We were at a ministers meeting a couple of weeks ago. A few people wanted to have an impromptu prayer time for us. There were 3 guys praying for Mike and I. A wife of one of the guys came over and started to pray too. She told us that the moment she came over she heard the loudest, fiercest battle cry come from us. She said it was so loud and powerful that it scared her!
I have been thinking about that since she said it and have been both encouraged and convicted by it. I am encouraged because Mike and I are both fighters of the faith. Nothing has been able to stand in our way. Things rise up but we fight through them. We have blazed many new trails in our 20 years together.
I am convicted because gone are the days of believing we (all of us) can really make a change in this world. I have been watching Mysteries at the Museums (a TV show) with the boys and I shake my head in amazement as I see how many times in history ONE person forever changed our course as a nation. What happen to those days when ONE man believed he could make a difference? When did we become sniveling, wimpy, whiney believers? Scared of our own shadow...afraid to ripple the water...afraid we will lose friends by standing firm to our beliefs without being a jerk about it. We have become powerless yet we expect people to flock to our churches. WHY? What do we have that they need? When was the last time we showed them God's power? Maybe the better question would be when was the last time we ourselves experienced His power? What has become of us?
I think one answer to that question would be we have lost our Battle Cry. If you have the nifty app called Holy Bible You Version search battle cry. There is verse after verse of the people of Judah raising a battle cry and God coming to their defense and crushing their enemies. 2nd Chronicles 13:15- 'and the men of Judah began to shout. At the sound of their Battle Cry, God DEFEATED Heroboam and all Israel'....There are many more verses like that!
Joel 2:1- 'Sound the alarm in Jerusalem. Raise the battle cry on my Holy mountain. Let everyone tremble in fear because the day of the Lord is upon us!' Come on church!! RAISE THE BATTLE CRY take back what is ours. Get off your butts, get out of your 4 walls. Raise the battle cry because the day of our Lord is upon us!!! When God hears our battle cry it rouses Him to battle. If you have been covering your eyes for a while stop, LOOK around. The church is a giant slumbering version of what God wants her to be. Let's sound the BATTLE CRY let's wake the sleeping giant. Let God hear our cry and come to our rescue. God loves to be our champion. He loves to come in and show Himself strong.
I leave you with something cool I found the other day. I have been reading about the reign of King Hezekiah...yawn...I know I use to think the same thing but I read this fantastic historical fiction book that got me reading those parts of the Bible with a whole new outlook and understanding of that time in history. To lay some ground work for the story Judah has just come from the reign of one of it's most evil kings Ahaz. He placed idols in every corner of Judah and even in the temple of God. He closed the Holy place and sold Judah to the Assyrian Empire for protection. After he died his son Hezekiah become king.
Hezekiah wants to restore Judah to its rightful place as a nation that has Yahweh's favor. He tears down all the idols and repairs the temple. He wants to free Jerusalem from the Assyrians. He encourages his people that God will fight for them. The king of Assyria kept sending letters to Hezekiah and the letter bearers would read the letters to all the people to try to scare them. "What makes you think your God can rescue you from my power". The Assyrian King takes pleasure in taunting the God of Hezekiah. But the Bible says 'King Hezekiah and Amoz cried out in prayer to God in Heaven. And the Lord sent AN angel who destroyed the Assyrian army with all its commanders and officers. So the Assyrian King was forced to return home in disgrace. And when he entered the temple of his god, some of his own sons killed him there with a sword.'' (2 Chronicles 32)
The thing that I love so much from this passage is that the Lord only sent ONE angel to wipe out the most powerful kingdom of that time!! The prayers of 2 men aroused God's protective side and He only had to send ONE to come to their rescue. What could we do if we as a church would raise the battle cry to our God who, with one messenger of Heaven, can defeat an entire empire. What would our world look like today if we understood the power we hold? What would our government look like if we stopped thinking 'oh whatever...it is just going to happen anyways. There is nothing I can do about it'? What would our families look like if we raised a Battle Cry over them and told Satan to get his hands off? What would our workplace look like if we began the day with a Battle cry before stepping foot into the building?
Raise the Battle Cry! Watch your Heavenly Father come running!!
