The Master Strategist

 At War with the Enemy or at War with God?

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     Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. 

~James 5:7-10

     At times I like to think of our journeys into the full stature of Christ as a chess game.  It's not that this is some game to God, I just think it is a fine example to help illustrate how God helps us remain in Christ.  Although we may profess Jesus as our Lord, often we take lordship of our lives.  So God uses all the various porns, whether in his Light or in the darkness, to checkmate us.  Checkmate is "crucified with Christ" (dead to our selfish, carnal nature) so that his Life can blossoms in us and his Spirit can work through us.  From checkmate we recognize Him as King of kings and Lord of lords and cast our crowns at his feet.  As King of hearts seated at the throne of our hearts we can walk at one with Him for his Spirit gives us the inner equipping, such as desires and a will in tune with our Heavenly Father's.  From there we walk with Him as we follow after his Spirit.  If we take a step out of checkmate and go our own way, God once again begins to check us and check us until we are once again coming from that place of remaining in Christ.

     Checkmate.

     Even the enemy is just a porn that is being used to fulfill God's purposes.  By his permissive will God will allow the enemy to come at us to help us grow in Him and so that we can also defeat him too.  He is a defeated foe stripped of his power at the cross of Jesus Christ.  

     Sometimes we try to resist the devil without first submitting ourselves to God.  We also want to be on board with God's purposes and used by Him but we have to recognize that if we are to be of honorable use to Him we'll have to submit to his way.  Those trials may just be his answer to our prayers, and we should know the pain is but a light affliction in comparison to being consumed in his glory.

     Let us get the order right.  Scriptures tell us to first humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, then resist the devil, and he will flee.  Hallelujah, we have an awesome God who loves us so much He gave his Son so that we can attain new, abundant life, and that includes victory in Him. 

     So consider the question, whom are we really at war with?  Our enemy may be in the picture but if we are not first submitted to God we are ultimately fighting against Him.  As scripture tells us, his ways are not ours (or the way the world operates), his ways are so much higher than ours.

     Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.  Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,  but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,  but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.  ~1 Corinthians 1:20-25

Further Reading:  1 Peter 5:5-11, Galatians 3, Romans 8, Colossians 1:15-23, The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, Act II, Christian Stepforville...Who's Calling?