ARE YOU STILL IN THE FAITH

I just listened to a sermon by Billy Graham, the old time preacher. Honestly, at the end of it I prayed the sinner’s prayer along with the rest of the people. The bible does talk about perilous times; these are perilous times. Walking with God today is tough; maybe tougher than it was. Warfare is at a heightened level and so many soldiers are dying in the battle field. What is so scary is the fact that the warfare is very subtle. Clearly, it is not the way it was in times past: for example, our enemy comes wearing nice suits, talking super spiritual these days. You may never identify him or his workings if you are “in the flesh”. It is sad because slowly but surely he is drawing more of us into the level of the flesh and causing us to lose battles of life at that level where we are ill equipped to war since the weapons of our warfare are spiritual and spiritually empowered. We need to be discerning.

2 Corinthians 10: 3-5 “we are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle the keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ. And after you have become fully obedient, we will punish all disobedience.”

Reality is that if you do not win the battle within yourself, you cannot win the external battles? Are you fully obedient? The battle within is getting more intense and fierce than it has ever been, though more subtle, because self is being exalted like never before. It is easiest for satan if he can fan our weaknesses so that it destroys us; that way he need not waste his limited resources on us. We must consistently search our hearts and our lives instead of always seeing those that want to attack or do us harm. If we are led by the Holy Ghost, obeying the word of God, no enemy will successfully attack us. 

When I was a young believer, born again believers lived right and were never afraid to face the enemy as long as God led them. It is not so any longer; we run from the enemy. Run is the wise thing to do if one is ill equipped but that is not the life of the believer the bible describes. The devil ought to flee from us as we resist him and not the other way round. I am not by any means suggesting that we are to fight every battle but we must be led by the Spirit of God. Our faith is not powerless but we have rendered it so by our faithlessness, misinterpretation of the scriptures and our lifestyle. We must begin to walk by the Spirit otherwise Christianity will be made to look like a joke. We ourselves must take the word of God seriously; if we don’t who will? If we believe there is power in the word, then we must demonstrate that belief.

1 Corinthians 10: 12 “therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

It is time to turn the search light on in our lives. Are you slowly and unconsciously rewriting the gospel to accommodate your opinion? Have un-forgiveness, pride, fear, unbelief and any other evil work taken root in you? These things are easy to identify in another but you want to check your life? It is time to turn the search light on in our own lives. We can’t continue with this powerless gospel. You can make that decision to realign or rededicate your life today even in the privacy of your home. It is time to start again so that we do not make “the word of God of none effect”.