Tag Archives: God’s protection

We are fighting in a war, and the enemy is out to get us. But God is our strength and our shield. Sometimes we do get hit by the enemy, but God is sovereign and He will have allowed it so that His purposes can ultimately be fulfilled.

Knowing God, Living by Faith

The name of the Lord is a strong tower.

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“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.” (Proverbs 18:10)

I am not someone who likes to do “actions“ with songs in church, and this proverb is the chorus of a song (“Blessed be the name of the Lord“ by Clinton Utterbach) that is often used (in the UK at least) to get a congregation – particularly children – engaged in praise. Personally, I like to think about the words as I’m singing them, and I can’t do that if I’m running on the spot and waving my arms about, but I guess that’s just me. And there’s actually some great stuff to think about here.

The lyrics of the chorus are slightly different from the proverb. The lyrics are “the righteous run into it and they are saved,“ but the proverb tells us that the righteous run into it and are safe. It’s the word “safe” that struck me when I looked it up. It doesn’t just mean in a place of safety, nor is it specifically just “rescued.” The Hebrew word śāḡaḇ means “too high for capture.” The place of safety isn’t created by the walls, but by the elevation. The person who runs into this strong tower is lifted to a place that is inaccessible to the enemy. And if we know Ephesians 2:6 we know that the place where we have been raised up to is together with Christ in heavenly places. When we are raised up in the spirit, we are inaccessible to the enemy.

I have also just been reading the prayer of Jabez, which is in 1 Chronicles 4:10. He prayed “Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!“ When we pray the Lord‘s prayer, we also ask Him to deliver us from evil. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of this in terms of keeping me safe so that evil things don’t happen to me. Jabez isn’t praying selfishly here: he turns it round to say “keep me safe from evil so that I don’t bring it upon anybody else.” If we bring this reflection to our safety in the name of the Lord, we get an added dimension to the proverb: when we run to the place of safety, the people around us are also protected from any pain that the enemy would seek to cause through us.

So how do we run into the name of the Lord? As I have said elsewhere, (and not just me of course!) to be “in the name” of Jesus isn’t just about a position of faith, but it’s about where we are putting our feet in actuality. The name of the Lord isn’t just what we call him, but it’s who He is, and to be in His name we have to be true to Him. If we have spent the day following our own selfish desires we can hardly expect to pray “in the name of Jesus” at the end of it, because we haven’t been in His strong tower; we have walked after the flesh and not after the spirit, by sight and not by faith. It’s the righteous who run into the strong tower: righteousness is only ours by faith, and “all that is not of faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23).

So when we are walking by faith we are lifted into the heavenly tower of the name of Jesus, out of reach of the enemy who has no access to our spirits, and a blessing, not a danger, to those around us.  Where are you today? Are you up in His strong tower? If not, start running, before anybody gets hurt.

Christian Life, Living by Faith

Lambs and Wolves

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“I am sending you out like lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3)

I re-read passages from ”Two Seconds to Midnight” sometimes, to remind myself of the things that I wrote so that I keep walking in them. I read this passage on God’s protection this morning: I think it’s a timely reminder in uncertain times that the best way to know God protection is simply to stay in His presence…

God provides for us because He is our Father, and also to ensure that we have the means to accomplish the purposes to which we are called and appointed. And to accomplish these purposes, He sends us out as “lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3). It would seem strange if our loving Shepherd set the prey loose amongst the hunters to fend for themselves, so I think it’s worth reminding ourselves why He has done it this way, and what He has put in place to keep us from being torn apart. Because if His yoke is easy we are going to live in the truth of Psalm 23, walking by quiet streams, feasting at God’s table while the wolves look on and slaver, and walking fearlessly through the valley of the shadow of death.

In 1978 a book appeared called The Upside Down Kingdom by Donald Kraybill. I’ll say now that I haven’t read it, but I heard of it years ago and the title has stuck with me ever since because it seems so true of the King who wins by apparently losing and leads by serving. The kingdom of God certainly turns the world’s wisdom upside down, and it has continued to turn the world upside down for the last 2,000 years. I used to be reminded of it often when I had a plain leather Bible cover with no marking to show the front or the back, and it seemed that every time I opened my Bible I opened it upside down. Maybe I needed a lot of reminding.

Going as lambs into the wolf-pack to take their land is definitely an upside-down idea, but it’s no more upside down than the “grasshoppers” going into Canaan to defeat the giants. Because it’s not the lambs who overcome the wolves any more than it was to be the puny Israelites who would overcome the giants: in both cases, the battle is the Lord’s. And if the battle is to be His, because “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50) it is imperative that we do not attempt it any other way: it is only as lambs that we will see the wolves defeated.

The key to our protection is of course the fact that God does not ask His lambs to go out alone. He is with us, and He is the only protection we need. Our first stop for a “protection” scripture has to be Psalm 91, and indeed we need look no further if we want to discover exactly how the Shepherd has established protection for His lambs. The psalm is full of wonderful promises for protection, but they are summed up well in verses 9-10:

“Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling.”

No evil. No plague. Thank you, Lord; I’ll take that! But there is a condition; a “because”. The condition is that we make the Most High our “dwelling place”. Our dwelling place is where we live; it’s our habitation, our home. It’s the place where we dwell intimately with our spouse and family. It’s the word used most frequently in the Old Testament for the Lord’s “holy habitation”, whether on earth, in His sanctuary, or in heaven where He has His eternal home. The opening verse of the psalm says: “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” These verses don’t mean that when we are threatened we run to Him from wherever we have gone and remind Him of His promise by quoting verses of Scripture in His face; they mean that if we dwell with Him and He is our home, we dwell under His protection, we abide in His shadow. As parents we might play shadow games with our children: we walk around outside in the sunshine, and they have to stay in our shadow as we move. To stay in our shadow, they will have to stay close. To stay in God’s shadow, His Word says that we must dwell with Him. We stay close. We don’t go running to Him from the other end of the garden when next door’s big dog suddenly barks close by.

Jesus will have it no other way. Our protection is nothing other than our yoke to Him. Moses said to the Lord, “Unless You go with us, I’m not going anywhere!” (see Exodus 33:15). Jesus turns this round, and says, “Unless you go with Me, you’re not going anywhere!” This isn’t just for our benefit, because our souls are fragile; it’s for the purpose of the kingdom, in our lives and in the lives of those to whom we are sent, because under His yoke not only do we find protection but we are also able to walk in His ways, “not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9).

Be prepared; hold on., Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

We Have the Fire

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“And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army, surrounding the city with horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” So he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, and said, “LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (2 Kings : 15-17)

In recent times there has been an emphasis in the prophetic on an increase in the intensity of the heavenly battle that we are engaged in. There have been words about God sending angels to earth, and His heavenly army being drawn up in battle array. But where is this battle taking place?

The battle is taking place all around us: not just in our churches, but in our private lives, in our family lives, and in our schools and workplaces. In some contexts it is also taking place visibly in the geopolitical sphere: in Israel, now as always; and where ever political and religious systems or legislative acts are standing in opposition to the Kingdom of our God and His Christ. The growing civil unrest in the USA is also largely an expression of the clash between liberal humanistic values and the values of the Conservative Christian foundation of the nation.

Individually, we can expect to face more and stronger temptations, and more frustration and opposition (especially in areas of ministry) as the devil unleashes his forces against the people of God. Where they are fissures and cracks in relationships the enemy will seek to drive in a wedge and force people apart. He will intensify his attack on Christian marriages and Christian families. Where we are neglecting to adhere to Romans 12: 1-2 and we are not “presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice” as our “reasonable service” to the Lord, the enemy will exploit all the weaknesses of our carnality to do as much damage as he can. The intensified battle over our own lives will often come down to the ongoing war between the flesh and the spirit – (Romans 6:19, Galatians 5:17, James 4: 1 1 Peter 2: 11), so we need to take seriously Peter’s warning to ”Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

Now is the time to stay closer than ever to the commander of our army, and to tune our ears even more finely to His voice. Jesus reminds us in John 10:27 that we, His sheep, do hear His voice; but very often we are listening to too many other voices as well, so His quiet whisper is drowned out.  Now is the time to ask the Lord, Just as Elisha did, to open our spiritual eyes so we can discern the spiritual forces around us: not just the forces of darkness, but the angelic forces of the Kingdom of God whose work it is to minister to the Saints (Hebrews 1: 7). We need to remember that we are not alone in any situation: that there is a spiritual dimension all around us that is peopled with beings who are both against us and for us. We need to pray at all times, not just for ourselves but for one another, and especially for those in church leadership; and those of us with the gift of tongues need to spend more time than ever praying in our spiritual language, because it is given to us for our edification.

But, as Paul says, “we are not ignorant of his schemes” (2 Cor 2:11), and the truth is that He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world, and that those who are for us are greater than those that are against us. The enemy may have his “horses and chariots” arrayed against us, but against them are “horses and chariots of fire.” Although the battle may rage, the war is already won, and we can stand firm in the hope of partaking in the fruits of that victory, whether it’s in this life or the eternity that Jesus has won for us. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. (Romans 8:37)

Jesus told us that the “violent” take the Kingdom of Heaven ”by force”.  There is a land to take, but we are going to have to fight for it. The battle is on. But we have the fire; and the Lord says to us today what He said to His old covenant people through Moses and Joshua: “Be strong and very courageous, for I am with you.”

And if God is for us, who can be against us?

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Prophesy and the prophetic

The Snowball

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I felt that God gave me this yesterday:

God has made a snowball, and has set it rolling down a mountain. It is the true Church; the righteousness of God in Christ, the people of God loving one another, held together by the Word of God and moving in the power of the Spirit of God. As yet it is small, but as it rolls it gathers momentum and it increases in size as it keeps gathering more snow to itself. The enemies of God and of righteousness say “this is only a snowball!” and seek to stand in its path to break it up, and they set fires to melt the snow. But the snowball crushes those who stand it its way, and puts out the fires that would melt it. Our strength is in Him as we hold fast to one another and to the Word that binds us together, and as we keep to the trajectory that He has ordained.

As I was meditating on it this morning I thought the following, but this is my further reflection on what I had felt the Lord had showed me, rather than the original rhema word:

As we do this we will find the snow sticking to us as we go, because we will be His witnesses. We do not have to make this happen, and we cannot gather another person’s snow: our responsibility is to pray for those that we are connected to in the Body of Christ, that they will be “sticky” enough to gather the snow that is in their path and remain united to the rest of the snowball as it rolls. For each one of us, the snow that we gather is our part of Ephesians 2v 10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Or, in this case, roll in them.