Battling Spiritually and Clashing with the Unseen part 3

Ephesians 6:10-18 Be Invincible In Battle

ENLIGHTEN US TO

MANAGE OUR ADORNMENT

MEASURE OUR ADVERSARY         

MANEUVER OUR ARENA 

MAKE USE OF OUR ARMOR

MANAGE OUR ADORNMENT

Our Preparation

     Be a Finisher                                              Finally

Be a Family                                                 my brethren

     Be a Fighter

Our Attire Christ’s Strength                       be strong

Our Approval Christ’s Life                         in the Lord

Our Ability Christ’s Energy                        in the power

Our Ascendancy Christ’s Capability      of his might

Our Attire Christ’s Strength  

In 1Kings 8:38 Solomon dedicates the temple and prays saying:

                  people know the plague of their own heart

There is a massive array of physical/social catastrophes but what about our spiritual frailties and shortcomings.

We hide from our personal plague with varieties of diversions in our cultural surroundings.  But God in His loving mercy probes into our heart with various adjusting alterations and an array of awkward obstructions.

All to move us away from our delusions and misconceptions to our real need.

When disaster strikes, or we’re face to face with a deprivation or suddenly a tragic upheaval raids into our life, a debilitating disease, any kind of calamity or our exposed vulnerability is laid bare by a constant threat of enemy attack.

It’s so that everyone can know the plague of our own heart

Solomon continues in his thought saying when we see the emptiness of our heart that we should stretch out our hands to God.

David wrote in Psalms 31:24

Be of good courage…he’ll strengthen your hearts 
  

How do we develop a robust dauntless faith when our vulnerability is exposed?  We do this by developing a living relationship with the Lord in a prayerful anticipation to Him for heart strengthening.

We need the inner reinforcement of finding our capacity in Christ, to be enabled with His endowment & advantaged with His ability

Our distractions shouldn’t give way to despairing and discouragement.  We’re to find our in Christ’s life.

Our life in Christ is or support, our endorsement and the authorization we so deeply need.

Our Approval Christ’s Life              in the Lord

The Lord is our strength in time of trouble Psalms 37:39

We need to be inspired in our impossible odds through incredible options.

Paul wrote in his tragedy in 2 Cor. 12:9

Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me 

Paul’s declaration wasn’t just the gloomy proposal of a stoic.  This isn’t docile acquiescence.  He was in stabbing pain from a piercing intense debility.  Something was causing an unnerving hindrance and impeding his productivity.

To glory in a problem and feel positive about what God is doing goes far beyond fatalistic surrender to misery.  To glory means to rejoice by taking pride in a thing, to boast, and brag about it.  The word glory is a verb; it’s an action of our life more then a noise from the mouth.

To glory is to aspire passionately through the pain of the problem to the power found through pray. This is living the exchanged life where we switch from our weakness for Christ’s strength.  To know our poverty in our selves is to find our riches in grace.

We’re able to assess our strength in Christ and our dependence on His grace when we see our response to the exposure of our weakness in difficulty and the disorder of troubles inconveniences. This is where we gauge our reliance on grace.

When the apostles had been beaten they left their circumstances rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name Acts 5:40–41.

Paul said in 2 Cor. 12:10 therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong

This idea of taking pleasure is a saucy twist beyond the previous verse where we’re implored to glory.

Phillips renders this, therefore; I have cheerfully made up my mind to be proud of my weaknesses, because they mean a deeper experience of the power of Christ.

I can even enjoy weaknesses, suffering, privations, persecutions and difficulties for Christ’s sake. For my very weakness makes me strong in Christ.

No matter how frail we are, regardless our infirmity, our faulty, broken down defectiveness, none of this matters.  It’s who we are in Christ, it’s our relationship with Him, which like His Word is alive and powerful and pierces into our soul and spirit.  His transforming grace is the power of God to save us from all the disappointments.

Are we available to the crisis juncture of manifesting the power of Christ?  This privilege is determined on our growing in an intimate relationship to Jesus.  As the Spirit nudges us to open our heart in closer and closer bonding in Christ we can give our weakness to Him.

Our natural predisposition flinches with revulsion to pain and problems.  Whatever the difficulty, a physical snag, or the constant aggravation of emotional trauma, it can just grieve on with complications and our nature loathes difficulty.

It takes faith to receive and firm trust to relish and comprehend the obscurity of this blessing of our weakness in self-turning us to our strength in Christ.

The Psalmist shares it this way: It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes Ps. 119:71

The people of God in the scriptures prevailed and overcame every obstacle by the power of Christ.

It seems so absurd, and too the skeptic ridiculous, to say:

When I am weak, then am I strong

We can be weighed down by shattered dreams and crushed by regrets and disappointments.  We can view our failures as a thing that labels us as insufficient and inadequate.

But we have to take these weakening stabs and bashes from life’s dysfunctions as a motivation to fill our lacks with the sufficiency of Christ.  It’s when we’re drowning in weakness that we cry for strength from Him who has all power.

We can take our weakness and allow it to drown us in our inability and become over absorbed with self.  When we feel our weakness we feel our lack of wisdom, our deficiency in seeing things from the right perspective, we recognize our impotency, incapability, helplessness and inability.  This is our opportunity to excellence, to choose the reach of faith, to prove our weakness is Christ’s strength in us, to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

A perception of our insufficiency is of value only when it moves us to crack out of our emptiness and embrace our Lord’s sufficiency.

Jesus tells us in John 15:5 without me you can do nothing 

Our Ability Christ’s Energy              in the power


O Lord my strength & my refuge & my fortress in the day of affliction Jeremiah 16:19

I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me Phil. 4:13

Our Ascendancy Christ’s Capability     of his might

Blessed is the man whose strength is in you Ps.84:5

The joy of the Lord is our strength Neh. 8:10