A daily devotional moment by Chris Garcia
Many people in their worship time end up in the mindset, of a struggling match with their wants, desires, worries, and concerns. It becomes a time or a battle in the mind with flesh against the spiritual goals and desires to get closer to His presence. In the moment of this battle, if you can release all of your distractions, wants, and desires, your battle can change in the blink of an eye. It becomes a moment of warring and struggles being transformed into victory in His presence with the breakthrough you are seeking. Just through simply loving Him. God is more interested in lovers, not fighters. We think we have to fight our way through. When in reality, the fight is simply "I have to die to myself and just love Him." Then you love God and apply this to your worship and love Him for who He is and represents. Because God is Love. He takes you to Himself. You bypass all of the struggling and the mental torments. You bypass all of that because you enter into love. God is love. The Bible says that God inhabits the praises of His people. It means that God inhabits and He begins to habituate in your praise. When you choose to love, you are choosing the space where He dwells. That is where He is. So many of us are stuck in this warring, fighting mentality or mindset. Where we are always striving to fight without realizing that the fight has already been won. You just have to love your way through that reality.
To be clear, I am not saying we do not fight. We do fight, but we fight in the wrong way. The Bible tells us the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. But they are mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds. What does this mean? The weapons referred to are spiritual weaponry, not carnal. When we look at the armor of God, we look or think of Roman soldiers. We think of a physical soldier. When Paul tells us we do not fight this world. So why do we apply the Roman soldier to Ephesians 6, when Paul tells us that we fight not of this world or like this world? What ends up happening is we take on a wrong understanding of the scripture. We start developing this unnecessary militancy and we are always having this mindset of fighting all the time. When in reality, it has nothing to do with the fighting that you perceive it to be. To clarify further, look up the word "kiss." The word kiss in the Song of Solomon chapter 2 for example, it is the Hebrew word to "fasten the lips like in a kiss." But it also means to arm with weaponry. Those who kiss the Lord and the Lord kisses them, are then armed with spiritual weaponry. Because the fight is not like this world. The violence that speaks of the Kingdom, is a love of God. It’s for lovers. The Bible says in the book of Revelation in the last half, the Body of Christ is addressed not as fighters but as kings and priests to their God and a bride.
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I am 64, and have walked with the Lord most of my life, but this was the first time I've heard this preached in a manner which made both scriptural and spiritual sense to me. Thank you.