The Lord our Banner

 "And Moses built an altar and named it "The Lord is My Banner."  (Jehovah-Nissi)

At the Battle of Rephidim Moses held up his staff in his hands to the Lord.  It is the same staff that he used for many of the miracles that were performed in Egypt.  They soon learned that as long as Moses held up the staff the Israelites would be victorious over the Amalekites, but when Moses stopped holding up the staff due to fatigue, they would start losing. So thus they concluded, "we have to keep this staff in the air toward the Lord until the battle is over and we have victory."  The solution was that they had a couple of men help Moses.  

This story illustrates the balance between work and prayer.  We need to pray as we work.  The staff symbolizes keeping our our hearts and minds toward prayer, and as the Israelite army fights in the valley illustrates the actual living and working.  As long as we pray, we see victory but when we get weary and stop praying we start to see defeat.  As we live and work we need to keep our heart in a ready place to pray.  Moses named the place for all of us to remember Jehovah-Nissi meaning "the Lord my Banner".  As we acknowledge God in all our ways we experience His power.  A prayerless person is a powerless person, while a prayerful person is powerful.  

How do you deal with enemies?

 Matthew 6:43-48:  You have heard that is was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy."  But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be the sons of your Father who is in Heaven.  For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.  For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have?  Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?  Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  You therefore, be perfect as your Father is perfect.

Notice the last phrase "be perfect as your Father is perfect."  It equates loving enemies as being perfect.  Therefore, a sign of perfection and spiritual maturity is to love our enemies as Jesus points out here.  Of all the attributes that Jesus could point out for a person to strive for it is the attribute of love.  

I Corinthians 13:13 says "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."  In the first three verses of the same chapter it says "If I speak in the tongues of angels and men, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have no love, I gain nothing."

With all the other attributes we could strive for and gain they are all worth nothing if we possess those without love.  We must strive to show love.  Jesus makes it very clear that whoever I would regard as my enemy I am to have love for.  A mark of a mature Christian is in how they view and treat their enemies.  

Jesus says "If you love those who will love you in return...what good is it?"  Even lost people do this.  I am afraid that the love that many Christians have is of the same caliber as someone who isn't a Christian.  Is it sinful for me to love my enemies?  Here we see that it is sinful NOT to for this is commanded by Christ.  

A Christian is uniquely equipped with God's Spirit to love this way.  Impossible because we often love someone for what we can get out of it, but Jeussw wants us to love because it is in our nature to love.  This kind of love loves without regard to how the other person will respond.    

Assurance of Salvation

Every Christian has a phase in their walk with Christ where they suffer doubt as to whether they are saved or not.  This usually occurs during the Spiritual Infancy stage through the Childhood stage.  Some Christians remain in these stages of immaturity their whole lives and fail to move into Spiritual Adulthood.  Because of this, they don't move on to Spiritual Parenthood either.  However, just like in the physical world infancy and childhood are healthy phases to be in and it seems at the time to take quite a while.  And so it is healthy during these phases to have doubts regarding assurance of salvation but as it is not good for a person to remain in the infant stage in their physical development so too it is not good for a person to remain so in their spiritual development.  

Some may wonder "Is knowing that I am saved even possible?"  I John 5:13 suggests that it is indeed possible "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life."  Notice here the words "that you may KNOW that you have eternal life."  Many of the things written in I John are there to give people assurance of whether they have eternal life or not.  Notice that John is clearly stating that a person can indeed know with certainty of their standing with God.  

Another point in seeking assurance is from Romans 8:16.  "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God."  A person can know that they are saved as the Holy Spirit who lives inside them speaks to their heart that they are saved.  God through the Spirit speaks with our Spirit that we are His children.  Let me stress to you that this is absolutely essential to assurance!  

So, how does Spirit speak to our spirits? What does He use?  What types of things do we need to do in order to hear His voice?  The Holy Spirit speaks with our spirits using the scripture. Notice what Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1:21 "No prophecy (prophecy of scripture) was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried away by the holy Spirit." The is the product of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit uses the Bible to speak to our spirits.  

 An audio file about works that can either get God's attention or that can get God to ignore.  We have been doing some podcasts from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus on how to get God's Attention

30-Day Challenges

 I have been utilizing some small incremental changes in my life using 30-Day Challenges.  I started my first challenge in June with the 30-day cold shower challenge.  I had a few reasons for taking this challenge, but the most significant was an aid to waking up early in the morning.  With the cold shower I would get up at about 4:30 and take my shower.  After I took my shower, I would have my daily Bible devotion.  For some strange reason it really worked.  The cold shower was extremely uncomfortable, and I had to work my way into it from starting at lukewarm, to having the last 20 seconds of the shower on full cold, to having the entire shower on cold. This only took a few days.  I do not know if I am a glutton for punishment, but the cold shower was crazy enough to cause me to get up when the alarm went off.  

Some people think that the way to get yourself to wake up earlier is to "go to bed earlier", but I have found that this simply does not work.  If you want to wake up earlier, you simply need to get up earlier regardless of what time you get to bed the night before. What happens is that the next night you will be tired enough that your body will signal "it is time to go to bed".  It is at that time that you need to go to bed and then you will be able to wake up easier the next morning.  So, in order to start this habit, you have to "eat the frog" and force yourself to get up then your body will start to adjust.  The cold shower really helped wake me up even when I felt half asleep.  The cold shower worked so well that after the 30 days I decided to keep the habit.  It is now October, and I am still getting up at about 4:30 and taking a cold shower (it is still uncomfortable).  Along with that is my Bible reading and devotions.  I have only missed two days and one was intentional and the other was due to being a guest at someone else's house.  

For July I decided to do an Intermittent Fasting Challenge.  I ate One Meal a Day (OMAD), or on some days did a 20 hour fast with a 4-hour eating window for 30-days.  I lost about 12 pounds for the month of July.  I found the fasting to be fairly easy and simple without having to count calories.  There were a lot of other benefits that I experienced as well such as more energy, less brain fog, and lower blood pressure just to name a few.  Again, this 30-day challenge worked so well that I decided to continue through the months of August and September.  As of today, I have lost 35 lbs.  

For August I went on a special prayer challenge of thirty minutes of silence on my knees for thirty days.  I did not make this challenge.  I went about 10 days and decided to quit as it is almost impossible to sit there and try to be silent by not thinking anything.  I do not see this as a failure because I learned some things through this challenge. With this challenge I have been able to come with some other ideas that I might try in the future for prayer.  

For September I went on a 100 push-ups a day challenge.   I only did these four days per week to give myself time to recover.  I did 10 sets of 10 push-ups.  This went really well as I did them throughout the day. Any time that I had free to do a set, I would do them.  What I learned from this was that I can increase my activity level by doing something during the times where there is not much going on.  I spend a lot of time working in front of a computer or reading, so it is good to take quick exercise breaks throughout the day. 

My 30-day challenge in October is a 30-Day Reach Out Challenge.  This challenge is where I contact people every day to see how they are doing.  I start out in the first week with one person a day and increase each week with another person so that by week 4 I am reaching out to 4 people a day.  A rule is that calling the same person in the same day does not count as two, but as only one.  I can contact the same person multiple times a week and it counts, but only counts as one for that day.  At this time, I do not know how easy or difficult this will be, but I know that I will learn something by the end of October.  It will probably become more challenging as I get through the list of available people.  My hope is that it will stretch me to actively look for people to care for.  

I have ideas for other months that I will share as the year unfolds, but I really like the 30-day challenge idea for several reasons.  They say it takes about 21 days to form a new habit.  Thirty days allows enough time to form a habit and clinch it with the additional days.  Thirty days allows for short-terms wins that can be celebrated.  With these wins a person can gain a bit of traction towards making small changes in their life that can bring significant benefits.             

Eternal Security: What about Judas?

“Judas is proof that a man can lose their standing with God—what about him?”

     Of all the people from the scriptures that we could point to as having lost his salvation, it would be Judas.  He was one of the 12 disciples that Jesus hand-picked.  He had a front row seat to Jesus’ ministry of healing and teaching, and he was also sent out two times to do ministry in Christ’s name.  The first time it was with the 12 and the second time was with the 70 (Luke Chapters 9 and 10).  In both cases Judas was paired with another disciple, and they were given authority to preach, to heal and to cast out demons in Jesus’ name.  If any of us had seen Judas he would have looked like a genuine follower (he, in fact was) of Christ as he worked miracles and preached the messages that Jesus instructed him.  And yet, Judas had a false faith, he was a follower but not a believer.  Notice what the scriptures say about him in John 6:70-72…

Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve?  And yet one of you is a devil. He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray Him.

            Notice also what it says a few verses earlier…in verse 64

…But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray Him.)

According to this passage Judas was an unbeliever!  Therefore, we cannot say that Judas was once a believer that lost his status as a believer, because these verses suggest that he was an unbeliever from the beginning.  Judas was among the twelve and doing the works along with the 12 and yet he was a “devil” the whole time.  His true colors finally came out, and so Judas was a disciple of Jesus and yet not a believer.  

 Wrestling with God.

Genesis 32:24,26,28b

Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak...then he said unto Jacob, "Let me go for it is daybreak." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me"... (The angel said)"you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed."

Sometimes God requires us to wrestle with Him to get the blessing that we desperately need.  Consider that Jacob was driven by his desperation.  This is important for us to notice as he already had assurances in the past from God that He was going to return him safely home.  Nevertheless, we find Jacob wrestling here to get an assurance of God's blessing.

There are times where we need to allow our desperation to seek God.  We can feel the restriction that God has placed upon us.  Why the barrier, the limit, or the hardship?  We can get that sense that God is neutral--neither for us nor against, but "Where is He?" It is in that time where we must allow our desperation to drive us into seeking Him.  We must have His presence so we will cling to Him until we get it.  It is such a time where He might be calling us into deeper level of submission and consecration.  

Many resort to other things such as their own material things, relationships, or activities.  They will pacify themselves with these substitutes and so they will not get rewarded.  They will not allow their desperation to drive them to seek the Lord.  So, they content themselves to live without His blessings or power upon their lives.  They are not content, but they get used to going without.  

Like Jacob, God by His grace gives a vision or taste of Himself of His activity in our lives.  The angels ascending and descending the ladder in Jacob's vision indicates their assignments from Heaven over Jacob's life.  God had by His Grace elected to set His activity over Jacob's life.  Therefore, Jacob commits to the Lord, and we see that over the years the Lord had protected Jacob's interests and blessed Him in spite of Jacob's conniving Uncle Laban.  Jacob was well aware of God's hand of blessing upon his life.  So, we see that God pursued Jacob, but it was in this moment Jacob's turn to pursue God.  Jacob was blessed as a result.

There are a few examples in the scriptures of those that had been blessed but failed to pursue God and so missed out and were actually rejected.  Do you remember King Saul?  In 1 Samuel 11 King Saul had been infused with the presence and power of God in his life in a radical way.  We also have the story in 1 Samuel 2 of the Eli the priest and his sons who were blessed to serve in God's service.  In the New Testament we have the Church of Laodicea in Revelation 3.  All of these cases are those who have been blessed and pursued by God and when it came time for them to pursue God they failed.  Each case God had rejected them.  All of these could have sought God and wrestled with Him to try to reverse the curse, but alas, they didn't.  In contrast, do you remember Jonah and Ninevah.  Ninevah was cursed and marked for destruction.  When they found out they decided to fast and pray hoping that perhaps God would have mercy and change His mind.  They had no promise or assurance that God would, but they decided to wrestle with it because they were desperate.  God heard their prayer and changed His mind about destroying them.  

So it is that when we sense God's hand is palm down upon us and His face is turned away that we need to all the more for His blessing.  The worst thing that we can do is cope with it and settle ourselves with other things.    

What do you have going on right now that you need to wrestle with God about?