Victory
From the
heart of the pastor:
“The kings
of the earth did not believe, nor did any of the
inhabitants of the world, that the adversary and
the enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem.
Our inheritance has been turned over to
strangers, our houses to aliens” (Lam. 4:12;
5:2).
Nations and churches do not believe that they can be
so subtly invaded as to allow the invader’s entrance
unnoticed. Few societal invasions occur quickly or
visibly to the blind eye or the focused upon
economics and commerce. Nonetheless, when the kings
of the culture are disbelievers in the God of the
Bible and ignorers of invasive trends, the
inheritance they intended for the following
generations shall become the possession of strangers
and aliens.
You live in an undisciplined era that is cheapening
life – a lusty age marked by social ruin,
recreational compulsiveness and unyielding spending
on entertainment and escape. Though the present
decadence has arrived in an apparent hurry, you know
that the foundations have been being removed for
several generations. The atmosphere in your land
needs exorcizing.
The work the Lord is calling your purse and hand to
accomplish quite large, so much time will be
required. You remember that the grand medieval
cathedrals required 300-400 years to complete
(Canterbury was twenty-three generations in the
making). God is calling you to establish the
likeness of His heaven in this land, so you know
this involvement of Christians in His mission will
take awhile. Since life imposes certain unavoidable
deadlines, the Lord is calling you to go ahead and
get about the work He is placing before you (Mt.
28:18-20).
God wants you to preach His gospel-building love (Lk.
9:2, 6). Thomas Brooks described Christians as
“those worthies ‘of whom the world is not worthy,’
(Heb. 11:38). You are the princes who ‘prevail with
God’ (Gen. 32:28.) You are those ‘excellent ones’ in
whom is all Christ's delight (Ps. 16:3). You are His
glory and you bear His glory. You are His picked,
culled, prime instruments which He will make use of
to carry on His best and greatest work against His
worst and greatest enemies in these latter days.”
People and events define an age. Think back upon
Alexander the Great, Amerigo Vespucci, Augustine,
Caesar, Calvin, Charlemagne, Charles V, Christopher
Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Galileo Galilei,
Genghis Kahn, Johannes Gutenberg, Leif Eriksson,
Leonardo da Vinci, Marco Polo, Michelangelo,
Montezuma II, Niccolo Machiavelli, Nicolaus
Copernicus, Ponce de Leon, Sir Isaac Newton, Vasco
da Gama, William Tyndale, John Wycliffe and Huldrych
Zwingli. Did not these men define their age?
Think upon the events that have defined previous
eras in world history: The Crusades, Dark Ages,
Discovery of the New World, Fall of Rome, Hellenism,
Indulgences, Nicaea, Ninety-five Theses, Passover,
Pentecost, Protestant Reformation and The War of the
Roses. Each of these events brought definition to
their land.
Because famine stalks your land, God wants you to
intervene as a warring amicus curiae in the societal
decline. In God’s word, He calls you to rescue a
continent from chaos by declaring the sink of
iniquity wherein you find your society, and placing
forth the resources to bring your culture out of its
darkening damnation.
Where will first blood be drawn? When will you stop
these highwaymen from robbing generations? You know
that the purses of the ones squeezing the trigger
shall suffer for upholding the dearness of eternal
truth.
Who will be moved by a grand vision of a pure
Christianity that takes part in the affairs of
nations? Are Christians not born again to war and
fight with the devils entering the gates of God’s
holy city? Who will remove the pariahs, the slaves
of lust and luxury? Who will be the Lord’s armada?
Who will be the precise mariner navigating these
treacherous shoals of tolerating the intolerable?
The answer is clear: One believing in the power of
God to accomplish all He commands – one willing to
be the paladin, the troubadour, the unsung hero
enduring disappointment and difficulty, but refusing
the acceptance of defeat. The victor shall be the
one refusing to surrender the baton of right over to
the heinousness of wrong.
Beloved, Christianity is vast with promise. The
conqueror knows that the option of failure and
defeat and returning to the way and place he
previously occupied is closed to him. He cheats the
devil’s temptations and worldly deaths because his
eye is affixed upon the glory of His God. He knows
that in Christ he shall emerge phoenix-like from the
ashes of all apparent defeats.
No one drifts into Christian heroism (a/k/a
martyrdom) – it is a deliberate journey. The
martyr-hero acts without expecting accompaniments or
encouragements. He is indifferent to worldly
acclaim, remuneration or honor. He does the
remarkable because in the power of the Holy Spirit,
he can. He is an achiever and is flexible to the
movements of the Holy Spirit but inflexible to the
contradicting fuels of this world. His stamina is
the strength sufficient and the wisdom appropriate
for this day.
Cartographers of the Middle Ages affirmed the end of
the known world with the words: “Beware: Dragons
Lurk Beyond Here.” Christians in this age affirm the
power of God in Christ Jesus to accomplish what only
He can bring about with the words: “The things
impossible with men are possible with God” (Lk.
18:27).
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