The Sword of the LORD

Recently, I heard a brother share some verses from John 11 - the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. I was struck all over again by this amazing story, but the more I thought about it later, the more I was impressed by its relevance for me today. We talk a lot about the spiritual warfare that we are engaged in as Christians.   We understand that our battle is not against flesh and blood foes, but against principalities, powers, and spiritual darkness in high places that seek to destroy us, and our testimony for Christ.   We face opposition from the world, the flesh, and the devil, but our focus must never be on trying to survive against such formidable enemies by our own strength, grit, or determination.   You see, our real battle is to believe.   The Apostle Paul told Timothy to, " Fight the good fight of faith , lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called."   (1 Timothy 6:12)   Later, he testified that, "I have fought a good figh...

"But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."    (2 Corinthians 11:3). We humans often have the tendency to make things harder than they need to be.  It is often the simplest ways that are the best ways.  Christians especially are in danger of being beguiled by the devil's oldest temptation.  You see, it wasn't fruit that enticed Eve in the beginning, but the desire to possess the knowledge of good and evil.  To take matters into our own hands, to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and to be like gods - this was Satan's fatal error, and he would like for it to be ours as well. Adam and Eve had it easy.  They merely had to trust their heavenly Father, and receive from Him all that they needed to sustain their spiritual lives.  God worked for six days and rested the seventh.  Adam and Eve, however, were created on the six...

"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.   Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’S hand double for all her sins."   (Isaiah 40:1,2). The covenant that God made with His people in the Old Testament was often marked by His wrath being poured out upon them for some misdeed or another.   He that despised Moses' law often died without mercy.   Of course, this is because the law was all about works.   "For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, 'That the man which doeth those things shall live by them.' "   (Romans 10:5).   How extraordinary, then, are the words of Isaiah.   God wanted to comfort His people, and speak to their very hearts and their inner man with tender words of hope. What were these words of comfort that God wished to speak - no, that He wished to cry out - to His people?   That her ...