Unconventional Warfare

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith. It emphasizes that God's ways are higher than our ways and that He can use unconventional means to accomplish His purposes. The message encourages trust in God's power and love, highlighting various stories from the Old and New Testament where God performed miracles and overcame impossible odds. The importance of remaining in God's love, seeking His guidance, and turning over situations to Him is emphasized. The overall message is to have faith and believe in God's victory. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of his word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to his perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Deuteronomy 20, verse 1 When you go out to battle against your enemies, and see horses, chariots, and a people more numerous than you, you shall not be afraid of them. For the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, is with you. When you read the Old Testament, does it sometimes seem like God can't count? All the Midianites and all the Amalekites and all the children of the East assembled themselves together against Israel. That's a lot. What did God say? With three hundred men, I will save you. Judges 7.7 Not good odds. A garrison of Philistines were camped in Michmash, part of the up to 60,000 strong force that was in the region, and two guys go up. Killed 20 of them and began the rout of the main force for Samuel 14. Four hundred and fifty priests of Baal on one side. A single prophet of Yahweh on the other. 1 Kings 18 Armenian army camped out surrounding the entire city. Four lepers who were starving. The Arameans flee. 1 Kings 7 When you read the Old Testament, does it sometimes seem that God doesn't know how you're supposed to fight battles? Walk around the city once, in silence, for six days. Then seven times on the seventh day and then shout? The walls fall down and you win. Joshua 6 Three hundred guys hide torches and pots. They spread out, they break the pots and shout. Army flees in panic. Judges 7 to 8 Dig pits and fill them with water. Create overconfidence in the army who then flees before you when you rise up. 2 Kings 3 Set yourselves for battle. Rise up, head out, but stand, do nothing. The people choose to head out, singing praise to God. They get there and stand. Enemy army completely dead already. 2 Chronicles 20 Ah, but when we get into the New Testament, things don't get any more normal. Go fishing. Take the first fish. Open its mouth. Take out coins and go pay your taxes. Matthew 17 27 Take a couple of pieces of bread and a fish. Feed 5,000 men plus women and children. Matthew 14 Go fishing again and fish all night. Catch nothing. Toss your net on the other side of the boat and catch more fish than your net can handle. John 21 Fill up large vats with water. Serve it to the guests as wine, which it now is. John 2 Obviously, God can't indeed count. And obviously, God knows how to conduct battle. And obviously, God is capable of doing things normally. I mean, look at the book of Esther. So, why doesn't He? Why doesn't He follow the rules? Why doesn't He conduct business in traditional accepted ways? Why doesn't He do things normally? Because it's our normal, our rules of conduct, our traditions. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts, Isaiah 55, 8-9. If you're dealing with the Lord, don't expect normal, natural, ordinary, or sensible. God uses unqualified people, murderers, selfish people, drunks, liars, uneducated, undisciplined, anger-issued, theologians, headstrong, cowards, egotists, and fools. They didn't stay that way, but that's where they started. God doesn't seek perfection. God seeks permission. God seeks a with to do impossible things alongside. Not alone, with. Not for, with. Not in spite of, with. With God, all things are possible, Matthew 19-26. We have the dominion. The Father has the power. Jesus has the authority. The Spirit has the guidance. Together, all things can be accomplished. You'll notice that our part is saying, yes, Lord, move, and then being guided, counseled, taught, and comforted. Everything else is His part. God doesn't do things in different, unconventional, and odd ways because He likes strange things. He doesn't do it to be colorful, noticed, or get attention. He does it to prove to our hard minds that it is, in fact, God who is doing it. He does things so off the beaten path that we can't even fall back on coincidence to soothe our egos and sense of order. God does things that shakes us to our core so that we are shaken to our core so that we can get to the place where we are aware that He is, so that we have to acknowledge that He is, He moves, and He is in our lives. Ideally, we will respond with praise and adoration. He certainly deserves it. But it is enough for us in our innermost inner thinking to admit that God is. It is important for us as humans to be constantly presented with that so that we never forget the choice that we have to make. God is real. God has standards based on His nature of righteousness, not our rules, not our nature, not what we think should be. God wants to keep us out of hell. Jesus paid the price for sin. A way has been made for you to enter fellowship with God. There, that's the message. That's the choice. That is what all the weird, wonderful, and wacky designs of God are all about. The acts point to the Spirit who is moving in them, who points to Jesus who is saying them, who points to the Father who is doing them. The Father does them by Jesus speaking them, who speaks them through the Spirit who moves into them and gives them form in the frame of the Word and the power of the Father. They're all three connected and intermingled and separate. And God, the strange ways things get accomplished, puts our minds on one of those aspects of the Lord God, and each aspect points to the other aspects, all of which are above us, beyond us, and in spite of us. If we hold that image of God in our minds, we will have no fear. It won't matter if a single foe stands there or a million. We will have no fear. Why? Because God has proved throughout history and continues to prove to us today that anything can be a tool for God if he has permission to work in our lives. There's chariots against you? No problem, there's a fish in your fridge. The government wants to take your children? No problem, there's an old tennis shoe in your closet. No money for bills and food? No problem, there's an old hamburger wrapper under your seat in the car. Ridiculous? Maybe. But not that much. Because God will use any and everything if we let him in order to accomplish what he wants. For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you hope and a future, Jeremiah 29, 11. Because he has set his love on me, therefore I will deliver him. I will set him on high because he has known my name. He will call on me and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. I will satisfy him with long life and show him my salvation. Psalm 91, 14-16. Good and upright is the Lord, therefore he will instruct sinners in the way. He will guide the humble in justice. He will teach the humble in his way. All the paths of the Lord are loving kindness and truth to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. Psalm 25, 6-10. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man doesn't remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch and is withered. And they gather them, throw them into the fire and they are burnt. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you desire and it will be done for you. In this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so you will be my disciples. Even as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Remain in my love. John 15, 5-9. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment. He who fears is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. These are all powerful things, powerful verses. It doesn't matter what's coming against us. God is with us. It doesn't matter the odds. God is with us. It doesn't matter how impossible it is. God is with us. It doesn't matter if they don't believe or are even spreading the message of the enemies of God. God is with us. God who can do the impossible. God who can use the imperfect. God who can use small amounts of unconventional things. God who doesn't count victory by number or quality, but by trust in him. If we have faith and turn over things to him, he will turn over the situation. He will turn the situation around and hand us the spoils of his victory. If you, then he. Don't miss out on the promise of victory. Start believing today. Our daily affirmation of God's love is 1 John 5-3. Is our love proof of his love? Yes. Yes, it is. We teach our children what we see as the rules of love. This is bushy. This is nurturing. This is toxic. This is healthy. This is manipulative. This is encouraging. But we didn't teach them the love. Look at babies. Unconditional fountains of unfiltered love and affection. They show it almost as soon as they come out of the womb. God touched them in the womb. His love rested on them. It taught them and empowered them to love. His love made our love. So when we love in honesty and truth, we are modeling his love. It's why the enemy seeks to promote toxic love, selfish love, self-love, dominating love, and abuse of love, among others. If he can poison our minds to love, we will not love each other. If we stop modeling God's love, it will be that much easier for the world to reject God's message of hope. God is love, and we are to be loving. Loving as he loves, not as the world loves. It is God's love that saved us. Let your love be proof of his love, which is perfected in his sacrifice to give you the option of choosing life and fellowship. Love, your love in him, is powerful stuff. Every time you feel loving, remember, it's the shadow of his love which burns for you. As we close, remember that you have birth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love, and no end to the things about you that he loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you, just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent his only-born Son into the world, that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin, and it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because he first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.