THE ART OF WAR… as fought GOD’s WAY!

THE ART OF WARFARE GOD’s WAY…

Christianity is all about learning to face your GIANTS, in other words your FEARS!

In the Bible where we read about the Children of Israel’s challenges and travels on their way to the Promised Land, we often will misinterpret the “Promise Land” as a type of Heaven, and it most certainly is NOT!

The Promise Land is where all your fears are tested and challenged; it’s where you are forced to put it ALL on the line, and test the mettle of our faith, and then know what exactly it is that you are relying on… whether on God, or on other things, or people?

The Children of Israel blew it the first time around, because after the spies had came back with their report, only two of them, Joshua and Caleb said “We can do it;” the rest of them quaked in their boots and said it was impossible.

But before we get on our high horses and criticize, let’s consider what it was that they were being asked to do; and then let’s ask ourselves how excited we would have been to go in and do battle under those very same circumstances?

To start with these people where not trained soldiers; after all, they had spent years in bondage, as slaves in Egypt; and they where most certainly not a trained army!

No these were families, including men, women and children, including people of all ages; and believe me, the moment they went in and declared war on Jericho, which was a fortified city, and I mean a literal fortress that was surrounded and protected by huge walls, and was populated with real GIANTS; so the moment they began this endeavor, there would be no turning back nor retreat, for either they win, or it was curtains for all of Israel… meaning all their families, women and children included, would have been killed, or worse. So there wouldn’t have been any time outs, where they could have just said, “Hold on folks, we changed our mind!”

Now after putting flesh and blood on this story, and seeing it for what it was; let us ask ourselves the question, how would we have done, considering it were our life, and the lives of our families that were at stake?

And before you answer that question, first ask yourself how are you doing in the challenges you are facing today, where your fears are being confronted, where you possibly are anticipating things in your future that are making you fearful?

You know, even with our worst problems that we face here in the West, we typically have it so much easier than most of the rest of the world.

Hardly ever are we facing life and death situations, as Israel did in the above story; and nor are we facing starvation and death and sicknesses at epidemic proportions, as is the case in other parts of the world.

In some of these places, you take your life in your hand just to call yourself a Christian, and there is a huge and constant threat, not only on you, but also on your wife and your children too.

This is the real world, in most other places of the world today; and yet we here, in America and also in most of your western European countries today, through we may think we represent the majority and the standard norm for what it means to be a Christian, we do not… in fact we are very much in the minority, when it comes to numbers.

We have been spoiled here in American and also in Western Europe, and therefore we are totally unprepared for what is about to happen; and this is owed to the fact that we haven’t had any REAL problems, certainly not on this order of what we are reading about that happened to Israel; or that we see happening in other places today, in Islamic countries, and in places like in Africa.

For our part, having been blessed and protected by God for going on generations now, we haven’t a clue what it means to have to face real danger, or having to forfeit everything, including maybe our lives and those of our families; and yet this is the reality most of our brothers and sisters, who in fact make up the majority of God’s church today in the world, as we in the West are very much in the minority, they have to face this sort of thing every single day… and even to just call themselves “Christian,” they are putting their lives at risk!

So before we are so quick to throw stones at others, and judge the Children of Israel, whose stores we have studied so many years and are so familiar with; before we judge them so harshly, we need to seriously evaluate our faith, and where we are today; as I believe that our day of testing is near at hand… as I believe that God is about to separate the “wheat” from the “chaff,” and the “sheep” from the “goats” right here at home!

The truth is, you don’t learn to fight in a war by reading it in a book. The way you learn is by going through training; and sometimes however, that training happens on the job, as you find yourself fighting for your lives in the middle of a war; and that very well may be the case here in America, for a lot of people, because we are for the most part so unprepared.

The Scriptures are very clear on this point, and Jesus made it very clear, that rough days are ahead for the world, and for the Church, among those who would be alive at the time of His return to earth.

Jesus called these times, “The beginning of Sorrows;” and He said that these times that we are on the verge of experiencing would be the worst ever, in the history of the world!

God’s plan for these times, again it is NOT for the destruction of the church; rather His purpose is to build us up, and make us stronger; that we in the church would begin to seize these times, and dig in, and become stronger; and that we would REPENT (change the way we think); that we would once again begin to plug into God’s Word, and the POWER of the Holy Spirit; and that we learn the Art of Warfare, God’s way!!!

For more information on this, on God’s tactics and how He expects us to behave… look to your Operations Manual (The Bible).

Shalom,

Skip Barland

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