Have you ever woken up and, during that day—and ensuing
days—the realization of a grand spiritual victory sinks in and becomes apparent in
actions and responses?
The uniqueness and novelty of this overarching victory is
that it is not just in quiet time with God that we feel it; it is that in the
daily ins and outs of life we know it, and now live it, when we were
incapable before.
I can only describe it as a major breakthrough among smaller
breakthroughs that have accompanied the Christian life.
We may now hear our spouse say, in moments that used to
challenge and stress us, “Wow, that isn’t how I expected you to respond. You're handling this so well!”
We may greet God in our mornings empty of an anxious mind,
finding that ten minutes have gone by and we have yet to bring anything at all
to Him in prayer!
And then, when we do commence praying, it is not for ourselves
or what once bothered us, but for others and their burdens.
Although we have long ago ceased to recognize the person we
were before we became born again in Christ, even now we begin to not recognize
the person we were even last week!
It is truly as if the thing (the gnarly entwined knot
of variables) we were praying for to be excised from our inner being for the last 15 years has
indeed come about—strikingly so yet almost imperceptibly—as if God, progressively unleashing
His answer in bits, has brought all those bits to culmination and has now added the
last jot to His answer, releasing us to victory in the spiritual battle He has
been waging within us.
In my Christian walk, certainly there have been individual
and specific answers to individual and specific prayers. They may or may not have been related to the larger frontlines in which I was positioned: they may have been
campaigns within the larger war, or stand-alones, in and of themselves.
But in the big picture, when the thing, the uniquely
unrelenting and widely encompassing downfall of each individual spiritual life—Paul’s
“what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do”—when this thing, this
elementally frustrating thing that has polluted and tormented us, is at
last vanquished via the power and investment of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit in our lives, it must and can only be known to our
hearts and minds as unwavering and steadfast Victory!
Once we taste it, we shall wonder why it ever took so long
in coming.
Each of us knows what our personal logjam to this victory is.
And we must understand it will be busted through—shattered
beyond all recognition so as to never block our Christian life again—only by our demanding it in the power and Spirit of Christ working for and
in us.
It requires our being reliant upon the tools of spiritual battle He
willingly provides for our maturity in overcoming.
Desire this Victory. Do not settle for less. No matter the
time it takes. Persevere in His Spirit.
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that
has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.
But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that
you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” 1 Peter 4:12-13
This victory in Christ is His glory revealed on earth.
Copyright Barb Harwood
"Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Romans 7:25a
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