Our PURPOSE is FOR Him…our POSITION is IN Him…our POWER is FROM Him
My friends we are in a war for the very soul of mankind. It is a spiritual war. The devil is alive and turning up the heat. He works through people to lie, cheat and distract. It is almost impossible to believe anything or anyone. Even many of our most trusted voices in the church seem distracted and conflicted. It is no wonder many of us are confused and feel that our joy is gone.
In order to help us recover and gain a much needed perspective, I want to wrap some powerful spiritual principles around three key words: PURPOSE, POSITION and POWER. Used in the context of going to war, it is important to first know your PURPOSE. Then, the proper POSITION militarily and finally we need to apply the appropriate POWER necessary to win. This is true in a physical war, but is also true in a spiritual war. As Christians we often say that we are in a spiritual battle, but what does that really mean? I refer you to Ephesians 6:10-18.
Let’s begin with PURPOSE. In a physical war it is very important to know your purpose/objective before you begin fighting. If you have not clearly understood the end game PURPOSE, you will likely fail. It has been said that if you do not know where you are going…any road will take you there. As we consider our response to the spiritual war, it is critically important that we clearly understand our PURPOSE is FOR Him. That is to know the Lord.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind
and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me
heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)
I love the Apostle Paul. He knew his PURPOSE was to reveal Jesus Christ to Jews and Gentiles, and nothing stood in the way of him “going for it”. Dear friends, this is what we need to strive for. Paul could not be distracted. Why? Because he knew his PURPOSE. The only way we can insulate ourselves from the deceptions of our enemy is to be clear on God’s PURPOSE. Seek Him every day and ask Him to reveal His PURPOSE for you in the midst of this war.
Next, we need to understand our POSITION. In the physical sense, it is important to know where you need to go and how to set up for the battles to come. This is not the case in a spiritual war. In a spiritual war we only need to know WHO is positioning us. Our POSITION is IN Him. The only physical element is our humble and prostrate posture before our King. Here, and only here, is where the victory comes, and the fruit of joy is restored.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5 (NIV)
Finally, we look at POWER. There again is a serious dichotomy between physical and spiritual POWER. We all know what POWER looks like in the physical sense. But what is spiritual POWER?
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not
the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,
and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (NIV)
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer. 1 Peter 3:12 (NIV)
These verses unpack the first aspect of POWER. Spiritual POWER is only possible through our obedient and righteous life, activated and trained by the Holy Spirit.
But also there is a very important second aspect of POWER, which is inner strength. Many of us have lost our strength, our physical and emotional sense of well-being. Loss of strength is most often the result of the loss of joy. For me, I find I am vulnerable to this in direct proportion to my focus on the distractions (battles) instead of God’s perspective. My strength is sapped and I become bitter and even angry at times.
It is at this point that I need to do everything I can to get His joy back into my life by focusing on Him and His purpose. Is it easy? No! But it is necessary. How can I get my joy back? It starts by recognizing that our POWER (strength) is FROM Him.
Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Nehemiah 8:10 (NIV)
I opened this TargetPoint by talking about how the enemy uses the world to lie, cheat and distract us. I want to close by reminding you that nothing sucks our joy more than when we give into this strategy. We must tune out all the information and noise we are being exposed to and remember that not much these days is really as it seems or being portrayed. The enemy knows that if he can keep us focused on the battles, white vs black, left vs right, Democrat vs Republican and a whole host of other divisive social issues, we will lose sight of the war.
The war, the globalist end game, is what they do not want you to see and these distractions keep us from focusing on our Lord’s end game—people being redeemed and His kingdom expanded. I am not saying that we should just ignore these issues and put our head in the sand. On the contrary, there are times we must fight these battles but, we cannot allow them to make us bitter, angry or in a place where we forget the bigger spiritual objectives.
For me, the only way I can win this personal struggle is to be spending more time with Jesus than I do watching and listening to the cultural noise. WHAT ABOUT YOU?