popular place of reference when talking about faith, but I just want to look two verses here, the first being verse 6. Hebrews 11:6 says “But without faith it is impossible to pleas Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” The second is Hebrew 11:1, “How faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The word ‘substance’ can be used interchangeably in this instance with the word ‘realization’. Realization, in its most basic form is basically the process of something becoming real. So faith is what makes hopes become reality. The second half of that verse is interesting as well. Faith is the ‘evidence’ or ‘confidence’ of things not seen. So faith fills us with confidence about things that are not seen, such as God, although His work is very evident.

            Before moving forward, let’s just take a second and look back over what all that information that I just threw at you was. Let’s just make a small list here:

Faith is _______.

1. Total dependence

2. What makes hopes become reality

3. What gives us confidence about things that cannot be seen

            There you go, that’s my rambling condensed into three points. Now if I can just have two more minutes of your time, I would just like to expand on something I mentioned previously. Everyone has faith in something. Like sitting on a park bench and depending on it not to crumble underneath you, faith in God renders you powerless. Your life is like the control room of a rocket, someone has to be in control. Faith is when we surrender ever button, lever, joystick, and control to God. It doesn’t take a lot of faith to ride in a car with someone else driving, especially if they’re experienced, so… NEWS FLASH! God has way more experience with the controls of lives than any person could possibly have driving a car. When we ride in a car with someone else driving, our temporal/earthly lives are in their hands, but when we let God have the controls, our eternal lives are in his hands. So why is it so hard to have faith in Him?

            Staying with the car idea, imagine that the driver of the car that you are in is speeding and the cop stops you and writes the speeding ticket out. Is he going to give the ticket to you or the driver? The driver gets it, of course, because the driver of a car is responsible for any illegal actions. Well, let me tell you, everyone is going to be given something even worse than a speeding ticket… death. We all will have to pay the price, so are you going to let God be the driver and pay that price for you, or are you going to try to take the price by yourself? As Christians, we need to be totally depending on God for everything we need. So who’s driving your car?

¹ Fresh Faith, Jim Cymbala (1999) page 16

Friendly Reminder!

           I’m not quite sure of the exact date that this took place, but around December 18 (2013), the news that Phil Robertson had been banned from A&E went everywhere. Facebook pages supporting him were established, instantly acquiring several thousand ‘likes’. Articles, pictures, boycotting, and petitions are being tossed around, even now. The endless debates are dominating social media and have been for the past almost a week now. Of course, if you are reading this, you most likely know already about all of this and none of it is new information. This is one of the most touchy issue in the United States right now, and there is no sitting on the fence.

            
            So why do I write this article? What is the point? I’m never going to stop this debate. No one will. So what can I do? Let’s just say that I’m playing Jiminy Cricket right now and I’m just going to drop a little reminder here to Christians out there that are a part of this debate. We should be dealing with this issue graciously, and not be using hate-speech right back at who we would consider our “enemy”. It is wonderful that a Christian man can have several million Christian brothers who back him up when he is attacked unjustly, but there is a chance that we are being as brutal in our accusations as A&E was to Phil Robertson.

            1 Corinthians 13:1-3 reminds us that we may have great intentions, and we may be defending Phil because A&E was wrong, but if we don’t have love, nothing of those things matters. NOTHING we do matters if we don’t have love, so I believe that includes how we deal with non-Christians on this issue. I stand with Phil Robertson and in no way do I support A&E in their decision, because it is a violation of our freedom of speech, and is unacceptable. However, this doesn’t entitle me to a long rant on Facebook about how I’m boycotting the companies that use A&E as an advertising outlet, or how some companies are “sitting on the fence” with this issue, although those things may be true. We should be gracious but firm (yes, it is possible), and take this as an opportunity to be influential, not tear down non-Christians because they haven’t seen the light and understood that gay marriage is a sin. Thanks for reading, that was just a short reminder about how we should, as Christians, deal with this difficult issue.

Character Qualities of a Christian- Thankfulness

What are you thankful for? I’m sure that with thanksgiving this past week, this question has been asked thousands of times. Perhaps it was asked at your table and you answered a generic question such as “my house, my family, my stuff*”, and these are all valid, so don’t get all discouraged, but I’m going to head down a slightly different track. Side note: I saw a picture that said “Only in America do we celebrate thankfulness and then the next day go fight people to get things we don’t have.” This is funny, but also sadly true. I’m also not here to criticize Black Friday, because I enjoy it as well, but we seriously need to take a good look at our thankfulness life. Now, the start to this article is a bit strange, but bear with me, and hopefully you’ll see what I’m getting at.

           

            When are we most thankful? Well, thanksgiving aside, we are generally thankful when someone does something for us. Maybe your parents take you to Disney World, or maybe your little sister does your chores for you when you’re sick, or someone takes you out for pizza randomly, etc. When are we least thankful? Normally when things are going wrong, or when someone messes up a project that you’ve spent seven hours working on, or when you’re two pages from finishing that novel you’ve been reading for two months, and your mom calls you to come and finish a chore. Figure out what is wrong with this scenario: You raked all of the leaves on your ¾ acre yard and are finally sitting down to watch Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and you have just enough time to finish it before you have to go to bed. Then, your mom asks you to help your dad take all of the leaves to the dump before dark. This will take one more grueling hour of work. Is your first response to say, “Thank you so much for having me work for another hour, and allowing me to rake our yard*”?

           

            When is the most important time to be thankful? That’s easy, always! 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22 is entitled (at least in my Bible) “various exhortations” and it is one of my favorite passages (but maybe I’m just weird). If you want a cut-and-dried set of commands, look here!   1 Thessalonians 5:18 is actually one of the longer commands, which says, “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In EVERYTHING, give thanks. That basically means that it doesn’t matter what your day is like, it doesn’t matter how sick you are, it doesn’t matter how poor you are; what matters is that you give thanks. We all have something. Some days it may feel like we don’t have much or don’t have anything, but you always have something to be thankful for.

           

            Thankfulness may seem like a self-focus, but it is actually an outward focus. Thankfulness is not (or shouldn’t be) “look at what I have” but instead, “look at what God has given me, through other people.” When we think we have nothing to be thankful for, that is a lie, and it is a self-focused mentality. I often think of a song entitled “Count Your Blessings” when I think of thankfulness, and that really captures the essence of what thankfulness is. Or in the Doxology when we sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” A lot of times throughout scripture, we see people “giving thanks” and you probably already know that another term for this is “praying”.

           

            Now, this article really boils down into one sentence: thankfulness is an outward-focused expression of gratitude for the blessings provided by God. I’m going to get as practical as possible here, and tell you one thing that you can always be thankful for: Jesus Christ paying the price for our sins by a brutal death on the cross. That, and that alone, is better than the best day a person can have. Thankfulness is defined as “full of thanks or gratitude” and that’s what we, as Christians should be; full of gratitude.

* My guess is that somewhere near 80% of the people who were asked this question answered one of these three answers

* Unless it’s said sarcastically (which I may have done before)

Character Qualities of a Christian- Joy

           I saw a three-pack of stockings, each with a different letter on them, spelling J-O-Y. With the Christmas season coming up, you are about to hear the word “joy” a lot. So what is joy? Is it the largest box under the Christmas tree with your name on it? Is it spending Christmas with your family that you rarely see? Or could joy possibly be something that we get as a result of our relationship with God? Perhaps you have never experienced joy, and this is all Spanish to you, but bear with me here. Or maybe you think you’ve found joy, but in actuality, you have never actually had joy. Joy is defined as great happiness or something that brings happiness.

            

           Before plunging into a quick overview of joy, I just wanted to put this quote in that really sums up this entire article, “The Holy Spirit stirs in us a joy and peace when we are fixated on Jesus, living by faith, and focused on the life to come.”¹ I stumbled upon this phrase in Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love, and thought it fit very well with the theme of this article. As I considered how to write this article, I contemplated breaking down this statement, but then again, as great as Chan is, he’s not God. So then that led me to ask what Jesus said about joy. I just want to look at what Jesus directly said about joy. Turn to John 16:20, and read it. Jesus says that joy will come in heaven, so does that mean that we cannot have joy on earth? Keep reading in verse 24. This is a popular verse in the Bible, but only the “Ask and you shall receive” part is, and not the part that says “So that your joy may be full”. So start a mental list of how and when we shall receive joy. 1. Asking God for things and receiving them brings us joy.

            

           Moving on (I’m not doing this in chronological order, fyi), or moving back, to John 15:1-11. You probably already know this passage in the Bible, but read it anyway. At the end of all of this, Jesus adds, “Oh yeah, I told you this so that you may have joy” (Author’s paraphrase). I’ve found that sometimes you have to read the Bible backwards as well as frontwards. Look back at what He said should make us joyful. 2. The fact that we are connected to the body of believers that are rooted in Christ should fill us with joy. This is the second point of this article, and it is also the main point of the article. Without being in a local church and growing spiritually, there is NO JOY!

            

           I just want to add one more statement to this, so as to make this list easy to remember, and this one is a little bit different from the others. Look at Luke 15:7-10. Find the word joy in this passage and then try to figure out what we can glean from it. The answer is not exactly clear, but it can be found by looking at Romans 12:15, which says to, “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” If you still have no idea how these verses fit together or even how they coincide with joy, let’s break it down a bit. Jesus says that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents. Well, we’re not in heaven are we? So how does this relate to the topic even slightly? We need to be like the angels; finding joy in the joy of others. A man came home one night to find a new car and a letter informing him of a large raise that he’d been given. In his excitement, he called up his two best friends. The first friend was overjoyed, because he knew that this man had fallen on some hard times financially, and this would be a great help. The man’s other friend bitterly congratulated the man and then hung up. His jealousy won over any feelings of happiness for his friend. 3. We find joy by rejoicing with those who are rejoicing.

            

           That story was fictional, but it showed the two different ways to react to something like that. I think everyone knows what the correct response is, but jealousy often overtakes us. I’ve found it incredibly hard to destroy whatever jealousy creeps into my heart in times where others are rejoicing, but with God’s help, it can be accomplished. So maybe this article could be called “Redefining Joy” because in essence, that’s what I wanted to accomplish, because as Christmas approaches, we receive false images of what joy is. Things on earth are often pleasurable, but nothing, save Jesus Christ, can bring you complete joy. One final thing before I end this article, if you have been searching for true joy, maybe just jot down these four things:

1. Asking God for things and then receiving them brings us joy

2. The fact that we are connected to a body of believers that are rooted in Christ should fill us with joy

3. We find joy by rejoicing with those who are rejoicing

4. Complete and perfect joy comes in heaven

¹ Francis Chan, Crazy Love (2008), pg. 109

Character Qualities of a Christian- Self-Control

          Interestingly enough, the word “self-control” was not used in the Bible until the New Testament. It is used only nine times throughout the Bible, and it simply means the ability to control your own behavior. I’m going to write this article a bit different than I do with most of mine, and I’m going to base it off of three separate statements. But before I do that though, I want to quickly define what self-control is. In its most basic form, self-control is the ability to set limitations on your life and do things in moderation; that’s where we get the term “self” combined with “control”*.

            

           Self-control is an essential component in the healthy walk of a Christian. I know that if I read something like this, I would be tempted to just say, “Yep, it is,” and leave it at that, but as Christians, we are called to a greater response. If you were raised in church, you probably learned the fruit of the spirit at a young age, maybe you even know it in song version*, but not all of us take that list seriously. I very strongly believe that it is one of the most important list of character qualities in the Bible. Self-control is one of the fruits of the spirit, and is mentioned in Galatians 5:23. If this character quality made the top nine, I think that we can assume that it is very essential component to a healthy walk. Boundaries and moderation are very important in life, but once we get our own house (and even before that), we are the ones setting our boundaries.

            

           Self-control can be achieved by all Christians. God generally sets realistic goals. Just turn real quick (this is still sort of on-topic) to Luke 18:27 where Jesus says, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” I’m definitely not saying that we can achieve self-control in our own strength. A popular phrase is “God will never give you more than you can handle” but that should be, “God will never give you more than He can handle”. Self-control can only be achieved through the power of the Holy Spirit. Christians can only have the ability of self-control when they surrender everything to God and let Him work in their lives.  

            

           Self-control has been commanded by God. A Sunday school teacher that I had several years ago would say something but follow it up with the statement, “But don’t take my word for it; open your Bibles...” So, open your Bible to 1 Corinthians 9:25. This verse seems a bit confusing at first, so I just want to break it down into two sections. The race that we are running in is our life. Run so that we may obtain the prize, which means to give God all that we’ve got. Exercising self-control is key to running the race. 

           

           Picture this: four runners are getting ready to run a race. The guy in charge* gives no rules and no boundaries, not even a track, but he does give a goal and no instruction on how to get there. I’m guessing that not many of them would actually make it to the end, because there were no boundaries. This is what I believe Paul is saying: Self-control is essential to our “race” because it gives us a direction or purpose in life and boundaries that keep us going in the right direction.

* In case you didn’t catch that, it’s control over one’s self…

* AKA, fruit of the spirit 2.0

* Yeah, that shows how much I watch racing… Referee? Umpire? Coach? Bat boy? Guy with the starting gun?