I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service (Rom. 12:1).
YIELD YOUR BODY
Why does Paul talk about yielding our bodies? Because our bodies are the battlefield in spiritual warfare. We read time and again in the epistles (particularly Romans) about our members, of the law that works in them, and the problems we have with them. But they are not throwing Christians to the lions today, at least not in Western countries. Elsewhere Christians are being savagely treated, but obscenities like that rarely happen in our lands.
The field of conflict here has just moved to another level. The greatest theater of conflict today is in the mental and emotional regions. I have discovered personally, and in dealing with others, that most of the problems Christians experience today have to do with conflicts in the mind. So the first thing we must do is present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. By this we recognize His right to rule our bodies and everything they contain–our minds, our emotions, our desires–and the changes necessary to conform us to the image of Christ.
DON’T be ENTANGLED
Next, we must not become entangled in anything that would hinder our ability to respond promptly to the Lord’s direction. I take this key to victory from 2 Timothy 2:4 where the apostle reminds us that if a person is a soldier, he should not become entangled in civilian affairs. He should not have any priority in his life other than his allegiance to his commander on the field. If you joined the army, I dare say when it came to the day of the battle you wouldn’t say, “Listen, I’m sorry but I’ve got something else on.” So it is with our spiritual conflict– we must be available.
Being available for the Lord is a real challenge today. Various areas compete for our time. The sports field seems to be taking a great number of the young people today. Please don’t misunderstand me–I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having good physical exercise, but when people know all about the players on the big teams and can’t tell the names of the judges of Israel, something has gone wrong. When there’s a greater knowledge of the world than knowledge of the Word, something is out of sync. We must not become entangled by these things.
One of the biggest areas of entanglement these days is the business world. Perhaps some of you heard my personal experience at a previous seminar in Kentucky. I became entangled to the point that I was not able to respond to the Lord’s requirements in my life. The business had me; I was in bondage.
Now there’s a difference between having a job and being entangled. The business world today will entangle anyone with abilities. They’ll try to tie them down. You’ll never consciously say, “I’m becoming entangled.” It just happens little by little.
Remember the story of Gulliver. While he was sleeping, little people came and tied him with these little cords. They seemed insignificant in themselves, but before long the giant couldn’t move. He was entangled. So we must watch the little things that would keep us from being available for the Lord.
Young people with ability, please make sure that you place priority on your availability to the Lord, and not your business life.
ENDURE HARDSHIP
Be prepared for inconvenience. “Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” Paul talks to Timothy that way. I’ve watched some films of the World Wars and you see these people lying in the mud. They’re sleeping there, and they’re eating there. The rain is up to their knees, and they’re fighting over the edge of the trench–it’s hardness.
If you’re going to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ, if you’re going to win the battle, you’ll have to be prepared to endure some hardness. People sometimes approached the Lord Jesus and said things like, “I’m going to follow You.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? Yet the Lord Jesus often appeared almost to be blocking them. He said things like, “You want to follow Me? That’s good; but keep in mind that foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but I have no place to lay My head.” That changed a lot of people’s minds. We must be prepared for inconvenience.
Move your life out of the comfort zone into the combat zone. That’s what we often have to do. Have you ever seen on your thermometer at home, “Comfort Zone”? I think that’s where we all like our lives to be–that’s where I like mine to be, anyway. But we will never have victory if we are not in the battle.
Accept things that God has placed upon you, which He will not remove (2 Cor. 12:7, 10). Evidently Paul had a physical handicap. He asked the Lord three times to take it away and the Lord said, “No, Paul.” That is contrary to the modern view that everyone should be healed. After Paul had accepted, finally, that the Lord wasn’t going to do anything about his condition, he said, “Most gladly will I glory in my infirmity, because when I am weak He is strong.” The Lord was providing a theater for demonstrating the power and glory of God in his body, and the pain and the anguish that he was going through. We need to learn to endure rather than escape when under trial.
KNOW the ENEMY
The Lord Jesus said that a king would never go into battle without finding out the strength of the other side. We have to know our enemy. The first thing we want to say here is, our enemies are not in the physical realm, but in the spiritual realm. Ephesians 6:12 says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, and powers…against spiritual wickedness.” Our enemies are in the spiritual realm. We also face a trinity of evil: the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The devil is the enemy against us. The world is the enemy around us, the system where people are trying to be happy without God. We are not talking about the people in the world, or the planet on which we live. We are using the term “world” in the sense that it relates to that godless system that has been built up around us.
Then we have the flesh, the enemy within us. I think we all know this enemy pretty well. What we must realize is that conversion does not change our old nature. We still have the same old rotten nature within us. It never was converted. Conversion gives us a new nature which lives in conflict with the old. Read Romans 7 and you’ll find that Paul is talking about the tremendous struggle that is going on. To put it in the words of an old preacher we had in Scotland when I was young, “The nature that will predominate is the one that you nurture.” If you feed the old nature, it will predominate in your life. If you feed the new nature, it will predominate. This challenge comes to us: which nature are we feeding? Which nature are we allowing to predominate?
WEAR the WHOLE ARMOR
We have a list given of the armor that a Christian has to wear if he is going to be victorious. Notice that all of the armor is for the front; there is no armor for the back. If you turn your back, you are unprotected.
We have our loins girt with truth. Peter talks about having the loins of your mind girded, bringing our thoughts into captivity. The battle will be won or lost in the mind. I was in Chicago with Mr. Wm. MacDonald some years ago. He said that the longer you think about doing something wrong, the more likely you are to do it. That’s wise, isn’t it? If we chase it out of our minds right away, it’s unlikely to go anywhere else. The longer we toy with the idea, the more likely we are to do it. My father-in-law used to say, “You can’t stop the crows from flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair.”
The breastplate of righteousness, the feet shod with preparation of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, and praying always with prayer and supplication–the last one is as vital as the rest. We neglect prayer to our peril.
LEARN HOW to USE YOUR WEAPONS
A shield is a defensive weapon by which we may constantly dodge the fiery darts of the evil one. When soldiers were approaching a defended city, the archers would shoot arrows with rags dipped in oil. Paul is talking here about quenching all the evil darts of the evil one in a spiritual way.
We also have the sword of the Spirit, the offensive weapon, which is the Word of God. It is only effective to own a weapon when we are skilled in its use. I think perhaps we feel we are the most vulnerable when we are not practiced in its use.
In a Bible study in Ontario, a man put me on the spot with these words, “I want everyone to think of five verses that talk about eternal security, five verses that have to do with the coming of the Lord, five verses that have to do with His deity…” and the list went on. We need to know how to use our weapons!
Look at the Lord Jesus in the Judean wilderness. He was victorious there by counteracting everything Satan said with the Spirit’s sword, the Word of God. He had a verse for everything that Satan said. Then Satan began quoting the Bible back to the Lord Jesus in a distorted way. The Lord Jesus was able to respond again with another quotation that negated that distortion. It is not only important to know the truth; we must be able to marshal it in such a way that we can use it effectively when we are facing the enemy.
KEEP YOUR EYES on CHRIST
“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him…” (Heb. 12:2-3). Our victory will depend in large measure on our occupation with Him. Christ is the victor.
When I was in business, at one point in my career, I was allowed to have various perks such as a company car and so on. My business’ insurance company insisted that anyone who drove a company vehicle should go to skid school. So I went off to skid school and was taken to this lot that had puddles of oil on the driving surface. The instructor told me to drive through the oil, and I spun around and around. Finally the instructor told me that in order to stay on the road I need to fix my eyes on something that would never move, so I looked over at a telephone pole. The next time I drove over the puddle of oil I didn’t spin around. I had my eye on something that never flinched, that never moved.
So it is when we look off unto Jesus. He has been through these battles before and He has been victorious! He is the fixed, immovable point where we must maintain our focus when everything else is going crazy. Things may be spinning around in your life, but as we are occupied with Him, we will be able to enter into that victory that will surely be ours if we follow Him.