“And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.”
2 Chronicles 20:15, ESV
We certainly don’t face a human army, yet the spiritual battle is just as consuming. Satan and his hordes are working 24/7 to capture our hearts and minds. He wants to enslave our spirits, and to assimilate us into his rebellion against God. For the broken believer, we know where we are weakest. Satanic influence can be fierce. However we are not alone.
Jehoshaphat’s own situation was precarious. Vastly out numbered, his own troops were about to be slaughtered and Jerusalem captured. Jehoshaphat responds by praying. He acknowledges God, and asks for divine help. We find him desperate, and that is how humility grows.
‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.”
When God intervenes, we can only watch (and trust) His deliverance. King Jehoshaphat arranged for his army to be led by singers. There is a confidence here. Praise and worship is the way the enemy is defeated. “The battle belongs to God.” A great victory is won.
Make God your general. Infuse the atmosphere with prayer and praise. Impossible things are about to happen. Victory can be yours if you can only ‘get out of the way.’ This is the wisest and the safest course. (My worst defeats have come when I try my hardest to battle on my own.) When the enemy is pounding at the door, ask Jesus to answer it. He alone will bring you the victory.
“I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.“
Isaiah 48:10
“Once we have come through the ‘furnace of humiliation,’ desperately, fearfully clinging to Christ for all He is worth, then we are fully equipped to march into somebody else’s furnace.”
‘Blessed with Bipolar”
Becoming a real and authentic person starts with basic responses that we’ve made in the presence of Jesus. Amazingly, this simple faith becomes the prerequisite, granting us the right to enter. However, without faith in those promises, you won’t find anything real or true.
You will not be able to handle the Kingdom of God unless you’re walking out a life of brokenness and humility.
I believe that only the heat of the furnace can teach us these things.
There are furnace promises, but they, without truly understanding them will walk around in unreality. Often ‘they get religion.’ These are those who land on “the rocky soil.” They become ‘quasi-disciples’ who will do and say things that they really don’t really understand.
But furnace people have the connection to that which is honest and true. They rarely enter into anything false or manipulative. Their own hearts are transformed by the fire, and only then are qualified to minister God’s grace. Only furnace people can enter in. You will know them by their scars.
The Church has a tremendous need for those who have withstood the furnace of humiliation.
After we endure its ugliness and its great evil, we’ll discover that we’re in an altogether different place than when we first started. The Church is waiting for those who went in and then come out on the other side.
Furnace people have the ability to function gracefully at this particular stage.
Furnace people are brought to a place where they can minister the grace of God into desperate situations. We must convince ourselves, that furnace people have a gift. They have been through the worst. They may be battered and bruised. But they still stand.
Our brothers and sisters have carried the Word with wisdom and grace. They come to us, through the fire. But will we receive them?
My hope is that you would personally grasp what God has worked in you. That really is your truest calling. The things good or bad, that have happened to you are part of how you’ll understand grace. He waits for you to respond. Will you come to Him, through the grace you find in the flames?
The most gracious people you’ll ever meet are those who endured God’s furnace.
“The furnace of affliction is a good place for you, Christian; it benefits you; it helps you to become more like Christ, and it is fitting you for heaven.”
A terrific study is finding the people who fell at Jesus’ feet. Tucked in the Gospels you’ll find stories of those who despair. You’ll also see them come to Jesus in brokenness and humility, without any other recourse. I call these the feet-finders.
They came to Jesus because they had no hope otherwise. They were people who were hopeless and wretched, they had long ago run out of options. They came to Jesus, falling down in front of Him. They were all feet-finders.
They were men and women who were truly desperate.
“Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
John 11:32
One of the classic scenes in the Gospels is when Mary meets Jesus after her brother’s death. She doesn’t understand Jesus’ delay, Lazarus has been very ill and Jesus could have healed him. She is grieving and confused. But she only has one posture and one place in her heart to be– at the feet!
There are some common characteristics that feet-finders have:
A great need that can’t be met without His touch
To understand one’s true condition–humility, brokenness
To beg for a healing, for self or family
To honor Jesus as the Messiah
To be more receptive to His teaching, to understand Him
To become a witness to others (although it does seem secondary)
The following 3 verses are just a small selection of those who fell at Jesus feet.
“And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them.”
Matthew 15:30
“But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.“
Mark 7:25
“Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”
Luke 8:35
But there are several other instances where people came to sit at Jesus’ feet:
Mark 5:22-23, Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue
Luke 7:37-38, a sorrowing mother for her daughter
Luke 8:41, also Jairus
Luke 10:39, Mary, when Jesus was teaching
John 11:32, Mary, meeting Jesus entering Bethany
John 12:3, Mary, with her perfume
Revelation 1:17, John to express what he was seeing (also 19:10)
In every case we find people consciously coming and kneeling at the feet of the Lord Jesus. It was a deliberate action that came from their hearts. Each had a terrible need, and each was without hope.
It’s the end of religion if you’re a feet-finder. No more facades, no more treadmills. Instead your heart forever changes.
Formality and religious politeness are jettisoned. Brokenness and true humility takes their place. A foot-finder is no longer operating on spiritual niceties. Religion is comfortable, noble, and respectable, but it cannot heal or change people deeply.
Feet-finders know that they need Jesus desperately and will go to any length just to be touched by Him. They defy what is conventional and proper. They are not what we call respectable. You can find them at the feet of Jesus. They are feet-finders. Foot-finders weep, kneel, beg, shout. Too many tears and maybe some snot.
Hardly decent to religious people.
Are you really that desperate yet? Have you seen your need, and do you realize how lost you would be without His healing touch?
Often when I do pray, I sometimes think of the woman who was unclean. She speaks to me about approaching Jesus. I see myself in a crushing crowd of people, and I’m reaching out just to touch the hem of His robe. I know only Jesus can stop my own uncleanness. (Matthew 9.)
I’m convinced only Jesus can make me clean and whole.
I’ve tried to be holy and acceptable to Him. But I felt like a juggler, trying to keep my balls in the air all at the same time, and I could never pull it off. So I tried again and again.I was the unofficial master of religious effort.
But I found my rightful place at His feet. It’s where I belong. I love Him.
“We all carry about in our pockets His very nails.” –Luther
“I am proud of the good news! It is God’s powerful way of saving all people who have faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles.”
Romans 1:16, CEV
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
Romans 1:16, ESV
What is it that holds you back?
Is there a significant issue–a new boat or your next vacation to Disneyland? Would that keep you from following Him? Would you trade Him, for that?
So many of us are “chicken” when it comes to witnessing Jesus Christ. We ‘cluck and duck’ when the subject of God or religion is raised. We hope no one is looking when we ask God to bless our food in a public place. Honestly, most of the time the issue for us is the fear of rejection. (It’s funny but some have never really gotten past the intimidation we experienced in High School.)
The saints who watch us from heaven, have got to be astonished at our embarrassment of Jesus, (Heb. 12: 1). They look and wonder at the way we act, when so many of them have suffered deeply. They have been repeatedly, and deliberately hurt for Jesus. But yet we’re arguing about padded pews and the color of the carpeting in our sanctuary.
“For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Mark 8:32, ESV
I suppose we must learn again the spirit of the saints who are suffering for the sake of the Gospel. This very minute they are in prisons, in torture, in abuse all because they profess a love for Jesus Christ.
Could it be possible that God is calling you to leave your comfortable Christianity behind and tell someone that Jesus loves them and wants to save them. Will you do it, or will you be too ashamed? Let this be the present now that you bring the light of Christ to your dorm, your neighborhood, your apartment building, your baseball team, or wherever God has placed you. Let Him use you for His glory!
I suggest that our faith will activate God– your fear switches on the influence of Satan.
“Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but trusting the Lord means safety.”
Broken Believers 