I want to share a portion of today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers:
The battle is
lost or won in the secret places of the will before God, never first in the
external world. The Spirit of God apprehends me and I am obliged to get alone
with God and fight the battle out before Him. Until this is done, I lose every
time. The battle may take one minute or a year, that will depend on me, not on
God; but it must be wrestled out alone before God, and I must resolutely go
through the hell of a renunciation before Him. Nothing has any power over the
man who has fought out the battle before God and won there. If I say, “I will
wait till I get into the circumstances and then put God to the test,” I shall
find I cannot. I must get the thing settled between my self and God in the
secret places of my soul where no stranger intermeddles, and then I can go
forth with the certainty that the battle is won. Lose it there, and calamity
and disaster and upset are as sure as God’s decree. The reason the battle is
not won is because I try to win it in the external world first. Get alone with
God, fight it out before Him, settle the matter there once and for all.
What he is saying here is NOT that we fight it out with God to see who wins! God has already fought the battle FOR us and has given to us the responsibility to enforce that victory in our own lives. What we are to do is to get before God, armed with the promises and provisions of the Word of God, and declare ourselves before Him! When WE speak HIS WORD with the confidence, boldness, faith and authority that comes from meditating on that Word, then we give HIM something to confirm with signs, wonders and miracles (Mark 16:20)! If we just go off 'speaking' to things, situations and circumstances WITHOUT meditating on those promises, then we are simply speaking empty words and releasing hot air! The creative Word that produces is the Word that we KNOW! Not the Word we memorize, but the Word that is revealed and illuminated to us from the inside out! The "rhema' Word! When we know that we know that this Word is true, THEN we speak it out with faith and power! Are you ready to give more diligence to the study and meditation of the Word of God this new year? If so, then you are ready to 'be strong and do exploits' (Daniel 11:32)! AMEN! Here is Hillsong United with "Say The Word":
Shalom in Him!
