"Ruled By God" -3

"He teacheth my hands to war, so that the bow of steel is broken by mine arms." (Psalms 18:34) When we truly love God and make Him our reason to live, there are certain things that God brings to life in us. Let's say that you wanted to overcome something that has afflicted your walk for many years, maybe even decades; how would you go about making it happen? I am not talking about something that is just hanging around with you, but something that you have surrendered over to God time and time again, and it just keeps coming back to fight it again. As I was sharing about yesterday, we really have to want God to work out these things in our lives, and He is faithful to make it happen; but we have to want it to happen!!! Therein lays most of our problem; not that we don't want to surrender all the ugliness of sin, because I believe we truly are sincere about doing that; but that we want to hold onto what we like about the sin, which is that which gives us pleasure doing it. There are two forces at work here: one is the Spirit, and the other is the flesh. I see this verse as a two part fight to defeat the flesh, where there is strategy and maneuvering, and then there is brute strength and extraordinary power. Both of these are things which we are equipped by God with to do battle, and both are brought about by being taught; which means that there is a learning phase involved with having hands to war and arms that break the bow of steel. As I was saying yesterday, when God gives us the ability to see the enemy coming and the ability to flee, there is really only one thing that can stop us from being overcome, and that is us. Most of the time we blame too much of our problems on the devil; it's that old "The devil made me do it" saying, which was first said by Eve before God; when in reality, it is really just us fulfilling the desire of our flesh, and then wanting someone to blame it on. If we truly want to be ruled by God, then we will take seriously what is required of us in order to put down this thing called the flesh; there is a strategy and a force that is involved, and it really requires us to participate in the fight. If we look at David's defeat of Goliath, the initial thing that brought him strength in that situation was his hearing that man speak out against his God. That sparked a reaction within his heart, which then caused him to want to do something about it. The beginning of our strength in overcoming something in our lives, is seeing that it is something that is offensive to our God, and then having the desire to take it out. It is our love for God that makes this possible, and it is our love for God that will cause us to be equipped with everything that we need to accomplish whatever it takes to get it done. God will do extraordinary things in ordinary people; but those ordinary people must be willing to do those extraordinary things...