In Stillness, We Have Victory

UV 2230/10000 In Stillness, We Have Victory

The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.
Exodus 14 v 14

Life is a constantly changing battlefield in many ways. The enemy is invisible. Every single day, the challenge is different. His tactics and weapons keep changing. The scriptural principle of standing still in such a battlefield may seem suicidal. But it is the way the Lord chooses to deliver His own, the faithful. He delivered the Israelites from the formidable power of the Egyptians without the former having to lift a finger in their own defence. The word “Israel” means struggle with God. We should stop struggling against the Lord, against flesh and blood as well as principalities and powers of spiritual darkness and hand over the struggle or the fight to the Lord. Stillness is yielding every battle to the Lord and expecting victory as a result. The ultimate and absolute enemy of mankind is not of our own species but is the evil one. The ultimate battle for every human being is not physical, intellectual, emotional, economic, cultural, political or social but it is spiritual. In this uni-verse, the Lord promises to fight for us. In quietness and confidence that the Lord will fight for us is our strength and victory. He asks us to hold our peace, to be still, to be faithful and courageous. A manger leader or manager also faces conflicts, arguments, disputes, controversies but he takes the counsel of the Lord and holds his peace in such volatile or provocative situations. The enemy wants to rob us of our domestic peace, peace at our workplace and peace in our streets and cities. We got to be always wary of his attempts to disturb our peace. Stillness is a great spiritual discipline that we need to practice.

We need to be wise in our ways and keep ourselves out of pointless arguments, disputes, wordy quarrels and controversies. Holding our peace implies holding our tongue or not speaking unnecessarily, knowing that the Lord will fight on our behalf. Some of our weaknesses are known to others, some are hidden but the spiritual enemy knows our hidden weaknesses as well as our weak moments and will try to create situations to expose the chinks in our spiritual armour by drawing us into battle. We got to be mentally and spiritually alert at these times. Sometimes, our own hidden pride would surface and get us embroiled in an argument with our near and dear or our colleagues. In such times, matters will only get worse if we add fuel to the fire by our anger and emotion charged words. Instead, the Lord says, “ Be still and know that I am God.” We will realize that His peace and plan will prevail in every situation as we pray in silence. We will understand that no word from us or no action or reaction on our part can either save us or help God to save us. We surrender our right to respond to the situation to the Lord. Our faith needs to be greatly strengthened with knowledge of the Word for us to accept stillness as an option in the battles of life. Surrender to the enemy is defeat, surrender to the Lord is victory.

Often, we reach a flashpoint in our relationships at home or at work as we are under a great deal of stress due to some factor or we are filled with bottled up resentment or bitterness at the action or inaction of someone else. Instead of doing nothing about it, we ought to confide in the Lord daily about the hurts, the pain, the misgivings, the fears, the pent up anger we feel about a variety of issues. He will then send His word to “heal us of our destructions” as it is promised in scripture. Seeking a daily healing of our emotional being should form a part of our devotion every single day at the start and end. It is perhaps the only way we can prevent the sun going down on our anger as each day, stuff is bound to happen that upsets us, disturbs us, offends us. We should over a period of time turn our emotional sensitivities into spiritual sensitivity to awaken us to spend more time in specific prayer and the Word. Even Jesus was strengthened greatly by the filling of the Holy Spirit before He ventured into the wilderness and was tempted by the devil over forty days of complete fasting. We need to seek a daily filling of the Holy Spirit before we venture into each day. We will then like Him be able to face and overcome the three great temptations: the temptation of sustenance – the fear of not having enough to live on, the temptation of personal glory, the temptation of folly.

Prateep V Philip