"Through Thick and Thin" -2

"He maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the earth; He breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire." (Psalms 46:9) God not only loves us, but He likes us; He calls us friend! The war that has ceased is the war between us and God, because He has already won, and we are no longer at war with Him; we are His children, and He is our loving Father. As far as Him destroying these other items, for the most part, it is His love that has taken care of the weapons, such as the bow and the spear; and the chariot He has taken care of with His Holy Spirit. When it comes to us saying that "God is our refuge and strength", we often will gladly accept the "refuge" part, as in being safe and secure, but then when it comes to Him being our strength, we tend to rely way too much upon our own capabilities, as if God has empowered us to move out on our own. Another thing about Paul's statement, "I can do all things through Christ", is that his statement is conditioned upon his abiding in Christ. In other words, we can only be empowered to do anything through Christ if Christ is working though us, and Christ can only work through us if we are abiding in Him. As soon as we begin to start working to gain merit with God, we have left off abiding in Christ! When it comes to loving others as ourselves, we have nothing within us that is of ourselves to allow us to do that; absolutely nothing! It is only the power of the Holy Spirit that can love others through us; it is not even us that is working to love them, but it is the Spirit within us that is loving them through us. The "bow" that God has broken is our own strength, which is the deceitful power that we think equips us to keep His commands and to earn merit with God; which we are totally incapable of doing, and He knows that, but He loves us in spite of our weakness. The "spear" is a little more complicated, because it is our understanding, or what we think that we know; which, no matter how much we think that we know, God will always cut it down to size, because we always know far less than we think we know, even if we know everything, or so we think. The plot thickens; God thins it out...  "Therefore, as by the offense of one judgement came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the obedience of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 5:18-21)