PICK UP YOUR SWORD - IT’S TIME TO FIGHT
Have you ever considered the strategic shift and strength it takes as a team to go from playing defense to offense? It changes the whole game, not just physically, but mentally. What once took extreme effort to keep your opponent away from the goal is now flipped as you use all your energy to take back the stolen ground.
I’d like to propose, the same is true spiritually. When you go through life playing on defense the shift to offense feels like foreign territory. Often leaving you unsure of how people will respond or what position to take; questioning if you have the strength to progress ahead. You might even be unsure if you have what it takes in combat. But, the truth is, in the advance, in the battle, and in the offensive strategy against the enemy is where the power of God is revealed.
Consider the story of David and Goliath - as T.D. Jakes says, “Goliath did not come to defeat David, he came to reveal him.” Nobody knew the small shepherd boy until the enemy came and taunted the army of the living God.
Yet, too often we consider any battle we face to be a negative and direct outcome of the fall of man and worldly sin; leaving us in reluctant retreat mode. Now, let me be clear I am not condoning violence or saying demonic strategy is not at play in our day to day.
But, I would like to challenge you….what if we were born for a fight, created for victory, and designed to reveal His glory? What I am getting at is sometimes the conflict is not simply the enemy, but an opportunity for the victory of God to be discovered.
THE DOUBTFUL SEAT OF DEFENSE
Believers have succumbed to fear and often chosen to retreat at any sign of upheaval or discontent — never wanting to offend but to instead be everyone’s surface-level friend.
Morality is whispered only in the safety of the closest of friends and purity has become a well-kept secret. Nobility has virtually disappeared from society and is viewed as an old man’s musings, irrelevant to the 21st Century, hipsters, and the PC crowd.
In fact, moral restraint is viewed as a bondage that shackles society; promoted only by religious bigots and antiquated dinosaurs who are disappearing in the ice age of a Sonless society.
And so we, with noble purpose, cower in the corner of culture, living in the shadows of society, desperately hoping we don’t awaken the hipster’s dissatisfaction and invite unnecessary persecution into our lives.
Meanwhile, our children march slowly into the darkness as we congratulate ourselves on another day without offense.
But, this is not our portion as the royal sons and daughters of God. Our inheritance does not lie in the settling standard of society - it lives with more conviction and confidence than the weary whereabouts of culture, testing the status quo and upholding the value system not of this world.
We carry the Truth of God — and the Truth sets people free. Unless it is smothered on the doubtful seat of defensiveness. I want to encourage you today, you were made for such a time as this, sovereignly set apart, and filled with divine purpose….You were born for a fight that in this day and age needs to be fought. Let me remind you of the good news — you are already victorious! It’s time to move from defense to offense.
