Spiritual Warfare: Put on the full armor

By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- The Book of Ecclesiastes contains a very important message: Life is ultimately meaningless without God. When you place God at the center of your life, you find meaning and purpose you never knew before.

Before I became a Christian I had no purpose other than to live for me, myself and I – the unholy trinity. I would never have guessed in my twenties or even my thirties that I would become a pastor and that my life’s great purpose today would be to advance Christian missions around the world.

And I’m sure that many of you have found a whole new purpose in life since you began to follow Jesus.

One of my favorite pastors, Ray Stedman, calls Ecclesiastes “The inspired book of error.” It is unique in the Bible because of its mostly human perspective on life, rather than revealing God’s point of view about life.

Everything in Ecclesiastes is evaluated according to what man can see, “under the sun,” the appearance of things from a human perspective, excluding divine revelation.

In Ecclesiastes, chapter 9, we see an unusual story:

"I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me: 14 There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. 15 Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man. 16 So I said, “Wisdom is better than strength.” But the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heeded."

The passage tells us a city was saved by the wisdom of one poor man, but his wisdom was forgotten. Isn’t it true that earthly fame, glory, heroism is quickly forgotten?

How many of us can remember the greatest hero from World War II? Does anybody remember his name? How about the greatest hero from Vietnam or the Gulf Wars? All earthly glory is fleeting, as this poor wise man who saved his city discovered.

But perhaps we can look at this passage in Ecclesiastes in a different light and find a spiritual application for us.

The little city can be compared to your soul. In other words, small and defenseless (in your own strength) against the enemy. The powerful ruler who comes against your soul, who wages war against you, is Satan.

It may surprise you to learn that behind the scenes in this beautiful area of Southern California, there is a deadly war being fought. It’s a war between light and darkness, good and evil, heaven and hell, Jesus and Satan.

Satan is waging war against God, he is trying to mess up God’s creation and disrupt God’s plans. He and his demons wage war against Christian homes, Christian marriages, and against Christian leaders.

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Mark Ellis is a senior correspondent for ASSIST News Service and the founder ofwww.Godreports.com.  He is available to speak to groups about the plight of the church in restricted countries, to share stories and testimonies from the mission field, and to preach the gospel. mark@Godreports.com

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One Small Seed: When Wise Men Decide to Do Advent

Power plays and big takeovers, it’s the way the world and Wall Street turns.

But God, when He comes, He shows up in this fetal ball.

Just this seed unfurling, impossible power contained in the small.

The beginning of December, that is what I set out on the counter: a bowl of seeds. Through Advent, through all the waiting days, waiting for His coming, for the Bread of Heaven to come down, we plant seeds of wheat. God, He gestated. God was a seed. I think this, holding a seed in the palm of my hand.  

 “Just one seed at a time.” My youngest with the mop of ringlets tells her older brother, this in her sing-song voice. 

 “One small act of kindness? One small seed.” She's put away her brother’s strewn shoes, a secret gift, a little thing planted in the expanse of a day. So she’s planting her seed, a little love that grows big. She uses her index finger to press her seeds down into the dirt and the dark. This is what we have to do, push back all this dark.

Because the economy scrapes its dark underbelly too low and who can breathe, when some phone call can hang up on all our dreams and everything goes dim and one kid, one parent, one hope fall into shadow overnight.

And this Gospel? It doesn’t come wrapped in twinkling lights and satin bows; it comes straight into our pitchest black. The Gospel of Christ, it’s a messy, bloody thing and this is how God was born, bloody and bruised, and that’s how God chose to die, bloody and beaten. And our God, He knows the comings and goings of our bloody battles, and this is exactly where He meets us. The Gospel is good news in the eye of the worst news.

Advent is the believing this, and this is how Christ comes:  

 “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him…” Isaiah 11: 1-2

Out of the truncated and amputated, out of the broken off and impossible, a shoot sprouts. God buds from the impossible. Our Savior comes as a sprout from a stump. Our salvation comes by way of the small, breaking through the dead ends. Who in the world lives slow enough, wise enough, mindful enough, not to miss the slender shoot? Who sees the sacred small ways of the infinite God?

Advent is an active waiting. And Christmas comes to those who wait for the whisper, who look for the little, who seek the small, scandalous signs of the every-where presence of God.  

The only way to see the Savior this Advent is to see the small, and wise men find ways to slow the season down.

 “Water it slow.”  That’s what our youngest says, us bent over dirt and seeds, the watering can tipped. 

All Advent, this pouring out in small acts of kindness: a hot cup of coffee, a sticky note on a mirror, a treat left on a seat. And for every small act, this planting of one small seed.

A seed that sprouts, a shoot out of the black earth, a small act of kindness that grows bold love straight up into the dark.

Come Christmas Eve, we’ll gather the slender sprouts and lay them down in the manger – like straw – like shavings off our heart – a bed for the Christ babe, the infant power play that uprights the world.

I watch how her small hand unfolds in the light.

How everything small unfolds, a small seed, like seed for the straw to hold the seed-made God.

Image by Rita M. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.

Editorial Note: And while you are drinking deeply of this season, won't you consider joining us for anAdvent Community Writing Project? There's still time to post your thoughts and link up at Wide Open Spaces by December 7.

The Last Thing I'd Ever Write

I couldn't stop thinking about the note Robert penned on the arm rest of his car when he waited to be found. What would I tell my family? What would I say if I could never say anything more? Those questions have preyed on my mind since reading Robert’s story. I figured the only way I could start thinking about something else is to go ahead and write my letter. So here it is, the last thing I’d ever write...

Image by Cali2Okie (April). Used with permission.Sourced via Flickr. Post by Billy Coffey.

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Having Someplace to Go is Home

The plaque doesn’t match anything in the room. In fact, it looks out of place in an already cluttered spot. So during last-minute straightening and dusting this past week, I snatched the plaque to get it out of sight. I was thinking about giving it away. My son, who was practicing piano, suddenly stopped playing. “I love that sign,” he said, a wistful tone to his voice.

Image by Katerina Plevkova. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Ann Kroeker.

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Spectacles of Awe - in the Backyard

by Glynn Young

Michelle DeRusha thought the ideal vacation would be spending a week of silence with Carthusian monks. (She must be a mom.)

When that wasn’t possible, she did the next best thing. She set aside 20 minutes of quiet in her back yard. For months. She simply looked around, watching the natural rhythms of life.

And she found spectacles of awe and wonder.

You can read Michelle’s post for the Lincoln (NB) Journal-Star, “Sitting still, noticing the spectacles.”

Image by Michelle DeRusha at Graceful. Post by Contributing Editor Glynn Young.

You Are Capable of Far More Than You Think

by Bradley J. Moore

I remember the first time I spoke in front of a large audience. The arrangements had been made months in advance, at which time it sounded enticing, even glamorous.

Truthfully, I was far more interested in the idea of me as a speaker, rather than concerning myself with the pesky details of the event itself. Besides, how hard could it be, to talk about something you know in front of a group of strangers?

But walking in to the cavernous auditorium that morning, it suddenly dawned on me: I have not quite thought this through. My dry mouth hung open as I gazed around the theatre, ultimately fixing my eyes on the enormous stage looming up front.

“Are you sure this is the right room?” I nervously checked in with my host. He just smiled and gave me a thumbs-up, while hundreds of people filed in to fill up the seats. The delicate little butterflies in my stomach now turned into violent, wrenching badgers, desperately trying to claw their way out.

I managed to complete the twenty-minute presentation without losing control of any major bodily functions, exiting to lackluster applause. I then proceeded directly to my hotel room, whereupon I curled up into a fetal position for the next two hours.

They say that, for most people, the fear of public speaking is worse than the fear of death, and I can see why. My talk was a disaster, and I wanted nothing more than to just hide out for a few months until the laughter died down.

But, of course, I didn’t do that. I eventually got up, splashed some cold water on my face, and headed down to re-join the conference proceedings.

Someone told me once that fear goes hand in hand with faith and fulfillment. In other words, you can’t accomplish anything worthwhile for God - or for anyone, for that matter -  without taking risks and facing some anxiety along the way. The thing is, I really wanted to learn how to become a good public speaker in spite of my fear, because it would help me progress professionally.

Plus, deep down, I knew I had this dormant, untapped potential to do better.

Rather than let the unpleasant experience hijack the rest of my career, I instead decided to attack it head on. I somehow managed to slink out another speaking engagement a few months later, and this time I was determined to be better prepared. I wrote out a script and memorized it, then practiced it in front of an invisible audience over and over and over again.

When the big day of the presentation finally came, I was nervous, but I nailed it. The audience clapped loud and hard, as I recall, and a small crowd even lingered afterwards.

That second talk, it turns out, changed my life. It opened doors to more speaking and consulting gigs, which led to a new job, and then an even better one after that. Who knows the self-imposed limitations I would have otherwise lived with, had I indulged a crippling fear?

It’s counter-intuitive to think that pressing into our own terror is the source of good things to come. But the more we go out on a limb and try new things, the more successes we’ll have, and the more confident we'll become about our capabilities. Our potential is likely far more than what we belive we are capable of.

I like how Eleanor Roosevelt says it: “Try one thing every day that terrifies you.” After a while you just get used to the idea of being nervous, anxious, and even terrified sometimes. It’s nothing to be afraid of.

Image by Matthew. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Bradley J. Moore.

Thousands Seek God's Forgiveness in South Asia

Gene Strickland at South Asia Crusade

CHESAPEAKE, Va., Nov. 28, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- Gene Strickland, the head of Evangelism International, recently travelled to South Asia to preach in several days of Gospel Crusades. People came by the thousands to learn the simple yet profound truth that God loves them and desires an eternal relationship with them. The crusades produced 3,420 decisions as lost people accepted God's free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ!

Strickland was also able to hold an all-day training seminar for 150 pastors. These pastors, and the local churches, are the means by which new Christians are made into fully devoted followers of Christ. Just six years ago, on the very spot where Gene preached one night, a local pastor was beheaded for daring to preach that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. In other areas nearby, human sacrifice is still practiced as a way to appease the gods. As foreign as this sounds to western ears, it is the very reason evangelists like Gene must go and deliver a message of how to have peace with God.

In poor areas like south Asia, there is much sickness amid the poverty stricken living conditions. At the end of each night of a crusade, people come forward for prayer. In discussing this with his translator, Gene explained that the people would see, by answered prayers, God is the one True God and their idols of wood and stone are nothing.

Hear their own words:

"I am Sumari, a 43 year old woman who was suffering with Dengue Fever. Doctors said my blood platelets were below 10,000 and I would die. I was brought to the Crusades, heard the message of Jesus, and God completely healed me!"

"My name is Saju. I had been in severe pain with swollen joints for over 5 years. It was so bad that at one point I wanted to kill myself. I tried all the treatments and medications but received no help, relief or improvement. After attending the crusades and having the evangelist pray for me, I am completely healed. No pain or joint swelling anywhere in my body."
 
"I am Kallayya, a 45 year old man. I fell from a tree 5 years ago and had been bedridden after injuring my spinal cord. Doctors said I would never walk again. I was brought to the Crusades and laid on the floor of a nearby building. God touched me through the preaching of His Word. I am completely healed and am able to go to the fields for work."

Over 400 miracles were affirmed by a local Christian surgeon and the churches have begun the process of baptizing new believers and making disciples. The crusade ministry of Evangelism International travels the globe to preach the great news of God's redemptive love.