Stevemidkiff's Blog

We feel internal resistance from fatigue, weakness and disappointment

We feel the pressure of outer resistance from critics, ridicule and opposition

To “be steadfast and immovable”

1 Cor. 15:58

means to be “settled, firm, letting nothing shake our faith or move us away

knowing and being continually aware that our efforts in the Lord

are not futile

nothing we do in Christ’s Spirit is ever wasted or purposeless

So we stand our ground. We don’t hold back.

We throw ourselves into the work of Christ ,

We’re confident that nothing we do for Him is a waste of time or effort.

It is significant that the word

“persecute”

in Philippians 3:16

is the word

“press on”

in Philippians 3:14

We call out to God, we cry and implore Him. We plead; give us answers.

God, please take our side! We’re in a tight place, give us some space;

Every time we turn around we’re facing new challenges, new problems

and more trouble: give us Your enabling grace! hear us!

We’re surrounded by rabble and riffraff

Lord how long do we have to put up with their scorn?

How long will they lust after lies?

How long will they live crazed by illusion?

Psalm 4:1-2 personalized

O God You are our righteousness:

You have enlarged us when we were in distress

Psalms 4:1 KJV

THROUGH PRESSURE YOU DEVELOP US!

At 17, Joan of Arc was determined to right the human injustices in France.

When asked,

“What if no one follows you?”

She answered,

“I’ll never notice because I won’t look back.”

Christ warns us

Don’t become “faint.”

Luke 18:1

The Greek word for faint means

Don’t relax, or don’t become weak or weary in faith

Don’t give up the struggle, keep pressing on, complete the task

Johannes Tauler, the German theologian who lives from 1300 – 1361

declared:

“If a man loves God, and has no will except to do God’s will,

the whole force of the Rhine River may rush at him,

and yet will not disturb him or interrupt his peace.”

“Zion, let not your hands be slack. The Lord your God in your midst,

the Mighty One, will save.”

Zephaniah 3:16-17

Alexander the Great was informed that there was a formidable army of

100,000 Persians prepared to defeat him.

He answered, “Yet, one butcher fears not myriads of sheep.”

“Ah!” said another, “when the Persians draw their bows,

their arrows are so numerous that they darken the sun.”

Alexander responded,

“It will be fine to fight in the shade!”

Vernie W. Reed

“Faith makes things possible; it does not make them easy”

Dave Arnold, Pastor

We’re to be steadfast, immovable always abound in the work of the Lord.

As C. H. Spurgeon stated:

“The best evidence of God’s presence is the devil’s growl.”

A paraphrase of John Wesley’s journal section reads:

“May 5th: A.M.:

Preached in St. Ann’s; was asked not to come back.

P.M:

preached at St. John’s; deacons said, ‘Get out and stay out.’

May 12th A.M.:

preached at St. Andrew’s; elders called a special meeting and said not to return.

P.M.: preached on the street and was run off.

May 26th A.M.:

preached in a field; got chased by a bull that was set loose.

June 2nd A.M:

preached at the edge of town; police moved me.

P.M: preached in a pasture and 10,000 people came!”

So we stand tall against the raging waves of resistance

Are we freaked at the presidential race?

Voters on both sides of the aisle are terrified of the proposition of the candidate from the other party taking office,

Is this year’s election one of the most polarizing in history.

The stats gurus are manipulating our minds

Trump vs Biden

are these the clowns of the century

Actually creeps and weirdos have been running us a muck since
Cain bludgeoned Abel

If we’re praying God’s will will be done

Outright butchers have run empires
and historical evidence of the results are etched in time.

This is another page in history

Is this the end.?

Is the Ark full yet?

As Jesse Carey noted:

Jesus never worried about politics.

Yes

These are Desperate Times

When Jesus was born they were desperate times.
His parents had to flee the country
With Him

When Moses was born they were desperate times.
His Mom had to hide him in a swap

All through history it’s been one frantic thing after another

God sometimes upsets the Apple cart

When Christ was born the ruler demanded that masses of young children and babies be executed

When Moses was born the ruler demanded wholesale butchery of babies in post birth murders of children and babies

We see Satan’s agenda

But the powerful truth is God’s agenda is in total control and
lasts forever.

What we see here around us are temporal problems and most of the
brain trust are offering ridiculous solutions

Jesus has never run for election.
But He is King of Kings and He is
Lord of Lords

He doesn’t need our votes

He wants our for hearts.

And the more of our hearts that He has and the more that we yield to His Lordship and filling,
The more we will understand and rest in every outcome.

Politicians come and go.

Jesus says Don’t Worry

He Says

Seek first His kingdom
and his righteousness,

If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—

most of which are never even seen

don’t you think he’ll attend to us, take pride in us and do his best for us?

What we to do here is relax,

Don’t get so preoccupied with getting, just respond to all God’s constant giving.

He’s giving us breath every second

When we’re confused about God and the way He works we get in a big fuss over everything,

God knows what He’s doing

God knows what works best.

We need to saturate our life
in God’s-reality

We need to drench our life
God’s-initiative

We need to immerse our life in
God’s-provisions.

We need to Give our entire attention to what God is doing right now,

don’t get all worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.

God will help you deal with the hard things that come up when the time comes. …

Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:33-36 personalized

A new president will be elected in the November election.

Needless to say this guy won’t be perfect.

Pray for the guy

“The prudent ignores an insult.”

Proverbs 12:16

Fools have short fuses
They explode all too quickly;
the prudent quietly shrug off insults.

Proverbs 12:16 the message

A fool is quick-tempered,
A wise person stays calm when insulted.

A fool’s wrath is quickly and openly known,
but a prudent individual ignores an insult.

Proverbs 12:16 | AMP

So how do ignore an insult?

How do we respond to personal ridicule?

How do we react to a disparaging put down?

No, we don’t take it like a Stoic:

“I am a rock, I am an island.“

Yes we do respond like a believer:

we grow in Jesus through sneers of disdain

we let Christ live His life through us

“When reviled, we bless;

when persecuted, we endure;

when slandered, we entreat.”

2 Corinthians 4:12–13

We’re not much to look at.

We each have past failings, personal flaws and faults

We’ve all been surrounded and battered by troubles,

Don’t get demoralized;

Yes, it’s a quandary,

Yes, there’s always someone who’ll put us in a pickle

There’s problems and predicaments daily

And often we’re caught off guard

we’re not sure what to do,

but we know that God knows what to do;

Jesus has an ideal solution for every problem

We turn to Him.

We tell Him we’ve been spiritually terrorized,

We accept the fact that God hasn’t left our side;

We don’t deny that yes, we’ve been thrown down,

But we haven’t been totally broken.

What we are experiencing has already been felt by Jesus,

Christ endured trial and torture,

Christ endured mockery and murder;

The way Jesus responded is what he’ll do in us—

Jesus lives! Jesus lives in us and through us!

This isn’t an obstacle!

This is a miraculous opportunity!

The way we grow in Jesus is to let Him live through us

And that happens in the stress and pressure of agony

Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake,

This makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us.

While we’re going through the worst,

We’re opening our hearts door to Christ’s best!

2 Corinthians 4:7-15 personalized

This is how we grow in Jesus

When a musical instrument’s strings go loose,
it sounds awful.

But you can also overtighten the strings, breaking
them or creating discord.

There’s a perfect tension to grace
and truth, which makes the gospel’s music.

The devil doesn’t care which side of
the horse we fall off of—as long as
we don’t stay in the saddle.
We need to ride the horse with one
foot in the stirrup of truth,
the other in the stirrup of grace.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
Susan asks Mr. and Mrs. Beaver
about Aslan the Lion:

“Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about
meeting a lion.” “That you will dearie, and no mistake,”
said Mrs. Beaver.

“If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or just plain silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?
Who said anything about safe?
Of course he isn’t safe.
But he’s good.
He’s the King, I tell you.”

Christ is good.

But until we understand that He’s not “safe,” until we come to grips with the truth of His uncompromising holiness, we’ll never begin to grasp His grace.

Many today try to reinvent Jesus,
giving Him a facelift.

They spin His statements for public consumption, making Him fit popular notions of the kind of Christ people want.

But Jesus is notoriously uncooperative with all attempts to repackage and market Him.

He’s not looking for image-enhancers.

We’re to follow Him as servants,
not walk in front of Him as a PR entourage.

When Jesus walked this earth,
many people didn’t recognize Him.

They were looking for the Messiah
as a powerful lion, bringing judgment on His enemies.

But they overlooked the passages showing Him coming as a lamb:

He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

ISAIAH 53: 7

The lamb appears

“looking as if it had been slain”

Revelation 5: 6

This seems a picture of weakness.
But suddenly men are hiding themselves from the

“wrath of the Lamb”

Rev. 6: 16

“They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them because

He is Lord of lords and King of kings”

Rev. 17: 14

At the end of
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
the children see a bright white lamb, speaking in a “sweet milky voice.”

As they talk, suddenly

“his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them
and scattering light from his mane.”

The lamb of grace is the lion of truth.

Sometimes we see Him as one, sometimes the other.

Always He is both.

GRACE & TRUTH

Selected

Margaret Holder was born in China to missionary parents with China Inland Mission.

In 1939, when Japan took control of eastern China, thirteen-year-old Margaret was imprisoned in a
Japanese internment camp.

There she remained, separated from her parents, for six years.

Margaret told us stories about a man called

“Uncle Eric.”

He tutored her and was deeply loved by all the children in the camp.

“Uncle Eric” was Eric Liddell,

“The Flying Scot,” hero of the movie Chariots of Fire.

Liddell shocked the world by refusing to run the one hundred meters in the 1924 Paris Olympics, a race he was favored to win.

He withdrew because the qualifying heat was on a Sunday.

Liddell won a gold medal.
He broke a world record in the four hundred meters, not his strongest event.

Later he went as a missionary to China.
When war broke out, he sent his pregnant wife and his daughters to safety.

Imprisoned by the Japanese, he never saw his family in this world again.

Suffering with a brain tumor,
Eric Liddell died in 1945, shortly
after his forty-third birthday.

Through fresh tears, Margaret told us:

“It was a cold February day when
Uncle Eric died.”

At times it seemed unbearable to be
cut off from their homes and families.

But Margaret spoke with delight of
care packages falling from the sky
barrels of food and supplies dropped from American planes.

One day Margaret and the other children were lined up as usual to
count off for roll call.

Suddenly an American airplane flew low.

They watched it circle and drop more
of those wonderful food barrels.

But as the barrels came near the ground, the captives realized
something was different.

This time the barrels had legs!

The sky was full of American soldiers, parachuting down to rescue them.

Margaret and several hundred children rushed out of the camp, past Japanese guards who offered no resistance.

Free for the first time in six years,
they ran to the soldiers that were raining down everywhere.

They threw themselves on their rescuers, hugging and kissing them.

Imagine the children’s joy.

Imagine the soldiers’ joy.

God rejoices in the grace He offers us as much as we rejoice in receiving it.

Whether it’s Jesus returning from the sky to liberate us,

or Jesus, drawing us to Himself
through our deaths,

we will be rescued and at last reunited with loved ones who’ve gone before us.

We’ll be taken home.

Prayer and persistence

Jesus declared in His teaching that

We ought always to pray and not give up,

In the parable in which His words occur,

Christ taught with an intention

of delivering us from being fainthearted

His design is to rescue us from weakness in prayer.

Our Lord is teaching us

that laxity must be guarded against,

His Spirit urges us to be persistent

He wants us to stay encouraged.

He wants us exercise the insistence of faith

The importance of earnest pleading

is an indispensable quality in our praying.

Urgent praying is a mighty movement

of our soul toward God with our burdens and needs.

It is a stirring of the deepest forces of our heart,

We come boldly to the throne of heavenly grace.

With Spirit driven ability to hold on, press on, and wait.

Jesus places in us Restless desire, in restful patience,

Jesus leads us to strongly grasp His embrace

This isn’t an incident, or a performance,

This is a passion of our inner person.

It is not a want, half-needed, but a sheer necessity.

The wrestling quality in urgent praying burdens,

Doesn’t spring from physical vehemence

This is not human fleshly energy.

This is an inwrought force

Where Christ is knocking on our hearts door,

This is a faculty implanted and aroused by His Spirit.

Virtually, this is the intercession

of the Spirit of God, in us; it is,

“the effectual, fervent prayer, that availeth much.”

The Spirit of Christ is inflaming every element within us,

with His energy and with His own striving,

This is the essence of His persistence

which urges our praying at the mercy seat,

to continue until the fire falls and the blessing descends.

This wrestling in prayer may not be boisterous

but quiet, tenacious, and urgent pleading.

Silent, it may be, when there are no visible outlets

for its mighty forces that presses us inside.

Nothing distinguishes reaching out to God

As clearly and strongly as praying.

Praying is the one infallible mark and test

of our expression of being a believer.

Believing people are prayerful,

When we’re doubt-minded, we’re puny in prayer

Believers call on God;

While doubting rejectors ignore God,

Empty professors call not on His name.

We need to cultivate continual prayer.

Prayer must be habitual, but more than a habit.

Prayer is duty, As praying rises far above,

Praying goes beyond the ordinary implications

Praying pushes outside the natural to God’s supernatural

Praying is the expression of our relationship to God,

Praying is yearning for divine communion.

Praying is the outward and upward flow

of our inner life toward Jesus our original fountain.

Praying is an assertion of the soul to our Father

Praying a claiming of our faith in our God’s faithfulness,

Praying links us to our eternal inheritance realities

adapted E. M. Bounds writings

Your power is irresistible the activity of it can’t be controlled

Show us Your power

Let us see Your convincing Influences in every circumstance

Help us to constantly Call out to You

We rely on Your provision

Make our total expectation You

Never disappoint our dependence

You never let us go

We’re etched into the palms of Your mighty hands

Lift our eyes to see You

Knock on our hearts door with Your loving fist

Knock hard & please knock constantly

We know, O God You can do everything

No thought is hidden from You

Lead us to trust in You

We’re convinced

You can do anything

You can do everything

Nothing & no one can upset Your plans

Show us Your path in each challenge

We know that You can do everything and that no thought can be hidden from You

Job 42:2

Relax us in Your hands

Power belongs to You

Strength comes from God

You Lord are the source of all power

Guide us in relying on Your power

God has spoke once twice have I heard this that power belongs to God

Psalm 62:11

Illuminate our faith in Your almighty hand

With You nothing is impossible

Articulate to our hearts that nothing is out of the question

For with God nothing is impossible

Luke 1:37

All power is Yours both in heaven & in earth

Jesus let Your voice ring in our hearts,

That All power is given to me in heaven and in earth

Matthew 28:18

You kill & You make alive

You wound & You heal

neither is there any that can deliver out of Your hand

I, even I, am He there is no god but me

I kill & I make alive

I wound & I heal

neither is there any that can deliver out of My hand

For I lift up My hand to heaven & say, I live forever

Deuteronomy 32:39-40

Do you see it now?

Do you see that I’m the one?

Do you see that there’s no other god beside me?

I bring death & I give life, I wound & I heal

there is no getting away from or around me!

I raise my hand in solemn oath;

I say, ‘I’m always around

By that very life I promise

When I sharpen my lightning sword & execute judgment

I take vengeance on my enemies and pay back those who hate me

I’ll make my arrows drunk with blood my sword

It will gorge itself on flesh Feasting on slain and captive alike

the proud & vain enemy corpses

Deut 32:42

What You have promised You are able also to perform

Make us fully persuaded that, what You have promised, You are able also to perform

Romans 4: 21

O God, why have You cast us off for ever?

Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture?”

The poet is despairing.

In disaster we ask WHY!!!

Job asked why. God didn’t tell Him why. That’s what many think.

But didn’t God say it was so Job could see God?

Believers faith has been tested through the centuries

by war

by famine,

by plague

by pestilence,

by all the miseries of humanity

by our personal decline and aging bodies.

We wrestle in prayer with our problems.

The poet prays:

Remember You congregation, You have purchased;

Your inheritance, which You have redeemed

Psalm 74:2

the enemy has done wickedly in the sanctuary

Psalm 74:3

It’s weird. Everything is closed and buttoned up

We run around with our heads covered

It’s haunting

Has God abandoned us to nutty politics

Your enemies roar in the middle of Your congregations:

they set up their placards for signs.

Psalms 74:4

Our cities are filled with rioting and shouting thieves

The media cheers them. The politicians rationalize and encourage them.

The prisons are being emptied of criminals.

And God appears silent.

His faithful are reduced to speechless impotence

They’re saying, Let us destroy this country:

they want to burn up all the gathering places of GOD in the land.

They want to burn down the courts

They want to destroy the civil authorities

Rotherham renders that:

“They have said in their heart, We will force them down altogether!

They have caused to cease all the worship of God in the land.”

Phillips notes:

The real plan was to bring an utter end to the worship of the living God.

That is Satan’s master plan.

It is always Satan’s strategy to get into the sanctuary if he can.

He worked, in history by destroying the Hebrew monarchy,

He tempted the Kings of old with lives of debauchery

He ruined the temple worship. He twisted the priests and the Pharisees

Into money mongers.

He’s the corrupter of politicians and pastors.

“Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?”

“If any man defile the temple of God him will God destroy.”

Twice, Jesus cleansed the temple

Each time the money changers, the merchants, the Sanhedrin

with its vested interests brushed aside Christ’s cleansing work.

Satan uses everything in his arsenal to foul the sanctuary.

So God pulls it down. He brought the legions of Rome, to burn the temple down.

But why? They had reject their Messiah

But what about us?

The believers body is the Holy Spirit’s temple;

Satan would like to see that temple defiled.

He gloats to wreck and ruin our temple.

He delights to find God’s home, the dwelling place of God’s eternal Holy Spirit,

defiled and then destroyed.

We’re surrounded by Confusion  

“We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet:

neither is there among us any that knows how long.”

Psalms 74:9

Jeremiah is dead.

Ezekiel’s voice is stilled.

Daniel is gone

Those who have brought us to faith in Jesus

Our mentors who have encouraged us in the faith

Our giant of faith who prayed for us have gone to their eternal rest

No seers. That’s part of our frustration

Are we ignorant of the Scripture!  Are we mining the Book for it’s riches

We’re viewing a disastrous situation

We’re surrounded with intellectual unbelief

We’re pummeled with fake news, fake science, fake leaders and fake solutions

Why? Why? How long?

“No signs!”

When calamities come we need God’s voice for signs,

Why is  God Delaying

“O God, how long will the adversary reproach?

Will the enemy blaspheme Your name for ever?”

Psalms 74:10

“Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand?

Pluck it out of Your bosom.”

Psalms 74:11

Smite down Your foes? So our faith wrestles.

Is God that far away. Are God’s miraculous interventions past?

Where’s the God who humbled Pharoah?

Where’s the God who turned Egypt to dust?

The poet is wracked with questions.

Just a minute the poet rehearses:

“For God is our King of old, working salvation in all around the earth.”

Psalms 74:12

God is our King.

This desolation and disaster. Our temple laying in ruins,

We are each as believers individually a temple of God

We corporately gather our temples together and Jesus promises His presences in us

God is still God, He is still King, He is working out salvation.

So are we shut down. Are we shut out over coughing throats and runny noses?

We have fellow believers hiding in their homes. Terrified of a virus

A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees.

But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers

Psalm 74:5–6

We have lavish architecture. Men who were famous who built this country.

They used great trees to built amazing structures

Our principles of law and justice built by skilled students of God’s voice.

But now vandals were hewing down the carved work and hauling away souvenirs

of their destruction.

The poet laments as he remembers the carving in the temple of palm trees and open flowers

1 Kings 6:29

Riot is wasteful and destructive.

The hacking up of everything by haters.

The wanton smashing to pieces statues that we’re a joy of memories of great leaders.

The desecration and wholesale burning.

Our Sarcasm mingles with our sobs.

Then the poets eyes are opened.

I went into the sanctuary of GOD, then understood I their end

Psalm 73:17–19

We take our problems into the presence of God.

Into the sanctuary

In Christ things get their right perspective.

This present life is not all there is.

There is our life to come

“How could we be so blind?”

In prayer our eyes are opened.

We see the treacherous domain of hating rejectors:

“Surely You set them in slippery places:

You cast them down into destruction.

How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment!

They are utterly consumed with terrors.

Retribution at times stalks the wicked openly.

But there are times when the syndicated crime of politicians and their

Useful idiots seem to get away with everything,

Times where all live in constant fear, the police are being downsized.

There’s treachery, gang-style murder, and general mayhem and corrupt politicians.

The weirdest people command vast wealth, most of it derived from pandering to human lust,

They make riches by based on our ridiculous weaknesses for instant gratification,

This adds to our misery.

They are intoxicated with their ruthless power,

They live behind locked doors of fenced castles, guarded by henchmen whose

loyalty is often for sale.

But God writes through the poet that they are in slippery places.

We need our eyes opened to that

As a dream when one wakes up; so, O Lord, when You awake,

You will despise their image

Psalm 73:20–22

The wealth and wickedness of the ungodly rich will dissolve like a slug drenched in salt

They will be exposed by the light, like a dream at the rising of the sun.

They are an illusion really in the perspective of eternity.

Our heart is grieved, we are pricked in our inner being.

We were foolish, we were ignorant: we were acting like a beast in front of God

Psalms 73:22 

A lack of faith makes fools of us.

Doubting God fills us with regrets

The psalmist uses the word “behemoth,” a big, blundering hippopotamus.

We often feel like big dumb blunderers

The poet prays:

Have respect to Your promises:

for the dark places of the earth are full of people of cruelty.

The rioters are like disguised demons,

They want savage laws and moral debauchery,

God’s promises are unconditional.

We’re to exercise praying faith

O let not the oppressed be ashamed:

let the poor and needy praise Your name.

Psalms 74:21

Overthrow our oppressors.

When we can start praising God, no matter what the present circumstances,

it means we have already begun to rise above the circumstances.

Keep reminding the Lord of the incessant and increasing opposition of the ungodly

Arise, O God, plead Your own cause:

remember how fools man reproach You daily.

Forget not the voice of Your enemies:

the rioting tumult of those that rise up against You increases continually

Psalms 74:22–23

We pray that God defends Himself!

We cry Lord! We are Your temple

Don’t let Satan into Your house!!!

Lots of smoke. God looks on the earth,

and it trembles:

He touches the hills, and they smoke.

Psa. 104:32

A look, a touch is enough to remind the earth

of the awesome power of the Creator.

It is as simple for God to consume the earth as to create it.

And sin has raised its head in the universe,

God will bring fire

He will detonate the heavens and the earth,

Our Lord will consume them in a fiery holocaust,

and then create a new earth

in which His perpetual purpose in glory will be maintained.

I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live:

I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

My meditation of Him shall be sweet:

I will be glad in the Lord.

Psalm 104:33–34

The word “sweet” can be interpreted

“a pledge” or “a surety”

This carries the idea of a mortgage.

The poet is writing of the certainty of eternal verities,

God has a mortgage with us

He’s given us His promises,

He’s given us His pledges,

He’s given us His guarantees

Our God Himself has given surety.

The thought of that is sweet.

No wonder we can sing,

even in the discordant note of sin around us

still has to be faced.

We focus on God’s promises not humanities perversions

Let all sinners be consumed out of the earth,

and let the wicked be no more.

Psalm 104:35

The end is near.

We pray about the wreckers of the earth

There is a discordant note in nature,

There are those who have caused it—by their sin.

Sin is a personal thing, it’s process will be judged

By those persons being judged in their person.

It is humanities perversions that has spoiled everything.

They want leaders who will legislate freedom for chaos

But their riots of destruction are only temporary,

God will one day put an end to that.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!”

cries the poet as he invites us to go back to

the beginning of the psalm

and to begin again to worship and praise our Creator.

LORD our God, You are very great;

You are clothed with honor and majesty.

You cover Yourself with light as with a garment:

You stretch out the heavens like a curtain:

You lay the beams of Your chambers in the waters:

You make the clouds Your chariot:

You walk on the wings of the wind:

You make Your angels spirits;

Your ministers a flaming fire:

Psalms 104:1-4

You are our King, O God:

Please command deliverances for us.

Through You will we push down our enemies:

through Your name will we tread them under

that rise up against us.

For we will not trust in our bow, (bullets)

neither will our sword (guns) save us.

But You God have saved us from our enemies,

and You God have put them to shame that hated us.

In God we boast all the day long,

Psalm 44:4–8

If we underline the pronouns here we have

“You” and “Your” and “our.”

Over a dozen times, these pronouns in Psalms 44:1-8

They refer to God.

We meditate in this truth that we owe everything to God.

God was sovereign,

God was sufficient,

He sufficiency is complete and comforting.

No fear haunt us,

no foe daunt us,

We have God!

So we’re physically declining

Our level of energy is drained

We face opposition and obstacles everywhere we look

This has been the force of Israel’s history:

We see the greats of the faith

We want to rally into this great cloud of witnesses

Our opposition. Our obstacles. Are our opportunities!!!

If God be for us, who can be against us?