Stevemidkiff's Blog

Battling Spiritually and Clashing with the Unseen 7

ENLIGHTEN US TO MANAGE OUR ADORNMENT

Our Protection v.11

Be a Force

        Our Array  It’s Clothing               Put on

Our Armor  It’s Complete           the whole armor

Our Almighty  It’s Christ              of God

In Psalms 18:31-36 we see our almighty, our armor and our array.

A Dynamic Display 

  In His Person v.31

He is Strengthening       for who is God save the LORD?

We are pathetically fragile.  No matter what physical fortification we gather around us, our vulnerability is relentless.  Our only strength is seeing God as our Lord and receiving Him as our master?

He alone is the true God. He deserves our admiration and praise; He merits our confidence and commitment. As we commit ourselves to Him, We will know Him as our Lord.  He doesn’t force Himself on us, we’re free to trust in ourselves and run our own life.  But He offers His power and asks us to receive Him as our Master.

As our Lord and master, He is our creator.  We can relax in trust as He supports, sustains and secures us.  He controls our beginning and our end.  He overrules as our sovereign leader.  The Lord predicts all things in our lives.  He directs each circumstance, each incident, and every situation.  All things come from His hand and as we allow Him to be our Lord we can depend on His strengthening. We can trust in His forgiveness and admire Him as the one who reinforces us by His enabling love and encouraging presence.

We access His strength as we accept His Lordship and give ourselves to Him.  This is a point in time decision first, but a daily reckoning also, as we consent to our need. We will continue to rediscover our shaky feebleness and need of Christ’s shepherding involvement.  We have to reach out to His reaching in, and His dwelling gentle leading for us.

He is Stabilizing       or who is a rock save our God?

A rock is a safe protective refuge.  Our God is a shelter to protect us from our vulnerability.  We are susceptible and exposed to constant liability and danger.  The Lord is our only security.

In His Provision v.32-34

He Gives Energy            It is God that girds me with strength

The word gird means God equips us with the covering of His strength.  He gives us the adequacy and provides the capability we need for every circumstance He allows into our life.

He Gives Enhancement     and makes my way perfect

The word perfect means complete, whole, secure, intact and entire.  Our way can mean our path, our manner and even our behavior.  Our life is complete and intact through the provision of Christ’s energy and enhancements.  He enriches and develops our surroundings as we confide in all our ways to Him.  We are to trust in the Lord with all our heart, don’t just trust our inner logic, but listen to His word.  In every choice we need to look to Him, accept Him in everything, and He will direct our decisions and path.

 He Gives Efficiency He makes my feet like hinds’ feet,

                                              & sets me upon my high places           

A deer is known for swiftness, agility and gracefulness.  The high place is the position of victory and location where we can care for others in prayer.  It’s our relationship with the Lord that develops in us, a capability to maneuver through the problems and challenges of others, and ourselves, where we can bring it all effectively to the Lord for solutions.

He Gives Effectiveness He teaches my hands to war, so that a 

                                                    bow of steel is broken by mine arms.

Snarly conflicts can be dealt with in skillful tact in Christ’s enablement.  We can confront seemingly impossible tasks in the power the Lord gives.  Breaking a steel bow mean bending it so that it’s rigid tension can be used to aim at our desired target.

In His Protection v.35-36

     He Shields                     You give me the shield of Your salvation

To be shielded by Christ is an amazing provision.  That Jesus stands between all that is against us is complete protection.  He will be secure us in His safe keeping better then an army of highly trained secret service.

 He Supports                 and Your right hand holds me up,

Jesus is our backer; He guarantees us and keeps us upright by holding on to us with His strong hand that’s firm and tender.

He’s Sensitive               Your gentleness makes me great

The calm gentle treatment of Jesus is delicate and penetrating with complex elegance.  God’s meekness leads us in humility, which is our prominence.  The Lord doesn’t force us to receive His way, over our way, but His loving example shows the thoughtfulness of His value of each of us.

He’s Steady                You have enlarged my steps under me, so my feet don’t slip.

The Lord gives us balance, poise and self-assured composer. As we trust in Him, He comes under us, lifting us up above all the things that can make us slide into catastrophe.

In His Preparation v.37-38

     He Gives Us Tactics      I have pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them

It’s through Christ that we given strategies to deliver us from defeat.  We are able to maneuver with procedures and diplomacy that outdo our possibility of setback.  This is not a guarantee that there won’t be intimidating alarms and obstructive challenges that litter our day.  But in the Lord we have a focus of confidence and a constant ear to guide through the obstreperous hindrances to see Christ glorified in each defying encounter.

He Gives Us Technique   neither did I turn again till they were consumed.

The Lord leads us into techniques and methods that are thorough and detailed in dealing with all hindrances and obstructions.

He Gives Us Triumph       I have wounded them that they were not

                                                        able to rise: they are fallen under my feet

Through Christ we are able to triumph over all that shoves God away so the Jesus receives the glory He deserves.

158. Eph. 5:25-33 The Massive Thought of Love part 158

Looking back on Ephesians 5 we began in verses 1,2 with the perfection of love.  Ephesians 5:1 shapes this precision of genuine love as springing from our relationship to God our Father.

As children imitate their fathers, we, as God’s children, are to copy him. We’re to live our lives in love, the same sort of love which Christ gives us and which he perfectly expressed when he gave himself up for us in sacrifice to God.  He gave and God gave as John 3:16 gives us the perspective of Jesus when he not only says God loves the world but also says He SO LOVES the world that He gave.

We read of acts of valor and fearless courage as a Medal of Honor is given to a warrior who gives his life in combat to deliver his friends and fellow soldiers.  Some in a rare action of love throw their bodies on a grenade or explosive entrapment, sacrificing them selves in an act of passion and love.

But this love that Christ gives us, where He perfectly expressed eternal love to the Father in a sacrifice to God, was so immense, so vast and colossal that it even goes beyond diving on a grenade for a friend but to the extreme of sacrificing for all His enemies. God was sacrificing His Son in love as He was reconciling the world and exhibiting His precious gift to us and for us to all that rejected and spurned His love with vicious murderous hatred.

What kind of love is this to run to the enemy lines and shield an enemy insurgent from bullets and destruction?  Not just one enemy but all antagonists and adversaries are afforded the privilege of the efficiency of being covered by His shielding love.

But this was more then a grenade, even more then a nuclear deployment.  What He threw His shielding life on was beyond all the destructive devices of the world.  He placed his person, between us, and all the infinite everlasting wrath of Gods justice and took all our sin on His self.  He perfectly answered for every twist and deviation of departure from right, beginning from the first to the last crime ever done. He took on His person a limitless, eternal, inestimable explosion for every crime and every criminal, as sin is a crime against God’s perfection.  This exactness God would have is the gold standard of true love to God, and tender love for each other.

Why would we not receive His love?  How could we shove Him aside?  Who would want to take the eternal infinite repercussions for their own departure and denunciation from His perfect love gift?

Now if God did this, while we were sinners, and Christ reached out to us, in this infinite sacrifice of Him self, when we were His enemies.  For He was defeating all against us, removing all between God and us, by making us right, in pouring His blood out for us.

We now, by receiving His life, of taking our place, and accepting His forgiveness of love, of taking all God’s judgment for us, don’t have any fear of wrath.  Jesus put us into a friendship relationship, with a perfect, loving, eternal Father.

Now salvation is living in us. Love is living through us from Him.  We’ve been broken free from the prison of sin to the freedom of love, joy and peace.

I was just texting my son about his need of a car.  We were discussing various models and the pros and cons of them.

I suggested that since God so loves the world, and that being everyone, well then, that means every car that we see was given to that person by God.  That means, every time we drive by a car, or see a car, we can thank God for giving that auto to them.  If we see a thousand cars a day or more we could adore His gift to each one.  Then as we thank Him, we ask Him for the best ride He has for us.  We don’t have to place a timetable, but we could ask, seek, knock, and bang, and scream, and praise, and enjoy His great giving.

This may seem a digression, from the subject of love for each other, as married lovers, but really the point is that God is love, and love is about giving, and we are to walk with Him in love, and as we see all He has given, we can revel in His love.  He is giving all the time.  We need to express in humble words, our personal need of all His constant gifts, of his favor of Him self to us, and His kindness in us, and His assistances through us.

There are thirty five ways we are to love in marriage as spread out by the Spirit of Christ in Ephesians 5:25-33.  I will lay it out as an outline overview and then we will take it one at a time in examination.

A Love of Adoration v.25-33

  Requirements v.25

The Channel                             Husbands Love Your Wife

A Detailed Love                     As Christ also loves the Church

A Denying Love                     and gave himself for it

A Distinguished Love          v.23 For the husband is the head of the wife

A Denoting Love                    even as Christ is the head of the church

A Delivering Love                  and he is the savior of the body

A Dignifying Love                  v.26 That he might sanctify

A Disinfecting Love               and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word

A Donating Love                      v.27 That he might present it to himself

A Demonstrative Love            a glorious church,

A Deleting Love                         not having spot

A Diligent Love                          Or wrinkle or any such thing

A Developing Love                    But that it should be holy

A Defining Love                          and without blemish

Thoughtfully Considerate    v.28 So ought men to love their wives

Tenderly Close                           as their own bodies

Touchingly Confidential        He that loves his wife loves himself

Temperately Certain                v.29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh

Triggered in Care                       but nourishes

A Devoted Love                              and cherishes it,

A Destination Love                       even as the Lord the church:

Tethered Composition               v.30 For we are members

          Truthful Channel

Primarily Jesus Love Through Us      of his body,

Philosophical Solid                            of his flesh,

Physiologically Enter-twinning     and of his bone

        A Definite Abandoned Association    v.31For this cause shall a man leave his                                                                                                 leave his father and mother

An Aligned Attachment                       and shall be joined unto his wife

 An Appropriate Amalgamation       and they two shall be one flesh

A Deep Love                       v.32 This is

A Secretive Love           a great mystery

A Sacred Love               but I speak concerning Christ and the church

Battling Spiritually and Clashing with the Unseen part 6

Ephesians 6:10-18 Be Invincible In Battle

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 Protection

Be a Force


         Our Array Christ’s Clothing                  Put on

To “put on” is a command of action; it’s an undertaking, a personal endeavor.  We’re to invest ourselves with the qualities of Christ. This is a vital imperative, and a fundamental necessity.  If we fail to be alert to our provisions in Christ we’ll nose dive from the weakness of exposure. He is the only garment that works for every need.

What does it mean to put on Christ?  We know how to put on our clothes.  The way we dress usually defines us.  We may follow a certain style, and we dress for various activities.  If it’s hot we dress with light clothing and in the winter we bundle up.

We’re to put on the Lord Jesus Christ; because when we’re fragile, when we’re breakable and insecure we need to put on the strength of Jesus.

When we’re pushed down, feel bad about ourselves and rejected, allow Christ to be our righteousness.  Put on the new nature He has made in us.

When we’re stumbled into self-centered pride and drugged with self-occupation of demanding our rights.  We need to put on serving others in love, put on the attitude of Christ, and let His mind of humility be our motivation.

When we stumble into imitating those that reject God and start conforming to worldly schemes, we must clothe in our Lord the perfect overcomer.  Jesus says, be of good cheer I’ve overcome the world.

When we’re guilty, accused by our failures and feel flooded with blame and reproach; put on the compassionate forgiveness of the advocacy of Jesus for His continuous merciful understanding.

If we’re draped in strife, wrapped in discord, bound in contention and conflict, we are in need to put on the patience and the tolerant forbearance of Christ.  Put on the durable covering of Jesus love, which covers all offenses against us.

When we’re lonely, deserted and feeling discarded, we can only find our comfort in putting on Jesus who has promised to never leave us or forsake us.

Awake, awake put on your strength put on your beautiful garment Isaiah 52: 1

In the background Isaiah 52, we see historically the Israelis in a tyrannical captivity, as a result of turning their back on a relationship with God.  But the Lord, in His mercy, is bringing them back to rebuild their lives and their land.

This was to be realized initially in the time of Isaiah as He prophetically presented the future of the time of captivity was nearing an end, for these people he ministered to.

The ultimate fulfillment though is to be seen in the millennial reign of the Messiah at the close of the tribulation captivity of suffering and oppression.

For us today, we’re responsible to wake up, and wise up to be jarred to alertness. We have to arouse to where our strength and beauty are to be put on, worn and experienced.  We are to work out our own salvation and embrace our beautiful dress in Christ.

Romans 13:14 implores us to:

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill destructive desires.

If we provide for the twists of our lower nature, deviance becomes our clothing and this pushes into a drift away from the Lord.

We have to get out of the bed of drowsy irresponsibility, get outfitted and dressed in the garments of Jesus Christ, allow our living to be a existence of His life in us!

We can’t dawdle around in idleness.  We can’t lurk around loitering in the shadows of a grey haze land.  We can’t just indifferently shove Jesus aside expecting to yoyo around leaving Him behind until the last minute.

The responsible thing is to wake up to Jesus, to be alert to all we have in Him, and to dress ourselves in Christ, to make Him the center of everything.

Jesus is our reality; He is our ultimate need and our highest importance.  We need to value our Lord as the finest of attire. He is our premium of apparel.

Our caution is we have to throw off the cloak of rags of humanities darkness and obscurity.  We zealously need to reject any enabling of the egocentric lack of consideration, which tries to cloak us in its ugly shreds and scraps.

We should be dressed from head to toe with Jesus.  We can’t allow one stich of self-life attire in our wardrobe.

Put on God’s complete armor so that you can successfully resist all the devil’s methods of attack.

Envelop us in the enhancements of Your fashionable garb

Robe us in Your elegance of strength and enable us In our weakness to consistently depend on You our Defender. Grace us with the favor of Your presence in each of our personal disadvantages, shortcomings and inadequacies.

Give creativity in our unfavorable circumstances.

When Grief and sorrow overtake us we are to put on our Lord who has born our grief and carried our sorrows.  He came to Adam and Eve in their nakedness and He comes to each of us to clothe us in Himself.  He allows our heartbreaks and disappointments for the purpose that we might find our all in Him.

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

Battling Spiritually and Clashing with the Unseen part 4 

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

Our Ability Christ’s Energy                        in the power


How is horsepower increased to produce more power?

The cylinder head is milled, or ground, as much as a twenty-thousandth of an inch to give a smaller cubic inch displacement in the cylinder head of the engine. This results in an increase in the compression ratio and a substantial increase in horsepower. The principle is simple, the greater the pressure, the greater the power.

When we try to build up our muscle density to increase our personal strength we exercise against resistance.  The more we exercise against resistance, work against opposition and train to overcome challenge, the better our development of muscle.

Pressure, grinding and resistance are the trappings engaged to show us our weakness in ourselves, and our need of finding our strength in the Lord.

In Ephesians 1:18-22, Paul asks us to comprehend our resources.  If we don’t know about our assets, we can’t cash in on them.              

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us ward who believe

We need to learn to depend on God for everything & rely on the Lord for every ounce of power we need.

Taken from The Journal of David Brainerd we find that

David Brainerd was born in Connecticut in 1718; he faced extreme setbacks in his youth. Both his father and mother passed away when he was young and an older sister raised him.  He was plagued with variety of disorders including the measles and tuberculosis that ultimately killed him at 29.

Even so, as a young man, he developed an extraordinarily intense prayer life.  While walking through a forest at the age of twenty-one, as he put it, he was “endeavoring to pray” he felt God’s call on his life, as a “light dawning.” From that day forward he prepared to follow the Lord.

Motivated by the preaching of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, Brainerd went to Yale to prepare for the ministry.

He sensed a burden to reach the Native Americans, the tribes of the Mohegans, the Mahicans, the Delawares, and the Susquehannas.  He prayed, “send me to the ends of the earth, even to death itself, … if it will promote Your Kingdom.”  Often he would feel depressed, but said in his journal that he used prayer to overcome his great personal darkness.

Strengthened by prayer, Brainerd walked for thousands of miles to reach the Indians, sometimes going for months and never seeing a white face.  Many times he walked alone, unable to speak the language of the Indians, he spent extended time in prayer.

What was he praying for? He knew that he couldn’t reach the Indians; he did not understand their language. If he wanted to speak at all, he must find somebody who could interpret his thoughts; therefore he knew that anything he should do must be absolutely dependent upon the power of God.

So he continued in prayer, asking that the power of the Spirit might come upon him so unmistakably that these people would be reached. What was his answer? Once he preached and the interpreter was so intoxicated that he could hardly stand up. That was the best translator he could find. Yet scores were converted through that sermon. We can account for it only by the tremendous power of God behind him.

He became a living example for generations of missionaries in America. In describing his prayer life, Brainerd said he asked God continually to satisfy his inner deep and longing desire after God!

When his tuberculosis became more severe, it was Jonathan Edward’s daughter, Jerusha, to whom he had proposed marriage, who began to take care of him like a nurse.

The two returned to her parent’s home in Northampton where she nursed him along in his final days.

Jonathan Edwards later said that Brainerd’s prayer life was stunning even as he was facing death. Brainerd life was his prayer life, it was considered legendary, by John and Charles Wesley.

It was said by these two brothers that Brainerd’s prayer life was like the weaving of a shuttle; they weaved his life into their sermons, essays, and even the hymns they created for their evangelistic services.

To be strong in the Lord is to seek His power in connecting to the Lord in His Word, in prayer in the enabling of God’s Spirit.  Paul exhausts the Greek synonyms to describe the vastness of power in Christ available to our every need.

The Spirit speaks of the Greatness of God’s Power, Eph. 1:19-22 

     To Be Elevated to Comprehend God’s Remarkable Power

Greatest Power              exceeding greatness of his power 

The word exceeding is the Greek term hyperbole. It means to go far beyond, to surpass, too overdo.  It could be defined as immeasurable, inestimable, endless, immense, massive and colossal.  This could even be a reference to infinite.

The word greatness is the Greek term megathos where we get mega, which means big, high and wide.  The reference is to the sizableness, magnitude and immensity of God’s power.

The word power is the Greek term dynamis where we get dynamo.  A dynamo flows out with power for others.  God is our source might, strength, force, and capability.

Energizing Force                 to the working

The word working is the Greek term energia, meaning working, operation, and action and functioning.

Endowed Ability                   of his mighty

The word mighty is the Greek term ichys, meaning ability, aptitude, knack, and skill

Superior Enablement          power

The word power is the Greek term krotos, meaning manifested power, exhibited power in perfecting, completing and creating

Fill us with you presence, peace, power, & pleasure 

Make each step we take a walk in our new life in You

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

Eph. 1:7 Rich in the Deliverance of Jesus part 5 

Captivate in Our Riches in Our Savior Jesus v.7-12

     Elaborate To Us How We Are Saved   v.7

     Enlighten Us In Our Being Purchased          

In whom we have redemption through his blood,

The facets of salvation are vast but we can summarize it some by describing our deliverance as being saved from something to being saved to and in someone.

Salvation is apportioned up in the Scripture between the three Persons in the Trinity.

The Father Eph.1:3-6

The Son v.7-12

The Spirit v.13-14

God the Father planed and purposed salvation.

The Son performed the payment & the price of salvation.  He’s the one we’re saved to and in.  The Lord Jesus Christ the richest and only true King and Lord of the visible and invisible realm.  He’s the God of all eternity, God the Son, second person of the triune God who took on manhood, to be born in time and taste our humanity.

Salvation is not us, trying to do something about our sins and it’s not us, trying to be someone in place of our sin.

Salvation is about a perfect man that paid a prefect price for our sin.  A person who is now a resurrected man living in the heavens, a man who can be touched with our feelings and yet He is infinite God.

We are saved to Him, He is our head we are His body, He is the bridegroom we are His bride.  He is our brother we are His brethren, He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother; He is our Lord of Love we are His servants.  He is the Captain of our salvation and we are solders in His spiritual conflict against darkness and deception.   We are rich in Christ.

Enlighten Us In Our Being Purchased          

In whom we have redemption through his blood,

Redemption is a word, which means paying the ransom price.  It’s tragic to have a loved one in prison and not be able to pay the amount for their release.  It’s even worse, to see that one you deeply care for in some devastating slavery or bondage and to not be capable of releasing them from their repressive torment and condition.

Robert Laidlaw faced the question in his booklet

“The Reason Why”

How could one life given, the Lord Jesus Christ’s one life, be considered the substitute for the lives of so many?  How could His life be capable of complete liberation for all lives from the penalty, power and even the presence of sin?

“That seems a fair question—a problem in arithmetic that can be demonstrated on paper. Christ was God manifest in the flesh—Deity in humanity—so that the life He gave was an infinite life, which can meet the needs of any number of finite lives. Get a sheet of paper and write down all the big figures you can think of—millions or more—add them up. Now you have a big number; then multiply it by 10-100—by a million if you like—cover sheets of paper, and after all you still have a finite number—a number that has bounds set about it—it has a beginning and an end, however far it may extend. No, by adding finite things together no man has ever been able to make that which is infinite. The infinite life of Christ given for sinners is more than sufficient to save all who accept Him as the One who died in their room and stead.”

The person implicated in our problem and caught up in our purchase is the greatest person of all time.  Our creator Jesus Christ, in the infiniteness of His love, He became our redeemer.

That is the person of our purchase but what about the price of our purchase.

Sometimes I place my poodle into a cage, he cries to be released and I really don’t have to pay anything to get Him out because I’m able to bend over and take him out.

Our ransom amount was astronomical, excessively exorbitant to the enormity of infinite.  We we’re trapped in a powerful cage of sin, which infested our entire nature and we we’re controlled by a tyrannical master Satan.

Our prison wasn’t just a life sentence it was an eternal death sentence.  Not only we’re we controlled and enslaved but blinded and deceived by his lies and diabolical substitutes.

The price of our purchase was eternally costly.  To unlock the door of our prison, our redeemer, Jesus, had to leave the wealth and beauty of Heaven, enter human life by means of the incarnation; He was born into poverty as a man, lived a perfect life, and then as He reached out by teaching, doing miracles and demonstrating love, He was accused constantly, then completely rejected.

He was betrayed and let down by one He had loved and cared for. He was sold, captured and revealed to His haters with a traitors kiss.

Arrested and tried in a false court.  Mocked and beat savagely, nailed to a cross to suffer the agony of crucifixion, the heartbreak of abandonment, the hurt of scorn, derision and dishonoring indignities, and the horror of being made sin, the agony and torture of God’s eternal wrath for all the sin of the world, and the disgrace, discredit and degrading dishonor of death, as His blood was poured out and shed for us.

That was the price of our redemption and pardon. Peter who witnessed it all said

we weren’t redeemed with corruptible things, as silver & gold

But with the precious blood of Christ” 1 Peter 1:18-19.

Paul says we are rich and our intense value is demonstrated by the price that was paid for us:

In whom we have redemption through his blood,

Battling Spiritually and Clashing with the Unseen part 2

Ephesians 6:10-18 Be Invincible In Battle

At times we struggle over prayer and our connection with God. Many things can begin to emerge with threatening frequency as we easily start to feel like prayer failures.  Multiple fiascoes, stuff that feels like we’re not connecting in our prayer, letdowns and total bomb outs of our life experience jab at us, eating at our mind.

All of a sudden, we start feeling like a disaster, a major flop, and a botch in our communication skills with God.

How do we become invincible in the spiritual battle against this unseen enemy who agitates us, interfering everywhere?

How can we develop unshakable reliance? How can our prayers be irrepressible with wild expectations, where we eagerly sense that we’re actually heard by God?  Where we have a real consciousness of being right in front of His face with our heart wrenching demands?

The Lord through these tugging stresses is assigning opportunities in us, by stirring our longings as He providentially inserts burdens in us?

A load, which He instigates for us, a weight that He tempers to cage us in with, that we might give it all to Him.  He is the only one who can lift it off of us.  He appeals to us to ask, seek, and knock about all, on the doors of heaven?

I see nowhere in the Bible where God says He’s disappointed with our pray. The thing that saddens and grieves the Spirit of God is our lack of faith, our absence of asking and our nonattendance in His presence.

By lack of faith, I’m not referring to quantity or size of our faith, but the deficiency in the object of our faith.  What I’m suggesting by lack of faith is that we entertain a deficit in the body of our faith and that obsesses us with defects in our vision.

In other words, our lack is, we’re looking at the wrong person, and we’re focusing on the wrong voice and we’re not apprehending the work of Christ for us and in us.

Faith comes by hearing.  So then, what is the thing we’re to be hearing, receiving and gathering in with intense perception?  Who is the master optometrist that drops the corrective lens of vision into place for the stimulation of our understanding, to place in us an outburst of trust and positive confidence?

In God’s Word we read it is the Spirit of God that prompts an uncovering of our eyes and ears of faith, to the voice of God. The only way to gain unshakable resolute faith is to get our minds and hearts in front of the Spirit’s voice in the Word of God.

We do this by reading it, studying it, meditating on it and getting around others who value God’s truth and are unswerving in consuming a maximum of biblical truths into their hearts and lives.

We’re under a constant attack not to listen to God. There is a noxious voice that pummels our mind with accusation and doubts.  This conflict is like an aggravating spasm.  We think it’s our own insecurities and the pessimism of our inadequacies.

But actually we’re under attack by an unseen force that dupes us to think it’s our own thoughts.  Our tale spin suddenly becomes our undoing as our faith shrivels from focusing on the words of this invisible enemy of humanity.

We think it’s our failure, our insignificance for God or we balk over our bad attitudes, our flawed behavior or repetitive, and defective habit patterns. But the accuser of humanity is terrorizing us and that plunges us deeper into disharmony and tension.

We can’t let this put us down from our acceptance in Christ. He values our individual personality and invites our approach to our heavenly Father and loving God.  We’re to come boldly to God’s throne of grace and love.  To be bold means to come in a shameless confidence.  Boldness is assertive assurances where we’re convinced that God hears every thing we express to Him.  It’s an amazing challenge to realize we’re to be excessively forward with God.  He’s elated and tickled with us.  He wants to impact every aspect of our life and circumstances right down to the minute detail of each item in our environment and situations.  Nothing in our life and circumstances is insignificant to Him.

These alien voices may attempt to impute an impression that sounds like this, now wait a second here, you can’t just relax with God while you’re a big messy sinner.

If that happens we have to grasp that we’re under an assault, we’re being put down.  God doesn’t convict by condemning, not ever.  He never gives up on us, for He is leaning down, always reaching out to lift us up to Him.

Who we going to listen too?  The Spirit says in:

Hebrews 10:17 and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

Now we already appreciate God as an all-knowing person.  How in the world would he not remember?  What’s it mean that He won’t remember our sins?  I think it’s because He’s selected to place us in His grace provision and to concentrate His eyes to see just Jesus in us.

We have to rest in is His forgiveness. Turn a deaf ear to the voice of accusation and criticism.

He craves that we enter into the celebration of his extravagant giving of this priceless gift of Jesus.

Ephesians says we are accepted in the beloved, the Spirit broods over us.  He desires for us to see how every conceivable spiritual benefit is ours as we walk toward and straight live according to our destiny of Heaven.  We should be overwhelmed with what he’s done for us and in us.  In God’s outstanding kindness He has made us totally comfortable in His infinite love.  This is the same love, he has for Christ.

Because of Christ sacrifice, in the awesome reality of Him taking our place of judgment. It’s through our Lord Christ that we’re now a free people, free of penalties and punishments.

The stuff we’ve stirred up by all our stupidity is gone.

I’m not implying that we don’t often continue to make contributions in a course of futility.

My point is that Jesus didn’t do a shoddy job for our need but accomplished a complete freedom for us.  We’re not just a little free, but totally liberated. Abundantly free!

I’m not eluding dismissiveness to the failings and frustration we feel around us as the battles we feel are very real.  We have to measure the battle and we should desire to pray, to pray always, but more often, if not constantly we have to be driven to pray.  So we’re forced to dependence by this warfare scenario.

God considered everything, covered ever issue we could possibly need, we are in the center of His plans and His pleasure is the delight of making us perfect in Christ.

When He says He doesn’t remember our sins He means He’s chosen to see us in Christ.  Sin is not relevant or applicable to us any more.

When I forgive someone for a wrong I have felt from another, I’m, in true forgiveness, making a choice to view the wrong done to me as irrelevant.  I have selected to see the hurt as unconnected because I don’t attach it to our relationship any more.  The wrong is made in my mind to be extraneous and peripheral.  I choose instead to see Christ in you; I don’t focus on sin on you. I see by faith what Christ has done, and I see, in prayer, what God is going to do in and through others.

So what do we do when we feel crummy, we admit it to God.  When we are slinking with an inferior, shoddy self-perception we disclose it to the Lord.

God is reliable, consistent, straightforward and upfront about everything. He already knows our condition.  We need to be straightforward and upfront with Him.  Its is called walking in the light.  There is no future in feeling trashy.  Admit where we’ve messed up, reveal it and release it to God.

When I had young babies in diapers I wanted them to be swaddled in fresh diapers, clean clothes and didn’t want the disfiguring of anything that would cause a rash or irritation on them.

I checked them when they we’re sad, and I appreciated it when they came to me with a mess or even cried out.  I wanted them to relate their needs to me, to make the annoyance known.  There is no future in concealing a problem.

Our God is a perfect Father.  Our Lord is a loving shepherd.  The Spirit of God who lives in us is a comforter and infinite encourager.

We can come boldly and we can share every feeling of our heart and our sins and inadequacies.  These things are no longer to be viewed as connected to us.  The tragedies of sin are not our identity.  They need to be placed is this vacuum of irrelevance where we don’t stew over it.  We approach God in prayer with all the beauty and perfection of our new person that we are in Christ.  So we are free to speak our mind with God.