May 8, 2012
Stand
fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be
entangled again with a yoke of bondage. -- Galatians 5: 1 (NKJV)
There is nothing sadder than a bound Christian. Someone who has given their hearts over to Jesus to be Lord of their life yet still cannot seem to get past one thing or another. Saved by the blood of Christ but crawling into heaven. Jesus said that He came to give us the abundant life now -- not later. The heretical prosperity doctrine has twisted that abundance to mean material wealth but that is not what Jesus meant. The abundant life is the victorious Christian life we hear so much about and sometime have such a difficult time realizing in our own walk. Christ died to appropriate the victory for us but we have to choose to walk in it.
The key verse actually defines it better than that. We have to choose to stand in it. Sometimes we get so caught up in the problems we face that we fail to stand. We meander. The world teaches constant movement, constant drama, and endless talking. There we go, circling the same mountain for years or even decades. Around and around. The world encourages us to talk about the problems. As usual, God says the opposite:
Give
all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. -- 1Peter 5: 7
(NLT)
God does not say to talk about your
cares. He does not say to medicate them. He does not say to spend years in
therapy. The truth is that quite often we need to stop talking about the things
that bind us and start turning them over to God. We need to stop standing in
the bondage and defeat. The key verse says it all. Christ has already made us
free and does not want us to be entangled again with the yokes of this world.
The yokes that bind us. The yokes that are so unforgiving.
Satan of course wants us standing
in our failures, which is why he reminds us so often of them. Satan wants us
standing in our past. Why? Because he knows there is NOTHING we can do about
our past except regret and wallow. We need to stand in the promise of what
Christ did for our past:
You
were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut
away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it
away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities.
He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. --
Colossians 2: 13-15 (NLT)
He took your past and He nailed it
to the cross! Look at the middle verse though -- by doing it this way Jesus
actually disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities of the enemy! They no
longer have any weapons to use against you from your past. But the sad reality
is the enemy still uses it against us and we allow it. We allow him to move our
position from standing in the freedom Christ appropriated for us on
The key verse not only says we are
to stand in this liberty but we are to "stand fast." Stand fast is defined as a
"rigid and unyielding position." We need to get that deep down in our soul
today. The world teaches compromise and flexibility because it doesn't stand
for anything. God says we need to be rigid on the things He has already done
for us. We need to be completely unyielding to the lies of Satan. Realize that
sometimes we have such difficulty because the action or fact the enemy is
reminding us of is true. It actually occurred in our life and caused us much grief
or guilt. The lie is in convincing us that it has any relevance to God after He
has already nailed it to the cross for us -- it doesn't! It is covered by the
blood of Jesus Christ.
So the question for us today is -- where are we standing? I mean on everything. One of the other crippling rationalizations we use as Christians is to think that a life standing in victory 80% of the time is victory. It is not. It's a start but it is not complete. Because the devil will exploit that missing 20% until you find yourself standing in it. Wallowing in it. Living in it. We need to be unyielding in our liberty because Christ died to secure it. Do not give the devil an inch. Stand fast.
Rev. Anthony
