The Resistance

"We only fight when we lose sight of the finished work of the cross."

IT DOESN’T do any good to fight the devil. It’s best, instead, to submit to God. On our own, our fighting is futile. The devil always has another scheme, most of which he created based on our actions, our words. We can’t be silent enough or empty-headed enough to prevent it. All of our efforts are, like the Old Covenant Law, us building a tower to reach the heavens. In the size of things, comparing ourselves to God, we are so small. This is not meant to be a point of frustration or sadness. But that we must let God be more than enough, and then what we try to do, that we can’t effectively do, will come to completion. He always has a way where there doesn’t look to be one.

JehovahJireh, Genesis 22:14, H3070, Jehovah will see (to it); Jehovah-Jireh

Jesus is, again, our example. Because humanity would only crown a king who had conquered lands and destroyed armies in boldness and great capacity. We like our heroes to be out front and out loud, even a bit hardhearted. Jesus is a softie, putting it mildly. He’s the physical example of a loving God of never-ending mercy. I beg of you to see His mercy in the Word of God and not to get lost in all the references of wrath and vengeance penned by a King’s translators in a bygone time. Jesus quashed the wrath of God when He shed His blood on the cross, and He showed the power of God, fueled by God’s love, when He rose from the dead. The Old Testament is meant to show us God’s longsuffering (which has nothing to do with suffering but patience and endurance). That God was gentle enough to allow men and nations time to repent and turn to Him and with their slightest honest prayer, He blessed them abundantly, is beyond measure.

From Abraham’s obedience came Israel, and from Israel’s kings, who were wicked for the most part, came the King of Kings. God would have His Son’s ancestry include ordinary men and women, a harlot, a shepherd. What an incredible thing. For God so loved the world that much, that He would make Himself as one of us.

It’s hard to let go of our self-preservation. Outside of Christ – Father, Son, and Spirit – we’re in a continual survival mode where only the strongest overcome and the fittest make it. What God has done is use our weaknesses to make us strong. He’s forgiven our faults and poured in His energy to love and to overcome, so that all we need to do is lean upon His staff. We’ve made surviving our identity, and it isn’t. What we are, after Christ comes to live in our hearts, is a new creation. All the old has gone, which includes our thinking. Our need to lash out and defend ourselves is now buried deep beneath the joy of our calling to come up higher and be with Him.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

God is not at arm’s length. He’s within. He’s not three words we heard at midnight, but conversation without ending. He’s not struggle and pain without a sight of tomorrow, but endurance that sustains us, every minute of every day. We want Him to wipe out all the bad stuff and let our lives be those of ease. But the ease comes within us when we look past the daily things we feel obligated to do and see His footsteps. It isn’t that He WILL remove the struggle but that He HAS removed it. We only fight when we lose sight of the finished work of the cross. This all seems succinct and overstated. I get that. But let me tell you, when I faced death, my perspective altered. There is lingering around me things I want permanently erased, and I know God will do so when the time is perfect. But half of living happy is not seeing them as permanent, is pushing ahead and rejoicing anyway.

It takes grit to keep walking and not lash out, to be deliberately peaceful and ignore the false feeling you are weak for not responding. It’s hard to change your perspective, even with the Spirit guiding you. But to be like Him means not being your old self. For old things to pass away, we have to let go of them and that often includes our memories. To rehearse the pain is to re-fulfill it. God can and will heal our soul. That is the words of Psalm 23:3. He restores our soul so that we can walk with Him in maturity. It’s our thinking, our emotions, and our decisions being healthy as He’s designed health to be. Not according to the unsaved world’s standards, they who worship men and accomplishments, history and tradition, false knowledge cooked up by convoluted thinking. We lay down who we are to allow God’s methods, His character, to take control, and in so doing, the devil loses us.

There is our resistance. On our own we’re blown about by every gust. With Jesus, walking in the Spirit, hearing the Words of the Father, we shape the wind, creating even our own breeze, the movement of the Spirit through us, changing our environment. I’ll take that any day. For the end of all things demonic is death. Or we should say, outside of our loving God, there is only death and an unending view of our regrets and the kindness of Him which we turned aside.

We view our resistance, our fighting, as strength. He sees unwillingness, even disobedience. We view rest as laziness, as impotence. But the entire message of the cross, both looking forward to it from the Law, and back to it from the empty tomb, is to let God do the work, the salvation, and to not rely on ourselves at all. It just usually surprises us how difficult that is to do, what with pride at the forefront, and then how easy it becomes once we take the first steps. For the God in heaven above desired us from the start to be made whole and holy only in His goodness and for all of our days to outshine the next one because He is the Head of it. The sight to see ahead, the strength to perform it, the wisdom to know what to do, and the authority to see it come to pass, all are His. We return to our foundations in Him, living as Adam, our first breath raising our chest and uncurling our fingers to succeed.

“The way to heaven is through the gate built precisely upon God’s law of love—God’s design protocol for life. There are many theories, philosophies and teachings that are less precise and suggest a broader, less exacting road, but all such paths are incompatible with life, and they result in destruction —and far too many prefer them. Uncompromising is the gate and exact is the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14, Remedy)

Image by Michael De Groot from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com