Everyday, I’m encounter  believers making decisions based on the idea that what God wants most for us is to be happy.  Not just content but happy, happy, happy.  In principle that is true. After all, David wrote, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps.37:4).  The problem, however,  rests on our notion of what makes us happy.

Some read the verse above and assume that if we serve God in some capacity and sing songs to him on Sunday, he will give us whatever we want as long as we believe that object, person, or circumstance will make us happy.  Unfortunately, that desire often comes from of the flesh rather than the Spirit.  We want a car so we think God should pony up with our dream vehicle.  We want a big salary so we think God should give us favor for the promotion.  We want the girl or the guy and may even think that God is okay with us leaving a spouse that no longer excites us for one that promises passion and romance because…that will make us happy.  All of that is a huge lie from the enemy, but it is a very powerful lie because we live in a culture that reinforces that belief at every level.  How many ads on television push a product that will change your life and assure you that you “deserve” what that product promises.  Honestly, the only thing any of us deserve is hell…and the rest is God’s grace.

A retake on Psalm 37:4 may be in order. First of all, the promise is based on the premise that you delight in the Lord.  You cannot delight in the Lord unless you also delight in his ways, his values, and his priorities.  If you delight in those, then the desires of your heart will line up with his and he will be glad to honor those desires.  Secondly, the verse may be best understood not as God giving you whatever desire springs from you, but God actually planting his desires in your heart so that they become your desires.  He will give you the desires….

Satan is an expert at convincing us that God will give us things that are contrary to his will simply because that is what will make us happy.  As many others have said, God wants us to be holy much more than happy.  The truth is that holiness is what produces long-term happiness. Paul is very clear in Galatians that if we sow to the flesh, we will reap destruction, but if we sow to the Spirit we will reap life.  Those things that we purse based on desires and reasoning from the flesh will eventually produce pain, loss, shame, and destruction. That is God’s promise.  To think differently is to mock God.  Happiness does not lie in that direction, although the devil will assure us that bliss is at the end of the road.

Even more diabolical, is the reality that a person’s decision to chase the desires of the flesh will bring pain, loss, and destruction on others who are innocent bystanders in the event.  Satan always convinces us that our decisions in pursuit of the appetites of the flesh affect only us but they will also affect all those with whom we have connections.  When a spouse leaves his or her mate for another, the spouse who is left behind as well as the children will suffer emotionally, economically, spiritually, relationally and in every other way.  When that person is a believer, the kingdom suffers loss, because once again, Jesus and his ways are discredited in the eyes of the world. Society suffers loss because one more decision has consigned marriage to the bin of disposable relationships. In addition, the sins of the fathers are passed down to the children and so forth.

Satan always convinces the one pursuing desires of the flesh that whatever pain is produced will be short lived and then later everyone will be fine.  That is never true.  The ripples from these decisions go out for decades because one day we decide that God wants us to be happy… on our terms.

Our prayer must be that God places his desires in our hearts rather than insisting that he make good the desires we ourselves have conjured up in our hearts or that Satan has planted there.  Godly desires produce life.  Fleshly desires breed death.  Period.  This “happiness thinking” among believers can be a very subtle thing until it takes root and then flourishes.  It invites in a lying spirit and a spirit of entitlement that both continue to insist that the believer has every right to be happy on his or her terms. Once it flourishes, it seems to undermine all spiritual reason and perception.  Beware of it in your own life and if you see it developing in others, point it out as a matter of concern rather than as a matter for condemnation.  It is a cancer in the church, much better prevented than treated.  If t takes root, it is certainly much better treated early than after it has spread to both the heart and brain.  At that point, life is truly in the balance.

There are seasons of life that overwhelm us. These are the seasons of life in which we can see no apparent solution to what is assaulting us. These are the seasons in which one crisis after another seems to wash over us and we sense that our trouble is more than the experience of living in a fallen world.  We know in our spirit that Satan has his crosshairs on us or our family and is unrelenting in his attacks.   In those seasons it can seem that all that we are doing in prayer and standing on the word doesn’t seem to be winning the day but only keeping our heads barely above the water. Those are the days that I need a revelation of God that is more than him sitting serenely on his throne in heaven.  I need a powerful and passionate rescuer.

I love Psalm 18, because David gives me the picture I need in those seasons.  David understood those seasons more than most.  Although David had been anointed by Samuel to be king over Israel, there were many days for David when the prophecy seemed nebulous at best. For years, Saul was unrelenting in his attempts to find and kill David. There were moments when weariness settled in and David doubted that the prophecy he had received would ever come to pass.  In1Samuel we are told, “But David thought to himself, ‘One of these days I will be destroyed by the hand of Saul. The best I can do is escape to the land of the Philistines’” (1 Sam.27:1).  Saul hunted David for years.  David and his men were always out numbered, always on the run. They weren’t living in the palace but in caves and wilderness strongholds. At one point, even David’s own men turned on him.  But in all of that, David discovered that God did know and God did care about him.

David wrote, “In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him— the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightning.

The Lordthundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies, great bolts of lightning and routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of breath from your nostrils. He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me” (Ps.18:6-17).

This is the picture of a Father who hears the cry of a beloved child who is being assaulted by the enemy.  As a parent, if your children were playing in the front yard and you suddenly heard them cry out in fear and saw someone attacking them, you would rise up in anger and tear the door off its hinges as you plunged into the front yard with all the power and wrath you could muster against anyone or anything hurting your children.  You would be breathing fire and hurling lightening bolts if you could. Psalm 18 is a picture of our heavenly Father doing just that.  Some days I need that picture and I need my God to be that Father for me.  On a day when you feel totally overwhelmed by circumstances, it’s okay to ask God to be that Father for you as well.

I think a fair question is why did God wait to ultimately deliver David from Saul when he could have taken Saul out at any time.  I’m sure David wondered that as well. Saul had been picked to be king because he looked “kingly” or “presidential” if you will. He had been installed as king without training and without testing. When an untested heart is given power, the result is usually disastrous.  Proverbs tells us that the earth trembles when a slave becomes king (Pr.30:22). That sounds like a great story, but if a man has not been taught how to use power, he can use it for great harm in the same way that so many lottery winners who had never had wealth were destroyed by the wealth they had always desired.

The years of waiting for deliverance, fighting battles, crying out to God, leading men in hard circumstances, etc. tested and developed David’s heart so that when his prophecy came to pass, he was able to steward the promise in an effective way. I have found that the seasons that have been overwhelming to me were preparing me for something to come.  God’s grace was always sufficient if I had faith that he was there and watching and if I held on to him.  I encourage you to hold on as well.  In those moments, David’s picture of a loving father, rising to rescue his child has been helpful to me.  Maybe it will be helpful for you as well if you are in one of those seasons now.

Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you (Jn.17:18-20).

I don’t know about you, but this verse bothers me.  Jesus seems to be saying that the smallest amount of faith can move mountains and if we are not moving mountains then our faith is truly microscopic. Rarely do I feel that I am moving mountains, so a bit of condemnation creeps up when I look at this scripture as the standard.  The question then becomes whether or not I am understanding this passage correctly.

Without letting myself off the hook for microscopic faith, there is another way to understand this passage.  The word that is translated “little faith” typically means a small amount or lack, but it can also be translated as “a short amount of time” or as “brief.” In the context, Jesus may have been telling his disciples that they didn’t sustain their faith long enough.  When the demon didn’t come out right away, they quit.  Persistence or perseverance is part of faith.  In an instant society, we want it now and are prone to give up if something doesn’t happen quickly. I think we can fall prey to that mindset when it comes to prayer, commanding a demon, or declaring healing. Sometimes, in order to move a mountain, we must persist or endure. The mountain may be moved a shovel full at a time instead of all at once.

James highlights this truth when he says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (Ja. 1:2-4). Sometimes we think that spiritual maturity and great faith always produce the overnight miracles of healing, provision, breakthrough, and so for. Yet James is clear that the quality of endurance is part of spiritual maturity.

In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul exhorts them to “contend for the faith” against ongoing opposition.  That text has the flavor of contending, wrestling, and engaging in conflict.

In his “sermon on the mount,” Jesus taught us, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Mt.7:7-8). The verbs in this passage are “present progressive.”  They could be translated as keep asking, keep knocking, and keep seeking.  After you have kept on, your prayers will be answered.

Our faith then is not always measured by the immediate miracle.  Sometimes it is measured by a belief that God is hearing my prayers and storing them up until the movement when they will be answered in a powerful way. Persistence can be the measure of my faith. Even in the context of deliverance, such as the one in which the disciples of Jesus could not cast out the spirit, we may need to go after that spirit more than once, believing that the power and authority that God has given us weakens the devil’s stronghold each time we command and each time we declare the word of God over it. At some point, when we have persevered, the walls of that stronghold will crack and the enemy will flee. We may think that the walls of Jericho came down all at once, but they came down after seven days of establishing authority in the spiritual realm by marching around the city.

Often, the enemy wins by just holding on long enough for us to give up. In those moments, our faith was sufficient in one sense but too brief for the stronghold to fall. We did not endure. Paul’s life and ministry was defined by endurance. He described it with the following words.  “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor.4:8-9). Basically, he said that they kept getting knocked down, but always got up and pressed ahead.  Their faith was in the final victory if they kept going.

Whatever you have been asking for, keep contending. Our faith is enough if it is not too brief.

Occasionally, I have people ask why only a few churches have any kind of defined Freedom Ministry to help their people move past old wounds, broken hearts, addictions, depression, and demonic affliction. The core of our freedom ministry is Free Indeed, which is an eight-week class built around small group dynamics as well as teaching followed by an all day experience we call Freedom Weekend that activates everything we have talked about and prayed about for eight weeks.

Twice a year we offer a class on Sunday and another on Wednesday.  We typically have 40-45 participants in each class so that on Freedom Weekend we are ministering to around 90 people.  Each spring we offer a Wednesday only class.  We have been offering this format for about eight years and every class fills up every time so that close to two hundred people go through Free Indeed each year. On average, about 30% are people from the community – Baptists, Methodists, Church of Christ, Catholic, Bible Church, Episcopalian, and other community churches. They nearly all wonder why their church doesn’t offer something similar to what we do because it seems basic to the life of a believer.

I wonder that also.  After all, Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted and to set captives free (Isa. 61, Luke 4). We consistently see more life change in eight weeks than most of our participants have experienced in ten years. This isn’t because we have discovered some revelatory approach to discipleship.  I believe that all the principles and perspectives taught in Free Indeed should be categorized as Christianity 101. They are the foundational principles of our faith when you take Paul’s admonition seriously that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces. Paul clearly states that yet few churches equip their people for spiritual warfare.

We believe that Jesus came to empower his church with divine weapons that can overcome the past, deep wounds, and demonic affliction. Victory over those issues produces significant transformation in weeks or months rather than decades.  However, what we consistently find is that most believers have no expectation of significant change in their lives beyond forgiveness.  Some of the lack of expectation is due to the fact that their churches have preached a gospel without power.  After becoming Christians, they found that their faith seemed to have no power to overcome deep wounds from their past, addictions in the present, depression, suicidal impulses, etc.  Where those reached serious proportions, their church referred them to counselors or clinics in the community that were often secular.  The message is that Jesus has no help for serious issues beyond some simple encouragement and a prayer.  When secular therapy does not give them victory over their issue, they lose all expectation for significant transformation this side of heaven.  Our first goal in Free Indeed is to rebuild an expectation that God is in the business of radical life change and he can and wants to do it for you.

Secondly, we maintain a perspective that, in most cases, hindrances to growth and change exist more in the spiritual realm than in the emotional or psychological realm of the individual.  We move into the realm of curses, generational sins, our identity in Christ, and demonic affliction in order to remove what seem to be immovable barriers to healing and freedom.  Secular therapy does not touch the spiritual realm nor employ divine weapons so issues are managed, at best, rather than overcome.  Churches that don’t acknowledge these realities or teach about them keep their people from experiencing the power of the kingdom that Jesus demonstrated. They tend to produce a form of godliness while denying the power of the kingdom.  Decades of silence and avoidance of real spiritual warfare has allowed a huge accumulation of spiritual junk in the souls and family lines of God’s people.

When God’s people know who they are, when they are armed with an expectation for power, and armed with basic spiritual weapons to be used against the enemy, radical transformation can happen in weeks or months rather than decades.  We have seen it over and over again in our church.  Other churches that have developed Freedom Ministries in different forms report the same thing.

So why do few churches offer ministries that have such an impact?  One reason, of course, is a theology that doesn’t allow for the miraculous power of God operating in the life of individuals today.  That same theology does not recognize the impact of the spiritual realm in the lives of God’s people. When the expectation of miracles ceases, so does the faith for them and the loss of power from the church. Transformation takes supernatural power. No power, no transformation.

I think a second reason that many churches do not have Freedom Ministries is fear…especially on the part of senior pastors. Let’s be honest, by nature many senior pastors are high on control and freedom ministries, by their nature, deal with elements that are somewhat unpredictable. Many senior pastors fear that these ministries will get weird and hurt their church or people in their church.  In addition, extreme people are often attracted to these ministries and can make others uncomfortable.  The answer, however, is not to avoid ministries that can heal and free large numbers of believers, but rather to embrace such a ministry, mainstream it, and train leaders to be effective without being weird.  They in turn train others to be effective without being weird and to train them to be submitted to church leadership. We are glad to train other churches to do what we do and I’m sure other Freedom Ministries are willing to do the same.  Avoidance is not the answer but sound theological and practical training is the answer.

Does ministry in this arena get weird?  It depends on what you call weird. Demons manifesting in people and being cast out with a scream seems weird until you realize it is the norm in spiritual warfare.  It doesn’t have to get out of hand, but it doesn’t mirror tidy little church services on Sunday.  I agree that church services are not the place for these things to happen, but they need to happen somewhere. If you cannot tolerate the ragged or unexpected, then you will not be involved in spiritual warfare, but neither will your people find freedom and transformation.  Every believer should be equipped to break the power of the enemy. That alone would transform churches and communities.  I hope your church has a freedom ministry of some kind or will develop one soon.  We would be glad to help, but more than that, the Holy Spirit is quite willing to help.

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 16:19

The passage quoted above is one of those passages that has been given numerous interpretations, some of which have been so far out in left field that they left the stadium.  However, it is an important passage and one worth looking at…especially for us “charismatics” who love to bind and loose.

In context, Jesus had just asked the apostles who the crowds thought he was and who the twelve thought he was.  The crowds thought that Jesus might be John the Baptist come back to life or one of the prophets who had returned.  Peter had answered for the group by correctly declaring that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God.  Jesus responded by declaring that upon the rock or foundation of Peter’s confession that Jesus was the anointed Son of God, he would build his church. That confession has been asked of every believer since Pentecost … “Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?”

Not only would he build his church, but it would be a triumphant church overcoming all the power of hell.  The gates of a city always represented its power and standing among the kingdoms of the world.  Jesus said that the gates –  power and authority – of hell would not be able to withstand the kingdom.  We should note that Jesus envisioned the church as being on the offensive rather than the defensive.  He painted a picture of the church having the enemy encircled and entrapped within the walls of a city whose gates would not be able stand against the onslaught of heaven. Jesus presented a similar picture after casting out demons. He said, “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry of his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house” (Mt. 12:29).

Whatever Adam had surrendered to Satan, Jesus came to take back and has given his church the same mandate.  Simply put, we should have no fear of the enemy.  He should fear us.  In Christ, we are always stronger. That is why James could say, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (Ja.4:7).  Some “end-times” scenarios have the church cowering at the hands of the Anti-Christ with the rapture as her only way out.  Jesus spoke of a church with power sealing up the enemy, plundering his house,  and overcoming him.

Jesus then declared that he would give his followers the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  Keys represent authority.  If you were a Roman jailer, you could lock up or release those under your authority. You could loose them or bind them because you had been given authority to do so. You didn’t decide who would be locked up or released, but you carried out the orders and at the point of contact, you bound them or released them.

In that cultural context, Jesus said we would be given authority to bind or loose. There was another cultural meaning that Jesus was drawing on as well. To the Jews of the day, those words were quite familiar.   In the synagogue, doctrines or commands were said to bind or loose. The words carried the sense of permitting or forbidding according to the Word of God.  To bind was to forbid and to loose was to permit.  Jesus declared that he was giving us authority to bind on earth what was forbidden in heaven and to loose on earth what was permitted in heaven. We do not determine what is bound or loosed in heaven but we declare and enforce those heavenly laws, principles, and values on the earth.  The idea is embodied in Christ’s command for us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Some translations make it sound as if we decide what to bind or loose and then heaven adopts our decisions.  According to a number of Greek scholars, the verb tense of loose  and bindin Matthew are “future indicatives” of “I am,” with perfect past participles.  I’m no Greek scholar but here is what these men say about those tenses. They should be translated “shall have been bound” and “shall have been loosed.” This translation reflects the truth that what men, led by the Holy Spirit, decide on earth about spiritual matters will have already been decided in heaven. This passage does not express man’s initiation, but man’s following God’s lead.  The New Standard American Bible gets it right when it says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven” (Mt.16:19).

This understanding of the text lines up with Jesus who modeled the believer’s life for us.  He didn’t say that whatever he decided, the Father lined up with.  He said that he only did what he saw the Father already doing and only spoke what the Father had already spoken. He did on earth what had already been determined in heaven.

So…before we go running around binding and loosing, we want to make sure that what we are declaring and commanding lines up with God’s will.  That means that whatever is forbidden in heaven we can forbid or bind here with all of heaven’s authority behind us.. Sickness is not permitted in heaven.  Demonic affliction is not permitted in heaven. We have the keys – the authority with which to bind sickness, infirmity, demons, and so forth in the name of Jesus.  We can also bind the church to God’s holiness rather than accepting compromise with out culture. We can also loose or permit.  We can find those bound up in shame, legalism, and the lies of the enemy and give them full permission to walk in grace and forgiveness. We can also loose people from their pasts, from demonic affliction, from fear,  and from infirmity.

We have authority when we line up with heaven.  We have no authority to make heaven line up with us.  We cannot decree that same sex marriage is now permissible. We cannot decree that sex outside of marriage is acceptable as long as it is monogamous.  We cannot decree that abortion is permitted because it is legal according to man’s law.  We can only bind or loose, permit or forbid what has already been determined in heaven. But when we are aligned with the Father and know that he has given us authority to bind and loose in the name of
Jesus, we too can do the works that Jesus did.

There is a text found early in the book of Joshua that I found puzzling in the past. After forty years in the wilderness, the second generation of those whom Moses led out of Egypt had finally crossed the Jordon and begun the conquest of the land God had promised to Abraham and his descendants. Their first challenge was the walled city of Jericho. Forty years earlier, the spies that Moses had sent into Canaan has brought back a report that the land was, indeed, fertile and rich but, “the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large” (Num. 13:28). Jericho was one of those cities and the first significant test for the Israelites.

On the eve before Israel was to attack Jericho, Joshua encountered an unknown man. The text says, “Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’ ‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.’ Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant?’ The commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so” (Josh.5:13-15)

The puzzling part of this text is the way in which the man who, was the commander of the Lord’s army, answered Joshua. Joshua asked whose side he was on. I expected the angel of the Lord (or possibly Jesus before his incarnation) to say that he was on Israel’s side and had come to assure their victory. However, he did not respond in that way but instead said that he was neither on Israel’s side nor the inhabitants of Jericho. He then simply identified himself as the commander of the Lord’s army. His response seems peculiar but only because of our mindset.

Ultimately, I think this is the point. God doesn’t line up with us, we must line up with him. If we want him to fight for us, our first step is to align ourselves with him. We join him…he doesn’t join us. When we think God is on our side because of our affiliations, we miss the point. Achan was an Israelite, but his sin cost Israel a battle and cost him and his family their lives. Although he was a Hebrew, his misalignment with the Lord caused him to be rejected. Rahab was a prostitute and part of the community who lived in Jericho. However, when she believed God and aligned herself with his promises, she was accepted and she and her family were saved.

God is not particularly interested in our affiliations – whether we attend First Baptist or Mid-Cities or Gateway. He’s not impressed with whose preaching we follow most or to whose praise music we gravitate. He is not even concerned if we are Republican or Democrat, American or Russian, or what neighborhood we live in. What he is concerned about is whether our hearts are aligned with his heart. He doesn’t join us – we are to join him. He doesn’t take up our agenda – we are to take up his. That was the message of the man Joshua encountered that night. God would fight for whoever joined him. It is clear that Joshua took up the Lord’s agenda because there was no other reason to march around Jericho once a day for seven days and then seven times on the last day blowing trumpets and shouting. That makes no earthly sense. But once Israel aligned themselves with God’s will and his ways, victory was assured.

Too often, I expect God to pick up my agenda and my desires and give me the victory that I have planned. The Spirit, however, expects us to adopt the agenda and the desires of God that he reveals to us. Remember, Jesus modeled life for us and he said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (Jn.5:19). When we discover that model, then we will see the power of God at work in our own lives.

One of Satan’s primary tools against believers and unbelievers as well, is a spirit of offence against God. That spirit prompts us to view God as the source of our pain or loss and paints some episode in which we have been wounded as a betrayal by God. The offence often begins in the form of a question such as “Why did God do this to me?” or “Why did God allow this to happen?” Satan follows up with accusing thoughts suggesting that God doesn’t love us or that he broke his promise to us and therefore cannot be trusted.

This strategy shouldn’t surprise us because it was the first strategy of the devil recorded in scripture. It began with the question from the serpent to Adam and Eve. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the Garden’” (Gen.3:1). I’m sure he was pointing out an abundance of trees filled with fruits and nuts as he said that. His tone of voice undoubtedly suggested that God was the sort of God who always withheld the best things from his people. When Eve replied that there was only one tree in the garden from which they could not eat and eating from it would produce death, Satan simply replied that they would not die which implied that God was a liar and could not be trusted. Once Adam and Eve accepted the premise, it was downhill from there.

One of the great lies that Satan promotes in the American church is that God has promised that if you serve him faithfully, your life will be trouble free or, at least, the troubles will be light and momentary. With that expectation, anytime loss or serious crisis arises, the believer must either believe that they are so defective that God can’t love them or that God has broken his promise to them. Either one of those conclusions moves us away from God.

The truth is that Christians will most likely face loss, woundedness, disease, and betrayal from other humans in this life. Jesus warns believers that in this world we will face trouble (Jn.16:33). The idea that God is supposed to totally protect us from all hurts while we live in enemy territory in a fallen world is an unbiblical expectation. Look at the “roll call of faith” in Hebrews 11. Some of God’s best people were delivered from trouble after a season of serious suffering while many others were ridiculed, rejected, tortured, flogged, chained, put in prison, stoned, sawed in two, put to death by the sword, and so forth. Jesus was rejected, beaten and crucified. Eleven of the apostles were martyred and the other was exiled to a lonely island. Hundreds or thousands of Christians today in the Middle East and China have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed for their faith.

As believers, we are often shaken with a diagnosis of cancer, a spouse leaving us for another, the unexpected or even tragic death of a loved one, the loss of a job, the failure of a business, a child born with a birth defect, a miscarriage, or the inability to have children altogether. At moments like these, we want everything to make sense as if that somehow would comfort us. I’m sure it makes sense from heaven, but not from this side of the veil. At times like that, we have to hold tightly to the things we do know to keep from being shaken by the things we don’t know. Paul said that we only know in part (1 Cor.13:9). We will have to be content to live with some mystery and some unanswered questions. If we had an answer for everything we would not need faith.

What we do know is that God is good. He is faithful. He cares and his grace will be sufficient if we allow it. We have to know that we are all subject to loss, pain, and betrayal in this world and for it to come is neither a sign of God’s disapproval or any broken promises. The promise is not for a pain free life but that he will walk us through the pain to some good that waits on the other side.

In Psalm 23, David did not say that God would take us around the valley of death but that he would give us hope and courage as we walk through the valley. Paul tells us that God is the God of all comfort who comforts us in our troubles (2 Cor. 1:3). It is in the midst of trouble that we experience his comfort. It’s not that God does not keep us from harm or from the evil one. He protects us more that we will ever know.

There are certainly promises of protection in scripture. But those are balanced with the realities of living in a fallen world in which God chose at the outset to honor the free will of men. That free will can have devastating consequences. By man’s decisions people are betrayed, drunk drivers kill the innocent, spouses enter into adulteress relationships, war’s take the lives of millions, and drug overdoses take the lives if the young. But it is also the very thing that produces real love, sacrifice, compassion, heroism, and faith. The church’s mission is to bring enough people under the saving grace of Jesus Christ that man’s free will becomes a blessing rather than a curse.

They key is to know these realities before trouble comes. If we are living with the paradigm that God only loves us if no pain comes our way, the devil will have no trouble getting us to be offended at God. The key is to know that we all live with the possibility that in this world we will have trouble. Some trouble will be short-lived. Some we will overcome in this life. Some we will gain victory over only in heaven.

Remember that Paul promised that “in all things we are more than conquerors” (Rom.8:17). However, we are conquerors because we can never being separated from the love of God no matter what. Whether in life or death, we will eventually win because our standard for winning is living eternally with Christ. That is where true victory lies regardless of the outcome of our battles in this world. I believe God wants us to live as overcomers in this world, pray for supernatural healing, raise the dead, and believe God for victories here and now. But those victories will usually come after some initial pain, sorrow, and battles. Some victories, however, will simply show up as victory over the grave and victory over the enemy as we refuse to fall to his strategy of alienating us from the God who has prepared a place for us and has promised us eternal life in a place without pain, hate, loss, and betrayal.

Life without pain will eventually be the full expression of God’s love for us, but only when we finally arrive home. Until then, the question is not whether trouble will come but only whether our faith stands when it does arrive. Jesus told us that we will have trouble, so we would not be surprised when it comes. When it comes, we should only hold God tighter and know that he is not absent nor uncaring but has already prepared what we will need to walk through the moment if we will walk with him.

When the name Jesus is spoken, what is the first image that comes to your mind? It might be a favorite image from childhood – the one in which Jesus is tenderly holding a little lamb. It may be the familiar image of Jesus lovingly blessing little children who have come to him. As an adult you may first imagine Jesus on the cross as your much-needed savior, Jesus walking across the waters of Galilee, or Jesus graciously protecting the woman caught in the act of adultery. Each of these images would depict a facet of Jesus that is accurate. For the most part, we have come to think of Jesus as the gentle carpenter from Galilee who was willing to lay down his life for each of us so that we might have eternal life. All of us are in extreme need of grace, so we typically think first of the gentle, forgiving, healing, and shepherding Jesus.

There is nothing wrong with that, but there are times when we need another image. When we find ourselves in a showdown with the devil, we don’t need a quiet, gentle Jesus but a powerful and victorious savior who would go to war for us and with us. There are several images of Christ in scripture that I want to point to briefly that may become your focal point when it is time to go to war.

One of these images catches my attention in John’s gospel when he records the words of Jesus speaking to the Father. He said, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (Jn.17:4-6). Jesus is speaking about his position in heaven before he put on flesh and lived among us. Earlier in his gospel, John had recorded the words of Isaiah and then gives us a phenomenal insight into the pre-flesh Son of God. He says, “For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere: ‘He has blinded their eyes and deadened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them.’ Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him” (Jn.12:39-41).

He is quoting from the famous passage in Isaiah 6 that declares, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple were filled with smoke” (Isa.6:1-4). Isaiah is given a vision of Christ’s glory before he came to earth and that glory is what Jesus asked the Father to restore.

From a distance, this vision seems glorious and sweet, but in the moment Isaiah received it, he was terrified. Jesus was huge, power, and glorious. He sat on a throne ruling the universe surrounded by weird creatures who0 declared his glory day and night. This Jesus was no one to be trifled with. No little lambs here but rather awesome and even fearsome power and authority.

Another image also comes from John in the book of Revelation. John tells us, “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords’” (Rev.19:11-16). This is a picture of Jesus riding out to make war against his enemies. The blood on his garments is not the blood of the lamb, but the blood of his enemies.

In Ephesians 4, Paul reveals that after his death, Jesus descended into hell and plundered the devil. He ascended with captives in his train giving gifts to men. This is the picture of a Roman general’s “triumph” as he would march through the streets of Rome pulling captives behind him and giving part of the spoils to friends as gifts. Jesus is painted as a conquering general here who has completely decimated his enemies and returned home to glory.

Finally, Paul shows us another image of the power and authority of Christ when he declares, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil.2:9-11).

There are times when I need to perceive Jesus as the gentle shepherd, searching for me and binding my wounds. There are other times, however, when I need him to be a fierce warrior who rises in anger at those who would hurt me and comes to me as the conquering general and commander of the armies of heaven, ready to decimate those who would attack me. When we are under spiritual attack, this is the Jesus we must hold in our minds and present to the enemy. When demons encountered Jesus on the earth they were terrified. They knew who he was.

I think we shy away from this Jesus because we fear his wrath will be turned against us, but his blood has satisfied his wrath. His wrath is now reserved for the devil and his angels and his unmatched strength and authority is ready to be wielded on our behalf. When demons, disease, or premature death rears its head, this is the Jesus we should call on, for he is surely willing to come. Read Psalm 18:6-19, when you need the ultimate warrior and the Lion of the tribe of Judah by your side.

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Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? Amos 3:3

The somewhat familiar passage from the Book of Amos listed above, embodies an important principle in the spiritual realm. Basically, it states that those who are in agreement with one another form some kind of unity – they walk together. That’s because there is no neutral ground in the spiritual realm. You are either with Jesus or against him. He declared, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Mt.12:30). There is no “unaffiliated” category in the unseen realm. You are either a believer or an unbeliever. There is no “agnostic” box on the ballot.

Because of that, agreement is critical to our relationship with God. That’s why James warned the “double-minded,” who were trying to live with only a partial commitment to the Lord and his standards, by saying, “That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does” (Ja.1:7-8). Being double-minded is not just about whether I believer there is a God or not or whether I believe that Jesus died for my sins. It more often falls in the category of whether or not I believe God’s word is true for me.

Most Christians, if asked, would immediately declare that they believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is, therefore, true. Knowing what is true is critical because Jesus taught that the truth will set is free. And yet, my experience is that many, many Christians are not free. They are still in bondage to past hurts and past mistakes. They still walk under a cloud of rejection and condemnation. They still feel insignificant and unworthy. They still do not feel the love of God and often medicate their emotional pain with some addiction. These good people love God, pray, and attend church on a regular basis and yet can’t seem to break free from their pain and their pasts.

It is also my experience that, on a personal level, they do not believe God’s word for them. In conversations or counseling sessions, they often respond to the promises of God with, “Yes, but…” When God’s word declares his love for them, his provision, or their value and significance in Christ, they reject that truth for them. The issue is that they give their emotions, the wounding words of mothers or father, or the lies of the enemy more authority than the word of God. As they “disagree” with God’s word they unknowingly agree with Satan and through that agreement he gains a foothold in their life. The underlying belief in their objections is that if their feelings don’t agree with God’s word, then his word is not true…at least not for them. It is a trap that prevents many of God’s people from experiencing the freedom that Jesus has purchased for them. Remember that the blessings of heaven are accessed by faith.

The path to healing and freedom often must begin with a decision of the will to declare that God’s word is true regardless of our feelings. It’s good to confess that our emotions and automatic thoughts don’t line up with the Word as long as we stand on the truth that we are in error rather than scriptures – that our emotions are liars rather than God. Our prayer and our confessions must be aimed at bringing our feelings and automatic thoughts into alignment with God’s word rather than distorting his word to match our emotions.

The key to realignment is the renewal of our minds and the revelation of the Spirit in our hearts. The renewal of our minds will come with a constant expression of God’s truth through our own verbal declarations, meditation, conversations, writing the scriptures, memorization, etc. It is how we establish new neural pathways in our minds and extinguish old pathways that contain and prompt our automatic thoughts. At a deeper level, we need the Spirit to give us a revelation of those truths in our hearts as we pray for that revelation and listen to his voice. As we renew our minds through the Word, that truth eventually seeps down into our hearts where the real issues of life reside. Revelation, however, seems to be a moment when the Holy Spirit bypasses our intellect and deposits God’s truth in our hearts. When that happens, God’s truth overrides the lies the enemy or life has written there.

It all hinges, however, on our first and persistent decision to give God’s word more authority than our own feelings, hurtful words, wounds from the past, and our old thought patterns, which often contain lies from the enemy.   Think about your agreement. Where are you agreeing with Satan more than God? Wherever we would say, “Yes, but,” concerning God’s word and his promises for us, there is a pocket of unbelief. Those pockets can give Satan a foothold, which eventually becomes a stronghold. Ask the Holy Spirit and your spiritual mentors to point out the “Yes, buts” in your life. Apply the word of God to those places and give God’s word more authority than those old familiar feelings and beliefs. It is your first step to freedom.

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How many of us have prayed for a change of circumstance for months or years without seeing any significant change? Those prayers may be asking for the salvation of a loved one, a financial increase, a career opportunity, the healing of a damaged marriage, or a solution to a long-term health problem. When we have prayed consistently for a long-term problem, we are hoping for breakthrough. Breakthrough is the moment that a door opens, a heart changes, an offer materializes, or a health solution or supernatural healing arises. It is that moment when progress begins again.

Sometimes, prayer feels like you are swinging a battering ram against a huge iron door. At first, you began with optimism believing that the battering ram of your prayers and efforts would jar the door open. But after days and months of trying, the door may be scuffed but still feels impenetrable. You often think about quitting but something keeps you going. Then one day, with one final swing, the door hinges weaken, then break, and the once impossible door topples to the ground. You can now move ahead for victory. Breakthrough is a biblical theme. There are numerous stories of breakthrough in the Bible. From these, we can glean insights and principles for our own breakthroughs. Some of the best are in the Old Testament.

One of the most interesting stories in all of scripture is the account of the battle of Jericho. After forty years in the wilderness, the second generation of those who came out of Egypt crossed the Jordan River into Canaan. The first order of business was to take Jericho – a fortified city with a huge, imposing wall. Israel had no weapons of war for destroying walls. When Joshua inquired of the Lord about a strategy for breakthrough, the Lord said, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in” (Josh.6:2-5).

When facing Jericho, the Israelites needed a literal breakthrough. The strategy the Lord gave them seemed ludicrous from a natural point of few. But as the men marched, the priests blew the shofars, and the people shouted, the walls collapsed into rubble. The fighting men then charged into the city and victory was secured.

The first thing we see in this account is that breakthrough does not come by trusting in our own strength and wisdom but in doing it God’s way – even if conventional wisdom says that God’s way is totally contrary to reason. For instance, those who are needing financial breakthrough most likely would be counseled by “financial experts” to stop giving to the church or to certainly stop tithing until they were totally of out debt. The Lord says to tithe first, even in the face of lack, and then he will open the floodgates of heaven (Mal.3:10). The wise man said, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Prov.3:5). Too many times, when we are seeking breakthroughs, we try to engineer the outcomes on our own. We fail to ask the Lord what he would have us do and often are unwilling to wait on him. We plunge ahead and sometimes create more opposition to the breakthrough we need because we were operating out of fear, the flesh, or our own wisdom.

Secondly, the wall fell when the priests blew the ram’s horns and the people shouted. The wall fell when the priests and people expended their breath. The word translated as breath is ruach in Hebrew. Ruach may be translated as breath, wind or Spirit. Breakthrough is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. As we release the Spirit though our prayers and declarations, then breakthrough can come. God declared through Zechariah, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty” (Zech.4:6). Breakthrough often comes when we stop trusting in out own efforts, our own manipulations, and when we quit striving with God as if we have to talk him into blessing us.

When we finally say that we are done, that we are helpless, and that we have no ability to affect the outcomes, then God often moves. Otherwise, we would assume that victory came through our efforts and our brilliance. Throughout scripture, God instructs his people to follow many unorthodox (crazy) strategies. They were strategies that would utterly fail without the Spirit of God giving supernatural victory. David Hernandez puts it this way. “Breakthrough does not come in your struggle; it comes in your surrender. It won’t be found in some brilliant strategy or aggressive action. Only when you do as God commands is the Holy Spirit able to bring down the walls that inhibit your progress” (David Diga Hernandez, Encountering the Holy Spirit, p.73).

For those seeking breakthrough, I believe this is spiritual counsel. It stands on two basic beliefs: God is good and God is powerful. Because he is good, he hears our prayers and is willing to act. Because he is powerful, nothing is too hard for him. He can do more than we can ask or imagine and is willing to do so when we trust in him rather than ourselves. Of course, there are things that may get in the way…unbelief, unrepented sin, unforgiveness, etc. that God wants us to remove so that his blessings are not bottlenecked. But, I think the bigger issue is trusting him enough to do it his way and depending fully on him. Just wanted to share some thoughts on breakthrough and may the Lord give you the breakthrough you need.