June 12, 2012
so David inquired of the Lord, and he answered, "Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front of the balsam trees. -- 2Samuel 5: 23 (NIV)
So David inquired of the Lord. This is a recurring pattern throughout David's military successes. David would always seek guidance and direction from his God. David understood that God created the heavens and earth by merely speaking them into existence. He knew that God had delivered him from the lion and the bear when he was but a shepherd boy. He knew that it was God that delivered the slingshot blow to Goliath, slaying Him to the relief of the cowering Israelite army. That is the same God we serve today. He is unchanging. He is not a man that He should lie. Whatever He has promised He has delivered:
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. -- Hebrews 13: 8 (NIV)
We serve the same God. He is omnipotent -- meaning all powerful. He is omniscient -- meaning all knowing. He is omnipresent -- meaning He is always present. The Psalmist explains:
I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night-- but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you. -- Psalm 139: 7-12 (NLT)
Yet despite the ever-present, ever powerful and ever knowing Lord living inside of us, we can proceed through our lives without inquiring of the Lord. We can freelance all of our decisions. We can seek out advice from friends and family. We can seemingly inquire of everyone but God sometimes. That is because we generally practice what I call reactive prayer. We pray in reaction to things in our life. We find ourselves in a situation we wish we were not in and we go to the Lord to seek His help, when we should have started by seeking His will in the decision making process. God doesn't want to just be the God of our problems. He wants to be the God of our decision making. If we could ever learn that -- we could avoid a lot of the problems we often find ourselves in.
David here is practicing proactive prayer. His enemy, the Philistines, are before him in the Valley of Rephaim and David does not know what he should do. He is asking the Lord if he should attack them or not. He doesn't want to charge head first into a situation he will not win. Conversely, he does not want to retreat from a victory the Lord might be willing to give him. Since he does not know the correct course -- he asks Him who does.
Let's be honest with ourselves. We too often have enemies we must decide how to face in our life. The Bible says we are in a spiritual war and that our enemy never stops in his pursuit of our destruction. Additionally, we have to deal with living in our flesh, which is always opposed to the things of God and rarely counts the cost of the sin it desires. Combined with this we live in a fallen world that thinks what we believe in is pure foolishness. Add all of that up and we have to navigate a pretty tricky battle field every single day.
A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. -- Ephesians 6: 10-12 (NLT)
This war is not a joke and it is not a veggie-tale. If we are constantly living our lives from a place of reactive prayer then we are constantly in crisis mode. We are constantly in a defensive posture. That is the posture the modern church has found itself in for far too long now. Constantly seeking revival -- if we ever learned to live right according to God's standards to begin with we wouldn't need to be revived! If we are constantly looking to be revived we should be should be trying to find out who keeps knocking us out!
God has the master plan. Even look at His response to David in our key verse. The previous time in this chapter that David inquired, God just told him to attack and David did and the victory was glorious. This time however, God tells him to not take them head on but to circle around behind them. This tells me a few things we need to remember when we are discussing proactive prayer. First of all, we can never assume the answer. The answer could change from moment to moment. From battle to battle. What worked last time might not work this time. Each battle is unique and different. God is trying to teach us something different every time. Sometimes we need to charge headlong into the fray and other times we need to be more strategic than that and circle back around the enemy we are facing. Sometimes the answer might even be to run. When Joseph faced the enemy of lust with the wife of Potiphar, he did not charge headlong -- he ran as if his life depended upon it.
Secondly it shows me that we need to be receptive to answers we might not have expected. This also seems a challenge to us in the modern church. The know-it all spirit infesting the church prevents the free flow of the Holy Spirit, who is supposed to provide the vision and guidance for the body. Look, David could have heard this circling around behind advice and thought it was cowardly and refused to follow it. If he did, he would have lost. We lose a lot of our battles in this walk because we have been told what to do in the Word of God and we simply refuse to follow the commands. Do you think the plan of God for Jericho made any sense to the brilliant war strategist Joshua? March seven times around the city and shout??? Yet he did not question the orders from the Lord and the walls came tumbling down.
We too may have great walls in our lives. Blocking out our growth potential. Shutting others out of our life for fear of being hurt again. Limiting our access to God. And maybe the Lord has given us similar commands as He had to Joshua. March seven times around and shout! But we do not listen. We do not behave proactively and follow the instructions from God. Instead we wait until something goes horribly wrong and then we go get anointed with oil at a prayer vigil, call for a forty day fast, lay down in torn sackcloth and ashes, and finally pray our reactive prayers to God.
God will answer beloved. He always does. But how much more powerful would our walk with Him be if we could ever learn proactive prayer? If we could ever learn to seek His will instead of His help? Inquire of the Lord today and be ready to carry out His commands in your life. Be ready for the walls in your life to come down with a mighty shout of faith. Be proactive today and every day moving forward. Hallelujah!
Rev. Anthony
