The Accuser

I hear the Lord saying that many are discouraged by the enemy. The accuser is a liar. He says "you missed your chance...you should have done x..." The enemy uses this lie to take believers out of the game. Jesus says the opposite. The Word says this:

Hebrews 12:12-13 So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.

We tend to read about the early disciples and apostles and elevate them above ourselves, but the truth is, the apostles and disciples who walked with Jesus were just like us. They were weak and broken people who said "yes" to a call to be different than everyone else. God uses weak and broken people because that is really the only kind of people that exist! The earliest followers of Jesus simply had a sincere desire to not be complacent, and often had a lackluster performance that accompanied a desire to be much better. This story of Paul encourages me:

Acts 16:16-18 Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour.

Paul knew the girl was afflicted from the start. For days he missed it. It wasn't until he got annoyed that he finally took authority over the demon and cast it out. I am sure if he had a "do-over" he would of cast out the demon as soon as he encountered it....but he didn't. Paul, who wrote half the New Testament...planted several churches...obeyed Jesus to the point of death...also suffered from the same struggles we do: distraction, fear, the flesh's pull toward self focus. This is what grace was given to us for: to have confidence to take a new grip, push delete on what we missed yesterday, and go after it again today!

Many want grace to sit on the sidelines, and that is wrong...it is an overconfidence in grace that moves the church into easy chairs...caring only about their comfort, thinking Jesus requires little of them. This is taking grace in vain. But there is an equally damaging misunderstanding of grace: it is to lack the confidence to apply grace to get back in the game...take a new grip and do something to agree with God. Jesus enjoys your sincerity to be in agreement with Him...if you offer Him that, He will supply the means:

Philippians 2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

This is the testimony of Paul:

Philippians 3:12-14 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

God, show me the doors you are opening before me today, and give me the strength to walk through them!