All Day Fight
By Shirley Mitchell
"On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:
'O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.'
So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar.
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!"
Joshua 10:12-14
Joshua led his men in an all night march through the steepest elevation. Five Amorite kings had joined together to fight against Israel's covenant partner Gibeon. Joshua and his army responded to the Gibeonites' plea to not abandon them. His army took them by surprise, and the Lord threw them into confusion.
In the battle, he saw the stones fall on his enemy because the LORD hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites (verse 11). Yet, the battle remained intense. He swung his sword until his arms were worn out, and his sword felt glued to his hand.
Joshua was an experienced warrior. He had crossed the parted waters of the Jordan River, fought the battle of Jericho, saw the walls come down, confronted the sin of Achan, and ambushed and burned the city of AI. He knew this battle required more out of him than the others.
On that day that was like no other, Joshua prayed in faith that God would answer his prayers, make the sun stand still and the moon stop over the Valley of Aijalon until the nation avenged itself on its enemies. Maybe they needed a little more sunlight because they were on their enemy's terrain, and their enemy would know the land better than they would. God answered his prayer. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. They knew that "surely the LORD was fighting for Israel" (verse 14).
Since I finished recording Jesus Lives, this particular story in Joshua has been my life. I have seen God supernaturally intervene for the writing of this Bible study and for the videotaping. I have walked on the water and done what so many people told me was impossible. It was impossible to work an over 40 hours per week full time job and care for a husband and three daughters and write a 10-week study. It was impossible to videotape a Bible study on the budget that we had. It was impossible to videotape without the equipment, director, cameramen, and locations. It was just as impossible to get me the teacher to speak intelligently and understandable as it was to get the donkey to talk to Balaam. Despite all these impossibilities and obstacles, God accomplished the work of writing the Bible study Jesus Lives and the eleven teachings.
Yet, the battle still rages on to get the book published, video tapes edited, and both reproduced. Every now and then, someone will say to me non-chalantly from the sidelines, without really grasping the seriousness of the battle that I'm in, "All in God's timing, my dear. All in God's timing." I almost feel like they should have a cup of tea in one hand and be dressed in their Sunday finest clothes sitting on a blanket and enjoying a spring day while I am in full battle gear with aching muscles from fighting, my body covered with sweat, and attackers surrounding me from all sides. I can't imagine Joshua would have appreciated this encouragement, either, on the battlefield that day.
It brings these kinds of thoughts to my mind, "I'm swinging this sharp sword of truth for my life here. All you can say is God's timing! I know about God's timing. I know that when God answers prayers it is yes, no, and wait. I know wait is sometimes harder than no. I have experienced God's timing many times. But if you are not active in service for the kingdom or have never engaged in the battle of your life, then your encouragement is not hitting the target with me. I know the Lord has promised me this victory. God told Joshua during the march to not be afraid of them and that He had given them into his hand. I know what the outcome will be, but it is at a time like this when I'm looking for some warriors to join me on the battlefield! There is still a battle to be fought. This victory was hard and fought through blood, sweat, tears, and prayer. The victory will be great, and I'm looking for people who want to join God and me in the exhilaration of participating in a miracle! There are people depending on this victory."
Oh, precious one, are you in a battle, too? Do you need someone to join you in prayer? Let's lift each other's battles up to God, Jehovah Sabaoth, the LORD of hosts, our Warrior, and give Him room to show His great power. The enemy will cringe and fall before Him.
Pray with me: Oh, Lord, we know You answer us in Your perfect timing. We know that Your purposes prevail. Teach us, Lord, to join our brothers and sisters on the battlefield. May we engage in Your battles and experience the thrill of participating in victory with You. You never promised us the battle would be easy, but You did promise us that if we trust in You that we will be blessed beyond what we can imagine! Surely, You, LORD, were fighting for Israel that day, and You are fighting for Shirley through this, too. You are fighting our battles. So, Lord, we give You room to be You and be huge in our lives. Fight for us, Lord! Fight for us! It's in the Name of the Coming King who will defeat His foes with the sword of His mouth, in Jesus' Name, Yeshua's Name, we pray. Amen.
"For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." 2 Corinthians 5:14-15
Showing posts with label fight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fight. Show all posts
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
The Desires Battle
The Desires Battle
“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.”
James 4:1-2
For the past few days, God has been speaking to me about the effect of desires. I am not quarreling with anyone, but God called me to check my desires and to examine any desires battle in my mind. In today’s Scriptures, James is saying that fights and quarrels are the result of the desires that battle inside of us. Inside of our minds, desires are fighting for their position. Desires live inside of us. God created us with a soul and gave us desires. We can desire many good things. However, we can twist a “good” thing into a harmful desire.
We can desire a husband, a home or for a bigger home, children or for the ones we have to grow up to be “good,” money for the lifestyle we want, “better” job, “more” ministry, and the list could go on and on. None of these things are necessarily wrong. God created us to accomplish, achieve, and strive toward goals. It is when these desires get out of order, when they get excessive or disproportionate to what our truest desire should be - God,- then we see this disorder breeds fights and quarrels. We fight, quarrel, kill, and covet because we can’t have what we want.
Fighting can be just that - fighting with words, punch to a punching bag, or a fist to the table. It can take the form of rudeness, bickering, irritableness, or unkindness. The battle within has a way of leaking out past our masks. Somehow, our faces will reflect the battle within. Either they don’t bear true joy, or they bear our struggle in the form of scowls, clenched teeth, or a tightened brow.
I believe that many people – even believers – covet a lot more than they realize. Coveting is one of the biggest sins in our time. Think about how we are constantly being bombarded by advertising. If advertising did not make us desire to buy the products, then it wouldn’t be working. Instead, advertising is a billion dollar business. Even if we don’t purchase the products, advertising drives our culture and shapes our minds more than we realize. Marketing occurs in such clever ways that we are drawn to it. Before we realize it, we covet. Television shows, magazines, internet stories, and many other forms of media shape our culture, lure us, and we fall prey to coveting. We compare our lives and our possessions to others’. We covet careers, husbands, kids, friendships, personality, ministry, beauty, talents, God-experiences, and on and on. Then, it feeds the battle within. Our desires shift and are twisted.
While many of us may not be committing murder of another person, how many marriages and friendships do we see ending? Marriages end in divorce sometimes because wives set expectations too high for their husbands to meet their every need, replacing God for him (and vice versa for men to do it, too). Additionally, wives can wish their men were more loving, more godly, or a more Christ-like father. They try to shape them into what they want them to be instead of letting the Holy Spirit do His job. They get frustrated because they don’t have the power to change them. It drives a wedge between them. Gosh, Have I lived this one! We can also kill friendships. Or we go into debt and make ourselves slaves to it. We can figuratively kill our relationships or our financial freedom.
When our desires are misshaped, then we have trouble resisting sin. James 1:14 says, “but each one it tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” The evil one tempts us by our own evil desire. The desires within us lure us into being hunted, baited, and dragged away into his lair (according to the Greek words in this Scripture).
God’s Word tells us in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” In other words, when we make God our truest desire and we make Him our God with no other gods before Him, then our desires are rearranged in the proper order. He is released to give us the desires of our hearts. Our desires grow by what we feed them. If we feed our desires our relationship with God, then our desires grow more godly. However, without an intake of perfect truth, we struggle to know what the bottom line is and don’t see things – our lives, problems, information, messages from the world – properly. Then disorder of our desires is prevalent. The battle within rages.
Beloved, I invite you to ask God to show you this year what are your deepest desires? Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart and do a desires check. May we be able to say that in 2009 we know that our desires are in the proper order and positioned so that God can give us the desires of our heart.
Pray with me: Oh, Lord, our God, we love You, and we adore You. Search our minds and our hearts. Reveal to us our desires. There may be areas where we are weak, and it may be difficult for us to give up our desires. However, we cry out to You to help us to rid ourselves of harmful desires, to untwist a desire out of shape, and to make our desires pleasing to You. It’s in Jesus’ precious name that we pray. Amen.
Copyright ©2009 Christ Compels
“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.”
James 4:1-2
For the past few days, God has been speaking to me about the effect of desires. I am not quarreling with anyone, but God called me to check my desires and to examine any desires battle in my mind. In today’s Scriptures, James is saying that fights and quarrels are the result of the desires that battle inside of us. Inside of our minds, desires are fighting for their position. Desires live inside of us. God created us with a soul and gave us desires. We can desire many good things. However, we can twist a “good” thing into a harmful desire.
We can desire a husband, a home or for a bigger home, children or for the ones we have to grow up to be “good,” money for the lifestyle we want, “better” job, “more” ministry, and the list could go on and on. None of these things are necessarily wrong. God created us to accomplish, achieve, and strive toward goals. It is when these desires get out of order, when they get excessive or disproportionate to what our truest desire should be - God,- then we see this disorder breeds fights and quarrels. We fight, quarrel, kill, and covet because we can’t have what we want.
Fighting can be just that - fighting with words, punch to a punching bag, or a fist to the table. It can take the form of rudeness, bickering, irritableness, or unkindness. The battle within has a way of leaking out past our masks. Somehow, our faces will reflect the battle within. Either they don’t bear true joy, or they bear our struggle in the form of scowls, clenched teeth, or a tightened brow.
I believe that many people – even believers – covet a lot more than they realize. Coveting is one of the biggest sins in our time. Think about how we are constantly being bombarded by advertising. If advertising did not make us desire to buy the products, then it wouldn’t be working. Instead, advertising is a billion dollar business. Even if we don’t purchase the products, advertising drives our culture and shapes our minds more than we realize. Marketing occurs in such clever ways that we are drawn to it. Before we realize it, we covet. Television shows, magazines, internet stories, and many other forms of media shape our culture, lure us, and we fall prey to coveting. We compare our lives and our possessions to others’. We covet careers, husbands, kids, friendships, personality, ministry, beauty, talents, God-experiences, and on and on. Then, it feeds the battle within. Our desires shift and are twisted.
While many of us may not be committing murder of another person, how many marriages and friendships do we see ending? Marriages end in divorce sometimes because wives set expectations too high for their husbands to meet their every need, replacing God for him (and vice versa for men to do it, too). Additionally, wives can wish their men were more loving, more godly, or a more Christ-like father. They try to shape them into what they want them to be instead of letting the Holy Spirit do His job. They get frustrated because they don’t have the power to change them. It drives a wedge between them. Gosh, Have I lived this one! We can also kill friendships. Or we go into debt and make ourselves slaves to it. We can figuratively kill our relationships or our financial freedom.
When our desires are misshaped, then we have trouble resisting sin. James 1:14 says, “but each one it tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” The evil one tempts us by our own evil desire. The desires within us lure us into being hunted, baited, and dragged away into his lair (according to the Greek words in this Scripture).
God’s Word tells us in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” In other words, when we make God our truest desire and we make Him our God with no other gods before Him, then our desires are rearranged in the proper order. He is released to give us the desires of our hearts. Our desires grow by what we feed them. If we feed our desires our relationship with God, then our desires grow more godly. However, without an intake of perfect truth, we struggle to know what the bottom line is and don’t see things – our lives, problems, information, messages from the world – properly. Then disorder of our desires is prevalent. The battle within rages.
Beloved, I invite you to ask God to show you this year what are your deepest desires? Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart and do a desires check. May we be able to say that in 2009 we know that our desires are in the proper order and positioned so that God can give us the desires of our heart.
Pray with me: Oh, Lord, our God, we love You, and we adore You. Search our minds and our hearts. Reveal to us our desires. There may be areas where we are weak, and it may be difficult for us to give up our desires. However, we cry out to You to help us to rid ourselves of harmful desires, to untwist a desire out of shape, and to make our desires pleasing to You. It’s in Jesus’ precious name that we pray. Amen.
Copyright ©2009 Christ Compels
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