God's Word Archives : Life with the King

Do you think it’s a coincidence that as we gear up to take things to a new level, suddenly things start going wrong? Maybe things start getting under our skin, distracting us, or even making us doubt that taking that next step forward is the right thing. This is nothing new. It is a predictable attack, and yet, I for one can still easily fall into thinking the worst about it, that this time might be different and maybe I really do need to be afraid. This is just one common tactic the enemy uses in spiritual warfare against us.

Feeling the effects of these tactics, I’ve questioned both myself and God so many times, “Did I really hear You right, God?” “Am I actually ready for this?” “Why would I be feeling so uncertain if I’m supposed to take this step?” I somehow find it hard to remember the fact that the enemy really, really badly wants anything and everything good in our lives to fail. He wants us discouraged and hopeless, working to kill, steal, and destroy our souls (John 10:10). The enemy is not creative, however. He doesn’t attack in any new ways, he uses the same exact ones (called “schemes” in Ephesians 6:11) relentlessly, over and over again, hoping to separate us mentally and in our hearts from the Truth, and our God-given identity and work. The schemes started with a tactical question he asked Eve that led her to sin in the Garden, “Did God really say [that]?” (paraphrase, Genesis 3:1). I talk about this question in depth in my post called The Serpent’s Question. The devil still asks us the same old question today, just personalized to fit our unique circumstances.

That question has driven people to believe outright lies about God, other people, and themselves, stealing their time, energy, and perhaps much more. But God has made the Truth about Himself known to us very clearly through His Word, and to all people:“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). We may know God is with us, and trust that He has authority and power over every scheme of the enemy, and yet, we still experience the enemy’s attacks in this fallen world. But, God’s Word warns us of them and prepares us for them. Spiritual warfare is clearly acknowledged in the Bible. God does not leave us defenseless. Ephesians 6 is a well-known chapter on the importance of the armor of God to prepare for such warfare: “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:11-12). No authority is above Jesus, our Authority, and in Him, we are completely and fully protected.

Not only does God care for us by giving us access to the armor of God, but we have Truth to stand on when lies come: the Word of God, Jesus, who IS the Truth itself (John 14:6), and our relationship with Jesus. Whenever lies threaten to kill our spirit, steal our joy, or destroy our hope, because of these gifts of Truth we have the ability to move forward with the purposes of God in the world despite any spiritual attacks that come against us.

That doesn’t mean spiritual warfare is easy, but it does mean that we have hope, despite every effort of the enemy to break us down into hopelessness. Those of us who love Jesus and seek Him out know what God says to us in His Word. We’re listening and attentive in prayer. We know when He speaks to our hearts. We write down and do our best to remember what He has spoken. But sometimes, the warfare of the enemy of our souls finds a weakness, a place where we aren’t believing the Truth about God or ourselves. He can use “cracks” in our armor, like insecurities or fears, to influence the inner dialog we have with ourselves in our hearts. As the father of lies (John 8:44), the enemy is well beyond an expert at attempting to get us to believe lies, and confuse them with the Truth.

So, take heart, friends. While spiritual warfare is nothing new, there are times when the attacks become more intense. It feels to me like now is one of those times. Thankfully Jesus gave us even more to help defend and remind us of Truth, the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:26-27). We are never left alone friends, in Jesus we have reason to have unshakable peace and hope, even while the spiritual attacks come.

May we all stand firm on the Truth, trusting Jesus, and never giving up the hope found in Him. Amen.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20).

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true” (Revelation 21:4-5).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

“How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1, Psalm 79:5, Psalm 89:46).

I’ve seen people close to me wait on the Lord. Have you? It’s an amazing thing to witness. When you know their hearts are longing and desiring something that just hasn’t come about, and instead of complaining or dwelling on it, they release it to God. Over and over again, every day. Instead of choosing to strategize, tap every earthly resource, forge connections that weren’t there before, they surrender to the Lord’s timing. Stories like this preach to my heart. Patience, one of the fruits of the Spirit, is something many of us need to rely on God for. Waiting indefinitely doesn’t come naturally to many people. Seeing the patience that comes from trusting the Lord’s timing is a sure sign of His work in their hearts.

I’ve also seen people rush ahead, making things happen for themselves. You can see this when you sense striving, strain, and difficulty to find opportunity. God’s Word repeatedly instructs us to wait on the Lord (Psalm 27:14, Psalm 37:7, 34). We choose for ourselves what we do with our limited time here; we can choose to wait on God’s timing, or we can choose to build the Babel of our own desires.

When we’re talking about ourselves, it’s very easy to miss the difference. We tend to be convinced that our own desires are good, that our desires are God’s will for us, our desires are there simply because they are supposed to be satisfied. So we push. We try to make things happen. I’ve done this myself and seen it over and over again with many others. It’s what the world and the culture is convinced is best for us to do. In a world that worships being self-made, we need to make it happen, right? Well, if you look at the history of God’s people, actually, not so much.

Abram and Sarai, for example. They wanted to have a child, and God promised them children. But Sarai was desperate to make it happen, and had her servant Hagar bear Abram’s child in her place when he was 86 years old. Instead of waiting on the Lord or trusting in the Lord’s timing to fulfill her God-given desire for a child, this was an act of striving that reached outside of God’s will. God’s will was always to give Abram and Sarai a child. Striving for that apart from God led to a very costly sin. God gave them new names, Abraham and Sarah, when, 14 years later, His perfect timing came to give them their son, Isaac. Isaac became a forefather to Jesus, through whom God desired to provide salvation for all nations, by His grace, including those descended from Hagar.

Saul, who later became Paul, provides another example in the Bible of pushing ahead, instead of earnestly listening and waiting on the Lord’s direction. Saul was a Jewish Pharisee, pushing to kill people based on what they believed, convinced he was doing the right thing in God’s eyes (Acts 7:58, 8:1&3). My guess is that he hadn’t asked God about whether it was right or not. Jesus Himself got Saul’s attention by blinding him and speaking audibly to him, saying that he would be told what to do (Acts 9:3-6). Saul didn’t know God’s will at all, even though he was convinced that he did, enough to approve of another soul’s murder! It is a risk to act based on anything but God’s direction.

God’s timing is often not what we would like or expect it to be. King David, the man after God’s own heart himself, wrote, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). No matter how close we are to God, we are all bound by time. We all struggle to wait patiently for God. We all eventually become aware of the fact that our time on this earth quickly runs out. We expect God to operate in this way in our lives too.

But God operates very differently. He tells us nothing is impossible with Him (Luke 1:37). He tells us in His Word that there is abundantly more than we could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20) in His plans for us. He tells us to trust Him and wait on Him. Who will we trust, our experience in the world, or God?

“And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word” (1 Kings 18:21). It all comes down to what we choose to believe about God (see Characteristics of God series).

Paul sums up the tension between following our own desires and following the Spirit, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). Paul describes the struggle every person has of falling into sin even when actively trying not to sin. “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (Romans 7:18-20). Only Jesus Christ can provide deliverance from the sin that derails our actions (Romans 7:24-25).

It isn’t just failing to wait on the Lord that can cause us to stumble in our walk of obedience. Another kind of waiting can trip us up; when God tells us the time has come to take action, but we wait instead. We procrastinate, ignore responsibility, or simply run away. Waiting isn’t the right thing to do when God is calling us to act.

A famous example of that is the story of Jonah. God tells him to go to Nineveh, but he runs in the opposite direction instead (Jonah 1:2-3). It was another costly sin of disobedience, and yet in God’s grace, after three days in the belly of a whale, Jonah had another opportunity. He eventually went to Nineveh in obedience to God’s will (Jonah 3:2-3). Has God nudged you to move forward with something in your life, but instead of immediately carrying it out, you waited? Maybe you’re in that situation right now. He asks us to trust that His timing is perfect. But when we miss it, God in His grace can make a way, even when we’ve waited past His timing.

I have spent weeks, months, and years trying to make things happen on my own strength (for more on this, check out All About Trust). But there have been many things in my own life that God’s timing (not mine) was perfect for. The things I couldn’t control like getting jobs, finding churches, meeting friends—all had a divine timing that only required surrendering and receiving the gift. There was no striving or making-it-happen involved; these moments were pivotal to where my life went in that season, by God’s mercy. We may not be patient with God, but thankfully God is always, always patient with us. Halleluiah!

The more I learn to trust that God is in control, the easier it is to surrender the fear of missing something. The more we trust God, the more patient we can become, as we grow in our knowledge that God’s timing is always perfect. Amen.

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7).

“In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (Psalm 56:4).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

Tag: God’s Word

Truth and Spiritual Warfare

God’s Perfect Timing