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.