I suppose it’s no surprise that I’m dealing with depression right now, since I am engaged in battling Satan. I see now that spiritual warfare IS the battle for holiness. You can’t cast out demons until you have cast them out of yourself. Take the beam out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of someone else’s eye. You must first bind the strong man. So we must focus on personal holiness and purity.
The reason I am always in so much trouble is that I have torn down my own house with my drunkenness, lust, anger, resentment, cursing, pride and arrogance. I’ve asked the Lord a few times lately if there’s any hope for me. If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind. He who troubles his own house will inherit the wind.
Just as I seem to have conquered lust, here comes frustration, anger and resentment. I need to understand that it’s not important to accomplish things, it’s important to remain at peace.
I have utterly misunderstood what wisdom is. I have held, even though I knew better, that wisdom is a thing to possess. I have mistaken knowledge for wisdom. Wisdom, instead, is the way you walk - in peace and in joy. It’s not found through reading books, but rather through the discipline of life. The true way to shape reality is to walk in wisdom, in the spirit. It has everything to do with dealing with the things that you don’t like, the things that are uncomfortable.
Oh, to walk in, to meditate on peace and joy and mercy all the days of my life.
Tags: beam, casting out, depression, eye, frustration, Holiness, hope, inherit, joy, meditation, mercy, peace, purity, resentment, Shaper of Reality, Spiritual Warfare, strong man, trouble, whirlwind, wind
I haven’t written in quite a while. That’s because I’ve lost my discipline. I’ve forgotten what I’m fighting for and how.
I’ve tried to write down the Word over and over in the morning - while at first successful, just like everything else, it gets old and worm-infested, like the jars of manna. I failed to abide in Christ, I let myself get taken away by lust, and so my powers of shaping reality fail. I need true repentance. I need to get into what is real - the Life of God. I need to acknowledge my refusal to work, my abhorrence of work - I have written before about work and rest, but my discipline has failed so that now I don’t want to work at all - I simply want to indulge and enjoy myself.
“Strike until you consume” now means, not a medical procedure, but a spiritual one - it means abide in Christ until the work is accomplished, it means tearing down each one of Satan’s strongholds within me - the ones that are particularly harassing right now are lust and revenge, hatred and cursing.
It is not a coincidence that I have been distracted by sin at this critical point in the presidential campaign. We give praise to God for M.A.’s wonderful news that the doctor believes she is definitely one of the 3 percent and is willing to give her a break on the chemo. We give praise to God that all of our children are alive, my parents are alive, my brother is alive.
Again, I must crucify the lusts of the flesh - the thoughts of lust, of contempt, revenge, and follow the paths of peace and joy.
I have grown soft again, with no discipline. Crucify your desire of things you cannot have.
Strike at the enemy. Strike at his citadels and strongholds. Accomplish. Boycott. Give yourself proper nutrition in spirit, soul and body.
Enter into the death grip with Satan and strike the mortal blow by your discipline.
I’m continuing to read “The Rise of the Roman Empire” by Polybius. Right now I’m reading about the First Punic War, particularly the section where Pullus was put in charge of getting the consignment of corn to the beseigers at Lilybaeum. Carthage engaged the Roman fleet near Drepana. “The Romans were now threatened from every quarter and found themselves in no ordinary difficulty.” The Roman fleet, divided because Pullus has waited on certain ships to arrive at Syracuse, put into anchor close to land. A storm arose. The Carthaginian fleet recognized the signs early and fled. The Roman fleet was annihilated. They had never suffered such a total disaster.
The Roman people were deeply disheartened but they persisted in their determination to carry on the siege. Pullus, though tormented, at once set about to devise some new and effective venture to retrieve the ground that had been lost.
The Romans set up a base at Eryx. The Carthaginians, under Hamilcar Barca established operations near Hercte, and now involved the Romans in a whole series of difficulties and trials of strength. Barca harassed them by keeping up a variety of attacks.
Polybius: The struggle between the Romans and the Carthaginians “might be compared to a boxing match in which two champions, both in perfect training and both distinguished for their courage, meet to fight for a prize. As the contest develops and the two exchange blow after blow, without a moment’s pause…”
Every day brought its ambushes, its sorties and counter-attacks. No stratagems were left untried. There were several reasons why the campaign could not be brought to a decisive issue. The forces on either side were equally matched; their respective entrenchments were so strongly fortified as to be virtually impregnable; and the two camps were pitched only a very small distance apart from one another.
But Fortune, like a good umpire, suddenly brought about an unexpected change in the contest: the theatre of action was shifted from the locality…
Hamilcar captured the town which lay between the positions. The Romans found themselves trapped, but endured the hardships and dangers of the ensuing siege with extraordinary courage.
Both sides employed every resource, every stratagem and every effort that the siege demanded, endured every kind of hardship, and resorted both to pitched battles and every other variety of fighting - they were two champions, still unbroken and unconquered.
“The struggle between the two nations might be compared to a fight to the death between two gamecocks. It often happens that when the two birds have lost the use of their wings from sheer exhaustion, their courage remains high to the end, so that they go on striking blow after blow at one another, until at last without any intervention, from outside they fall into a mortal grapple, and once this has happened one or the other will drop dead.”
“The Romans were worn out with the strain of an unbroken succession of hard-fought campaigns, and were being driven to despair. Their strength was beginning to fail and their resources had been drained by taxes and military expenses.”
“They decided for the third time to risk their fortunes upon the sea. They believed that this strategy, if they could strike the enemy a mortal blow, offered the only prospect of finishing the war successfully.”
Tags: abide, ambush, attacks, blow, body, boxing, champions, citadels, consume, contest, counterattacks, courage, crucify, cursing, dangers, death grip, decisive, despair, determination, devise, difficulties, difficulty, disaster, discipline, disheartened, effective, employed, endured, enemy, exhange, fighting, forgetting, fortified, gamecocks, grapple, ground, harassed, hardships, hatred, impregnable, jars, joy, life of God, lost, lust, manna, match, mortal blow, mortal grapple, nutrition, peace, persisted, prize, real, repentance, resource, rest, retrieve, revenge, shapers of reality, siege, sorties, soul, spirit, strain, stratagems, strength, strike, strongholds, struggle, suffered, tearing down, threatened, tormented, training, trapped, trials, unbroken, unconquered, Word, work, worms, worn out
The Lord has begun to stir in me again.
[Note: R.C. passed away last night and I am sad about that. On the other hand, I am grateful that the Lord heard my prayer and healed J.B. I’m getting frustrated and angry about M.A.’s increased cough, but the Lord says, Don’t be angry at me! Walk in peace and be angry with Satan.”
Here is what I believe to be the Word of the Lord to me now:
1. Get back to the basics of prayer. The Word of the Lord will give you power and direction. You are powerless when you are not praying.
2. Secure your household with prayer.
3. You experience not the Spirit, for you are carnally-minded, which is death.
4. Purpose yourself to offer prayer and testimony and minister.
5. Seek the Word. Read the Bible. Ask yourself, Where is there peace in your spirit?
6. Walk in the love of Jesus.
In the name of Jesus, I have once again begun to battle Satan. Once again, I declare war on him and I will do damage to his kingdom. In the name of Jesus, I crucify the lust of my flesh. It is no more. In the name of Jesus, I crucify my anger and cursing and revenge.
Tags: anger, battle, Bible, carnally minded, crucify, cursing, death, direction, household, love, love of Jesus, lust, name of Jesus, peace, power, prayer, revenge, Satan, testimony, war, Word, Word of the Lord
I think the way of the Christian soldier may be given some insight by looking at the Roman soldier, as described by Polybius in “The Rise of the Roman Empire”.
In less than fifty-three years, the Romans brought under their rule almost the whole of the inhabited world. Their efforts were to achieve universal dominion.
According to their customs, it was a capital offense for a man to desert his post or retreat in any way when he is on guard duty.
Because they saw that the war was dragging on that they first applied themselves to building ships. It is this fact which illustrates better than any other the extraordinary spirit and audacity of the Romans’ decision. Without waiting to gain any experience in naval warfare they immediately engaged the Carthaginians.
The Romans’ plan of campaign was to sail to Africa and shift the whole scene of operations to that country: they wished to make the Carthaginians feel that the war no longer threatened Sicily but their own territory. They put to sea with high spirits and in a fighting mood.
They behaved with manly dignity and resolved that they would suffer any extremity and try every resource rather than submit to a settlement which was so ignoble and so unworthy of their past achievements.
Now in general the Romans rely upon force in all their undertakings, and consider that having set themselves a task they are bound to carry it through, and similarly that nothing is impossible once they have decided to attempt it. They were determined that on no account would they surrender.
Caecilius was responsible for restoring to the Roman troops the will to fight and to regain control of the open country. The Romans had come very near to losing their entire siege-train, but in the end they held their ground.
Such was the determination of the Romans to win the war that they in no way slackened the effort that was now required, but put in hand all the necessary measures to continue the campaign.
The desire to wage war against Satan has returned. First salvos are to come.
Tags: audacity, control, determination, determined, dignity, dominion, fight, fighting, nothing is impossible, restoration, retreat, rule, Satan, soldier, spirit, spiritual war, submit, suffer, surrender, war
The last few days I have tried to listen for the Spirit, to sense His movements within me. But how can I hear if my spiritual ears are clogged with the noise of the world? The strong wind, the earthquake and the fire all came to Elijah but the Lord was not in them. The Lord was and is in the still, small voice. He will not shout over the distractions of the world to make His voice heard.
So, what do you do with these clamorous voices of the flesh, voices of seduction that try to lure you away from your focus on the Lord? Shall you try to compromise with them or placate them or try to satisfy them, as Lot attempted, in order to get them to be quiet?
Through the determination of the Spirit we mortify them. Like Phinehas, execute judgment. Take your javelin and run them through until they are silenced. The devil is relentless so we must be. If we relent, he will return. But if we submit ourselves to the Lord and resist the devil he will flee from us. Utterly destroy your spiritual enemy like Saul was supposed to do. And so the last few days have I applied the Cross to these lures.
I have spent the last few days searching my heart for unforgiveness, for any sin that may hinder my prayers, and dealing with dryness, though the Lord has given me times where He has allowed me to touch His Spirit and for that I am grateful.
Tags: devil, dryness, Elijah, listen, Lot, mortify, Phinehas, Saul, spirit, still small voice, the Cross, the world