Winning Spiritual Battles

This is not really the post I planned on writing.  Sometimes, however, life throws curve balls at you and you have to shift if you’re going to do anything with them.  Especially when they’re coming at you from somewhere in left field instead of the pitcher’s mound; but I’ll leave the baseball analogies for now – I was never really good at baseball anyway… it’s been a bizarre couple of days and I’ll spare you the details.

Spiritual battles manifest themselves in the physical world as the various challenges we all face.  Sometimes it is clear we are facing something truly evil but sometimes it’s not so clear.  No matter, it’s still a spiritual battle since how we chose to face any challenge places us either in God’s will or outside of it.  Right now, I’m just living in Psalm 3.  I’m reminded the Lord is a shield around me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.  I affirm with David I will not fear the tens of thousands surrounding me.  I will call on the Lord’s deliverance, remembering He delivers.

This is something remarkable with David – the context here is Absalom’s rebellion and the very real danger David was in to lose not only his kingdom but also his life.  David is running away and operating on very little information – I kind of think verse one might even be a question   Yet he doesn’t panic and it is not in his speed or the caliber of those with him David relies on.  He is relying on God and recognizes true deliverance is always from Him.  If we think this is an isolated incident, it’s not.  It’s David’s M.O.  Consider he wrote Psalm 34 when he faked insanity to get away from Abimelech.  It worked.  But when I say, “It worked,” I betray an attitude David didn’t have.  David doesn’t say “It worked.”  Rather, he writes in no uncertain terms that “God worked” – and will always work for His people.  He didn’t praise himself for being so clever, he doesn’t even thank God for making him smart enough to outwit his enemy.  David doesn’t consider it important enough to mention.  What is important is God.

Now let’s consider ourselves.  This is where we fall short.  We forget in times of trouble that God has us.  When we emerge unscathed or maybe slightly scratched from some danger, we often look back and say, “Thank God I did such and such,” emphasizing the ”I did” in our own actions and relegating God to some sort of supporting role or, worse, that of spectator who may throw out barely helpful pieces of advice we can take or leave at will.  We speculate about how close of a call it all was and if things had been just a little different, we might have been ruined, chalking up our deliverance to chance.  We learn the wrong lessons and believe we (emphasizing ourselves again) can somehow avoid all trouble if we are just a bit more careful.  David sees all that as nonsense and his Psalms help us see what is really true – God is good, His constant attention is on us, and He delivers us from the myriad troubles that inevitably come our way.