Battling Spiritually and Clashing with the Unseen part 5

Ephesians 6:10-18 Be Invincible In Battle 

MANAGE OUR ADORNMENT

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

The author of the Psalms tells us the person of our ascension.  It is in Christ, in allowing Him to have full access to our hearts that we surmount and scale and climb beyond our present challenges.  His strength is our blessing.

Psalms 84:5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the ways of them

The Message in it’s paraphrase of this Psalm renders this:

How blessed is all those in whom you live, whose lives become roads the Lord travels

Rotherham in his translation renders the last clause as:  Who have highways are in their hearts.

What’s going on in our heart, what are the motivating patterns of our heart?  Do we have a highway in our heart leading to God’s presence and the Lord’s power?

Jesus said I am the way.

He says: Lo, I am with you always.  Lo means: listen to this, pay attention.

Jesus says: I will never leave you nor forsake you,

And He says:  Behold, I stand at your door and knock!

These are not static, antiquated expressions.  These are communiqués that are touching, poignant, stirring and inspiring.

Jesus is saying these words, not just to those who were in His presence, hearing Him at the time of the statements.

He’s giving us, in these expressions, an up to date exposure. This is His exclusively individual and delicate touch of disclosing His personal nearness. This is the breathing of His continual availability, to express His distinctive, intimate, loving desire, to be our strength.  This is the Lord, our shepherd, reaching to us as our inner forte.  He is saying these things, in a relentless love.  He is incessantly, persistently knocking and speaking to our hearts. His love is not sporadic, but it’s a love that’s uninterrupted and constant, as His gentle voice continues to reach out to us.

Our benefit, our privilege and profit of value are to find our ascendency in Christ as our complete capability.

Are we this Blessed person whose strength is in God in whose heart are the ways of them? Psalms 84:5.

Is our heart an open freeway of constant access for the living power of Jesus?

Psalms 84:6 give us the result of allowing the Lord in to be our strength.  It says:

Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also fills the pools

The valley of Baca is the vale of weeping.  It is the low place of sorrow. This is the place we often wander too, of deeps of depression and frustration.  But through Christ, through allowing his strength to flood our heart, we make these experiences a reservoir, a place to pool up a reserve of the filling with the favor of God’s grace of refreshing.

Psalms 84:7 explain further results of letting the Lord in us: They go from strength to strength; every one of them in Zion appears before God.

Zion is a symbolic reference to being in the presence of God. As Phillips says:

When we’re walking in the power God gives then we’re walking in the place where God lives.

At times life seems impossible; sometimes it may feel like it’s more then “at times,” but that “all” the time life is unbearable, intolerable and totally unmanageable.

That’s far from experiencing moving from strength to strength.  We may start to develop the idea that God is unreasonable and that His dealings in our life are arbitrary and His involvement in our life are random.  We may even feel that He is uninformed about our real needs and haphazard and indiscriminate in His answers to our crying needs.  The knee jerk reaction of our real gut might be that all our attempts at touching Him in our prayers is light years away from really touching Him.

What little I know of the Lord, but in that feeling, I’d have to say, He wants to hear our doubts; He’ll receive all our disappointments and gather our disillusionments into His loving acceptance.

Jesus wants with all His heart to bless us with His life within us.  He longs for our heart and life to become a road that He travels constantly with His strength to strengthen in every need.

How blessed is all those in whom you live,

Whose lives become roads the Lord travels