Eph 6:11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
Good morning friends and readers, last night was such a blessing at Calvary Baptist as the Spirit was really moving. There was much liberty for the preacher to preach what the Lord placed on his heart and what a great message it was. Well today I would like to finish out point #3 of our Training of a Soldier Part I. To recap from previous posts we looked at:
· Core Values- God First, Service Before Self, and Excellence In All We Do To The Glory of God!
· Core Beliefs- The Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures, The Virgin Birth, The Vicarious Death, The Victorious Resurrection, and The Visible Return of Christ
We will look at our Core Mission for today, this is the why of the training cycle. In it we see that the sub points lead to the main reason for all Christians to get in the fray. Here is a simple breakdown of what to look at in the Core Mission.
· Our exhortation
· Our equipping
· Our evangelizing
Our exhortation is these three things to make us successful. First we are exhorted to stand. Standing in the line of fire is not an easy thing to do, when bullets start flying most people want to run. A good soldier will just plant his feet and prepare for the onslaught, he doesn’t want to give up any ground, he is fighting to protect something that is very dear to him. Friends, when the devil throws those fiery darts at you just stand, plant your feet and resist him ( Jas 4:7; Eph 6:11, 13-14) for the God of Heaven says that you are able through Christ to do so. We are not to be on the offensive looking to run over the devil at every chance we get, or go charging the gates of hell with a squirt gun, instead we are exhorted to stand (1Pet 5:8-9). When persecution starts just stand, and pray for those that are ignorant of what you know, and who you are through our Lord Jesus Christ. When temptation tries to take you then know that God has made a way of escape (1 Cor 10:13). Second we are exhorted to pray. When the going gets tough the tough go to praying (Jude 1:20). In many ways we can overcome the devil and this world by the simple act of taking it to the Lord in prayer (Mat 5:44). When I was in the military one of the most effective things to winning the war was communication, and our communication with the Lord is very important, He needs to hear from us in order for Him to help us. Our lifeline when we are about to get defeated is with the Lord, then the reserves can be sent in, or another soldier can pick up the slack and help out a brother in need, all this comes though by prayer and supplication (Mat 6:4). Thirdly we are to be watching. If we are ever vigilant then it would be hard for the enemy to get a foothold, or and advantage of us. What a shame it is when we are to be watching and praying that we are found to be goofing off or have our eyes on things that are of no eternal value. The Lord took three of His disciples into the garden to watch and pray, instead they became secure in their place and fell fast asleep, this ultimately led to them being taken advantage of during the trial of Christ. If they had obeyed and watched, they would have seen the perfect example of what we are to do when the battle gets fiery hot, that is pray like you’ve never prayed before. Our Lord prayed so hard that the Bible says it was as if He were sweating blood! It says this in 2Ti 4:5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. We are exhorted to watch thou in all things, inside the home, outside the home, in the church, out of the church all this so we may be considered a good servant and an excellent soldier. In closing today I hope that I have encouraged you to stand, pray and watch and endure hardness as a good soldier for the honor and glory of Christ. Tomorrow we will begin to look at our equipping so that we are able to accomplish these things.
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