This week’s blog continues from last week. Take a few moments to read last week’s if you haven’t already. It will help.
In the Film the Director and all his crew had to keep Truman Burbank from finding out who he really was and what he could do if he found out that the Director’s narrative was completely false. At all costs, Truman must not find out the truth, or the game would be up for the Director and his crew – they would be finished.
This is a picture or an illustration of what we are up against. Satan, like the Director, has a crew at his disposal. He has a storyline that he wants to get us to believe, because at all costs he wants to prevent us from finding out the truth, and then even worse, living in that truth. “They must not find out who they are or what they can do” would be his catchphrase. So he responds to what God has done for us, by trying to get us to believe something different. Exchanging the truth for a lie.
We had a glimpse last week of the greatness of what God has done for us – of where we start from as Believers in Christ.
- He provided forgiveness for all our sins, past, present and future. They are already all forgiven. Father God is holding none of them against you, because Jesus paid for all of them. Love keeps no record of wrongs.
- Father God has changed us at our very core. We are new people. He has given us the most marvellous and effective heart transplant. Our heart desire now is to relate to God, to please Him and follow Him. When we fail we are churned up precisely because our action just contradicted our hearts desire.
- Father God has made us new and cleaned us up so effectively that it is Holy Spirit’s desire and pleasure to live in us, forever.
- The result of all this is that we are righteous – right with Him forever. So right in fact, that we can approach Him at any time in complete freedom and confidence. So right in fact that we can reign in life rather than life reigning over us. We are now brothers and sisters of Jesus. That’s a good place to be starting from!
Hebrews Chapter 2 v 3 says “how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation”. To neglect it would be to dismiss it, or misuse it, or take it for granted.
We need to make sure that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that God did all of this for us just to “get us through” because He knows how weak we are.
Yes He knows how weak we are, but He has done all this for us in order to make us strong – and if we’re up for it, to make us invincible. He has done all this to equip us thoroughly to fight. We are born again, and born into a battle at the same time. Our destiny is not just to survive, or to scrape through. Our destiny is to win. The thought of this makes the enemy lose sleep.
We are equipped to fight and win because we are forgiven, we are clean. We are equipped to fight precisely because we are new people, recreated at our very core – we have a new spirit in us, our desire is to follow Jesus. Holy Sprit lives happily in us. Satan has no leverage over us (unless we choose to offer him some). As the prophet Joel said, “Let the weak say ‘I am strong’”. Because now we are.
I believe we are going to see a time of great harvest ahead, but also, there will be a great fight and much opposition. No surprise there. Ignore the lies of the enemy. Ignore his deceptive narrative. Remember that Father God chose for you and me to be alive at this specific time, and He has equipped us for the challenge and for the victory that lies ahead.
Together with Jesus at the head, we can do this!
Church is out there 