battle – Page 3 – Praying Pint

Exodus 14:14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. ”The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.

Isaiah 30:15    For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

Deuteronomy 20:4    for the LORD your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.’

Joshua 23:10    One man of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the LORD your God who fights for you, just as he promised you.

2 Chronicles 20:17    You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the LORD on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the LORD will be with you.”

“In quietness and in trust shall be your strength”. How many times are we not quiet? How many times do we try to do it in our own strength? Far to many I fear. We say God is my rock and my shield, but could it be that we say things that are not faithed out in our lives? There is nothing like a Red Sea before us and a killing army pressing in on behind us to push the faith button. Why does it take such drastic measures to move us into complete trust in God? Why does it have to come down to the impossible, no way out type of a situation, before we acknowledge His awesome and mighty power over the situation?

Could it be we are not that close to God in our everyday lives? Oh, we may spend time reading a devotional, but did anything come of it that day? Were we looking and expecting anything new to be revealed to us? Was there a change in the way we acted throughout the day? Do you ever seem to have a hard time fitting God into your day?

Just think how much time you could spend with God if you conscious and intentional wanted/desired to be taught, held, protected, led, fed, strengthened, encouraged, forgiven, and loved by God – all the time. Everything you experienced throughout the day would have the light and shadow of God over it.

What if we consciously and intentionally chose to humbly serve, honor, glorify, worship, follow and obey God all throughout the day. Every action would then have purpose beyond self or just being a task.

Having God present all the time takes a heart and mind consciously and intentionally wanting/desiring to see His hand at work, to hear His whispers of leading, teaching, guiding, encouraging, strengthening, testing, empowering, throughout the day….. it is a change of heart, mind and soul to intentionally and purposely wanting God present in every moment and aspect of our day.

Choose this day to begin being purposefully, consciously and intentionally wanting God with you, to teach you, lead you, encourage you, help you, love you, forgive you, and strengthen you. You will continually grow in awareness of His presence, able to see His hand at work, able to hear His whispers of guidance and you will continually grow in humbly serving, honoring, glorifying, worshiping, praising, following and obeying Him.

Exodus 4:21 And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

Deuteronomy 2:30-33     But Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as he is this day.

Joshua 11:20     For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses.

Psalms 105:25    He turned their hearts to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants.

Isaiah 6:10     Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand wit

Isaiah 63:17     O LORD, why do you make us wander from your ways and harden our heart, so that we fear you not? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage.

Romans 1:28    And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

Romans 9:18    So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

Romans 11:8-10     as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.”

2 Thessalonians 2:10-12     and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.  Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,  in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

1 Peter 2:8    and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

Ezekiel 3:6-11     not to many peoples of foreign speech and a hard language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to such, they would listen to you  But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces, and your forehead as hard as their foreheads.  Like emery harder than flint have I made your forehead. Fear them not, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house.”  Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, all my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart, and hear with your ears.  And go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD,’ whether they hear or refuse to hear.”

One of the more difficult biblical concepts to understand is that of God hardening the hearts and minds of certain people. What are we to make of texts like these, which explicitly or implicitly speak of God hardening the hearts of people? These questions involve very deep mysteries, mysteries about God’s sovereignty and how it interacts with our freedom.

There was a time when people thought that God was at the center of all things and they instinctively saw the hand of God in everything—even terrible things. Job said, The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised … if we have received good things at the hand of God, why should we not receive evil? (Job 1:21; 2:10) Thus the ancients would commonly attribute everything as coming from the hand of God, for He was the “first cause” of everything that happened.

The ancients were thus much more comfortable attributing things to God than we are. In speaking like this, they were not being superstitious or primitive in their thinking; rather, they were emphasizing that God was sovereign, omnipotent, and omnipresent, and that nothing happened apart from His sovereign will. They believed that God was the primary cause of all that existed.

We need to understand that the ancient biblical texts, while often speaking of God as hardening the hearts of sinners, do not mean to say that man had no role, no responsibility. Neither do they mean to say that God acts in a merely arbitrary way. Rather, the emphasis is on God’s sovereign power as the first cause of all that is. Hence He is often called the cause of all things and His hand is seen in everything.

In man’s enlightened, superior, highly educated, and self-reliance, man moved himself to the center and God was gradually “escorted” to the periphery. Man’s manner of thinking and speaking began to shift to focusing on secondary causes (those related to man and nature). If something happens we look to natural causes, or in human situations, to the humans who caused it.

We are dealing with the mysterious interrelationship between God and Man, between God’s sovereignty and our freedom – Mysteries. In the face of such mysteries we have to be very humble. We ought not to think more about the details than is proper for us, because, frankly, they are largely hidden from us.

Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”

None of us can demand an absolute account from God for what He does. Even if He were to tell us, could our small, worldly minds ever really comprehend it? My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, says the Lord. Yet we try to put God in a box we can humanly understand.

We should be careful to admit the limits of our knowledge when it comes to interpreting “hardening texts,” in which God hardens the hearts of certain people. These must be approached carefully, humbly, and with proper distinctions as to God’s sovereignty, our freedom, His mercy, His justice, His plans, and His purposes. (Charles Pope)

We do well to put God in the center of all things and man’s existence totally subjective to His sovereignty.