Dear Friends, as we prepare for the election results, I received some words of encouragement and caution from the LORD concerning the ATTITUDE we will need, the positioning we will need, to be successful in the coming season.
If we keep our focus on the LORD and His Goodness, and do not get distracted by the coming madness, insanity, chaos, violence, and upheaval, we will see God’s Will manifest throughout our lives in extraordinary ways … think of the story of the Two Witnesses in the Book of Revelation and personalize it for your own ministry. But if we start lamenting the ongoing wickedness, and gossiping about it (talking about it outside of decisive prayer), we may inadvertently empower it and suffer its wrath. WE MUST CHOOSE LIFE IN THIS SEASON AND CHOOSE THE GIVER OF LIFE UNEQUIVOCALLY OVER THE SEDUCTIVENESS OF DEATH. OUR LIVES MAY DEPEND UPON IT.
Often, in our attempt to bring recognition to a problem, we highlight it, and we focus on it in depth, instead of keeping our focus on Christ’s victory. Sometimes this seems necessary. We need to let people know! They need to pray! They need to take precautions so they can be safe! They need to get on board with us so we can fight this battle together! Power is in numbers, right???
No … but it is in unity, and we are craving it.
It seems foolish to not know what is going on. Ridiculous. Unconscionable. Here we read, “Behold, I m sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be as wary as serpents and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) And here we read, “I want you to be wise in what is good, and innocent in what is evil, for the God of peace will soon crush satan under your feet.” (Romans 16:19b-20). We are called to be wise and alert in the craftiness of men so we can be successful ambassadors for Christ, and we are called to keep our hearts stayed on God’s Goodness and not be deceived or interested in the power of evil, because the soon-coming victory belongs to God.
We need to inhabit these two commands together.
The demonic loves to be noticed. He feeds on controversy. Any ounce of fear or anxiety or coercion or manipulation or control or lasciviousness or unforgiveness or self aggrandizement that is in our unconscious minds or in our unexplored hearts will inspire him. As we wake people up, intending to empower them, the enemy urges us on, spiritually doing a victory dance. Why? Because what we think will disempower the enemy actually empowers him. He doesn’t care about truth. He doesn’t care about life. He cares about dissension and destruction, and he wants society to be torn apart by division. Anything at all that causes strife or unforgiveness or chaos empowers him. Anything. All our best efforts. This is why we don’t see the victories we expect. If we shout from the rooftops about how evil everything is and how people need to take action against it, if our actions are not fueled by Christ’s love and proclaimed in a way that fully glorifies Christ’s blood sacrifice, if the results “we” achieve are not rooted in deeper intimacy with Christ Himself for those who are listening to us, we may experience very ugly demonic repercussions. Shocking. Surprising. Without victory. There is nothing ugly in Christ and He doesn’t believe in defeat.
As an example, I was recently at a gathering where a couple were diligently speaking about the need of the USA church to wake up and take a spiritual stand against the evil of human sacrifices. It was a shocking message. They spoke about the extensively committed lifestyle behind human sacrifices, murders, and compared it to the non-sacrificial lifestyle of the church that lives on donuts and chitchat. They explained how the “stolen” blood of the murdered holds power. They told the story of the Moabite King who sacrificed his eldest son in 2 Kings 3:27 in order to successfully defeat Israel and said that that strategy is still being used today. Effectively. They described how most USA Christians are insipid spiritually. During the last 5 to 10 minutes of this message they talked about how the blood of Yeshua usurps and conquers all other blood. Hallelujah!!! But for 90% of the message they talked about the “spiritual” success of blood-letting, of murders committed in faithful obedience to demonic rulers.
For someone who has experienced much of this, it was ghastly. For those who did not know about these things it seemed highly informative. Inspiring. And perhaps this church body has woken up to its own power, in the LORD, to make a difference. The worship there has been over the top in glory recently.
But there was a great cost. Without going into detail, the couple who presented this message and the church body itself experienced serious warfare, including sickness and a car crash, leading up to and during the event. Really serious stuff. I believe the cost was unnecessary. I believe there was a safer and more effective way to present the message. Just as powerfully. We are protected when we dwell under the shadow of God’s Wing.
How do we deliver messages intended to defeat the enemy in such a way that the enemy can’t touch us? Remember how the enemy tried to touch and distract Yeshua, time and time again, but he never got anywhere until God said it was time? Only when Yeshua opened the door wide and welcomed the enemy inside to kill Him was the power of darkness allowed to influence Him. Yeshua is our standard. That standard is fulfilled when we rest within Yeshua’s embrace. We don’t go ahead of Him or behind Him or to the side of Him. Sometimes that means changing our plans dramatically, sometimes it requires a little tweak, sometimes we remain steady and on course. When we give God the glory from beginning to end, and don’t usurp His glory by assuming that our actions make the difference, we learn to really rely upon His Voice, and learn to respond to Him the way He responded to the Father, so that we do and say exactly what He chooses. That way, our words and our actions never come back void, but always hit their target, and we remain completely protected within the Father’s Embrace.
That’s quite different than trying to defeat the enemy on the enemy’s terms by outperforming him. That’s witchcraft.
I discussed the topic with a friend who has a similar background to mine, and she initiated the following dialogue. “Of course, you can’t fight the demonic on demonic terms, encouraging believers to sacrifice more for God’s kingdom than the enemy sacrifices for his kingdom, and expect to come out unscathed. It creates a work driven mentality that can lead to flagellation, fasting unto sickness, and belief in the power of the human being to conquer evil through his or her own intentions. Our sacrifice is under the blood of Jesus Christ, and our sacrifice, under him, is simply love. To love him, to love others, to love each other, and to forgive. When we live like that, when that is our message, we are protected by the Lord Himself from attack. But when we attempt to defeat the enemy through our works, by being a better or more diligent sacrifice than our adversary, we are relying upon our own efforts, our own goodness, and we have walked out of the truth of Grace and into the lie of self, giving the enemy lots of room to attack us.”
Evil cannot withstand forgiveness. It cannot withstand love. It cannot withstand true joy. It thrives on argument and learning (the knowledge of good and evil) and fact-finding (as opposed to truth revelation). The more attention we give to God’s Kingdom the more effective we will be in defeating the enemy, in growing our ministries within Christ and in seeing a resurgence of God’s glory. The more we lament about the sorry state of the world and all the wicked things happening, and how ineffective we have been, the more we will diminish our good results. But taking actions, as directed by Christ, to specifically defeat some agenda of the enemy, as happened recently during the Women’s Gathering on the Mall, is highly effective. We must be wise as the serpents themselves to see the evil and undo it, and we must keep our focus and intention and words solidly on Yeshua as we do so. As we give Him glory, and focus on His ability to smash the enemy’s patterns, His gavel of justice comes down. We give the problem one percent of our attention, just enough to identify it, and we give God 99% of our attention, intentionally focusing on giving Him the glory for the victory He had created before the foundation of the world. Hallelujah!. Therein lies the victory of Christ manifest.
The temptation to profess the faults of others, to blame them for their lack of faithfulness, to show others their weaknesses rather than repenting of our own, to lament and to complain, to focus on all the darkness, is very real and very divisive. If we give into that temptation to faithlessness, we show the enemy our cracked armor, putting ourselves in harm’s way. But if we turn our eyes upon Yeshua, the author and finisher of our faith, our armor will glisten like polished steel, showing the enemy our trust in Him in Whom we have our being, showing us how to war from within His already established victory.
The two witnesses, two of the most human characters in the Book of Revelation, knew this well. Every word out of their mouths brought forth the victory of the living God. They wasted no words in lamentation, they simply brought down the evil wherever they went. Kabam. When our words become swords of victory instead of dull knives of complaints, we give each other the positive hope to enter into the relationship with God that will bring forth His glory. When we keep our eyes on the end result, it will fuel us to victory in the name of the living God. His Victory is love. We defeat the enemy through the love that comes from Christ’s center, through His sacrifice upon the Cross. The more willing we are to surrender our lives to Yeshua the more impact we will have for God’s Kingdom.
The meeting with the couple proved to be a blessing for me, and I am grateful to them in the Lord, because it brought me to a greater degree of healing and a greater degree of awareness of why I am doing what I am doing. There are times when we must put ourselves in harm’s way, but there are other times when it can be avoided by understanding more fully the rules of engagement. If we focus on the demonic or the effects of the demonic, we open ourselves to experiences of them. If we focus on God and the effects of His Presence we open ourselves to experiences of Him. The choice is always before us.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things…And the God of peace will be with you.” Phil 4:8-9
Amen.
FREEDOM 
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