Running with the Footmen.....

[Gideons300]

Running With The Footmen

Saints, here is our dilemma.

God says to his Bride-to-be:

If you have run with the footmen and they have wearied you, what the heck are you going to do when the horsemen arrive, and if in the land of peace, you have no victory, how will you survive when the evil overruns its banks??

Jeremiah 12:5

Please do not be offended by my paraphrasing..it does mean what it says...really!

Listen, we have been saved as brothers and sisters in the Lord in a time of little persecution or cost in becoming a Child of God. Yet, even so, for the most part, our struggles in gaining victory have kept us defeated and not mounting up with wings of eagles, where we walk and do not get weary, and where we run and do not faint.

We also know perilous times are coming, soon, and that it is highly possible that in our lifetime, it will cost us our lives to profess His name. So God warns us.... "Listen", He says. "Do not be fooled into thinking that somehow, miraculously, you will somehow find victory in tough times that you could not find in good ones. The truth is rather that it will be far harder!"

Most Christians I know, myself included, have had this "progressive" theory about victory, that each year we walk, it gets better, easier, the things of this world hold less sway and we walk more and more with our eyes set on heavenly things. The sad fact is that in my life, like most I know, the opposite has been true and thay our constant failings finally have led us into a peace treaty so-to-speak with Satan, whereby we said in essence "If you don't bother me, I won't bother you." We then settled into a fake victory stance, a play-like type of walk where are mantra becomes "We are only human", and somehow excusing our failures to walk pleasing to Him every day, all the day because of our humanity instead of believing that "I can do all things thru Christ who strengthens me."

Listen, dear brothers and sisters, tough times are coming...very tough. Not just physically. There is coming a spiritual wasteland and many will be made shipwreck. Now is the time to get oil in our lamps, not then. Do not be fooled into thinking that persecution will somehow do for us what God's grace could not...make us get serious about our walk with Him and figure out how to gain the victory He has promised, a victory by the way that unless we find and hide ourselves in, we have no hope of enduring until the end. There is no miraculous cure to be found in hard times. If we do not discover the secret to victorious living now (and there is one), then what in the heck will we do when evil is absolutely rampant and we are threatened with not being able to buy or sell, or hold a job, or get medical treatment for our children, unless we bow the knee to satan?

This warning of God is for us, today, in the 21st Century church. It is high time we really became transparent with God and ourselves. If we have not yet discovered how to walk above sin in our lives, if our unruly flesh still seems to dominate us, then we had better hit our knees and ask God for the answer. There is one you know.....for God has promised that he is able to keep us from falling, and that we can quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

How? Listen, it is NOT try harder! That is the problem, not the answer. We must believe in HIS goodness to keep us from Satan's power. And why can we not believe? Because we have not yet realzed that we cannot walk the walk He desires of us, unless He walks it in us! Our problem is not that we are too weak. It is that we have not yet been made weak enough. It is only a humbled and broken and contrite heart that can exercise the faith God asks of us.

Have you yet realized your ineptness at walking the walk? Have you finally agreed with God that in you (your flesh) dwells no good thing? That all your efforts to keep His commandments, try as you might, seem to end in abject failure? If you have, praise God, that is the hard step, painful but absolutely necessary. The second is a gift...believe that what you cannot do in you, He can do, and WILL do, if we but believe. He has promised it.

Hear what god says in Ezekiel 36:23 concerning the result of the old covenant...i.e. written laws, and what the new covenant will do for us.

Ezekiel 36:22 Therefore say unto the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.

23 And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.

24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.

25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

28 And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.

29 I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you.

30 And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen.

31 Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.

32 Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord GOD, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel.

33 Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded.

34 And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by.

35 And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited.

36 Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I the LORD build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate: I the LORD have spoken it, and I will do it.

37 Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock.

38 As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

Let hungry hearts lift up the God that can keep us from falling. That shield of faith in HIS work is promised to quench all the fiery darts. The horsemen are coming...I can, like you, feel the rumblings of their hooves on the earth. Run into Him, and He will keep you until that day. That is His promise and our God does not lie.

Faithful is he who calleth you who also shall DO IT! Praise God!

[Guest]

Hallelujah!