More Power to You

When you became a Christian, you did not walk onto a playground but you stepped into a battlefield. As a believer, you are always living in harm’s way. There will never again be a time in your life where you will not be a walking target.
The enemy has the crosshairs of his scope fixed directly on your heart. Hell knows your name, your background, how you are put together, your weaknesses and your strengths. Hell knows the points that you are the most vulnerable.
Hell has been studying your profile since the moment you decided to follow Jesus. On that day, you became another participant in spiritual warfare.
Whether it is day or night, you are a man, woman, an adult or a child, physically fit or a paraplegic, emotionally strong or a nervous wreck, a brain or a jock, a band geek or a chess champion, married or single, have children or live in an empty nest, grew up in a Christian home or brought up in pagan place; you have an adversary.
He is the devil and his emissaries, the demons, all have one goal for you and that is to sabotage your walk with God. The enemy wants you paralyzed, pummeled, panicking and powerless. Hell wants you ruined and rendered “Missing in Action.” You have a stalker with the stench of sulfur as he tries to slime your every step.
The best strategy of Hell is that it hopes you never pay the enemy any attention at all. Keep pretending it doesn’t exist and write it all off as a fairy tale. The darkness could only hope that you walk out into your world every day, naked, ill-prepared and totally vulnerable.
The enemy would like nothing better than for you to picture him as that little imp on your shoulder, whispering naughty ideas into your ears. Go ahead and buy into that crazy caricature of the devil decked out in a red suit with horns and a pitchfork. But come on Christians.
Have you ever wondered why life is so hard, suffering is so painful, agony is always near, and God seems far away? It’s because there’s an enemy who hates God, hates you, and has set his army against you because you’re a child of the one true God.
When life gets hard, we can easily forget that we’re victorious in Christ and lose hope. Some people practice self-centered contempt and blame themselves when things go wrong. Some practice others-centered contempt and blame other people. And some practice God-centered contempt and blame God.
Behind all sin, however, is Satan. While we remain morally responsible for our sin, Satan sometimes also bears some degree of responsibility, as he is the deceiver who delights when we join him in his rebellion against God.
You do not want the battle to begin when you’re unprepared. You don’t want to be just sort of lollygagging around and all of a sudden you’re halfway defeated before you finally wake up and realize you’re in the war. So preparation comes by heeding the challenge from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:10 when it says “Be strong in the Lord and in the power or the strength of his might.”
Notice it doesn’t say, “Be strong for the Lord,” as we could never muster enough strength on our own to win the battle over our hearts and soul. We need the assistance that the Holy Spirit provides by our constant and utter dependence upon God. His power is our power.
His truth is our truth. It is in Christ that his might becomes our might. We have all the resources, all the power and all the principles to live the Christian life. There’s just one thing that we need to know. In spite of all the resurrection power available to us, it will in no way ever be easy.
We must not become lazy in our faith and take anything for granted. If there is no struggle in our pursuit, there just may be no Spirit in our possession. Struggle, we don’t want to hear that. But Hell is locked in and loaded and there are specific bullets with our names on them. We don’t like this.
We would rather think of life as an idealized, peaceful easy feeling, drifting happily from our birth and dancing happily through our days until we ultimately land in the arms of God in eternity.
If you look at life from a pure circumstantial perspective, you won’t make it. There will always be “Giants in the Land,” “Goliaths” cursing our God and our people, “Lions” licking their chops, “Red Seas” hoping to drown us and other obstacles placed strategically in our path hoping we fall and fail miserably. But we must be aware of the schemes that the enemy uses to lure us in.
We must learn how to recognize the bait. It’s not healthy and while it may appear tasty and we may be really hungry, we can’t allow our unwholesome appetite to lead us into getting hooked. Hell never plays fair and it does not care about cheating and lying with a straight face.
Who needs to memorize these verses so you are better prepared? Colossians 3:1-4 says, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things, for you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
You have to know God so that you are not surprised by Hell’s methods of madness. We won’t beat Hell until we join Heaven. We can’t be strong in the Lord if we are still madly in love with our own ego. This is one of those times that the cry of victory is more “I Can’t.” because it is as that moment we will realize that God can. No satanic assault is stronger than God.
No satanic scheme can thwart God’s power over us. No satanic force can defeat what God is doing in us and thru us. No satanic threats can cancel out the promises of God.
So are you going to be humble or haughty? Will you believe God or end up being torpedoed? The Nazi regime commissioned the famed Bismarck battleship in 1940.
Stretching 825 feet, it was the largest battleship in the world. It boasted eight guns that held shells 15 inches across, as well as some five dozen other armaments. The Bismarck’s onboard targeting computer was so precise that it blew away the HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, with a single shot.
As grand as the Bismarck was, it had one small but fatal weakness. A vulnerable rudder was located right beneath its thermal exhaust port. In the darkness of night on May 24, 1941, the Royal Navy attacked the ship with little success until, all of a sudden, one torpedo hit this rudder. The boat was severely disabled, attacked fiercely, and defeated.
The key to victory in war is knowing your enemy. If you don’t know your enemy, you can’t know how to attack them or defend yourself. The Royal Navy found the Bismarck’s weakness, but it took many battles and heavy losses.
Imagine how many lives and ships would have been saved had they known the ship’s weakness before it was even launched. In this life, we have to know our enemy’s weakness and our own shortcomings. This way we can both defend ourselves and also be on the attack so that we may be victorious.
The devil is not running a poker game in Hell today with all you can drink beer on tap.
He is in the most sacred of places trying to dupe those who don’t know what Jesus looks like or who God truly is. It is a waste of time to try to take on a foe that you can’t see without the power of The Holy Spirit.
If you could only see what is happening right now in the heavenlies, you would never pray another casual prayer for the rest of your days.
We need to be made strong in the Lord and we need to discover our strength in Him. We are going to acknowledge our weakness and invite the Lord’s presence.
More power to you means more room for God. Our step of faith enables us to see what God can and will do. No satanic evil will ever prevail over the prayers of God’s people. Let’s get to do some serious battle from our knees.