When you have done all, stand. I have some experience with this.
The devotional is incomplete. The point of remaining unmoved while being attacked by the enemy is not to prove faithfulness to God against fearsome odds, and it is not an exercise that has no goal but weathering the assault. The point is to win.
When I was a young man I regularly got migraines that would always knock me down for 3 days with incredible pain, nausea, and sensitivity to light. I was still getting them after I had joined up with God (by trusting Jesus to save me), but it wasn’t until the day He showed me the truth of what Paul was saying about spiritual warfare that I finally got free. It started with a request. I was recovering from a particularly bad migraine, and I asked God to show me how to win. I was determined to beat this thing, and He honored that. (My determination to win was a big part of my faith.)
It was 2 days later in the midst of another migraine coming on when the understanding of what Paul said to the Ephesians suddenly dropped into my heart. (Dropped is the right word. I actually felt it). It was much more than mere head knowledge. It was a spiritual understanding that was bigger than that. I suddenly knew what I had to do, and it was so simple. I began to relax, trusting that God would take care of it, and the migraine left. That had never happened to me before in my life. I never had a migraine dissipate after the aura appeared, and when I realized what happened I was beyond joy. God made it clear that I won that battle for all time, and since that day I have never had another migraine in 40 years. Not one. And I never will because I know what I know. I have that ground under my feet, and the devil knows that I can beat the crap out of him on this issue.
It's important for me to note that I didn't have my life all together at the time, but what I had was faith. You don't have to be perfect before you can get an answer from God. He responds to faith, and faith will get you there. That point is something Jesus abundantly demonstrated when He was on earth. The most important thing to Him was that people had faith when they needed something from God. Being imperfect was never an issue, and it never came up when Jesus was healing people. The only issue was whether they had the faith to receive what they wanted God to do for them. The thing that mattered was what they believed.
Standing is planting your feet in faith after you do everything you know to do in the fight, and it’s a partnership because we are never alone on the battlefield. Standing is trusting God with complete confidence that He will do His part to cause you to win against whatever is opposing you. It’s no more complicated than that.
When you have done all, stand. I have some experience with this.
The devotional is incomplete. The point of remaining unmoved while being attacked by the enemy is not to prove faithfulness to God against fearsome odds, and it is not an exercise that has no goal but weathering the assault. The point is to win.
When I was a young man I regularly got migraines that would always knock me down for 3 days with incredible pain, nausea, and sensitivity to light. I was still getting them after I had joined up with God (by trusting Jesus to save me), but it wasn’t until the day He showed me the truth of what Paul was saying about spiritual warfare that I finally got free. It started with a request. I was recovering from a particularly bad migraine, and I asked God to show me how to win. I was determined to beat this thing, and He honored that. (My determination to win was a big part of my faith.)
It was 2 days later in the midst of another migraine coming on when the understanding of what Paul said to the Ephesians suddenly dropped into my heart. (Dropped is the right word. I actually felt it). It was much more than mere head knowledge. It was a spiritual understanding that was bigger than that. I suddenly knew what I had to do, and it was so simple. I began to relax, trusting that God would take care of it, and the migraine left. That had never happened to me before in my life. I never had a migraine dissipate after the aura appeared, and when I realized what happened I was beyond joy. God made it clear that I won that battle for all time, and since that day I have never had another migraine in 40 years. Not one. And I never will because I know what I know. I have that ground under my feet, and the devil knows that I can beat the crap out of him on this issue.
It's important for me to note that I didn't have my life all together at the time, but what I had was faith. You don't have to be perfect before you can get an answer from God. He responds to faith, and faith will get you there. That point is something Jesus abundantly demonstrated when He was on earth. The most important thing to Him was that people had faith when they needed something from God. Being imperfect was never an issue, and it never came up when Jesus was healing people. The only issue was whether they had the faith to receive what they wanted God to do for them. The thing that mattered was what they believed.
Standing is planting your feet in faith after you do everything you know to do in the fight, and it’s a partnership because we are never alone on the battlefield. Standing is trusting God with complete confidence that He will do His part to cause you to win against whatever is opposing you. It’s no more complicated than that.