Let God’s Holy Spirit Encourage You

The Holy Spirit is saying,

“When your arms are heavy from holding your shield of faith, when you are tempted to lay down your sword, when you’ve lost your shoes of peace and your helmet of salvation feels it’s falling off, tighten the belt of truth around your waist.  The enemy of your soul spews lies to convince you you’ll never win the battle, but the truth is the Father always leads you into triumph in Christ.  You are in Him.  Move and live and have your being in Him.  Victory belongs to you.” (adapted from Heart of the Prophetic)

When you read that, doesn’t your heart just rise?

The truth is we Christians are in spiritual warfare all the time or we’re no threat to the enemy, but I personally don’t know any Christians who aren’t beleaguered occasionally.

The war is a flesh-level war, where we want our own way; when having things go our way has to be the way.  It’s plain tiring.

Well, the Holy Spirit wants us to know that His strength is ours when we tighten that belt of truth around our waist — to acknowledge the flesh is weak — that our way to inevitable victory is to rely on His strength, which gets us through.

Honouring the truth is getting out of our flesh and into His Spirit — it’s the jettisoning of ego, and the striving for humility through submission.

Let the Holy Spirit encourage you; the truth is God our Father holds us up to conquest when we’re in Christ.  When we seek Christ’s best, in surrendering our putrefying flesh to Him, to gather our poise, and to go back into the arena, He serves us unto blessing.

We’re more than conquerors through Him who loved us so much as to bear the cross.

And what that means is, the harder the things that come against us, that we bear weakly by submission in His strength, the more the enemy is held up to shame.  The worse things get the better glory goes to God.  The more we’re put to shame, the more the curse of shame sticks irrevocably, as it eternally does, to the devil.  So we see we’re not put to shame at all — we’re being glorified even in the midst of our being persecuted.

The final word I give to John Chrysostom (349–407), early church father:

“Yet those that be against us, so far are they from thwarting us at all, that even without their will they become to us causes of crowns, and procurers of countless blessings, in that God’s wisdom turns their plots unto our salvation and glory.  See how really no one is against us!”

Trust in His Spirit, rely on His strength, obey His Word, and all will go well.

© 2016 Steve Wickham.