When, when do natural militaries prepare for war? When do they prepare for war?
They prepare for war in times of peace and continue preparing all the time. We are a military as well. The body of Christ is identified in the book of Ephesians as an army. We are an army, a collective army. And we have to be training in times that are good and we need to be training all the time.
We’re no different than natural militaries. We need to be prepared.
And he did evil because he prepared not his heart to seek God. He didn’t prepare in the good times on how he was going to respond in the bad times.
2 Chronicles 12:14
He didn’t prepare his heart. And we are absolutely like Rehoboam. We have the opportunity in good times to automatically fill ourselves and continually fill ourselves with the Word of God that will teach us how we are to respond in bad times.
When someone pokes you in a bad time, what comes out is what’s really in there.
I’ve heard it said that Christians are a lot like tea bags. You just don’t know what’s in there or what they are until they’re in hot water. And that happens to all of us. When we get in those tight places, and they come, because we live in a fallen world. It would be wonderful if we could go from the day we met Jesus as Lord and Savior until we meet him face to face and never have a problem.
But I don’t know anybody that falls under that description, myself included. We all have opportunities to fail in serving God. And the determining factor on how we’re going to come through those times is how we have prepared our hearts when things are good.
You know, David… When David picked up those five smooth stones and he ran headlong toward Goliath, that was not the first time that he had encountered the mastery of God.
He had already prepared himself for the goodness of God and the faithfulness of God while he was a child. And he had an occasion where a bear and another occasion where a lion came to devour the sheep, and David overtook them supernaturally. One man was able to kill a lion, and one man was able to kill a bear.
So David already had history with God. He already knew how things were going to turn out. I am fully confident when David reached for that first stone, he had five in his pouch, when he reached for the one and it only took one, he was fully confident of what was going to happen to Goliath.
David said it in his words, before he threw the stone. He said, who are you? Who in the world are you? I know who I am. He doesn’t say it in so many words that way, that’s the Linda translation. But he says, I know who I am, and I know who you are. And you have no covenant with my God. I have a covenant, you don’t have a covenant. Down you come.
And we need to be able to walk in our lives with that confidence that what God has set as available for us is already and constantly available whenever we need it.
Get in THE WORD, and prepare!