Ephesians 6 describes our faith as a shield that repels, resists and rejects the satanic assault against us. The other five chapters contain references to our faith as the means to our sustenance, our mutual edification and in fact, the key to all of God’s great provision for us. Our faith in the Word must emphasize it as a shield in warfare or little that we believe for comes to pass.
Eph. 6; Eph. 1:15–16
We love the Scriptures but we miss the full impact of what they are saying and making them work in our life. That is where the battle is.
Let the Scriptures work. Let them be the formulas that God has committed to man whereby His omnipotence and His omniscience is loosed to bring about His will through us in this earth.
Faith becomes the key that unlocks the door to God’s fullness but it also becomes the defense against the satanic attack that would keep that fullness from us.
DO I READ IT OR DO I EAT IT?
Through the Scriptures the implication is given that the prophets and the apostles of the Lord did not merely read; they ate the Word of the Lord and they witnessed that it was sweet to the taste but bitter to the stomach. The difficult process is assimilation of the Word and becoming what it reveals.
Jer. 15:16; Ezek. 3:1; Rev. 10:8–11; Deut. 8; John 7:37; Matt. 13.
This siege of victory seems to be showing fruitfulness in the whole overall breakthrough in the realm of spirit. It’s just like a cloud’s lifting.
Don’t say, “I’m waiting for my own personal deliverance before I get involved.” Get involved with this collectively and you will find out that generally the answers come to everybody all at once.
You are positioned for one of the greatest things that’s ever happened in your life. That is the privilege of believing and walking with God through the end of one age into another. This siege is a victory siege that is going to do just that for us.
God never lets you become one who merely transmits ideas; it has to come out of your own being. If that Word is written on your heart, then you can speak it.
When the whole assimilation process has taken place there will have been deposited within your life the miracle of becoming something in God that His Word brought forth in you.
If we are going to speak a Word, it is because first of all God purges us. That whole sanctifying process is so that we can speak the Word to the nations.
We eat the Word and it’s sweet to us and we really love it, but it’s going to be bitter until the Word overcomes that within our life that resists it.
The desolation has only occurred because we got a Word and that Word had to bring desolation because we had so many other things still in our spirit we didn’t even realize.
Every step of desolation reveals something that was warring against the Word in us.
The Word never stops working until it is written on the tablets of our heart and we have become living epistles known and read by all men. That’s the ultimate thing God is seeking in us.
Everything that is going to happen to bring down Babylon’s order will happen because of the spiritual level that His people have attained, and that will be because of the Word they have assimilated.
SIGHT AND FOCUS IN THE SIEGE
The deep release in our spirits is enabling us to view everything more clearly without the distortion of emotional and soulish conditionings. Included is the spontaneous explosion of the prophets in a huddle after the Word came.
This victory siege is taking a turn that I didn’t anticipate. It’s not breaking through to incidents of victory so much as it is positioning us in the victory of the Lord.
Little by little in this siege we are positioning ourselves in the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are appropriating a level that God has already provided for us.
The level of revelation is rising and little areas, little pockets of deception are being broken for people.
Devastation really would not have been necessary in the first place if we’d had the right attitudes in our heart toward the Lord and toward everything that He’s doing.
Things are being uncovered that were buried. Not that they are such bad things but they were indications of attitudes that were to change, a little coloring in our thinking, little influences.
If we can reach this victory siege state that God wants us to reach, we will have the mind of Christ.
God is releasing us from things that we have inherited in our very nature. At the same time He will loose us from the conditioning that we have acquired through our environment.
The initiative is coming stronger and stronger for you to believe and for you to be led by the Spirit of the Lord.
In this victory siege God is bringing everybody up into a more mature understanding of each other.
This victory siege is going to result in more effectiveness and maturity, more evangelism, more of a compassion for other groups.
A lot of things are brought to light to be dispelled. Now I am not trying to run from the past, I can live with it. It isn’t anything that is so bad because now that it has opened up there’s nothing to fear.
In relationships we were on the defensive to a great degree. Everyone is changing and we’re coming to see that we’re all one and we’re flowing. We’re changing in our thinking.
People don’t always absorb teaching and preaching as much, but begin to discuss it and the dialogue they get.
You take five boys in the back room and you get further than you do trying to preach to a big crowd. But it isn’t necessarily the limited number. You can have a number of people around but it’s the fact that it’s in a relaxed state of focus.
It is a relaxed focus. We’re not struggling so hard to see and we’re seeing more clearly in a new dimension.
God has driven us right up into a total acceptance of our victory in Him. It has been the most Christ-exalting thing that has happened for a long time.
It’s one thing to say, “Jesus, You’re the Lord, You can change this. Just speak the Word.” But it’s another place where you actually live in an awareness of His Lordship over every detail and that victory has been given once and for all time for you.
All we’re doing is moving in what has been done for us.
It’s a revelation of what He has already done and our position with Him in it. Because we have died with Him we have also risen with Him. We are seated at the right hand of God. And if we believe it, we were perfected by that one sacrifice.
The Lord can give you the victory and you still have to unlearn the defeat that you carry in your spirit.
You have to accept victory and reject defeat because we have really accepted defeat as a way of life. We have accepted limitation as being part of our everyday walk with God.
Victory has to teach us to unlearn a lot.