April 03, 2014
Living With the Enemy
I
asked Peggy if she had any enemies and she laughed, “Yes, but can I pick more than one?” Then, on a serious note, she told
me about being married to her 90 year-old husband, a man who is 25 years her
senior. Early into the marriage he attended church with her, but he soon
dropped all pretenses. “He is what I
would call a spiritual enemy. He mocks me, makes snide remarks and ridicules
what I’m doing.” Peggy is determined
to have a Christian home, with or without a believing husband. “I love him, but I’ve stopped taking
responsibility for him. All I can do is pray and be a good example.” The book
of Numbers offers insight into living with enemies, “When you go into battle in
your own land against an enemy who is oppressing you, sound a blast on the
trumpets. Then you will be remembered by the LORD your God and rescued from
your enemies.” (Numbers 10:9 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Doesn’t God have any respect for our moments? He tells us how much He’s going to take care of us and protect us and rescue us from our enemies. Yet this poor lady remains suffering the abuse of an enemy-hearted husband. We all now suffer the weight of a behemoth play-ground project hung around our necks in a time of poverty enabled by a justice system which calls right wrong and wrong right under an administration who treats our allies like enemies and paves roads for our foes while it burdens productive people with insufferable regulations and batters down every wall of restraint for all the ravenous free-riders it glorifies. Amidst God’s promises, good people go hungry, are harassed by our government, are shot in the back of the head by other governments; Christians in the Sudan are hauled off and tortured for ransom; Christians in Syria are murdered; and Israel suffers a constant barrage of rockets. And God rescues His people from their enemies.
-----His people are a very special kind of human. They have been rescued from their worst enemy - eternal death - by having been rescued from their worst enemy - themselves. (Relate the two.) A man’s spirit is the lamp of the Lord for searching his soul (Prov 20:27). The first thing God does for a person having turned to Him for rescue is to put in him His own Spirit for making the light of the man’s spirit to become true. Then by that light God knows him truly within his place of first peace - the inner soul. Therein is the individual’s place of greatest momentary importance. Anywhere his body may go or be taken or starved, imprisoned, tortured, or destroyed, there also is this great peace of victory over the enemy. For there, inside, is yet his mingling and meeting with God. And there, by the new light of the man’s spirit, his mind has been processing differently, transforming and taking captive errant, enemy thoughts of deceit and despair. New conclusions turn him around, and his senses perceive constructive paths of love and joy, friends now in the place of his old destructive paths of spite and anger and infringement - vanquished enemies. But God does not build for us this fortress against these enemies lest we first bring to Him the material for its building - our selves. We are a special people by the way we are reconstructed.
-----Then our bodies do truly endure only a moment of tragedy. For our minds and souls now perceive more like God that these afflictions are truly momentary and are significantly confined to the flesh, while the overwhelming most of what we are is sheltered within the impenetrable peace and joy of the fortress of a greater an vastly more real existence in God’s presence, rather than in an enemy’s.
-----Certainly our bodies in their physical existence are not now rescued from enemies, but after all, they are only the trailing edge of us, the heel which snapping wolves can bite only, but not devour. For our bitten-to-death bodies will even be resurrected rather than swallowed. Our enemies will take to their death absolutely nothing of ours.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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