"Ruled By God"

"It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect." (Psalms 18:32) For the next five verses, and beyond, David reflects on the many ways that God had given him victory over his enemies. David was not naturally a man of war, at least not in the way that he had become; but he was naturally a lover of God, and spent many nights in field worshipping and proclaiming his deep love for God. As said before, we cannot naturally love God, but once we see His great love for us, it is hard not to love Him back. For David, his life of being a man of war started when he took down Goliath, and then grew from that into a battlefield hero where he was praised for taking down tens of thousands. It was his trust in God that guided his life, but it was his love for God that gave him strength. If you ever need to find strength to overcome something that keeps causing you to stumble, then by all means, love God with all of your might! When we love God with all that is within us, we naturally will fight for Him when His majesty is being disgraced; and His majesty is disgraced when He is defiled in any way. We see this in the attitude of David as he first noticed Goliath spewing words against God and His chosen people. David was pricked in the heart and immediately his desire was to come against that uncircumcised Philistine that would defy the armies of the living God. It is our love for God that causes us to become offended when He is put down in any way; which includes our own thoughts and actions, and those things that cause us to stumble. To put this another way; our strength is a product of our love for God! We can see this given as an example by Jesus when tempted by the devil in the wilderness and while praying in the garden the night He was arrested. It was His love for the Father that enabled Him to overcome temptation, and it was the love He shared with the Father that gave Him the strength to complete what He was sent to do. When Jesus spoke about no man being able to serve two masters, He was speaking about being ruled by one or the other. In order to be a servant to anyone or anything, that person or thing must rule over us, and when something rules over us because we allow it, we naturally hold to that which we serve the most. Now guess what happens when we hold to that which we serve the most: we love that which we hold onto, and we despise the other... "No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Matthew 2:24)