Christian Family Services Ministry

9-11-2019 – A Word to the Wise – This will be a two part examination of spiritual warfare.

s evident in scripture that the Lord is going to use the wilderness experiences of our lives as training ground. This is an all-volunteer army, there are no draftees. The training is grueling, the conditions harsh, and forbidding.

Beware that Satan induces godly men to attack with scriptural principals the godly person. Satan challenges moral integrity and intellectual ability.

The Lord’s warriors are to fight until the enemy was annihilated, and this was to be done in close quarter engagements that utterly terrified the enemy.

The most dangerous time on the battlefield for the winner of an encounter is right after the battle is his.

How often it is we believe we have won battle to find ourselves faced with the most intense temptations brought on by our pride. Addicts will tell you right after they get a chip indicating successful abstinence comes their strongest temptations.

In like manner, in Joshua’s’ day the defenders of Ai had just driven off the last Jewish attackers. Flush with success they failed to see the ambush behind them. Satan had just killed the Son of Man, and now the kingdom of God comes with much power. Every loss holds the kernel of success. Every win the possibility of defeat.

Why this failure out of success? Because the chief temptation the root sin of all sins is the sin of pride. This sin always insures failure. We look around filled with the first blush of success. Perhaps we have just received and unexpected check. Maybe we have just performed our very best on the sports field. Perhaps there is a standing applause for outstanding accomplishment. Drunk with pride we turn around to find it all swept away in the blink of an eye. Just an accident?

No, for Satan knows we are most vulnerable at these times and lays his ambush. So what do we do? Refuse all praise? Negate every success? Torment ourselves and others with admonitions of failures? No. We need to learn what our temptations are all about.

Knowing the temptations are coming the Lord channels us into hardship which deemphasizes the value of the physical, or emotional. The battleground is of God’s own choosing. The wilderness like it was for Moses, like it was for Jesus like it is for us is the best battleground.

Surrounded with the terror of the wild beast of life, and being alone one is ready for the final test, or as is known in military terms, ‘hell week.’ That part of training which puts together all of the things learned to determine ones weaknesses.

However, we tend to want to we want to challenge the battlefield prepared by God. We want back the peace and comfort of our surroundings. God says these will lure us into failure in the coming battle. Clothe yourself instead in pain, and hardship it will armor you for the battle. To willingly immerse oneself in hardship, emotional agony, and indigence weakens and makes ineffective Satan’s charms.

Willingly seeking the wilderness makes Satan’s offer of opulence no lure. If one seeks physical hardship what can Satan offer? But the hardships are not the temptation only the prelude to temptation ready or not now comes the trials.

What is the first temptation? Turn these stones into bread. What may one ask does that mean? Simply misuse the authority that God grants you. Divert it to personal use.

To use God’s authority and power for one’s own use is a supreme violation. This is a temptation that every warrior faces at one time or another. Moses faced it when he killed the Egyptian without the proper authority. He suffered forty years imprisonment for this lapse.

King Saul choosing to offer sacrifices because Samuel is late thus transgressing the lines of authority drawn by the Lord is another example. David choosing to number the people when the Lord told him not to. All of these are examples of men choosing to misuse either the power or authority granted by God

We have the same choices today. Every man faces this temptation to misuse authority to acquire something for himself in his marriage. How often does the man remind the woman she is subject to him in order to dominate the woman? God gave the authority to man to protect the woman not to control, dominate, or enslave her.

Every police officer who steps outside the law to make an arrest crosses the line of improper use of authority and eventually it will come back to haunt him.

The same is true of the military. I had an uncle who was a tank commander during World War II. He was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge. He admitted much later in life that he had murdered an innocent civilian, while in uniform, in a combat zone and he could never forgive himself. He died an alcoholic, alone in a Veterans hospital. He died with no one’s regret.

The Lord allows no allowance or latitude when it comes to misuse of authority. One just does not do it without paying a great price.

The second temptation has to do with the object of our worship. We are surrounded with those things that belong to God. Yet we constantly take those things and justify using them as we wish whether that be the material, emotional or spiritual.

We are given time and we assume it is to use as we wish. We are given material things and we assume it is to satisfy our desires. We are given emotional fortitude and we assume it is to use it for our lust. The warrior needs all of these supplies for battle, but often consumes them before the first skirmish.

The third temptation is fearfulness usually exhibited in wanting to give up, runaway, perhaps hide; maybe immerse oneself in the futility of life or waste one’s life on the immaterial. The temptation is to throw yourself down; solve problems your own way. Force the Lord to act in one’s behalf.

Satan lays the ground work for battle by bringing severe physical, emotional and spiritual hardship. These are the tactics he used with Job, or the challenges thrown at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus and Job were taken from indigence to a hope of opulence. He does the same for us. One extreme and another to upset our balance.

It is our task to perceive why the Lord acts in the manner that he does. The Lord delivers His people from bondage in Egypt and immediately leads them into the wilderness, why? To prepare them for warfare. To provide a safe arena for training. To enhance and shorten the learning period. To provide them the weapons necessary for battle. To cause them to fear Him more than any other challenge of life.

What did they do? Complain, fornicate, resist, rebel, idolize, curse and swear and they had not even seen combat yet. All they had endured was but the prelude to the battle.

Rarely are the temptations perceived for what they are. Our tendency is to consider Satan everywhere behind every tree. Most of our daily temptations arise out of our lust. They are much different from that once in a life time situation where we are confronted with life altering decisions. Often these temptations come early in life and reoccur as we fail.

9-9-2019 – A Word to the Wise – RESPECT
You cannot teach a child respect, unless you first have a respect for the child.
Attitude and emotions speak an unmistakable language which no amount of
lecturing can disqualify. A child comprehends the behavior and
attitude of respect for another by experiencing it first for another. Young people are
failing to develop the proper self-respect and respect for others mainly because of
the warped and inconsistent teaching they are receiving. Too often we ask them to
respect us on the basis of an adult parent-teacher. This is no basis at all.
All human beings are worthy of respect.
A child’s capacity to respect is developed by a careful and consistent guidance in
his sense of values. In other words, respect is a process of growth. We do not
demand respect in a child. We guide him in his development of it.
Many find it difficult to teach their children to respect their father because
he is an imperfect model of manhood. But respect is taught on a much deeper level
than this. A part of it is based on God’s authority. The rest of it is based on a
greater value than that of simple outward behavior. A child respects his parents
first because it is a commandment of God. When God gave this commandment he was not
ignorant of the parent who would be neglectful, or the one on the bar stool.
He knew all these failures in human beings when He gave his commandment.
No, man is worthy of respect because he is God’s creation.
This places the reason for respect with God, not man. He is endowed with the most
valuable of all gifts — a living soul. Though a child should be taught to appreciate
the good in his parent, it is not his good that makes him worthy of respect, but the
power of God. Too often in trying to teach respect, we only teach respect of persons
which of itself is sin. Respect is taught from early childhood and it is not based
on age, but humanity. You should not permit your child to speak to another child
insultingly any more than to you. Another child is a human being, a creation of God,
therefore, he is worthy of respect. Many try to apply it to the age or parents and
then wonder why it doesn’t take. Much harm is done to their whole adjustment to life
because you have taught them a false set of values. All that has been taught is really
a “respect of persons” rather than a “respect for persons”, a living soul, which is direct
from God Himself.