Some who come for Word Based Counseling are
Christians seeking freedom from lifelong patterns of sin
and oppression. These patterns are strongholds, power
bases through which the forces of darkness seek to keep
the struggling Christian conformed to this world and
under the enemy=s dominion through the lusts of the flesh and fleshly
mind. Oftentimes, the hard-pressed saint is astounded
that freedom does not come more quickly, more easily.
Their discouragement, confusion, and weariness often
lead to apathy and passivity.
Yet that is not God's desire, but rather that the saint would stand,
fight, and win the war. Indeed, war is essential to
freedom, to spiritual maturity, and to real peace.
War is an indispensable part of God's delivering His people
out from bondage, and bringing them to Himself, as a
glorious nation:
Or has a god tried to go to take for himself a nation
from within another nation by trials, by signs and
wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an
outstretched arm and by great terrors, as the LORD your
God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it
was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God;
there is no other besides Him (Deuteronomy 4:34-35 NASV,
italics added).
Every new generation of Christians must learn war.
Every individual Christian must be equipped with the
weapons of war, trained in their use, and battle-tested.
When we are born-again, God does not instantly take away
all of the old strongholds and power bases of the enemy
in our lives. Rather, He prepares us and brings us into
confrontation against them, because it is through war
and victory that we prove who and what we are:
Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to
prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had
not known all the wars of Canaan; only that the
generations of the children of Israel might know, to
teach them war, at the least such as before knew
nothing thereof....And [the nations] were to prove
Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken
unto the commandments of the LORD, which he
commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses (Judges
3:1-4 KJV).
If we do not learn and practice the discipline of
war, we will compromise like Israel did in the day of
the judges: AThe children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites,
Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and
Jebusites: and they took their daughters to be their
wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and
served their gods" (Judges 3:5-6 KJV, italics aded).
If we do not learn war, we
will remain in bondage to life-dominating sin, to the
ways of the world, and to the cruel oppression of
darkness.
But if we become vigilant and ready,
"and if ye go
to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth
you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and
ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye
shall be saved from your enemies" (Numbers 10:9 KJV).
May we
all become like David, who declared,
"Blessed be
the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war,
and my fingers to fight" (Psalm 144:1 KJV). Unshrinking
before his enemies, David proclaimed: "I have
pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them: neither did I
turn again till they were consumed. I have wounded them
that they were not able to rise: they are fallen under
my feet. For Thou hast girded me with strength unto the
battle: Thou hast subdued under me those that rose up
against me. Thou hast also given me the necks of mine
enemies; that I might destroy them that hate me" (Psalm
18:37-40).
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