“WE”

I had a man email me this week who has been going through some very tough situations in his life over the last two and a half years and he was once again needing prayer for direction and strength in the day to day. He has come a tremendously long way in his walk with the Lord and I am so proud for the strides he has made and for the successes the Lord has brought into his life.

So, as I was looking for another verse from God’s Word that would encourage him in the battle, I was once again drawn to a passage in II Corinthians that has become increasingly familiar to me over the last few years. I once again read this passage and began thinking about what I was going to type to him to encourage him and the Lord showed me something that I had really never noticed before in that passage. As I mulled it over in my mind, I became increasingly aware of how misguided my own thoughts can get at times when I am going through struggles of my own and how down and discouraged I become because I don’t sense God moving or working in my situation. What started out to be a quest to help a brother, became a lesson for me. I would like to share with you what I believe the Lord spoke to me.

II Corinthians 10:3-5

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Did you notice the two letter personal pronoun in this passage – WE? I don’t know about you, but that little word changed my perspective on how spiritual battles are fought and won. You see, I am more than happy to pray to the Lord for His hand in the difficult circumstances of life, but I so often sit back and wait on God to move and work in situations that I have the power to change. God has given us the weapons we need, loaded with His divine power, and ready to go to war yet we sit on the battle field with those weapons at our disposal and wait on God to do some miraculous, cosmic type of manifestation in our circumstance that will get us out of the trouble we are in. We sit like so many of this generation who have been taught that we are victims and deserve compensation or reward for our plight.

Instead of waiting on God to fight the battle, why don’t we just pick up the tools He has given us and go after those wrongful thoughts, those spiritual barriers, and DEMOLISH them ourselves using the divine power God has placed within each of us who have accepted His gift of salvation. The Lord challenged me to get up, get out, and get working on those strongholds and then “WE” – Him and me together – can win the war.