The Sword of the Spirit

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist". (Ephesians 6:12-13) "And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God". (Ephesians 6:17)

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The evil one is the unseen ruler of this world, and so it should not be surprising that the world is not only opposed to the gospel, but to the scripture which proclaims it. This has been true from the earliest times until now. The opposition may be blatant, or subtle, but it is constant. It began when the serpent asked Eve; "Did God say?", and the same question is asked today, even in our seminaries and churches. Whether you are aware of it or not, you and I are in a daily battle for the revelation of truth, and the eternal soul of man lays in the balance. And if the enemy cannot win that battle, he conducts a thousand others, all designed to keep us from a close relationship with God. The enemy wants to rob us of joy, peace, health and material blesings. He wants us to worship at the altars of this world instead of at the foot of the heavenly throne.

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One of the main tools that God has given us to find, and to understand truth, is sacred scripture. I believe that the Holy Spirit reveals truth, and gives understanding, and although He does that in many ways, He has given us His written word as a sure and unchanging standard against which we must submit everything else. This standard is not to be a law, which leads to religious rules interperted by others, actually blocking the working of the Holy Spirit. Instead, it is to be a fountain of life for those that humbly seek, and a sword for those that respond in faith.

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Here are some things that may help you hear the Spirit as you read and study scripture. Begin by having a short talk with God before each reading, asking for understanding and retention of His word. Have an attitude that desires to know what is true, and is willing to surrender to that truth. Realize that there are usually three different ways to look at a passage. The first is to consider what the author was saying to the people he wrote to. Check the overall context and the context of the section in which the verse is located. The second is to listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us from the passage. Although written by men, the true author is the Holy Spirit, who can speak to our hearts from any verse to inspire, guide and instruct. Third, there may be a prophetic purpose to a passage.

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I believe scripture ends up making the most sense if looked at it in a literal sense, except when the context is obviously allegorical. And to understand one section of scripture we may need to compare it with other sections. This will help keep us from forming opinions and doctrine based on just a little piece of a bigger puzzle. The concordance in the back of your bible can be very helpful. The other day a sister of mine who lives in another state, and who just started going to a bible study two years ago, called to inform me that she just discovered that Christians were cheaters. "I thought they had all those verses memorized, until I found out that your could look them up in the back of the book". And lastly, listen to wise and Godly consul from others. Listening to the Spirit is still your responsibility, but God does place people in our lives to help.

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Here are some well known passages, in their context, concerning the necessity to learn, apply, believe, and use scripture. In these verses we see a common theme. The world, it's attitudes, it's system, cannot comprehend and thus instruct us to know the will of God. But the inspired written word, through faith, can. The author of Hebrews, beginning in the 3rd chapter, compares Jesus to Moses. The people that Moses led out of Egypt had a chance to enter into the promise of God, but did not take up their swords because of unbelief. But we have a promise given by God that reads; "let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed, we have had good news preached to us (the Word of God) but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard . . . Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart".

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In the 3rd chapter of 2 Timothy we see that difficult times will come but that scripture will equip us and help lead us through those times. Compare this discription with what we are being bombarded with every day. "Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconsilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power . . . always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth . . . You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work".

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And finally, Peter advises; We did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty . . . And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention, a lamp shining in a dark place . . . But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God". ((2 Peter 1:16-21)

Who Are You Going To Serve?

Last night I had a dream in which I was outside at a kind of camping area, and a lot of my family and friends were there. Looking up I spotted a lion coming into the camp and so I yelled out a warning to everyone. We gathered under the roof of an open shelter and the person who was in charge told us that we were to stay calm, but if the lion kept approaching any one of us, that person should extend their hands to the side of the lion's head and scream at it. When I awoke I realized that the lion represented the evil one, and the dream was showing me the subject of today's blog.

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As I've stated before, the world we live in has both a physical and a spiritual dimension. Each is real, and each affects us, even if we do not see the spiritual world with our physical eyes. God is the creator of both, and it may be inferred from Genesis 1:1 ("In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth") that since "heavens" is mentioned first, then perhaps angels and other spiritual beings were created before man. And we may also deduce that, just as our physical world has in it an astounding variety of creatures, so also would there be a huge variety of spiritual beings. At some point in the time before man, one of those beings, an angel of the highest rank, rebelled against God.

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Scripture does not pinpoint the exact time of his rebellion, but we do see in Ezekiel 28 an account of its beginning, and the reason for it. Ezekiel gives an account of the prince of Tyre, a powerful city state located along the Mediterranean Sea just north of Israel. Then we get the account of the force, the spirit behind the evil ruler of Tyre, and this spirit is called the king of Tyre. "You had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God . . . You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God . . . You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence and you sinned . . . Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor". This angel is not a force which is the opposite of God. He was designed and created by God, to be creation's most intelligent and beautiful creature, his beauty representing the splendor of God, his abilities conveying the worship of created beings toward Almighty God. But from here and other places in scripture we see that he became proud of his beauty and, although intelligent, he thought that he should be considered equal with God, receiving some of the worship that belongs only to God.

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We also see that his desire to obtain this was so strong that he would lie, use violence, and even murder to obtain it. And so he became the father of those things (John 8:44), and through those things became the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), the ruler of this world (John 14:30), and the accuser of the brethren (Zechariah 3:1, Job 1). We live in a world with an enemy whose desire is to keep us from a relationship with God that enables us to freely worship God for who He is. This enemy wants us to have the values of his kingdom because he wants to keep us under his dominion. God the Father has made it possible through Jesus for us to spend eternity with Him, because He loves us and desires the best for us. Yet our enemy wants us to suffer, and while suffering, he wants us to blame God as the cause of it. Our enemy comes disguised as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), and he presents as attractive and desirable those things which God, in His wisdom and love, has warned us about.

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He started it in the garden by talking through the serpent, questioning God's instruction to Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by saying; "You surely shall not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil". And we are told that when Eve saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that it was desirable to make one wise, then she ate and gave it Adam to eat (Genesis 3). The enemy has not changed his tactics. He still hates us and has not given up in his efforts to deceive us.

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We need to understand that this enemy is real. He leads a host of evil spirits that want to bring to us sickness and fear, distress and condemnation. However, God has provided for us ways to confront our enemy, many listed in Ephesians 6, beginning with verse 10. God wants us to approach Him daily in prayer, and worship, in spirit, and in truth. Always ready to confess our sins and weakness, always ready to forgive and to seek forgiveness. We should be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit regarding our entertainment and our habits, and really, all aspects of our life. And we need to remember that God wants the best for us, but we are easily deceived by the attractions of this worldly kingdom, whose lord is our enemy.

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"Humble yourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert, your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you". (1 Peter 5: 6-11).

With All Your Heart

Here are some comments on the first three sayings at the beginning of Proverbs, chapter 3. Each begins with a word of wisdom from God, and is followed by the result of following that word.

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"Let your heart keep my commandments. * For length of days and years of life, and peace they will add to you." For me, this is the corre, the center of what the Lord desires of us in our relationship with Him. The tendency of man is, and always has been, to want to live by rules apart from, and instead of, relationship. We want someone else to determine for us what is the will of God for our lives. And we do this because we think we can have one part of our life be religious while still retaining control (lordship) of the rest. However, God wants us to draw close to Him and to be led in all things by the Holy Spirit. It is scary to enter into a close relationship with God because He really wants to be the Lord of every part of our lives. He loves us, and wants us to experience that love. And when that happens, when we are obedient to His leading because it comes from the desire of our heart, it is easy to give up those things and areas of our life which are not really what God desires for us.

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"Do not let kindness and truth leave you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. * So you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man." Kindness and truth, how interesting that these two are mentioned together. Kindness needs to be an attitude that will express itself no matter what our situation or circumstance is, no matter how people act toward us. God acts in kindness toward us dispite our rebellion, and we should reflect that same attitude to others. God also does not try to deceive us. Instead, deception comes from the father of lies. We should be open and straightfoward with all whom we come in contact with, but mixing that truth with a sensitivity toward the feelings of others. Again, acting in kindness and truth requires that it be both the desire of our heart, and of our mind. And if so, then it will be easy to act as God desires.

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"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him. * And He will make your paths straight." Our daughter Becky recently got married and several days before the wedding Ryan sent her two dozen tulips, which Jackie and I have been enjoying while they have been on their honeymoon. When I look at those flowers up close I am so in awe of their beauty and design, and I marvel at the vast wisdom and goodness of my creator. Who could think that beauty could come from chance? And even if we see beauty in what appears to be the chaos of nature, that too was designed by God. I know this in the depths of my heart. I feel it. And I express that awe to God everyday. Trust, like obedience from the heart, has to do with our relationship with God. I trust Him because I know in my knower that He loves me. I believe that every hair on my head is counted, that all things work together for good for those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. And when He reveals His will to me, and asks me to conform to it, I know that His plan will be better for me than my plan.

Faith To Move Mountains

Note: Shown to the right is Mt. Harvard, a 14,420 ft. peak in Colorado I climbed when I was 17. I was going through a boulder field on the way down and about a 1000 pounder came rolling by, just grazing me. When you are 17 you simply think; "Hmm, that was close."

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When Jackie and I resided in Kalamazoo we knew an older couple from the prayer meeting we attended. They had two sons, both rough characters and no-believers. One son, Mick, did the hitch hike out to California without any money thing, actually lived for several months in the large cemetery that is near downtown Kalamazoo, and was into tarot cards and other occultic things. One day my father-in-law talked to him, led him to receive Jesus as Savior and Lord and as baptizer in the Holy Spirit. As a new believer he got rid of all the occult stuff, pretty much straightened himself out, and had a great thirst to read the Bible, although sometimes while high on drugs. At that point in his life it seemed like a natural thing to do. After a couple of months the Holy Spirit got to him and he gladly gave up the drugs.

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I remember Mick especially for two occurrences. We had a family prayer meeting for years that met every Friday or Saturday night with Jackie's parents and a large bunch of her sisters and brothers, spouses and other family. We included Mick and his wife for a time, and during one prayer meeting about a half year in, Mick said that he felt the Holy Spirit was telling him to ask that we pray for his teeth. Mick had a mouthful of really crooked teeth, and after we put him on the "hot seat" and laid our hands on him and were praying, his mouth started to quiver and shake like jelly. After a couple of minutes it seemed to me that there had been about a 70 per cent improvement in the condition of his teeth. I know now, after reading about spiritual giants in the healing ministry such as John G. Lake, that if we perservered longer with prayer for Mick that it was very likely that the healing for his teeth would have been complete. However, 70 per cent was a huge improvement, and it was really exciting because that was the first micacle I had seen.

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Awhile after Jackie and I moved to Holland there was a prayer meeting at the house of a couple we knew and I invited Mick to come and share his testimony. At the end of the meeting we had a time for prayer. One of the men there, Lloyd, had started coming to the Holland prayer meetings as an unbeliever a year earlier. He had also been a pretty rough character as a young man, and marriage to a believing wife had changed him quite a bit. He initally went to the meetings to be with his wife, but God got to him early on, and the fruit of accepting Jesus continued to change him. At this meeting Lloyd asked for prayer for his arthritis. Every morning Lloyd would need to place his hands under a hot faucet for 20 minutes to get his fingers loose enough to work well. Mick advised Lloyd that sometines arthritis is the resulf of unforgiveness. That immediately struck a nerve with Lloyd, who felt that God was telling him that he would get healed from the arthritis after he sought out his father and another person with whom he had really bitter feelings for, to ask for their forgiveness. Lloyd did as God directed and the arthritis was completly gone.

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Now back to Mick's brother. Eventually he came over to talk with my father-in-law, asked Jesus into his heart, and was filled with the Holy Spirit. He left the house flying high, got into his car, and found that the battery was dead. Thinking that this shouldn't be a problem for the God of the universe, he laid his hands on the hood of the car and prayed someting like; 'Start in the name of Jesus'. He then got back into the car and it started. Mick's brother, unjaded at that point by theology or the world, could simply pray "without doubting" in commanding the battery to "move".

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It is interesting to notice the different aspects of faith present in the stories above. All three men saw something about Jesus that they desired enough that they were able to surrender the lordship of their lives to Him. They heard the living word about Him, and believed that He was Savior and Lord. And they heard the living word about the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and by faith willingly asked and received. The Holy Spirit was able, at the moment of salvation, and over time, to change the desires and thus the actions and lives of those men. Mick and Lloyd both sensed the Spirit's direction as to how to obtain healing, and by faith were obedient to the Spirit's leading.

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And of course there is the faith of the rest of us. Obedient at times, confused at times, sometimes strong in faith and sometimes weak. We grow in faith by trusting God when He seems both near and far, by taking time with Him in prayer, by searching the scriptures with a desire to know the truth, and by listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Through these things we know the will of God, and trusting that it is the will of God, we can say without doubt to the mountain Jesus mentions in Matthew 21: 21-22, "Be taken up and cast into the sea. And all things you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive."

Trip To Mars

One of the main goals of space exploration is to find water on other planets or their moons. Scientists are looking for water because water is necessary for life, and if life forms can be found outside of our planet Earth, then it would offer support for one hypositheis about the origin of life on our planet. This hypositheis suggests that life first developed somewhere else and was carried to Earth by a meteor, and from that meteor carried seed of life, all life on Earth evolved. There is one main reason for this hypositheis. Evolution requirres a starting point, and scientist do not know how life began. No experiments have produced life from non-life. No instances of spontaneous generation of life have been observed. No mechanisms for spontaneous generation have been identified. Yet life had to have a beginning, and science in our generation is not allowed to have a non-mechanical origin theory. Finding life on other planets or moons actually would not solve the ultimate question about spontaneous generation, but the thought is that perhaps with other combinations of chemicals and such they will come up with a better theory. The one assurance the public is given to justify the cost of this space exploration is that we have recently found new life forms near thermal vents deep in the ocean floor, and microscopic life beneath glaciers, and if life can thrive in what are described as hostile environments, then perhaps simple life forms are possible outside of the more ideal conditions present because of Earth's unique climate and distance from the Sun and its location in the Solar System.

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The problem with this view is that life is not simply a matter of the correct chemistry. The general public has an impression of a primordial soup, chuck full of the right ingredients, mixed with a little lightning, given millions of years to stew, and then arising from that the first simple cells. This view is not only misleading but false. It is false because even if we select the right ingredients, in the correct amounts, with a perfect environment, and using water as the universal solvent which can mix everything together, life does not begin through a chemical reaction. Life requires information. And it takes a lot of information to produce even the most basic life forms. The simplest cells need a huge amount of information, on a multitude of levels, operating independly. And each independent ooperation is necessary for the construction, the functioning, and the reproduction of even the most basic cells. Information is needed to build proteins, to shape them into a multitude of different cell building machines, to determine shape and function and energy reception, waste removal, and reproduction. The information chain in the most basic cell is over 3 million links long, each link needing a mixture of different acids and sugars, providing information possibilities thousands of times more vast that a computer binary code. In human life this chain is 3 billion links long. Now theoretically life could function with an information code of only 300,000 links, but you see what the problem is. We have not observed nature building these links on its own, nor have scientist been able to build these links from scratch.

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I was an athethist prior to becoming a Christian at age 22. When I started to study scripture it was a first difficult to take certain passages literally because I assumed that science had proven evolution. Sincere Christians can take scripture literally and come up with different conclusions and I'm not going to define here what mine are. But my point is that is wasn't until I became reborn in the spirit and decided to believe that God's word was inspired that I had the freedom to question the prevailing wisdom of the world. The other day I was reading from one of the gospel accounts and it told about the disciples out in the sea in their boat at night, crossing over to the other side, and Jesus walks right out to them on the water. And I thought, how cool was that! It's not a problem for me because I believe that God is the designer and the creator, and that He can figure out how to do stuff like that.

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But the world is blinded to seeing God as designer and creator. Science has told us that we must have a mechanistic explanation for life and it's diversity, and any discussion outside of that is promoting religion. So we will be spending billions on a quest to see if somehow other not yet know conditions could have produced amazing and complex information links that survived a meteor ride to earth to produce the dogma promoted by our most educated inhabitants.

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"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it". (John 1: 1-5)

The Plans of the Heart

At one time I was part of a group of leaders for a prayer meeting that met in the basement of a church that Jackie and I attended. Part of my responsibility was about every three or four weeks to take a turn leading the meeting, and that meant having a 20 to 30 minute teaching. I often had this experience. I would study up on a certain subject matter. I would read, hear or see something on a completely different subject that made a big imprression on me, and something would be happening in my life or with someone I knew in a spiritual area. Then while in prayer as I was driving to the meeting. not really knowing what God wanted me to say, He would connect the dots and the talk would formulate in my mind.

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The meetings started with praise and worship and people were encouraged to share what God was doing in their lives that week, or to have a scripture reading that struck them, or to request a special song. And there would often be a time during or just after the worship to be quiet before the Lord, and sometimes a person would then have a word of encouragement or a prophecy. The amazing thing was that on certain nights all the pieces would fit together wonderfully on a certain theme. The songs, the sharings, the scripture, the prophetic word, these were by different people, and yet it would all relate to the teaching which God had given me on the way to the meeting but which had yet to be delivered. That, my friends, is the work of the Holy Spirit.

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I heard a story just last night which will illustrate the difference between hearing and seeing, and understanding. My nephew Scott really wanted a new Wii (?) game system, as apparently millions of others also do. He asked his dad Jim, who he knew was very good at getting hard to find stuff, to check it out for him. Jim found out that Target was having a sale on them at midnight, got there third in line, and bought it without Scott knowing. The next day Jim and Jennifer put the syhstem in a Talbots bag (a clothing store), went over to visit Scott and Betsy, and when they got there Jennifer told Betsy to check out the new dress that she bought for our daughter Becky's upcoming wedding. Betsy saw the game system and excitedly remarked how wonderful it was. Scott, sitting in his chair by the TV, and while actually looking at them, remarked how great the dress looked. The game system was right in front of Scott but he didn't see it because a little switch in his brain clicked off when it heard - mothers dress for wedding.

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Talking to others about spiritual subjects often requires that we be sensitive to the move of the Spirit in our preparation, and that we present it in a way that allows the Spirit to move upon the listener or the reader. We don't want the little switch in our or their brains to be clicked off. In preparation there is one main thing to be aware of. It is God who touches and changes hearts, not us. We may have a great plan, a great delivery, a perfect setting, yet if God is not in it we may move the mind or the emotions, but the heart stays tucked away. So we need to prepare with prayer, with hearing God through His written word, and with reflection on things that make an impression on us. There is usually a reason for having a strong impression.

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If we are sensitive to the Holy Spirit, without even realizing it, God will be preparing us with something that will combine with how He has been moving in another person's life. And that combination will unlock access to the heart. "The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are clean in is own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives. Commit your works to the Lord, and your plans will be established." (Proverbs 16: 1-3)