Unleash Your Inner Warrior
“What you need in life will be brought to you, but what you desire, you’ll have to go get. Much of what you cry for will not be brought to you.” My dear warrior, Welcome to Part 2. Yesterday, I left you with a question to think about. I ask you again: Is God so cruel that He would dangle your hearts desire in front of your face and taunt you with it, only to deprive you of it? Ask that out loud. Just like I wrote in There is Always a Solution, I want you to laugh at how ridiculous that thought is. Go ahead: laugh! Why would God dangle the answer to your prayers—your heart’s desire—right in front of your face? When the Bible says that God is good, it means that He is good. He is not some cruel, sadistic God with a penchant for schadenfreude—that is, deriving pleasure from your pain and suffering, or gaining joy from taunting you with what you desire. It is not in His nature to taunt us. It is not like Him to take the very things from us that we’ve desired all along for the sake of seeing us suffer. One thing I have recognized is that if we have a godly desire for something (not a perverted or lusty or sinful desire), it most likely came from Him. I do believe that He placed those desires in our hearts in the first place. Psalm 37:4 says to delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. I don't think this is limited to meaning that He will give you what you want, I think it also shows that He puts those desires in our hearts (for good, godly things) in the first place. (Just hold tight, I will expound on that in a few paragraphs). I love the Douay-Rheims translation for this one. It says "Delight in the Lord and He will give thee the requests of thy heart." God is a good, good Father. If regular, human parents give good gifts to their children, how much better will the gifts of our Heavenly Father be? Scripture tells us that if we ask for bread, He will not give us a stone! He is not cruel or heartless. He is a loving God.
Matthew 7 and Luke 11 have this to say on the matter: Matthew 7:7-12 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!" Luke 11:9-13 "So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" I have to ask, if your heart desires something good, what are you waiting for? Why aren't you asking? What has you so afraid of asking for what you want? Are you afraid of what the answer will be? ...Are you afraid that rather than the answer being no, that the answer will be that you must fight for what is yours? or that you will have to work for it? or that you will have to prove yourself, that your mettle will be tested? If that's the case, that's wonderful! It means you will grow! The worst thing that could happen is that God's answer to you is "No, I have something better for you." But most likely, if you're facing a situation in which there is a challenge, you just need to accept the challenge instead of assuming the answer is no. More often than not, I have found that God is waiting for me to say "ok God, challenge accepted," because He has created those circumstances to test me, prove me and refine me. He has created a challenge so that I can grow. Don't you want to 'level up', too?? Truly, I believe that the desires He puts in our hearts are the same kind of anointing it takes to bring us into His arms. It is the same as our desire for Him: we can't want Him unless He wants us first. We couldn’t love Him unless He first called our names. We couldn’t even possibly worship Him unless He anointed our hearts to do so. We are completely incapable of doing anything unless He draws our hearts. I can find no more perfect portrayal of the way in which God calls to our hearts than in C.S. Lewis' beautiful story, The Silver Chair: "You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion. If God has allowed something in your life, if He gave you your heart’s desire, and it has been removed, I would dare to posit that it is not so much that He removed it as it was Him showing you His reality. He put it before your eyes because you had not dared dream big enough and He wanted to show you what was possible. He wanted to show you that the dreams you were barely daring to dream could be a reality. But He allowed that to be removed (for a time) for a few reasons: Unless He had put it before your eyes, you would not have known it was possible. You could not have dreamed big enough if He had not given you the dream in the first place. Next, He put it in a heavenly “bank account” and is letting your dream accrue interest, so to speak. Finally, He wants you to partner in prayer with Him. God doesn’t want to hand you everything on a silver platter. Just as good parents will give their growing children more responsibility as they get older and can handle more, God is trusting you with increasing responsibility as you grow in faith. He is teaching you to partner with Him; He is teaching you not only to have vague hope, not only to have biblical hope (confident expectation), not only to have faith—but to walk in the knowledge of who He is. Knowing that He is good, and knowing what He wants to do with you, in you and through you. But you must learn to co-labor with Christ. We must not only pray and vaguely hope; we must pray and work. Co-labor. Partner with Him. Fight by His side. He is bringing you into a place of intercessory warfare, worship warfare, and rest. You are learning to fight the good fight with Him. Anything that is worth fighting for is not going to be easy. Anything that is easy is not worth fighting for. Ask Him what it is you need to do. Maybe He is waiting for you to take a risk, a leap of faith, to move out of your comfort zone. Maybe He is challenging your faith. Whatever the case may be, you have a part to play in this. He is not going to do your job for you. Find out what it is that you need to do. (Here's a hint: it might be that thing you've been really resistant to doing, but know you need to do!) The quote I included at the beginning of this blog post states it perfectly: “What you need in life will be brought to you, but what you desire, you’ll have to go get. Much of what you cry for will not be brought to you.”—Bill Johnson What is it that God wants to answer right now? What question have you been avoiding asking? What answer are you wanting, but have been too lazy or fearful to ask for? It is important that you seek God out for the answer to your God-given dreams and desires, rather than running or hiding from Him in fear. Running from Him will only lead you in circles (you cannot run or hide from God or what He is doing in your life. You’ll just find yourself running around that mountain over and over and over and over again), or will land you in the belly of a whale. Either way, it won’t get you anywhere worth going. “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain and difficulty… I have never envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”—Theodore Roosevelt One prime example in our culture (that is lost on the current generation) is that men ought to fight for the women they love. Men no longer know how to fight for the women they love. Go back to point number 3. So often now, when God wants men to fight for the women they love, He allows things a situation to become challenging so the man must truly partner with God. He allows the man’s mettle to be tested to see if he is worthy of the woman’s heart. But far too often in our generation, the man loses hope. Rather than partnering with God in prayer, rather than having biblical hope (confident expectation) when things get difficult, he throws his hands in the air and fails the first test. "If she's amazing, she won't be easy. If she's easy, she won't be amazing. If she's worth it, you won't give up. If you give up, you're not worthy."—Bob Marley Another example would be taking a risk in business. You might feel like you've really put yourself out there, and you feel like you're right on the edge. Take a step back and look at it from God's perspective: you're probably a mile from the edge. He is beckoning you to go right up to the edge of the cliff and (Indiana Jones style!) step out over the edge. He will meet you there. He will not let you fall. Or maybe He is pushing you out of your comfort zone in your faith. He has convicted you of truth and is pushing you to dig deeper. You know in your heart that what you believe is a little off, that something isn't right. He may be prompting you to dig deeper. He may be pushing you not to cling to the beliefs of your forefathers simply for the sake of holding onto tradition. He wants to make your faith real to you! If that's the case, why aren't you chasing that? Why aren't you diving head first into Him? I know it's terrifying. I've been there this past year. Let me assure you: when you decide to take that leap of faith, you will find yourself free falling, and it will be scary. But the moment you have the realization that He is a good God, and Christ the solid rock is your foundation, He is your answer, you will be fine. In fact, your faith will become more beautiful than you could have ever imagined! Just know this: if God is challenging you, and if He is good, then whatever the objective truth He introduces you turns out to be, I can guarantee you it will be good. It will be worth it. That is the realization that gave me peace as I sought out objective truth. I will leave you with one last quote to think on: “There are times in prayer you are not engaging with God to change His mind, you’re engaging with elements that are working against the very miracle you’re contending for. I never become devil-focused in these times. I become God-focused and will-of-God focused. When He fills your heart and mind with what He is saying and doing, there are times you pray, and you do nothing but watch. But there are other times where the storm is in front of you as it was with the disciples. How is it they could pray and Jesus answered and would say they had no faith? He had trained them, He had modeled for them that you could speak to the mulberry tree ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would removed, you could say to the mountain ‘be cast into the sea’ and it would be removed. Anything that is an obstacle to divine purpose must be addressed verbally because that’s where your power is. The worlds were created by the word of God.” - Bill Johnson Stay strong, my dear warrior. There is an answer. But you must partner with God. You must engage with Him, ask the right questions, ask what you must pray, and co-labor with Christ in prayer. Live in the battleground, Warrior Beloved ©Michèle Aimée, 2016
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