Be Formidable
Be strong in the Lord and the strength of His might. - Ephesians 6:10
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In Judges 2:21-22 and the first few verses of chapter 3, we are told that God allowed Israel’s enemies to stay in the Promised Land in order to test them, to see if they would remain obedient in the midst of opposition. Like training at a gym, God uses resistance to build the strength of His people.
Make no mistake: God is not in the business of raising up cowards (Revelation 21:8), conformers (Romans 12:2) or the uncommitted (Luke 9:26).
Now we are all in-and-of ourselves cowardly, conformist and embarrassed by the demands our God places on us. Not one of us can rightly claim any kind of worthwhile virtue before Him.
“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” says I Corinthians 15:57, as Psalm 28:7 declares, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in Him my heart trusts, and I am helped.”
So God calls us to be strong and then enables us to be so.
Men, it is time we lean into that calling. It is time we began to follow in the footsteps of our spiritual forefathers. It is time we become formidable.
In Acts 4, Peter and John were dragged before a powerful and hostile Jewish council and interrogated about just how they were able to perform a miraculous healing. Peter, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” declared to them that it was in fact by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Jewish leadership had unjustly crucified and who had risen from the dead that the man in question had been healed. Furthermore, Peter stated, Jesus Christ is the only hope for the salvation of mankind.
Arrested and essentially facing the same group of people who concocted a sham trial that resulted in the horrendous death of their Messiah, Peter and John stood firm. They stuck their necks out for their God and were willing to declare truth, come what may.
Acts 4:13 records the response of the Jewish leadership:
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”
The power and truth of God bear more weight than credentials, education, nobility, wealth or human esteem. Like their blue collar, carpenter rabbi before them, Peter and John refused to let the particular dynamics of their station in life define for them how they ought to act, what they ought to respect, or what they ought to fear.
Through the grace of God, they were strong and stood firm, regardless of what common human wisdom said they “should” have done.
Men, strength is born out of consistency and discipline in the midst of resistance. The Holy Spirit will make you strong, like a trainer at a gym, but you must be willing to show up to do the work. You have the equipment and the examples going before you. You have the Word of God and centuries of examples of faithful men and women to draw from.
Later on in Acts 19, some Jewish exorcists attempted to appropriate the power Paul had used during his ministry to cast out an unclean spirit. The demon responded to their injunctions with, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” (Acts 19:13) It then proceeded to promptly wreck and humiliate them.
The demons know a phony when they see one.
To keep yourself out of the category of the pretenders and to become formidable, you must commit yourself to the work God has set out for you to do. You must do what it takes, in and out of season, on good days and bad, when it’s easy and when it’s hard, to equip yourself for the task at hand.
God will give you what you need to be strong. But you have to want it. And if you want it, you will be disciplined enough to pursue it. You have to accept the resistance and embrace the tools of prayer, study, reflection, memorization, fellowship, confession and repentance.
Then, you will become a force the enemies of God must seriously reckon with.
This is your calling, brothers. Don’t take it lightly.
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Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. - I Corinthians 16:13