Conquer the Enemy Through Faith

“When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, ‘”Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery….” And I said to you, “I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But you have not obeyed my voice.” Judges 6:7-8, 10

“And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” And Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.” And the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?”  

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” Galatians 5:16-17

During the period of the Judges, Israel repeated a pattern over and over after taking possession of the land God had given them. They would enter into a period of doing evil in the sight of the Lord, including worshiping false gods. This would provoke God to discipline them by giving them over to their enemies which caused great suffering and moved God to pity for them. Then the Lord would raise up a Judge that delivered them from the hands of their enemies. But once the Judge died Israel would do worse than before (Judges 2:18-19). The Lord had not driven out all of the nations at once from the Promised Land to test Israel to see if they would take care to walk in the way of the Lord (Judges 2:22-23).

I believe God has left us today, as Christians, with our fallen nature in an otherwise redeemed soul to see if we will “obey his voice”, die to our selves and believe God that He can empower us to live a holy life. None of us will live perfectly and we will give in to temptations at times and God will have to convict us and sometimes discipline us to bring us back to the Straight and Narrow but we can live a much better Christian life then we think through faith.

Gideon was the Judge God raised up to deliver Israel from the Midianites. He was an insignificant son in an unimportant family and had no chance of raising an army and conquering Midian without God. He was hiding from the Midianites when the angel of the Lord came to him. He did not exhibit great faith when instructed to destroy the Midianites but did in the end believe God sufficient to follow His instructions and was able, with only 300 men, to destroy the large enemy army. In the same way, I believe faith in the power of God is the key for us to overcome our fleshly enemy that wars against the Spirit. Like Israel being freed from the Egyptians, God freed us from the old nature when we believed in Him although we can allow ourselves to be entrapped into it again if we fail to obey Him and continuously deploy the power of the Holy Spirit through faith.

To the extent we have faith in God to accomplish for us what we are not able to do ourselves we can live out a victorious Christian life. Our enemy, the flesh, is strong and imposing and we are completely weak against it ourselves, but we have a greater power inside us that is unleashed by faith and that can overcome the flesh. The flesh wants to keep us from what we want to do (Romans 7:14-25) but walking in the Spirit, through faith, and drawing on His power can keep us from gratifying the desires of the flesh. Christian, go in this might of yours and live victoriously.