2 Corinthians 10:3-6 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.
The first king of Israel, King Saul,was told by God to utterly slay Amalek and his descendants. In blatant disobedience Saul allowed Agag, the king of the Amalekites and the best of the cattle to remain alive. The following day, Saul tried to remedy his disobedience by attempting to sacrifice the best of the cattle to the Lord.
But the prophet Samuel informed Saul that because of his disobedience, his family would no longer reign over Israel, and he told Saul, "to obey is better than sacrifice." If offering the "best of the cattle" for sacrifice was a poor excuse for disobedience, its negative consequences must have paled in comparison with sparing the Amalekite King - whose infamous descendant Haman, an agagite (Esther 3:1) later rose to power seeking to destroy the entire Jewish population of Persia.
If Saul had dealt with Agag as God instructed him, he would have spared his people, centuries later, from the agonizing contest with a vicious enemy who would destroy them. So it is with sin. Allow it to live and be sure it will return to slay you with more power. Don't compromise. "Small" sins lead to bigger ones, and soon enough the early footholds that are ignored will turn into strongholds which cannot be!
"Take no prisoners" when dealing with sin -- seek to be rid of the little sins, so that later you will avoid the strongholds that may threaten to compromise or destroy your walk, your calling, your life, and the precious relationship that the Lord has purchased for you!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]We found an interesting story in an old copy of “Our Daily Bread”: In 1883 in Allentown, New Jersey, a wooden Indian — the kind that was seen in front of cigar stores — was placed on the ballot for Justice of the Peace. The candidate was registered under the fictitious name of Abner Robbins. When the ballots were counted, Abner won over incumbent Sam Davis by 7 votes. A similar thing happened in 1938. The name Boston Curtis appeared on the ballot for Republican Committeeman from Wilton, Washington. Actually, Boston Curtis was a mule. The town’s mayor sponsored the animal to demonstrate that people know very little about the candidates. He proved his point. The mule won!
It never ceases to amaze me how our little girl, Elianna is growing and developing. I remember when she first came into this world, she was so helpless and frail — she couldn’t even move her head without our help. Now, just having turned two, she’s running around and tumbling, jumping, singing and dancing!
Yesterday we wrote about one of the greatest moves of God … the Moravian Revival. When the community was in complete disarray, Count Zinzendorf focused on how they could live together in love despite their differences. He called all the men together for an intense study of the Scriptures to focus on how Christian life in community was portrayed. These studies combined with intense prayer convinced many of the believers that they were called to live together in love and that their disunity and conflict were contrary to the clear calling of Scripture.
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing. In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic. These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years. Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified, “This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”
Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
In the late 1800s, an awakening in South Africa led by Andrew Murray was a powerful move of God. Studying that revival yields essential insights concerning the events occurring now throughout the United States. As the spirit of God began to move in Cape Town, Murray compared the SA revival with past experiences of revivals in Europe. He decided that the intense “emotionalism” was a false experience of God and charged in to break up the meeting. Stepping out of the church, he encountered his father standing and weeping. His father rebuked Andrew, “How dare you stop something that I have prayed to happen for 30 years!”
I love to study past revivals and in studying them, there are two recurring themes that stand out:
First, that He has often used obscure and unknown individuals to lead revivals, and that even these men whom He used so powerfully never considered themselves to be “special”, but often wanted to stay out of the limelight.