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Is your enemy your friend?

 

 

"Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are in the way with him; that the opponent not deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be thrown into prison" (Matthew 5:25).

God’s Kingdom principle for victory [in any circumstance] is resurrection. Resurrection is not possible without the death of the cross. God is not the one who brings death into our lives; He leaves that to our enemies. Therefore the enemy becomes a friend to us.

Gene Edwards is quoted in his book "The Inward Journey" page 89, as follows:

The time when you get the idea that God has allowed His enemy some portion of your life, even for one split-second, remember this: if God had actually allowed Satan to come into your life, when the confrontation is over, the results will be transformational in you. Be sure, a little less of the dark side of your humanity will be there. A little more of the bright side of his ability will have taken its place.

If you have the tendency to blame everything on the Devil, then you're going to miss out on a great deal of the Lord's work intended for your life.

True, it may be that this one called Satan is in control of the world; but please remember to press on that matter one more step: the Lord is ultimately in control of Satan. I repeat, ultimately, even your enemy Lucifer is under the control of the Lord.

The Lord uses resurrection as His law for victory. He does not just clean things up in our lives. He buries our victory in the grave so that the enemy also goes into the grave. When resurrection takes place, our provisions come up and our enemy stays in! The characteristics in us that were like the enemy also stay in the grave.

God wants to abundantly bless us. However the blessings He wants for our lives are the ones that the world and Satan have no more dominion over. The only ones that qualify for that are the ones that have been raised from the dead. Like Romans 6 says, "death has no more dominion."

"They (the former tyrant master's) are dead, they shall not live and reappear; there are powerless ghosts, they shall not rise and come back. Therefore YOU have visited and made an end of them, and caused every memorial of them, every trace of their supremacy to perish" (Is 26:14).

"Your dead shall live, O Lord; the bodies of our dead saints shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is the dew of sparkling light, O Lord (Heavenly supernatural dew); and the earth shall cast forth the dead to life again, for on the land of the shades of the dead you will let your dew fall" (Is 26:19).

If we have truly turned from the ways of the world to the ways of the Kingdom of God, then we should not expect to see the world’s way of victory in our lives. We should not be expecting God to simply bless our wonderful plans for comfort and success. That would make us spiritual brats without any character. Don’t expect God to take the ways of the world and just put His blessing on them. The destiny for the ways of the world (and our flesh) is not improvement but death. God takes the ways of the world and crucifies them in our lives so that the ways of the Kingdom will prevail.

What did Habakkuk see that caused him to almost go out of control with joy? He asked God why such an unrighteous enemy was pursuing Israel. To distill the story, God in effect told Habakkuk that it was He, God, who was causing the enemy to pursue, SO THAT they [the enemy] would be destroyed. That is when Habakkuk gets real happy. "A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, set to wild, enthusiastic and triumphal music" (Habakkuk 3:1 Amp).

"and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross" (Colossians 1:20). Reconcile is to convert an enemy to a friend. The Cross of Jesus does just that.

But get the confirmation for yourself. Make sure that YOU hear God speak to YOU, then you will have the confirmation spoken of in Hebrews 11.

"Now faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed, of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality, faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses" (Hebrews 11:1 Amp.).

Faith only comes by hearing God speak personally to you! Take the time to listen and you will have victory.

 

Larry Chkoreff January, 2000