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November 27 - December 27, 2020
The most essential, critical, irreplaceable commodity in our battle against evil is truth.
Our entire lives, including our thoughts, actions, belief system, and worldview, are to be reoriented according to God’s Word. We are to be saturated in it because it will give us God’s perspective in every aspect of our lives. Strap your belt on. First.
Only the sheepdog and the Great Shepherd love enough to die for other people’s loved ones.
John 15:13 (ESV)
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
This is the Internal Mission: To love God and to love others. Pray for love. Dear God, teach me to love, fuller and richer and deeper. In Jesus Name I pray!
Next is our External Mission: To fulfill the Great Commission. To bring others to the saving grace of Jesus and thereby bring honor and glory to God!
As we pray for a few more years of life for our loved ones, as we pray for less suffering and pain in this world, never forget that these things are nothing compared to evangelism: bringing people to the knowledge of God’s infinite love and salvation through the blood of Jesus! This is God’s amazing grace! And it is our all-consuming external mission. Our highest outward goal.
there is the concept of “combined arms” operations using prayer, fasting, and God’s Word to break down strongholds of sin, darkness, and violence, to pierce the hard heart of the sinner and bring them to the knowledge of salvation.
The mission is to love God, love others, and bring them to the knowledge of salvation. And the objective of doing good is, in turn, part of God’s great strategic plan. As Jesus put it, “‘Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven’” (Matthew 5:16 NIV).
love. Sacrificial love. The mother animal loves her babies more than life itself. Audie Murphy loved his fellow soldiers more than life itself. And Christopher Amoroso loved his fellow citizens, men and women trapped in those towers—men and women he had never met!—more than life itself.
Only the sheepdog and the Great Shepherd love enough to die for other people’s loved ones. And, “Perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18 NIV) because “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
Where was God on 9/11? Wherever you see sacrificial love, I think you are looking “through a glass darkly” at the face of God.
Love. The sheepdog, the protector, is empowered by love. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16 NIV). The sheepdog understands this and lives by it.
by our endeavors and personal, selfless witness, we also help to bring others into the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
One way that everyone can support any good work is through prayer.
Take our missionaries, our church leaders, our church body, and every other good work, and constantly hold them up in prayer.
We. Are. All. Called. To serve. To pray. To do good and never grow weary of doing good. “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17 ESV).
Heavenly Father, please give me the wisdom and discernment to see the good deeds that I can do.
If we’re not firmly rooted in his Word, we cannot know his voice, we cannot recall his truths.
This is the Internal Mission: To love God and to love others. And it can bear great fruit!
in spiritual combat, do not give more attention to the enemy or his tactics than you do to the Father. Break any target fixation the evil one has created by focusing your spiritual eyes back on God, through prayer and the study of God’s Word. Place him on the pedestal and watch your enemy be defeated.
When we keep our eyes on Christ, in prayer and study of God’s Word, it means we have placed our entire trust in his ability to guide us through spiritual warfare.
What do we do when these scars of our past are held up by satan? It is then time for us to use our breastplate of righteousness and our helmet of salvation. Never forget, Jesus paid the price for our sins, and nothing (blam!), nothing (blam!), nothing (blam!) can separate us from his love.
Notice how, when we start defending ourselves, we go straight to the shield, breastplate, and helmet (faith, righteousness, and salvation), but it is the sword (God’s Word) that we use to counterattack and ultimately defeat the evil one’s attacks.
Our prayer life, combined with our appetite for the Word of God: this is how we pursue a victorious, triumphant life motivated and empowered by the love of Christ towards us.
Thus, prayer warriors, we must go into battle under authority, in the Spirit, having confessed our sins, failures, and weaknesses to God.
One of the duties of a Christian spiritual warrior is to be a peacemaker. To maintain, restore, and ensure peace. Spiritually and physically. “To bring light to the dark places where others fear to go.”
To love God and to love others and to bring others to the sure knowledge of his salvation.)
We may not be very effective in speaking to others about the saving grace of Jesus. But we are far stronger, much greater witnesses by our behavior in times of trouble and tribulation than we can ever be through our words.
When we cast our cares on God, when we keep our eyes on him, he gives us perfect peace.
The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to forget is the happiest. —UNKNOWN
First, identify all the things you can’t control and give them to God. (That God part is what makes this different from the classic, secular concept of internal locus of control. We have an eternal resource to assist us, and the world does not.)
The only thing in the universe you can control is you. Yourself! Can we all agree on that? The only thing you can control is yourself. You can’t control the events, but with prayer and God’s help, you can control how you respond to those events. Romans 12:2 exhorts us, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (NIV). This is something we can do in cooperation with the Spirit’s work on our lives.
In the first sermon Jesus gave in Matthew 4:17, “repenting” (which essentially equates to “changing your thinking” or “changing your mind”) was the central theme.
“We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV).
As the years go by, as your body gives out and your health gives in, you can still be a mighty warrior for God: loving God and loving others, bringing others to the knowledge of Jesus and his saving grace, giving God the glory, and reaping love, joy and peace in your life!
Because, through a lifetime of remembering his faithfulness, we have developed one of the most important skills of all: gratitude. This action, this powerful character trait, gratitude, is the path to great wellness, happiness, and satisfaction in life.
Whether you know it or not, you were facing the armies of hell, and you were triumphant! Never forget the goodness of God that brought you through those times.
Remember that place you were in when you felt hopeless, when it seemed like you couldn’t make it, and it looked like you wouldn’t make it. But here you are, right now, still standing. No, that wasn’t in your own power. That wasn’t in your own strength. And it won’t be your own power in the future. This is why the necessity of remembering the goodness of God and his previous moments of deliverance from evil is so critical.
In the end, we will all face our final battle, the moment when we are truly overwhelmed by accident, illness, or old age. And on that day, we die. We will all die physically. When that day comes, let us pray for the final blessing: to make our lives, our death, and our final battle so filled with God’s grace and love, that we win our greatest victory in our final hour, inspiring others to “Follow Me!” One sheepdog with the Great Shepherd is always a majority!
“You withheld love to yourself when you withheld it from Me.”
The most important concept in the universe: there can be no true love, no lasting satisfaction, without God. The source of all love is God. Thus, we entrust everything to him: our children, our spouse, our friends, our nations. Our every endeavor.
We strive to trust and love God and to love others as he loves us. Thus, when we love them as God does, we become God’s relentless hounds, sheepdogs dedicated to telling the world the good news, the gospel of Jesus. In this process of loving, trusting, and obeying God, we find the only true love, the single source of all joy, and the solitary path to perfect peace.
It is the worst of times, and it is the best of times. Use discernment in all things. Turn to God’s Word in all things, in prayer and fasting, and nurture his Word in your heart.
Remember why we’re here: •Love God. •Love others. •Bring others to salvation. •Do good deeds and give the glory to God. •Live a life of love, joy, and peace!
Bury the temptation of compromise, forgive those who’ve hurt you, and pursue a relationship with Jesus like you’ve never done before.
As sheepdogs under the Great Shepherd, our goal is to free souls from sin by bringing the gospel of peace into their lives.
In life or in death, we obey the commands of our Master, and we dedicate ourselves to fulfilling the missions that he has given us: •Love God with all your heart. •Love others as you do yourself. •Go into all the world and preach the gospel. •Learn to do good and never grow weary of it, giving the glory to God. •Live the life of love, joy, and peace that your loving Father desires to give you.
