1 Corinthians 15:57-58 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, leaders from around the world gather to honor those who served and died to deliver Europe and the world from the Nazis during World War 2.
It was on June 6, 1944, that the largest military operation in the history of the world took place.
Just before the invasion, allied commander General Dwight Eisenhower issued a now-famous letter to the 156,000+ soldiers that stormed the beaches at Normandy, the 13,000+ paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines, and the naval officers on the 5,000 ships off the coast of France.
In his letter, Eisenhower stated, “You are about to embark on the Great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.”
Eisenhower ended his letter by stating, “I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good Luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”
Eisenhower expected victory … but he carefully warned his troops of the reality that it would not come easily because the enemy was savage!
As we come to the conclusion of this age, the spiritual battles are intensifying. In our spiritual warfare, we truly face a battle-hardened enemy who fights with savagery – ignoring the enemy is foolish and will lead to our defeat. Overestimating him, however, is the opposite error, for “Greater is He that is within me than he that is in the world”; and we are assured by the word of God and His spirit within us that victory awaits us.
C.S. Lewis once said, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
Our daily battles may be subtle, obvious, or brutal; but for most of us they aren’t easy, and luck will not figure into our success. What we need will be the courage that faith inspires, and the perseverance which God will bless. The word of God is our sword, along with the rest of the armor [Ephesians 6:11-18] needed to walk in His victory. We simply must press on and press through… the glory of that D-Day victory will pale in comparison with ours, which will stand for eternity. So be reminded this day … at the end of the Book, “We win!”
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]As we discussed last week, the word for “sign” in ancient Hebrew is “oht”. It was used in Genesis to designate God’s covenant sign with Noah, (the rainbow). And we see now the same word again, in Exodus, identified with the deliverance of the Jewish people from the tenth plague, when the angel of death passed through all Egypt to strike the firstborn. Anyone under the “sign” of the blood was spared.
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.
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!”
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.
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.”
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.
During the Great Depression, poverty swept across America like a whirling tornado, ripping up dreams and scattering hopes to the wind. One such poverty twister hit a small part of Texas where a man named Yates ran a sheep ranch. Struggling even to keep food on the table, Yates and his wife did all they could to survive. Finally, they had to accept a government subsidy or lose their home and land to the creditors.