We are surrounded all around in the world with the forces of evil and darkness and are subjected to their attacks repeatedly every day. Their efforts are aimed sat leading us away from God and ours to stay in close fellowship with Him by surrendering all areas of our life to His Divine control. He then equips and strengthens us to face this opposition and emerge victorious. The greatest weapon available to us, all believers, is the hand of God that protects and guides us. Despite all this we face many challenges and hindrances to our walk in faith and victory and how do we overcome these?
The challenges we face – God in His mercy has given free will to everyone to do as they please but it does not mean that He has lost control over His creation. The Scripture assures us ‘that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His good purpose’ (Romans 8:28). In all things God works and every event is under His control and He blesses all those who love Him and are called and chosen to fulfil His assigned tasks. The Risen Saviour asked Apostle Peter, ‘Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?’ (John 21:15-17). Surely Apostle Peter must have been a little worried with this formal address but he replied, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love you’. Without going into the two words for love, ‘agape’ used by Lord Jesus and ‘phileo’ used by Apostle Peter, we shall focus on the question itself. What did the Lord ask actually His disciple? The first could be, does Peter love the Lord more than his love for the other disciples; The second, it could be about his love for his profession and other possessions and the third could be, does he love the Lord more than the other disciples love Lord Jesus.
This exchange teaches us three things, first, The Lord is ever ready to forgive our failures if we get up, submit to Him and then be ready to be used for new responsibilities. Second, we must understand that there is a cost to discipleship and our willingness to do greater works also implies that we are willing to let go of other things, for only an empty hand can receive. Third, The priorities of our life must be right, Jesus first; others second and myself last, always and every time. When Lord Jesus repeated the question the third time, He used the same word ‘phileo’ for love that Apostle Peter had been using all the while. Lord Jesus is willing to come down to our level to take us to His, provided we are willing to be used for His good purpose, so that He can turn all things for our good.
When I was posted in Kashmir, during one of the operations, we found two terrorists hiding in a wooden attic of a building. I and two soldiers climbed the wall to reach them and a burst of an AK-47 rifle was fired on me, for I was the bigger target. The LORD God, who is always in control, though I did not yet know the Lord at that time, diverted all the bullets to hit a wooden beam just a few inches above my head. The terrorist had the free will to surrender or fire, he chose the second option but unknown to him, God’s plan of ‘future and hope’ (Jeremiah 29:11) was also working to save me from sure death. Our enemies use their freewill for our harm but God uses that to help us learn some important lessons and prepare and equip us for greater challenges.
During the Last Supper with the Lord, in the upper room, all the twelve disciples shared the meal with the Lord (John 13:26-27). However, after Judas Iscariot took the ‘piece of bread, Satan entered him’. The challenge is not the enemy without but the one within, our fears, doubts, evil desires that lead us astray.
Who is the enemy of a believer? It is anything that leads him away from God and His protection. All believers have read the blessed promises of the Lord, ‘Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling’ (Psalm 91:9-10). However, at the first sign of a bad medical report or a calamity, we tend to start looking for various ways of our own to get over the same. Invariably, our last resort is the Lord whereas He should be the first and the only one. On the cross, Lord Jesus felt the absence of God the Father, who is holy, when the sin of the world was heaped on Him, to cry out ‘My God, My God why have You forsaken Me?’ (Mark 15:34). The Son of God felt abandoned but did not doubt the love of God the Father for His Son. Even in that painful state of being on the cross for almost six hours of great agony, Lord Jesus checked to see ‘that all things were now accomplished’, to ensure absolute completion of His task (John 19:28). Then confident of the love of His father for Him, He could declare for all to hear, ‘Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit’ (Luke 23:46).
All the deep darkness of the sins of the world, right up to the time His kingdom of holiness will be established on the earth, could not shake the faith of the Saviour in the love of His Father. The Living Word is well versed in the Scripture and was confident in the declaration of King David, ‘You will not leave My soul Sheol, nor You will allow Your Holy One to see corruption’ (Psalm 16:10).
In our times of distress and even during joy, many falter in fear and keep looking over their shoulder for the next calamity to come. Job told the truth to his three friends, ‘the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me’ (Job 3:25). The continuous fear of something happening to us is actually our surrender to that situation for the devil to bring it about in our life. Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews has provided the key, ‘let us lay aside every weight, the sin, which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith’ (Hebrews 12:1-2). We lay before His throne of grace and mercy every sinful thought, desire and fear that is a trap for us and keeping our focus on Lord Jesus, we keep running this race of life with endurance. In this way then, we let Him give ‘His angels charge over you to keep (preserve) you in all your ways’ (Psalm 91:11).
How does God prepare and equip us to face challenges – Prophet Isaiah saw the glory of the LORD in His Temple and cried out, ‘Woe is me for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips’ (Isaiah 6:5-9). A Seraphim then touched his lips with ‘a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar’. The Seraphim then told the prophet, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged’. God appeared in the Temple at that precise moment when only Prophet Isaiah was present in the Temple and the question from God was not for the Seraphim but for His prophet, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?. When Prophet Isaiah volunteered to be sent, his task was revealed to him by God, ‘Go and tell this people’. The task was to go and tell and for that his mouth had to be sanctified so that he could speak exactly what the Lord commanded.
Lord Jesus was with the disciples for three years, teaching them and preparing them for the task that awaited them in the future. God is love and the Son of God ‘loved them (the disciples) to the end’ (John 13:1-7). At the Last Supper Lord Jesus, who was always aware that ‘the Father has given all things into His hands’, suddenly got up, removed His outer garments, girded Himself and started to wash the disciples feet. In answer to Apostle Peter’s question, the Lord said, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this’. The washing of the disciples feet is taken only as an act of humility of the Lord, but in this there was nothing that they could not understand.
The LORD God commanded Aaron and his sons, the priests, through Moses, to wash with water (their hands and feet) before ministering, ‘lest they die’ (Exodus 30:19-20). The priests could not minister and offer sacrifices to the LORD before the ritual of cleansing from their works and walk of this world. No one can enter into God’s service without attempting to let go of the ways of the world and moving with a holy and righteous mindset. The atonement sacrifice offered by the High Priest, once a year, was a way to seek forgiveness of his sins. When the Apostle Peter objected to washing of his feet by the Lord, he was told, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me’ (John 13:8-11). It was then that Apostle Peter wanted the Lord to wash His hands and head also to be told, ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you’.
At the time of anointing of Aaron and his sons as priests, Moses took some of the blood of the ‘ram of consecration’ and applied it first ‘on the tip of Aaron’s right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot’ (Leviticus 8:23-24). He did the same to his sons after that as per command of God. The anointing was for their hearing the right things only, that their faith remains strong, to do the right deeds in conformity to God’s Word, and to walk in His ways. At the time of baptism, repentance of sins is the washing of the soul and the soul is tuned to turn from sinful living towards the Lord. Thereafter, believers’ walk of faith is the daily walk of obedience and the washing of the disciples’ feet by the Lord was to equip them to be right and true witnesses of His work and especially His sacrifice, resurrection and ascension, which they would witness shortly after that.
Prophet Isaiah was to proclaim the Word of God and His mouth was sanctified but the disciples’ task was ‘to make disciples’ (Matthew 28:19). The opening lines of the Book of Psalms define the state of a blessed person who is recognized by his walk being different from the ungodly (Psalm 1:1-3). Apostle John remembered the lesson to teach us ‘if we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth’ (1 John 1:6). Our state of faith is revealed through our walk in the light as the Psalmist declared, ‘Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path’ (Psalms 119:105). God has blessed all believers with the indwelling Holy Spirit to lead us on the path of righteousness for He is the Spirit of ‘power, love and self control’ (2 Timothy 1:7). He has prepared us but He never forces anyone and that is why Prophet Elijah heard Him not in the strong wind, the earthquake or fire but ‘the still small voice’ (1 Kings 19:12-13).
No believer has the excuse of not knowing the will of God for himself, for the Scripture clearly defines our role on the earth as ‘salt of the earth’ and as ‘light of the world’. We are to preserve the world and lead people from darkness to light as children of God. This is our daily challenge and we are victorious in the power of our Lord.
Ways to walk righteously – Lord Jesus in His prayer before the final hour of persecution, has this great confirmation about the work of the disciples by saying, ‘I am glorified in them’ (John 17:10). Our basic role is to be a witness of His work on the cross and thus bring Him glory and in this all the works of our life are counted. Our life in this sinful world is being changed daily and this change appears tough. When we try and fill a bucket of water from a pool or a well, it appears very easy to handle as long as the bucket is immersed in the water. The problem, however, starts after it is out of the water and it becomes very heavy to pull. The difficulty increases as the bucket is just about out of the well, in safe hands and placed outside. This is what our life is about, as long as we are part of the sinful world, living as per its ways, it all seems easy and even the trials appear to be a part of life. But when we turn to the Lord, our ways are then in opposition to the values of the world and we are moving in opposition to the current of the stream.
A young woman with an infant child in her arms travelled across various countries, changing aircrafts, waiting for baggage arrivals and, getting a hotel to stay. And then again move on to the next destination undergoing all those procedures again, moving from airport to airport facing all the challenges. After having travelled through some 15 odd countries, if someone asked the child in her arms, where all he had been, his answer would be, in his mother’s safe arms. While the mother faced all the odds, the child enjoyed the security, peace and comfort of her embrace. Lord Jesus has called out to all in the world, ‘Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11:28). He is willing to take our burdens on Himself when we place our trust in Him.
The Lord who has chosen us has sent into the world to be among them and not be one of them and live as per their ways. He chose the twelve for He needed them to carry on His work after His crucifiction, resurrection and ascension into heaven. We also need others’ help in fulfilling our task and must choose reliable friends and partners. Lord Jesus has called us His friends for He has revealed all of His plans for the world to us (John 15:15). We also must work as His partners by depending on Him for all help and guidance. It is important to live with this realization that the Son of God, who is seated at the right hand of God with all power and authority over everything in heaven, on earth and below the earth, is my friend, who died for me and lives to help me in all my battles.
The child in His mother’s protective arms is not troubled by all the problems that are going around him, but rests securely. Apostle Paul has given us the final key to see victory in every situation by teaching us that ‘if the Spirit of Him (God) who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you’ (Romans 8:11). And this life in us is the life of God that equips us as His children to face and win battles!
God as a loving Father desires all His children to be successful and victorious in every sphere of their lives, for which loving father would delight in defeat of his offspring. It is for this reason that the indwelling Holy Spirit is given that we live and walk in His guidance and empowerment and keep getting transformed into the image and likeness of the Son of God, bit by bit. We are not defeated when we fall down but when we refuse to get up by not taking hold of the rescuing and loving outstretched hand of the Saviour. Get hold of Him and He will nor ‘forsake nor abandon you!
