The Bible says in Eph. 6:11-12 that you must arm yourself. That is necessary, because everything we experience in life has to do with battle. Only it is not a battle between flesh and blood. You would expect that in your dealings with all situations at home, at work or in church. You can encounter a lot of difficult people on your path. But it is not about those people, but about a battle in the heavenly places. With demons and devilish powers in the invisible world around us.
It sounds dramatic, but the Bible says that we can arm ourselves against it. If you feel weak, think that you are always losing, things do not always work out in life, experience a lot of opposition, then do what it says in verse 10. You can become strong by being one with God. And being one means intimacy, comparable to what is written in Gen. 2:24 that man and woman will become one flesh. This is how you become strong when you have fellowship with God, when you are one with Him, intimate with God.
Intimacy with God is a great principle and has everything to do with time. You will have to spend time with Him. Then His great power will start working through you. Just as a woman, by being intimate with her husband, becomes pregnant with new life, so God will also beget new life in you when you are intimate with God. That is a spiritual reality. That is also the reason that God wanted to show His power through Mary, to come to this earth Himself. Through intimacy with the Holy Spirit, a Divine Fruit was conceived in the womb of Mary, resulting in the birth of Jesus Christ. God revealed Himself through her life.
According to the Bible, the joy of the Lord is your strength (Neh. 8). Conversely, if Satan can steal your joy, he steals your strength! He will do everything he can to achieve that. But by being one with the Lord, Satan will not succeed.
In order to become intimate with each other, you spend a lot of time with each other. If you want to overcome in this lukewarm world, in which there are setbacks and perhaps illness, then you need to be intimate, to make yourself strong in the Lord. That power permeates your entire being down to your bones. Everywhere you will have an influence on your environment, instead of the evil world influencing you.
Compare it with a pickle. A pickle has spent a lot of time in a mixture, the taste of the sweet and sour is permeated with it. If you put the pickle in water, then after a while the pickle will still taste the same and the water will even change its taste.
In addition, you must arm yourself with God’s weapons (Ephesians 6:13 ff.), then the devil will not be able to harm us with his devious tricks. Or, as the Statenvertaling says, his cunning diversions. The devil can only sell you lies such as that God is against you, and that people are against you. He turns all kinds of things around, just like with his cunning questions at the fall of man in Gen. 3:2.
With the same ease he uses people for that, hence the warning in Eph. 6:12 that you do not fight against people, even if you think you do. People can work against you in all kinds of ways and you quickly think that that person does not like you or wants to do something to you. This world is tyrannized by a whole army of dark powers in the invisible world around you. That is where the battle lies. Unfortunately, Satan always succeeds in telling you that it is your neighbor, your colleague, your husband, your wife or your brother in the church, that they are your enemies.
That only works with those who have not armed themselves. Because if you realize where the battle is taking place, then you will whistle through every battle. You then know that it is not a person you are dealing with, but that it is something behind it. So you don’t have to fight that person.
From Ephesians 6:14 onwards it is explained how those weapons work when the enemy attacks. Then the Bible promises that you can come out of the battle undefeated! Read the instructions! For example, verse 15 says that you need shoes to make the good news, the gospel, known.
That willingness to go is also in Mark 16:15 ‘Go into all the world,’ he said to them, ‘and preach the good news about me to the whole creation. 16 Those who believe and are baptized will be saved, but those who do not believe will be punished.
The reason Jesus says this is not that you will then walk around with a staff of judgment to indicate who will and will not be punished. No, He only wants to emphasize the importance of sharing the good news. What good news is that? It is that He has taken away the sins of this world. Read 1 Cor. 15:3 The most important of the good news I received and delivered to you is this: Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures foretold.
What did Jesus do, for example? Read Luke 14:1 On the Sabbath, Jesus went to eat at the home of a prominent Pharisee.
Jesus ate the meal more often with others, because He knew that it would be easier to connect with people. He did not manifest Himself as an untouchable rabbi, but wanted to talk to His environment on an equal level. The promise from Revelation 3:20 is therefore not at all strange: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me (HSV). So if you want to bring the Good News, invite people and organize a meal and have fellowship with them: speak to them from heart to heart. Not to condemn, but to tell them that He has come to take away your sins. God is a God of restoration, who also wants to equip us to win the battle. He is for you and not against you. He loves you and wants to use you to be a blessing to many people.
Luke 14:2 And they watched Him there, because a man had come to Him who had dropsy. We would say edema today, someone retains fluid in the body due to what was possibly a heart problem. They were watching Him because it was the Sabbath, a day on which you were not allowed to work.
Luke 14: 3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and the teachers of the law in that house, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” 4 They were silent. Jesus took the sick man by the hand, healed him, and let him go. Then he looked at them again and said, “If your son falls into a well on the Sabbath, will you pull him out? And you would not leave a cow in a well.” 6 They did not know what to answer.
Jesus demonstrates His unconditional love here. Even though He is the Lord of the Sabbath, He can deviate from that when it comes to people’s lives, when it comes to recovery. In the same way, God wants to use you towards people. Therefore, let go of all your religious beliefs and all your preconceptions about how it should be. Don’t judge, but let your love flow to people. Look at how Jesus was constantly on the road to solve the needs of people around Him. This is essentially what the gospel is all about. Put your life in His hands.
God wants us to be victorious in everything. We are not meant to be defeated. Whatever you are going through, God is there and wants you to come out stronger. Eagles use a storm to rise higher. If you only know what you are dealing with and how to fight the battle. When you look beyond the people around you and focus on Him, you become intimate with Him, then His power will work through you and you will look at people and your circumstances differently. God always wants to help you make the right choices.
Everywhere Jesus went, He infiltrated the world. He was a friend of sinners, the Bible says in Matt. 11:19b (NKJV). He knew the common man on the street, and went to places most of us don’t go and He ate with them. He would be more likely to be found in the mall than in church, because His heart goes out to the lost person.
You may think that you can’t do all that and don’t dare. But wherever you are in life, God sees it with you. You can always start over with Him. He is not a “respecter of persons”, so whoever you are today, you are male or female, you are young or old, you serve God or not, you know the Bible or not, it doesn’t matter. He is looking for people who want to be intimate with Him from today.
He is not only the God of Abraham, the man of faith, but also of Isaac, the obedient man of joy, and even of Jacob, the deceiver, who has paved much of his way through life with his elbows.
Read Gen. 32:22-32; Finally, Jacob has an encounter with God; he is intimate with God. Not in harmony, but he wrestled with God all night. Eventually God struck him on the hip, causing Jacob to be crippled from then on. But Jacob would not let go unless he received a blessing. And God blessed him and his name and status were changed from Jacob the deceiver to Israel, the God who rules. Despite that, God still calls Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel.
In Ephesians 6 it actually also says that you should remain intimate until you have received His strength. Do not let go until you have received His blessing. That takes time. It is not obvious that you can get there with a short prayer. Read Psalm 131, in which David states his position before God. He knew that his success had to do with intimacy with God, like a child at its mother’s breast. So do not seek salvation in fleeing from, or wanting to adjust, your circumstances. Start with God.
It does not matter what your life has been like, you can always start over. He will always strengthen you. You can come as you are. It doesn’t have to be in church, it can also be done at home. You are always welcome.
It worked that way with the disciples, read Joh. 20 from verse 19. Jesus had risen from the dead, and suddenly appeared to the disciples. Unfortunately, Thomas was not there at that time. The next time the disciples saw Him, they told him what had happened. Thomas was not satisfied with that and wanted more proof than their testimony. He even said “Not until I see the nail marks in his hands and feel with my own hand that he has a wound in his side!” And eight days later it happened. Jesus appears again and walks straight to the unbelieving Thomas. Jesus could understand very well that Thomas had difficulty with His resurrection and encouraged him to convince himself now. It was not a reproach to Thomas, but an act of compassion, and with empathy He showed that it was really Him. And that is how He says it to you and me. Maybe things in your life have not gone the way you thought they had or you have become disappointed in God or in people. But God tells you directly today that He is still there. He still loves you just as much and you can still start over with Him. He constantly approaches people to call them.
He also gave that personal attention to Peter, who denied him after 3.5 years of intensive teaching. Earlier, Peter had proudly shouted that he would never leave Jesus (Matt. 26:33-35). But when push came to shove, he failed miserably. Imagine if your husband, wife, child or best friend repeatedly claimed after 3.5 years and uttered a curse that he or she did not know you, just at the moment when you were having a hard time. After the rooster had crowed three times, Peter knew that he had failed miserably (Matt. 26:69-75). He also did not get the chance to speak to the Master before His death on the cross. Peter was so disappointed with himself that after all the events he went fishing again.
Until the famous Sunday morning, when Mary Magdalene heard from the angels that Jesus was alive. She was given the command, “But go tell his disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee” Mark 16:7 (NKJV). How so, you might say. Peter is also a disciple, isn’t he? But Jesus knew that Peter had almost lost his hope, his guilt complex was enormous. Jesus knew that Peter needed extra attention. That is God’s style. Even if you have denied Him and feel disappointed, He always wants to look after you personally.
He wants you to walk intimately with Him. Not that He demands it of you, but because you have to be full of Him, if you want to overcome in this life.
Meditate on Ephesians 6 to understand what it says. Everything that happens in the invisible world has no effect on you if you follow God’s principle. You don’t have to be afraid either. The reason we often feel weak or intimidated is that we neglect to seek intimacy with God. We immediately start thinking and reacting to problems in a solution-oriented way instead of withdrawing. We should then go to God and ask for wisdom and insight. To have our frustration and pain taken away and to be changed from within. From that moment on, you look at the world around you differently.
Luke 14:25-26a Many people came to Jesus. At one point He turned around and said, 26 “Whoever wants to be my disciple must love me more than his father or mother or wife or children or brothers or sisters.”
Why is Jesus making this so difficult? He is actually saying “if you really want to have life, value me more than anyone else; if you put me first, everything else will follow automatically”.
And that is why He continues in verse 26b I must be more valuable to him than his own life. 27a Otherwise he cannot be my disciple. You must be willing to say, “here is my life Lord, go your way”, otherwise you cannot be His disciple. Just look at verse 27b No one can be my disciple unless he carries his cross and follows me. 28a But don’t start unless you have first calculated what it is going to cost you. Calculate the price. Are you willing to pay that price? And the text continues with verse 28b For who would build a tower without first asking for a quote? He needs to know whether he has enough money to pay all the bills. 29 Otherwise he might not get past the foundation. Everyone would laugh and say, 30 “Did you see that? This man began to build and had to stop halfway because he didn’t have enough money!
Finally in verse 33 Therefore, if you cannot give up everything you have, you can never be my disciple. If you really want to follow Jesus, if you really want to see the power of God manifest in your life, then you have to come to a point where you say, “Lord, just tell me, I don’t care anymore; I’m not going to hold on to the things I know, but I’m going to believe you.” And what you get then is in verse 34 Salt is good. But if it loses its flavor, how can you give it flavor? So salt can lose its taste, especially by being diluted too much. If we think back to the story with the pickle, and you keep changing the container of water, then in the long run the pickle will lose its flavor. But if that pickle returns to the “intimacy” of the original jar of sweet and sour in between, then it will retain its flavor.
The same goes for you and for me. If you want to remain salty salt, then you have to keep walking close to God. Salt is also the type of preservation, and your influence will then also be preserving. People will feel better when they are near you. Moses walked so close to God that his strength had not diminished at the end of his life (Deut. 34:7). Reach out for intimacy with God, then you will notice that God really keeps His promises.