WAR Part 2

(I was) awakened from my slumber… I recognized the person at the door but the look on his face was alarming…”Quick, The enemy is on the prowl. Where is your battle armor? Your weapons? You must stay alert.” …I remember sitting down for just a moment… I was so tired…. I was too tired to pick them up, too tired to remember, we are at war… How did I forget all that?This is a fabricated story to express how I felt on a recent Sunday morning when Pastor Tim Shorey started what will be an 18-month sermon series through the book of Revelation. He said, “We are in a war zone.” “We must stand ready to fight…not a fighting with guns, weapons and bombs …but with words, with grace and with truth… fighting for the soul… it is a war…” “Fight against sin…fight for holiness” “Two great kingdoms are in conflict and we are in the middle of war…there is an enemy raging against us… we are at war everyday. Your entertainment center is a war zone. The mall is a war zone…your diet is a war zone…your tastes are a war zone…your work place is a war zone…your bank book, your devotions are war zones…. There is no safe place on planet earth.”

I realized I had drifted off to sleep in my spiritual walk and let my weapons fall to the ground. If obedience was “easy” I obeyed; but if it was too hard, I made excuses. Fight against sin? Fight for holiness? How did I forget?

Dear fellow believers: AWAKE. ARISE. We are at war. BE ALERT. FIGHT. PERSEVERE.

Fight the good fight of the faith. 1 Timothy 6:12

If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all… Isaiah 7:9b

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Romans 8:37

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. Revelation 2:11

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it. Revelation 2:17

The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, Revelation 2:26

The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. Revelation 3:5

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. Revelation 3:12

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Revelation 3:21

Diane