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- Written by: Don Goulding
So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (for if you live according to the flesh, you will die), but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. (Romans 8:12-13) (NETFull)
Of the three enemies that plague me—the world, the flesh, and the devil—the most dangerous is my old nature that craves self-rule. Satan and the world are menacing to be sure, but neither of them can touch the real me in my spirit. Only my own flesh can drag my whole being into hell.
I am my enemy. The battle of life is against my own carnal nature. I fight human injustice, and I’m zealous to attack Satan, now it’s time I stop crumbling before my flesh.
Today, I admonish myself—know your failures. Study your weaknesses then diminish their territory. Don’t make a pact with your darker self that as long he doesn’t flat out deny Christ, you are willing to allow worldly impurities. Don’t go there. The danger is far too perilous for compromises.
Most importantly, deploy the nuclear bomb that demolishes temptation—the filling of the Holy Spirit. The world, the flesh, and the devil all melt in the presence of the Spirit of Jesus.
On this battle ground you will be made or destroyed. Be strategic. Be bold. Rout the enemy before he overtakes your eternity.
Prayer: Present Holy Spirit, help me in today’s mighty battle against myself.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Then the angel said to me, “Write the following: Blessed are those who are invited to the banquet at the wedding celebration of the Lamb!” He also said to me, “These are the true words of God.” (Revelation 19:9) (NETFull)
“What are those children doing in the harvested fields?” I said.
“They’re the youngest of their families.” Our host navigated her Jeep down a dusty African road. “In times of starvation, the older members eat first. Those little ones are trying to club mice for food.”
I could hear pain in the reply coming from a missionary who gave her life to help orphans, and saw no end to the need.
The children in their rags stared at the dry billows behind our car. We had what they wanted.
I’m hungry, too, but mine is soul hunger. My table is meditation, my fare is Scripture, prayer, and God’s voice. I indulge in dessert of inspirational music.
In spite of this intake, I’m never satisfied. I chew a promise, it spikes a rush of joy, is digested and gone. I’m still hungry, craving more.
Jesus has his eye on the children of the field. Still, many of them will depart this earth with their hunger.
I’ll depart this earth with my hunger. Together with the children, we’ll ask God to fill us. We’ll appear before the King to feast and drink aged wines. We’ll break into song, dance around the throne, and absorb God-love. Filled in every way, we’ll fall into a laughing tangle and bellow through our hysterics, “No more pain, emptiness, or hunger.”
Then we might get up and revel again—not because we’re hungry, but because of the overabundance from the Lamb, who promised, “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.”
Prayer: Jesus, fill me and the children at your banqueting table.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
As he said this, he called out, “The one who has ears to hear had better listen!” (Luke 8:8)
Woe to the over-churched. That was me. God saw me sitting in the pew, wrote a razor-sharp message, and handed it to the Spirit. The Spirit breathed into my pastor’s sermon and it flew from the pulpit. The words arced through the air, hit my eardrum, and bounced onto the floor.
I’d been practicing A.S.D. (Auditory Selective Dullness) for years. Raised in the pews, the effervescent words of life were poured over me before they had meaning. Jesus is the blah, and the blah, blah, blah. It’s a malady I fight today.
As I got older, I determined God was for retirees and recluses, and I reached for the highest numbers on the fun-o-meter. But such living never brought joy. My truest desires weren’t greeted at the door, let alone invited in to satisfaction.
Behind the temporal games I hid a longing to touch the Progenitor of life. I wondered if the enormous life in Christ lay in grasping the true meaning behind all those churchy phrases—washed in the blood, dead to sin, sanctified by grace. They were so much white noise in a preoccupied head.
One morning I woke and there beside me lay the instruments needed to open the tired phrases—a Bible, prayer, and a desperate heart. With the tools, I pried the trampled walnuts until they burst open to reveal emeralds of hope, fire-blue sapphires of love, and diamonds of truth. ‘Christ in me’ was no longer a ho-hum by-line, it was my oxygen. The words were the same, but the power exploding out of them woke me from the stupor I’d called life.
From time to time I still feel over-churched, but I attend so I can squeeze the old terminology for all the brilliant reality it will yield.
Prayer: Holy Spirit, dynamite my crusty heart with fresh understanding.