Personal power vs Godly authority

We stumble in spiritual warfare when we rely on personal power. But we prevail in divine authority.

How often we confuse personal power and charisma, with divine authority. How predictably we advance leaders who would probably have made it anyway. It is a cause of great resentment in many that they are like Cinderella’s, left at home, whilst the same notables get their pickings in the team and in places of favor.

Saul is a great example of someone with the external attributes, which those who confer power love to affirm. But Saul, in relying on his personal power, forsook legitimate power: for all authority comes from God. If Saul had humbled himself under God’s hand and submitted to the mandate of His God, to do what God had commissioned him to do, his legacy would have been perpetual. But he chose to go his own way and therein is no power, certainly not the power of God.

Real power and authority comes from the Word, the revealed heart of God. It defines who we are, our rights of way or prerogatives, and our divine mandate.

Who we are. Thhe first vital pretext of our authority is our position and identity in Christ. Christ triumphed over sin, hell and the grave and extended that victory to us. If we appropriate what is ours we will prevail, but if we concede legitimacy to Satan’s words, we will succumb to the weakness and inadequacy he speaks over us. Those with apparent personal power, have no power at all except it comes from God, but those without apparent power can be powerful indeed if they live within God’s Word.

Our rights of way or prerogatives. God has commissioned us to live out our lives within His purpose. We are called to do His will. Jesus conceded that to be His life mission. He only came to do His Father’s will. He was challenged, but the real challenge of Satan related to His reference point (It is written: The Lord is one and Him alone will we serve), His boundaries (It is written: we shall not tempt the Lord our God) and His principles or ethos (It is written: man shall not live by bread alone but by every Word of God). Those three pillars were inviolate and became the foundation of His authority. He asserted His place in the Father, through obedience to the truth. Satan could not resist or fault Him on that and thus He did not walk in personal power, but divine power.

Our mandate. All are mandated to be priests and kings of God. You have a place in His household and no one can deny that. Many are called to be husbands and fathers or mothers, and with that comes authority to fulfill God’s mandate. Satan seeks to undermine your role and if you concede ground to him or renege on your mandate, you will be progressively disempowered. You will also disempower the next generation. Satan lost all legitimate pretexts against us, at the cross. You, however, have abundant pretexts for victory, conceded through the cross.

We are also empowered to fulfill God’s specific mandate for our lives within His household, to actively share in the life and thought of the Kingdom. Such invovement will rely on personal power to the extent that you either miss His calling or sin, but if you know His calling, then your authority vests in His authority, notwithstanding any other disadvantages.

We need to determine who rules our hearts.

Israel asserted her national identity as long as the King, the Priesthood and the Prophetic pillars of the kingdom were sustained at the centre: in Jerusalem. Battles at the borders of the kingdom were determined by what happened at the centre, in the heart of Israel. That is no less true for our lives. If Jesus, our Prophet, Priest and King leads us, restores us to God and rules through His Word, we will prevail in other area of our lives.

Stop limiting yourself to your personality, stature or charisma, or lack thereof. Those considerations are not, nor ever shall be, the basis of authority. Those who depend on such things will be found wanting, but those who allow His authority to define their lives, will prevail and become history makers, for all authority comes from God, not men (John 19:11).

(c) Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/

Divine perspectives

I can see clearly now the rain is gone. Gone are the dark clouds. It is going to be a sunshiny day.

My youngest son has a wonderful ability to remember places. We have traveled through towns that we may have last seen years before, but as we came across familiar scenes, he could recall the past: “This is where we had a puncture or this is where we laundered our holiday clothes.”

Unfortunately, Dan is still young, so he still has a limited perspective. He cannot see a whole city, region or country in perspective. He can tell us exactly how to get to school or church and a few other places, because his neural pathways are developing and maturing. But as he grows and fills out, his perspective will change, the gaps will close, the loose ends will come together and he will have a full perspective on the world he lives in.

This principle is true in the spiritual world as well. When we are novices, we have a somewhat binary relationship with God. We ask, He gives. He asks, we obey. Our perspectives on sin, satan, the world and other spiritual landmarks are also disjointed and incomplete.

But, Solomon (Proverbs 18:10) spoke of God’s name being a high tower that the righteous run into and are safe. He also found perspective through lifting himself above his surroundings, but he gained that perspective through the name of God. In the process he found safety or refuge from the storms of life.

Much of our insecurity results from wrong perspectives. We tend to fear what we don’t understand, which is what spurns superstition and misunderstandings of God’s heart for us. When we retreat into the fortress of His name, it lifts us to a new vista and restores our perspectives. It makes the struggle of life and the enemy of our souls relatively small, but the vastness of God and of His power, very great.

Solomon’s words suggest that we can bypass normal growing up cycles by ascending to a higher point, through our knowledge of His name. We can lift ourselves, but my son can only wait for his turn. That said, Danny has taken to sitting on the kitchen floor to listen to worship CD’s, so he too has lifted his spiritual perspectives even if his life perspectives remain stunted by his youth.

Paul, in Ephesians 6 said concerning our spiritual struggles, that we are equipped to stand. Our spiritual armour enables us to hold our ground and resist the devil (James 4:7). Satan cannot easily push us off our position in Christ, but will use every trick in the book to lure us away from our position of strength and authority: in the high tower of His name.

The devils also believe in Jesus name and they tremble. Believing His name can be purely theoretical if it applies that name as a kind of mantra. But a proper understanding of His name and what it represents is a sure tower of refuge where we are safe and blessed with a proper perspective of our life struggles. Part of our battle is won simply in seeing our struggles in context, understanding that we are in a war and that so much is at stake. But with that perspective comes an understanding of how much was secured in the death and resurrection of Christ, the foundation of our faith. Those contexts give us real stature in the face of dark contradictions and they push back our enemy, for his one great hope is to confuse our thinking and darken our minds about who we are and what we have in Jesus.

Paul also had a high tower, which is explored in Ephesians 2:5-6, saying “We are alive in Him and seated with Christ in heavenly places.” This flows from Ephesians 1:22, where God shows that He put all things under His feet. So the place of seating (not even standing, but seating as a ruler would do), is on top of a pile of ruins that represent the victories of Christ over our enemies. He has divided His spoils amongst us and given us a place of authority at His side, above a fallen foe.

That is God’s perspective, even if it is not always our own perspective.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

You are my God

You are my God, there is none other. With Him we make a majority and where He is, grace abounds.

In Hebrews 8, we read of the New Covenant, something I feel has not been adequately covered in theological teaching.

A pivotal clause of the New Covenant is God's promise to be our God, as we shall be His people. The subject here is not us. It should not read "I shall be your God" because God is the subject. Thus it should be, "I shall be your God". God entered into a covenant of His making, he did not become a willing participant in a man-made institution.

When Abraham mounted Moriah he was asked to do what other gods would typically have required of him: to offer his child. The pagan world was characterised by such barbarism and now Jehovah God demanded the same from Abraham.

In that moment, Abraham's concept of "My God", was deeply tested. The idea of "My God" or "My Faith", is something personal rather than fundamental. It alludes to our personalised concept fo a divine icon. It somewhat reduces God to a talisman. People invoke the notion of "My God" in times of trouble or when facing anything that confronts their value system. Americans seem to invoke the term for just about everything.

But when Abraham stood alone on that hill with his son, he had to examine whether "His God" was just a colloqialism, a peculiarity of his own world view, a product fo his own thinking. Indeed God removed all His own distinctions so that to all intents there were no notable differences between Himself and other Gods.

Jesus was also tempted on the central divinity of God, when satan offered Him the kingdoms of the world. To this he replied, "The Lord our God is one and Him alone shall we serve".

Both these great men had to confront their faith in the face of huge contradictions. They emerged with a real faith, not in a contrivance of their own imaginations, nor in a God amongst gods, but in the only absolute: Jehovah.

That is the crux of the New Testament. God is not saying I will be your personal crutch or designer God. He is saying that as the only sovereign He will be yours. You, your values and your world view will be defined by the Great I am, who is and was and ever more shall be.

When Abraham finally obeyed God, God intervened. His sovereigty was displayed openly as He said, "No, don't touch the boy, there is the lamb of sacrifice." Thereafter God effectively said, "Your people have become my people, for becaus eyou did not withhold your only son, that son who by implication became mine, is the instrument with which I will make a nation, a people as the stars in the sky: and I will be their God".

The idea of God's centrality to our faith was fundamental to Jesus victory of satan in the wilderness. You will also find victory when God assumes His place as God, not merely your God. It is when He is there to be worshipped and obeyed for whom He is, that we will finally know the heart of our struggle against satan, which is about affirming our absolute dependence on the one, true God.

As long as you waver on this point, you will falter in your battles. But when it is settled and you overcome satan in this, God will do what He did for Abraham: He will declare you as His people.

(c) Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/

Becoming a fool

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom or discipline: Proverbs 1:7.

In Biblical wisdom literature, the pupils of the sages and mentors are the unwise, often termed "fools" (Prov. 1:7) or "simple one" (1:22). In wisdom literature, the different levels of fools - both young and old - are the raw material on which the sages had to work, and they represent the varying degrees of rawness. Perhaps as much as anything else, the term fool is descriptive of an attitude, bent of mind, or direction in life, which needs correcting. The various Hebrew words for fool occur more than a hundred times in the book of Proverbs. [Marvin Wilson, Our Father Abraham (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), 284-286.]

The reference to someone being a fool was not necessarily a negative term. A simple fool, or peti, was a person who made mistakes, but quickly righted them and was restored to fellowship with God and with others. King David was a simple fool, one who made mistakes, but kept a repentant heart toward God. This is why God did not turn away from him for his many sins.

The hardened fool, kesil and ewil, makes mistakes, but never learns from them and will not listen to others. Such people can expect God's reproof to continue and will eat the fruit of their own way (see Prov. 1:31-32). The hardened fool "returns to his own vomit." King Saul was a hardened fool, one who made mistakes and continued in them even after realizing he was wrong. We're going to err in our ways. The question is, once we know we have made a mistake before God, do we make the necessary adjustments that will allow Him to intervene on our behalf? And will we avoid the same course of action in the future? God says that if we do, He will pour out His Spirit on us (see Prov. 1:23). He will make known His words to us.

The third level of fool mentioned in Proverbs is the mocking fool or letz. The mocking fool mocks the things of God. This word means "scoffer" or "scorner." When you encounter cynical people who disregard the things of God, you know these people are "mocking fools."

The fourth level of fool is the God-denying fool or nabal. This term relates to the morally wicked person who ignores the disgrace he brings on his family and who despises holiness (see Prov. 17:21). This person says, "There is no God." By failing to acknowledge God for who He is, the nabal declares himself to be a "God-denying" fool.

I have found that it is helpful to try to understand if people are teachable. Are they simple fools, those who make mistakes but seek to learn from them? I can work with those people. But if I sense I am working with a hardened fool, I know I should not spend much time on that person. Jesus did not spend much time trying to convince the rich young ruler. He presented truth, and let him make his decision.

Some people must get broken before they can become simple fools. Sometimes it is simply better to let satan chew on people until the ground is fertile enough to present truth to them.

Source: John Hall at www.pleasantplaces.co.za

Catch the wind

God displays His power in a refined and channeled way despite His boundless capacity for raw power.

There was a time when the concept of manned flight involved a lot of raw power or brute force (and ignorance). Flapping of feathered limbs, in the way of birds, was one approach. Others jumped off bridges and cliffs or used exertion to launch themselves into the air. Even the pre-flight era muscled along in brute force and ignorance, believing that a wing should be designed to ride the wind and batter its way into supremacy over the air. Other attempts focused on making lighter-than air vehicles, which was inherently frustrated by the inclusion of the “man” component of “manned flight”.

Then the Wrights realized that the secret to flight lay in harnessing the wind and using its physical properties to carry the aircraft aloft. The secret lay in the shape of the wing, which exploited the laws of aerodynamics.

Sailors had similar joys in harnessing the power of the wind. The concept of catching the wind soon gave way to the better idea of riding the wind, which enabled sail boats to actually face the wind and be drawn forward by the venturi effect of aerodynamics. The alternative was to rely solely on following winds as they pushed you around the earth, a long way to go if you needed to go a bit upwind for a loaf of bread.

The power of God is also depicted in scripture as a wind, for good reason. It is accessible to all, free and abundant, but its power can only be harnessed by applying appropriate principles of spiritual dynamics.

We need to shape our lives to catch His breath and live in His power.

A sailor tacks to get the optimal angle of attack into the wind, but opens the sail when sailing with the wind. When sailing upwind, the sail is trimmed to its optimal shape, enabling the wind to draw the boat through the water.

Two things are needed for sailing upwind: tack and sail trim.

Spiritual tacking implies a need to face God, spend time with Him and humbly seek His ways. It’s about aligning our lives to His Word and life. Clearly if we just wait for down winds, we will slowly drift away from the source. To head back to God, we need a different approach. His Word is powerful and life giving, but if we don’t expose ourselves to it or skillfully navigate our lives into the wind, the power of His Word will be lost to us.

Of course we also need to shape our lives, through application of His truth. It is not enough to just face God and enjoy His wind in our faces. We must apply ourselves to His truth if we ever hope to tap into the power of the life that blows through our lives. We can go to church and busy ourselves with many things, yet never really progress as we wallow around in dead water. Or we can deliberately respond to His truth to stop that noisy flapping in the wind.

There is an unsustainable, tiring and inefficient way to walk with God, but there is also a way to tap into His rhythm, know His heart and feel His heartbeat.

The vision in Ezekiel 47, of a river flowing from the temple of God, speaks of a tide that we can immerse ourselves in. We may start off at ankle- or knee-depth or even stay on the banks to watch the kingdom flow past us, but the best place to be, is in mid-river where the current flows strongest. The river that Ezekiel saw eventually flowed out into the fullness of the Promised Land and that is where we will end up if we go with its flow: we will experience its power, realize its boundaries and see His promises fulfilled.

There is no doubt that the wind or tide of God’s Spirit describes vast power, but it is not the raw power that we normally associate with power in everyday life. It is not explosive or kinetic or pneumatic or any other kind of power. It is spiritual power, capable of transforming ordinary lives into history makers. It challenges the gates of hell and raises us from the uttermost to the uttermost to equip us for eternal life. It is a healing, restorative and quickening power.

It may be subtle and often almost imperceptible, but no one who has trusted in His truth has ever been put to shame, for His truth will always win the day and prevail against the darkness. In the immortal words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, “His Truth is marching on”.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

I see you

If our faith in God looks for a visible face, does our understanding of the devil look for the same?

The use of symbols, buildings, statues or golden calves to depict God and make Him more accessible to humans, has led to dangerous distortions and a corruption of real faith. It is a powerful ruse of Satan to vest our ignorance in symbols and images. For although they make one feel warm inside they do nothing for the war of the soul.

It is no less futile to try to put a human face to the devil. We often allow bad or horrible people to become the target for our fears and superstitions, but we then end up beating the air.

Paul said in Galatians 5:7 that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in heavenly places”. When we use human instruments of darkness, regardless of our pretexts, we merely fight the instrument, not the force or logic behind them. That is analogous to warring against shields or swords or guns, which are quite incapable of spontaneous action and devoid of any will of their own.

So when we find ourselves in conflict with individuals, we are really wasting time. The problem is behind them. The objective of Chess is to take out the King, not to eliminate the opponent’s resources. I accept that a war of attrition against the other player would render the King very vulnerable, but in spiritual warfare the “men” at Satan’s disposal are innumerable. Attrition would only favor his cause as it would bog us down in a highly inefficient and pointless distraction. We must target the King or more specifically the spiritual forces behind what we see on the ground.

I am not about to advocate that we run off wildly berating or rebuking the devil, for as the seven sons of Sceva found out, such naiveté is foolhardy. But I am saying that unless you understand what is behind your struggle, you will be quite ineffective.

So blaming your parents, your boss, the schoolyard bully or other oppressors in your life is not going to cut it. It will just frustrate you or turn your own feelings into instruments of your spiritual enemy.

Joshua and David were two great Old Testament warriors. Their approach to war was first to inquire of God and ensure that His favor was with them. That sounds quite routine, but it isn’t. Satan’s pretexts against us are significantly linked to our own position in God. If we are in sin or have opened up a spiritual door through past activities, Satan will exploit our spiritual vulnerability. When Joshua or David found battles going against them, it inevitability pointed to some sin or offence that had to be corrected before they could advance.

So if we are to win against an unseen but virulent force we must restore our divine position in the greater unseen force. We must know God and walk with Him if we are to see our enemy is perspective and we must obey Him if we want to walk in His authority. Then, in His timing, God will lead you into a meaningful engagement and deliver the enemy into your hands.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

God is great

Our need for tangible symbols of God offers false comfort that frustrates our ability to overcome..

Mohandas Ghandi said, “To a poor child in Calcutta, a piece of bread is God”. To the children of Israel, “A golden calf was God”. To modern believers, very often money or a provider or a pastor, is God. Church has been an incarnation of God for many and there has been a strong historic dogma for turning the Church into the centre of our faith. Others turn to symbols like a crucifix or even try to evoke life out of dead bread. All of these behaviors stem from a desperate need to have and hold God on human terms. The invisibility of God frustrates us, but it need not be that way.

When Jesus met the woman at the well (John 6), she said “some say that we ought to worship God in Jerusalem, others say in Samaria, what do you say?” Jesus replied, “It’s not about time or place, for God seeks us to worship Him in Spirit and Truth.”

Israel got into deep trouble when they depicted their concept of God as a golden calf. Their idea had some credence, for Ezekiel 1 depicts one of the faces of the four living creatures around the throne of God, as an ox, symbolizing the strength of God. Although the image used by Israel was drawn from Egyptian pagan practices, I am fairly sure that most of the people naïvely sought a symbol or replica of God or their concept of God. I am also fairly sure that depicting God as a calf was no less an issue as the idea of depicting Him as a building, an iconic leader, a crucifix or a statue.

The Samaritans got into different trouble when they allowed themselves to become alienated from the rest of Jewry, because they perceived that the well of Jacob at Shechem had a greater sense of God or God's presence, than did Jerusalem. How many religious groups have tried to sentimentalize places to evoke the presence of God or out of a misguided sense of service that does nothing to fill our empty wells. Muslims go to Mecca, Christians and Jews flock to Jerusalem and all come away with an experience yet without a lasting reality of God.

All of this may sound a bit gobbly-gooky, but sadly it is exactly what happens to our faith when we displace an intimate relationship with symbols for that reality. God is very real, but His voice is still, small and almost imperceptible, whilst the way He works in our lives is subtle, almost invisible. We can enjoy a very deep, very real relationship with Him if we connect with Him at a spiritual level, but we get into all kinds of problems when we try to reinterpret the invisible God in physical terms.

One of the sad consequences of this is an oppressive relationship with church through a form of service that comes close to guilt-induced slavery - the kind of thing that should only happen in the corporate world.

Such activity may be rooted in theology, but it still amounts to a relationship with objects and a dependence on others for approval. That is where we get lost, but we get lost, according to Romans 8, because we are made subject to vanity. Our vanity cries for approval through our deeds and associations, rather than through our divine position in God’s eternal purposes.

The tragedy of a symbolic faith is that it neutralizes our power to overcome sin or the world. Jesus said, “The devils believe and tremble”, but He referred to a fear for a living, regal God. When we trust symbols of that reality, we end up with a form of Godliness that denies the power thereof (2 Timothy 3:1-5) and become the laughing stock of the enemy. We become like lions without teeth, going through interesting rituals of service and applied clichés, whilst achieving squat in our war against evil.

We must restore spiritual connectedness and fellowship with God to overcome and extend that relationship into a vital expression that makes us the church, not church goers. We must have His life in us so our cups can overflow and make a vital difference to the world around us. We must win our fight in the air, not beat the air using physical symbols of God to war against flesh and blood fronts for the unseen darkness.

© Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

Don't beat the air

The reduction of our struggles to everyday concepts, minimizes the greater war for our souls.

When things go wrong in our lives, it is easy to put a human face to our woes, to rationalise our struggles in everyday times. When Moses disappeared into Mount Sinai for an extended period, the people asked for a golden calf to be made. There are many angles to this request, but it must at least be seen against the background of a departed Moses.

Moses was the tangible expression of the unseen God seated beyond the swirling mists above and the pillar of fire below. They needed a physical presence in order to cope with the unseen. Moses had become a kind of linus-blanket, a comforting presence in an otherwise uncertain, confusing dilemma.

His absence demanded a proxy, without which the people risked falling apart. The golden calf would become a proxy for Moses and for God. I am not altogether convinced that the calf should be seen as a specific return to the gods of Egypt, but they may well have stolen a concept from Egypt to rationalize God. It partly explains our own need for buildings, priests, symbols, statues and proxies for God.

The calf not only symbolized the hopes and dreams of Israel, it also explained away their worst fears and misgivings. It had become a kind of talisman. If they could just see something representative of their concept of God, they felt that things would be okay.

By way of contrast, when Moses descended again they asked him to wear a veil, because of his glow. 2 Corinthians 3 explains that in effect they rejected the glory of the law, the bigger story behind current events. Having already worked through to a workable concept of God, the people were happy to take the written law as their new symbol of comfort and adopt it in a way that would give them a tangible religious experience. The truths behind the written laws were lost to them.

Now when we try to personalize our own struggles, grasping for meaning or symbols of hope to reassure our faith, we too miss the real point. Our struggles are not an end in themselves, but part of a greater journey with a surpassing conclusion. We must take our wrestles to a higher level, seeking God’s face and His heart for our lives without settling for symbolic gestures. Standing in prayer queues and falling over, nice sounding prophetic words and all the other jargon that characterizes our faith are not the real thing, they are at best just poor substitutes for intimacy with God.

We may fear what a real knowledge of God would imply in terms of exposing our nakedness or the costs of knowing God, but anything less is just a cop out. Sooner or later we must stop trying to put a face to our struggle or relying on symbolic gestures to make ourselves feel better, even if we aren’t. We must go up the hill and meet the lawmaker, not the laws and find intimacy with the savior not just the benefits of salvation.

© Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/

First win the battle in the air

The battlefields of the heart and mind need a strategic perspective just as human battlefields do.

US military doctrine largely hinges on airpower. Ground wars are dangerous and technology can be countered by sheer numbers, as Napoleon and Hitler learnt in their wars against Russia. Technology can also be a hindrance in battle as it breeds an over-dependence on a vulnerable resource.

So, as happened in most post World War II US theatres of war, airpower was the key to tilting the balance in favor of US ground forces. The plan has been well honed. During Desert Storm, General Norman Schwarzkopf used air-cover in the first wave of attack, to neutralize missile emplacements and other fixed artillery points. This provided safer passage for mobile ground forces.

Most military forces have focused on building significant strike capabilities using exceedingly sophisticated manned and, more recently, unmanned super-sonic and super-cruising aircraft. Stealth bombers like the B2 have enabled previously dangerous aerial targets to be engaged with relative impunity, whilst longer-range standoff weapons have enabled remote engagement from ships or aircraft operating outside the radius of fire.

The principle behind these strategies is to win the war in the air before trying to win it on the ground.

There is a powerful spiritual principle here. So often we engage our spiritual enemy in hand-to-hand combat, fighting wars of attrition at a tactical level. We engage and fight daily issues using everyday ideas and weapons. Of course, as we all have found, that is exactly where the enemy wants to meet us, because his resources are enough to tip the scales in his favor. Satan has nothing to lose, you have much to lose. He doesn’t care a hoot about hitting you every way he can and the Geneva convention means nothing to him. He will fight dirty and aim to kill wherever possible.

However, we can tilt the balance in our favor by resorting to an aerial war. By that I imply spiritual warfare waged through prayer, fasting and intercession. It is there that we fight with God, as Joshua once did, to take out the strongholds that dominated the landscape of Judea. In a later article I will explore those strongholds, but suffice to say that Joshua was very strategic in his approach. He picked his enemies and his timing, to break the resistance of the enemy, sow confusion and uproot strategic strong points.

The fact is that most of our ground struggles relate to symptoms of deeper issues, pretexts that give the enemy advantage over us. Prayer and fasting helps to expose the underlying issues so we can remove those pretexts and upstage the enemy. The idea of strategic pretexts will also be explored later, but it reflects traditional military thinking.

Often we are more like a boxer beating the air, using strong language to rebuke and resist the enemy, yet making no headway. It is interesting that Paul, in Ephesians 6, contends that the weapons of our warfare are for standing, not for offensive action. James concurs, saying, “Resist (not attack) the devil and in due course he will flee”.

© Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

Power for all

The power of God is accessible to everyone. It is able to save, heal and transform ordinary lives.

Peter spoke of the divine power of God, in 2 Peter 1: 3. He said that it has given us all that we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.

All power has utility value else it is of no relevance. The heat of a fire is useful and harnessed to heat food, water or cold bodies. The glow of the sun is useful for photosynthesis and maintenance of a viable biosphere. Electrical energy is not totally efficient, because what is not used cannot be stored, but what is used has changed our world. Whilst sophisticated first world societies are very well developed, crisis would even the scales and potentially kick lesser cultures back to prominence, because their systems are less vulnerable, more able to bounce back from disaster. Such is our dependence on electrical energy in every aspect of modern life.

God’s power also has utility value. There is raw power, just as the heart of a power station consists of the raw, unbridled power of the furnace. God possesses awesome power and if the universe expanded from an infinitely massive singularity of infinite density, I can imagine Him picking that grain up to blow it out of His hand. The idea that God spans the heavens with His right hand (Isaiah 40) comes to mind here, for at some stage a very small universe was blown out of His hand to become the vast expanse that now stretches across the heavens.

The power of God cast stars into space and introduced the four fundamental forces of nature within one second of the big bang. But, God has harnessed and distilled His awesome power to us to enable life and godliness. Sometime His power is so subtle, so deft that we often miss the point and thereby miss God. He is able to rule the heavens and overthrow His enemies, yet is equally capable of such finesse. His creativity crafted delicate beauty in flowers, insects, microcosmic matter and the wonder of sunsets, soaring mountain vistas, pounding oceans and exploding galaxies.

But He has also made it accessible to everyday human reality. His love and power relates to our daily struggles and persists with us even when we reject Him. It transforms wretched lives and lifts others from the gutters, to carry us on the wind of His Spirit until we reach the distant shore. Out of such transactions will emerge everyday heroes, people who will overcome all kinds of odds to reach glory and be crowned with His everlasting blessing.

Glory describes the ecstasy of the winning runner in a marathon or the afterglow of a mother who has just given birth: that is partly what is meant by divine glory. But it is also a share in His glory, the ecstasy He feels in His finished work and the realization of His power to save us from the uttermost to the uttermost. It suggests an embrace of lover and beloved or the arm-in-arm celebration of fellow combatants in the glory of victory.

Everyone who truly walks with God will emerge with a living testimony of His faithfulness.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

The power curve

Does the power of God vest in our practices and structures or in our knowledge of the heart of God?

Energy has a tendency to surge and stabilise, with peaks and troughs throughout its lifecycle. Various things are used to smooth power curves so we can use energy efficiently in our everyday lives.

Spiritually we also face a power curve. When we come to the faith, our locus of power and influence is rooted in the world, and ultimately in sin. We respond to what we see, hear, touch, taste or feel in our emotions. We apply logic and emotional responses to work successfully navigate the world. Those are the skills we are born with and that is all we know, so we do the best with what we have.

Our responses are of course moderated by cultural, cognitive and experiential factors. Thus Abraham, despite his roots, was influenced by his pagan culture. It shaped his traditions, values and responses.

Then God called him: it was the strting point that would trace the two influences of his life. From that moment the still, small voice of God was on the ascendancy and the prevailing voice of his culture began to recede.

Over the ensuing years, the voice of God emerged from the background clutter to become his dominant influence. During the phase of his life that led to him siring a half-son, Abraham faced intense competition between his established concept of truth and his emerging consiousness of the divine. It posed deep dilemmas for him as he wrestled with a relatively unknown God, whose light exposed all his real flaws.

Slowly the voice of God gained the upper hand and through his struggles, clarity and certainty of faith emerged. Then, when his heart was sufficiently renewed, God tested Abraham. In effect the LORD said, "You came out of that pagan world and reached thus far in your walk with me. But now that you can discern between these two world-views, it is time to finally decide which value system to adopt for you and your descendants".

It was an agonising moment for Abraham as he looked truth in the eye and confronted the crux of his faith. He had to dig deep to determine whether the God that he followed was the real thing. In his heart he knew that the sacrifice of children harked back to his pagan roots and confronted the unspoken regrets of his past. "LORD, why do you ask me to do this? This is not you. Have I grown so familiar with you that when you remove your distinctions I can no longer separate you from paganism?"

This is a deep issue. If the things that you presume to define your faith, such as church life, prayer, praise or whatever, was removed, would your faith still stand. The ecumenical movement would argue that our differences are not enough to sustain the divisions between faiths.

Do you buy that? In some ways they are right. There are good people in all persuasions, hard workers, generous, socially active souls that contribute very meaningfully to the world about us. So Christianity most certainly does not have a monopoly on the virtues we deem to define us.

Indeed, if your faith was stripped down to the bones you would feel very insecure, because a lot of Christian practice has become a linus blanket for keeping our faith intact. But, as for Abraham, the stripping away of the veneer represents the tipping point of our faith, where we must finally realise that if God is anything, He is everything and the faith we have is distinguished in the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

When we get to the heart of our faith: the heart of God and His deep values relating to love and truth, we can finally say that the curve which describes our faith has become the only voice in our lives, silencing every alternative view. God is not a relative concept, He is the only true absolute by which all truth will be measured.

Knowing Him in such a riveting, personal way is the key to our power: it removes energy sapping distractions, focuses our lives and taps into the zeal of God that consumed the passion of all bible characters.

(c) Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/