Spiritual Warriors in the End Times

We need to put on the Armor of God and leave it on. We should be sleeping in it. This should be our norm. We are here to be spiritual warriors.

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I believe we are in the last days that the Bible talks about. Currently,  I am reading a devotional that is covering the book of Judges. This morning, it was talking about Christians leaving an impression on our children, that with each generation, we seem to be falling more and more away from God just like the Israelites did when they wandered in the desert for forty years. We see how Satan convinced the Israelites that they could serve their selfish pleasures all while serving God which ultimately led them to wander more and more away from their mission and true calling. Because of their sin and their impatience and selfishness, their promised land eluded them for so long. They could have entered right into the promised land after only a few days. They could have had forty years of a wonderful and prosperous life serving the Lord. Their children would have probably had a less callous life had they been obedient and taken the Lord more seriously.

It seems that each day that passes, we see more and more of the end times prophecy played out in the mainstream media. Social media is littered with selfishness and arrogance and anger. We see slander and lack of self-control. We see lovers of pleasure instead of people who truly love God.

We as Christians have so much to learn from the Israelites back in those days. We go about our day to day waking up, scrolling social media, watching the news, grabbing that fancy coffee on our way to work and completely forgetting to acknowledge our Lord and Savior. We do not offer Him our first fruits of the day. Slowly but surely, we are forgetting Him and setting Him on the back shelf to collect dust. The One who created us. He has all the power in the entire Universe to give us life and take it away. Without God, we would have no fancy coffee. We would have no social media to scroll or comfortable beds to sleep in.

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of  Godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people” (2 Timothy 3:1-5, ESV).

We see this very behavior playing out in society today. People are going to perish. Hell is described as a very awful place. We don’t truly wish it on our worst enemy. The unfortunate thing is that we are seeing what is described in 2 Timothy in the church. If we know we are in the last days, we do not have time to NOT take God’s Word seriously.

It is time for Christians to stand up and live out the Word of God. We have spent far too much time getting comfortable and trying not to rock the boat. Now is not the time to settle and be tolerant of false teachings and new age philosophy. It seems that these days, what is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right. Satan has successfully achieved his mission to turn our world upside down. Why have we as believers allowed this to happen? We have become complacent. We have tried to tiptoe around so as not to offend anyone for fear that we will push them away when, in fact, the very thing we have sought not to do has caused us to stumble ourselves. The prophecy will still play out, but we have a choice to either store up our treasures here on Earth or mature and be obedient and store up our treasures in Heaven.

We are here for a mission. We are here to be a beacon of light, a lighthouse to show people the way to safety. We are here to be salt and light and to show others that life does not have to be miserable. Sure, we may still have to deal with that person that cuts us off at the light or the person that tells us off at the cash register because we are taking too long. However, we are here to show people the love of God, that He is a sovereign, loving God that is not sitting up in Heaven on the edge of His seat waiting for us to mess up so that He can teach us a lesson. He wants a relationship with each of us.

As Christians, we have a duty to live out our lives as Jesus’s example. We are not here to judge people; we are not here to criticize. We are here to help direct people to the relationship we should have with our Lord and Savior. He who breathed life into us, He who knew our names before our parents ever found out we would be gracing the world with our presence.

As with everything, we need to be balanced. We need to know when to speak and when to be quiet. We need to know when to move and when to be still. How do we do this? With the Holy Spirit.

“The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you” (John 14:26, ESV).

If we are in prayer daily and staying in the Word of God, we will be able to hear the Holy Spirit’s guidance. We will start to sense what is appropriate and what is not. There will be a prompting in our hearts on how to handle each situation. We will be able to test the spirits to discern if what we are being taught is correct or a distorted version of God’s Word. It’s time to take our Christian walk seriously and start being a better example of what it is to live out our calling in this world. To reflect the TRUE nature of our Lord and Savior. Jesus paid such a high price for us to inherit the Kingdom. Although we are saved by grace, should we not show Him in the way we live how much we appreciate the high price He paid for us?

“Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14, ESV).

When the day comes where we stand before our Heavenly Father, will you hear, “Well done my good and faithful servant”? We need to be mindful daily that Satan is out to derail our train. He is deceitful and will do everything in his power to make you believe you have all the time in the world, so you may as well just enjoy it while it lasts. We need to put on the Armor of God and leave it on. We should be sleeping in it. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit.  We should be praying and conversing with the Lord daily. We should not be fighting amongst ourselves but acknowledging the true enemy so that we can all work together as one body. We are called to love one another. This should be our norm. We are here to be spiritual warriors.

“Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another”. Ephesians 4:25

 

 

This is an updated edition of a post originally published on anchoredinatrove.wordpress.com

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The views and opinions expressed by Kingdom Winds Collective Members, authors, and contributors are their own and do not represent the views of Kingdom Winds LLC.

About the Author

Valerie Close has a passion of encouraging others with the truth from the word of God and her own personal experiences. She is faith-driven and a seeker of truth with a real heart and compassion for other people to come out on the other side with a new hope and revelation of Jesus Christ.

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