Are you ready for some…Warfare?

God’s chosen people are settled at the edge of the Jordan River. They have just finished their Exodus of a lifetime across the dry and barren land. They can now see the promise of God across the other side of the river, God’s Promised Land. God has told them the land is theirs for the taking. But they do have to take that land. But there is a problem; there are “ites” in the land. Joshua 3:10 tells us they are the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Parasites and other “ites”. These are the enemies of Jehovah God, they worship pagan gods, and they are strong. Reports were given to Moses years earlier of their might and strength.

So what does God do? He first tells them to “Get Ready.” He then gives them His promises in Joshua 1:1-4. “As I was with Moses, I will be with you… I will give you every place where you set your foot…No one will be able to stand against you…I will never leave you or forsake you”. These people are going into battle. They must be prepared. If they are not prepared, they will fail.

The first thing he tells them is “Be strong and courageous” in Josh 1:6. This is the same promise God spoke to Moses to pass on to Joshua in Deut. 31. He did not want the people to fear going into the land. Fear can paralyze. And Paralyze it will, if people let it. The people wondered in the wilderness for a generation because of fear. Fear kept them from having faith in God that He would take care of them. Fear kept them from the promises of God. 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and a sound mind.

Fear is learned. The people learned to fear their enemies by what others said. Joshua wanted the people to be strong with God behind them. But there were the “ites” in the land. We still suffer from the “ites” today, just different ones. There are the Fear-ites, disease-ites, poverty- ites, bad marriage- ites, stress-ites, grouchy neighbor-ites, insecurity-ites, rejection-ites, bad economy-ites. But God is bigger than the “ites”. As God told Joshua and the people, he is telling us, Do Not Fear – Be Strong and Courageous – I Am With You.”

Today, we like Joshua and the Israelites are involved in a battle. Our battle is not against the things we can see. But against the things we cannot see, forces of evil as described in Eph. 6:12, spiritual forces. We wrestle against them daily as we strive to walk in the ways of God. And just like God told Joshua to “Get Ready”, we need to get ready on a daily basis for the warfare we are involved in.

We must first realize that the battle is not ours. God has already given us victory. Jehoshaphat realized this in 2 Chronicles 20:12 when he declared, “For the battle is not yours but Gods”, and David in 1 Samuel 17:47 when he declared to the giant “for the battle is the LORD’S”. We need to come into that same realization.

God told Joshua to tell the people to “Consecrate Themselves” in Joshua 3:5. In other words they needed to get themselves in order inwardly lined up with the will of the Father, God. To have victory, hearts need to be pure. The same with us, if we are going to gain victory we must have our lives right with God first.

Joshua then told the people in 1:8 ““Be careful to obey all the law of Moses, don’t turn to the left or the right. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from our mouth, meditate on it day and night, so you may be careful to do everything written in it.” Going into spiritual warfare we must be armed with the Word of God. Hebrews 4:12 tells us “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes.” The weapons of spiritual warfare are not physical but spiritual (2 Cor. 10:4). We must get ready every day with the FULL armor of God. Especially the Word of God as our sword of the Spirit. We like the Israelites must read it, meditate on it and live it out in our lives.

Another weapon we have is Spiritual Worship. Israel sent Judah first into battle. Judah is Praise. In 2 Chronicles 20:22 we read that as the people “began to praise, God set ambushes”. Trumpets brought down the walls of Jericho and won the battle at Ai as well. God unleashes all the arsenal of heaven when he hears people worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.

We also have the weapon of prayer. In Psalm 5:3 David expresses the need and power of consistent prayer. The disciples in the book of Acts believed they needed to pray continuously because spiritual warfare was continuous. The bigger the church grew, the more they prayed. Often times, the busier we get, the less we pray. We can learn a lesson from the disciples in Acts 6. Joshua won his battle because of his constant communication with God. When he failed to petition God about the Gibeonites (Josh. 9:14) and make a treaty with them. He opened the door for pagan worship in Israel. When we do not pray, the door is opened for sin to enter our lives.

Another weapon Joshua knew was the power of his army. Joshua did not fight the battle alone. The army of Israel fought it with him. We have a family in the body of Christ to encourage and pray with us. God has not called us to go through battles alone. When we are under attack, we cannot withdraw but move on with the weapons of our warfare. God has given us what we need. We are his children. He has won the battle and has given us what we need to fight our spiritual battles willing to prepare us to fight on in our spiritual battles.

What is revival?

A few weeks ago I was in a meeting with several pastors and we were discussing revivals.  One of the pastors declared, “Most churches in America today don’t even know what a revival is!” That got me thinking.  I went back to my office and looked up the word “Revival” in my Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of English Language.  Revival – “return, recall or recovery to life from death or apparent death.”  Well, if we want revival in American churches, the American churches must be dead or near death.  That is a sobering thought.  But then I started thinking, attendance is down in American churches, salvations are down, baptisms are down, and the influence of the church that once existed no longer does.  Maybe the church in America is nearing death!

When talking of revival we often quote 2 Chronicles 7:14 but do we know what it really means. “If my people, (God wrote this to his church at the time. This church must have been dead too. They needed revived.) who are called by my name, (there are a lot of names out there today) will humble themselves (most leaders today want to be in the front not on their knees)and pray and seek my face (we must hunger for God more than things) and turn from their wicked ways, (not half way but the whole way. Not one leg in the world and one in the church) then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” This is a conditional promise. We must do our part then God will do his. Perhaps the reason we do not have ‘alive’ churches is we are not doing our part.

We read in Ezekiel that he had the same problem, a dead church. God gave him a vision in Ezekiel 37 of dead dry bones. And what brought life to those bones was the Spirit of God. In Ez. 37:14 God said, “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.” That is what we all need. The Spirit of God living and breathing in us.

We read about the revivals of the past with Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, Jeremiah Lamphier, Evan Roberts, and the Azusa Street revival with William Seymour. There have been other pockets of revival, but why doesn’t God move today in the church as he did years ago? I recently heard someone make this statement, “We don’t have revival today because we want revival without repentance.” How true that is!

Why don’t we want repentance? True Repentance is hard work. John the Baptist came declaring “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near” in Matthew 3:2. In the Greek language, the word ‘repent’ actually means “to turn around”. Turn from evil ways to Christ. Turn from acting out of the flesh to walking by the Spirit. God has spoken the need for man to repent for years. Jeremiah declared it. So did Ezekiel and Joel, as well as other Old Testament prophets and priests. Even Jesus came preaching repentance in Mark 1:15 “The kingdom of God is near, Repent and believe the good news.” And the apostle Paul declared it in Acts 26:18.

But what is repentance? Proverbs 28:13 encourages us to confess and renounce our sins. James 5:16 tells us to confess our sins to one another. True repentance involves confession of sin, turning away from sin, turning to God and it may also require restitution. Zacchaeus taught us this in Luke 19 when we encountered Jesus he gave half his possessions to the poor and gave back 4 times the amount that he took from others. Jesus then told him in Luke 19:9 “Today salvation has come.”

This can be a hard thing to do. We do at times ask God to forgive us but what about going to the one we have wronged and ask for their forgiveness, then changing our behavior and attitude. This is a hard thing to do. But if we truly want to see a move of God, we need to truly repent.

Revival will not happen without Repentance. When true repentance occurs revival will come. And it all starts with us!!!!!