How to Fight and Win
Suffering. Struggle. It can be easy to see ourselves and our efforts in the kingdom as insignificant in the face of devastation as painful and lingering mass shootings.
The massacres of Buffalo and Uvalde reminds us - evil is still present. It's impact, powerful. It's reach, vast. It's carriers like a virus are among us, ready to strike. Ten years after Sandy Hook and still no viable plan of resolution. Living embedded in this cycle of hate can make us all feel very small and the noise of it all sound so loud that we start to tune out the voice of God.
Because we want more than prayer, we want a solution.
I get it.
My question to you is do you know the environment you're operating in?
Our Flesh, His Spirit
We live, eat, sleep, laugh, cry in this flesh. And we see people do horrible, horrible things to each other in the flesh. But is that where their power lies? Is it where your power lies?
The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew[chose] you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord. ~Jeremiah 4-8, New International Version
Although this text is used frequently to instill courage, I rarely hear people discuss it's full context. Yes, the people of Jerusalem were in exile. Yes, Jeremiah was young in age and in nature. But do we know the environment of this text?
This. is. prayer.
The word of the Lord came to me, saying...
Jeremiah may hesitate on the assignment, but he wasn't afraid of God. God came to him because they had been together before.
Intimacy through conversation.
Transparency through revelation.
This was the history between Jeremiah and God. And because it was so, God brought him into his destiny through transformation.