POWs

Every year the school I attended hosted a talent contest. It had categories that ranged from model car building to singing and just about everything in between. One year a friend and I decided we would enter the singing contest. We would bring our own rendition of the national anthem. We found an empty class room and started belting out the anthem.

We were doing a bang up job of singing (poorly mind you) when a student appeared at the door wondering exactly what was going on. His teacher had sent him from the adjacent room to see if we could tone it down a little! We had both forgotten how thin the walls where and how our voices would carry into the surrounding class rooms.

Embarrassed doesn’t begin to express what we felt in that moment. Even though no other person, other than none descript student X, had a clue who was singing loudly and poorly in the room nearby, that knowledge has not stopped the enemy from using the situation to trouble my mind and remind me how embarrassing it was to have lived through that experience. Yep, 43+ years later, he still tries to use that day to condemn me and stop me from the mission our Lord has me on for the Kingdom.

The enemy doesn’t use lies when he talks to us, he uses our own mistakes and embarrassments to try and hold us back. If he can get us to take our eyes off our Lord and start looking at our situation, then he wins. What we have to do is acknowledge our short comings and realize our Father has paid it all forward with Jesus. When you break the power of the past with His promises for your future, who or what can stand against you?

Blessings

POWs
TGIF Today God Is First NextGen
by Charis Hillman Brown

“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” -Isaiah 61:1

We have many prisoners of war in the body of Christ today. People are plagued by deception, unforgiveness, bitterness, and small thinking. They feel unable to step into a better future, the “spacious place” the Psalmist talks about in Psalm 18:19. “He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.”

There is no doubt that there is a war going on – between the forces of the kingdom of darkness and God’s kingdom. This battle is for souls, for relationships, and for destinies. The enemy of our soul has no greater purpose than to see you and I destroyed, never able to be the people God intended us to be.

The enemy wants us, first and foremost to believe the lie that God doesn’t love us, that He isn’t good, and He doesn’t have our best in mind. He wants us next to be isolated, so we are unable to believe the truth. And, he wants us to continue believing lies about ourselves and about others so that God’s purposes cannot be revealed in our lives, and we cannot in turn set others free.

There was a Hollywood executive who produced a well-known movie that my dad and his friend went to visit. My dad’s friend had a word of knowledge about this executive that he was struggling with committing suicide. The man became visibly shaken. It was true! How could this successful executive be struggling with suicide? He was a Prisoner of War – in his mind, due to some situations that had happened in his life.

Is there any area of your life where you’ve been believing a lie about yourself, about others, or about God’s good nature? Pray today and confess that lie to Him. He never wants us to feel alone in our journeys – talk to or pray with someone you trust that can help you believe the truth. It may be that you are the key to unlock the truth in someone else’s heart. God’s desire (and complete plan) is that we are victorious!

“For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves” -Colossians 1:13