Don’t be Ashamed: You can retreat to advance

I honestly believe that we, as believers would suffer less losses if we could respond wisely to situations. Our God is the all wise God from whom nothing is hidden so that His counsel is always the wisest in every situation even when it looks like foolishness. Amazingly, God is even more desperate to give us this wisdom than we are to receive it. He calls Himself wisdom in the book of proverbs and then tells us that wisdom is calling out to us. So who more than believers should respond appropriately in every situation even under sudden attack when wisdom is readily available to us?

James 1: 5 “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.”

Unfortunately, believers have a higher propensity to respond foolishly in situations. We are often so irresponsible and presumptuous that we respond wrongly. Irresponsible because we wouldn’t think things through checking it against the word of God; we feel we have a right to do whatever we want and it’s up to God to work everything out for our good. Presumptuous because we often assume that we are walking by faith but it is our own idea of faith. Unfortunately, we often do not have the faith we like to pretend we have and a lot of us don’t understand what faith really is. For example, would you have considered it an act of faith that Joseph ran to Egypt with baby Jesus just because an angel told him to do so, but it was. There was no sign of danger at the time and he was asked to leave his comfort zone with a new wife and son to a land with “strange people.” In a way, that was like Noah building an ark.

1 Samuel 30: 8 “Then David asked the Lord, ‘should I should I chase after this band of raiders? And the Lord told him, ‘yes, go after them. You will surely recover everything that was taken from you.”

As you and I know, our lives are lives of constant warfare. Even Paul admonishes Timothy to endure hardship as soldiers and there are several other scriptures confirming that we are consistently in a battle with the enemy who always wants to get us back into lives of bondage but thank God who always causes us to triumph. The difficulty is that we are never certain how he is going to attack since he uses different methods and instruments so we are often not prepared yet if we can respond appropriately, we may douse the fire immediately and not even need to enter the battle. More like defeating him before he even starts. To achieve this, we must learn to hear the voice of God as to what to do and if we don’t hear Him, there is nothing wrong with a temporary retreat.

2 Samuel 5: 17 “When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king of Israel, they mobilized all their forces to capture him. But David was told they were coming, so he went into a stronghold.”

Retreat is not always a sign of weakness and guess what, it does not matter what anyone else thinks. If you must win, you can’t make decisions based on what people think of you. It is good sometimes that you know how you are perceived but then that should not help you decide who you are and also what you should do. What you need is God’s counsel and it may come to you directly or through His word and it could even come through anyone including your enemy but it is your responsibility to be able to discern the voice of God no matter how it comes.