Faith and Courage

We are barely halfway through 2020. But from when we woke up on January 1 to now, the world has changed dramatically.

Sulemani, Netanyahu, Gantz, Johnson, Putin, Xi, the British royal family, the German far right. Escalation in Syria. Inferno in Australia. In the first months of the year, our world was already rapidly changing. Yet those events seem like distant memories. The world truly changed with the draconian government responses to coronavirus that crippled their own economies—and the rights their citizens thought they had.

But even the ongoing pandemic oppression seems strangely distant. Much more painfully immediate is the outbreak of “protests, rioting, looting, burning, violence and statue toppling” in dozens of American cities and the larger coordinated, sustained, direct attack on American “society, culture and history.” Activists are branding most of America, past and present, as “racist.”

This is obviously not a spontaneous, earnest protest about racial prejudice: “This is an ongoing revolution.” Many different people with different motivations are united in “hatred”, united not in what they want to build, but in what they want to tear down: “the American government and the system of American government itself.”

In fact, they are openly trying to destroy institutions even more foundational than American constitutional government. They are tearing down the principles of individual rights, rule of law, the police, male leadership, even the actual structure of family itself. What they are targeting are the last few remnants of America’s Bible-based heritage: “any lingering recognition of God, favorability toward the Bible, fundamental concepts of right and wrong, individual responsibility, the relationship between male and female, even the existence of male and female.”

It’s July 2020. You live in a “different” world. You can feel the “hate, fear and disgust” across the nation.

The surprising, almost synchronized reaction to this “socialist insurrection” has been journalists, actors, commentators, athletes, professors and even corporations falling all over themselves to show how “anti-racist” they are. Some people have tried to speak out. Within 24 hours or so they are retreating from one fearful, groveling apology to the next. I’m sorry I didn’t realize I was so racist. Some have been fired or silenced. Some have literally knelt before the mob. Most people are looking around and asking, “What in the world has happened?” They don’t understand where it came from, but they are beginning to realize that it is going to touch their cities, their families.

The state of the world gets a lot clearer, and a lot scarier, when you realize where this “raging wrath” comes from. It originates not with one person, one group, one political party, one nation or even one ideology. We are facing a “spirit of hate”, produced by a completely enraged spirit being: “Satan the devil!” (Revelation 12:9, verse12.)

Evil is real, hatred is real, and its spiritual source is very real. And what is coming will be far worse than people have ever imagined.  Satan is real, but so is God. And even as Satan’s tide of hatred rises, you can see God’s intervention. God is using the current president of the United States to fulfill this prophecy! People do not realize just how close the nation is to collapse.

Donald Trump has proved himself willing to take a stand where others have not. It is quite something to behold him resisting these anti-American forces! Think of it! Thousands of powerful politicians, bureaucrats, spymasters, professors, billionaires, media moguls, journalists, influencers and other enemies, foreign and domestic, swaying millions of followers. How could they possibly be held back? Only God could do it, and He does it not only through miracles but also by the hand of one man. Despite Trump’s flaws, there is something about this leader’s character that God is using.

King Jeroboam was flawed. The judge Joshua was flawed. The judge Gideon was flawed. The Prophet Ezekiel was flawed. The Apostle Paul was flawed. So was the Prophet Jonah, who took God’s message into the heart of the cruel Assyrian Empire and also prophesied to Jeroboam that God was with him. But God overcame enormous hostility by the hands of these men.

What quality did God use in these men? Courage. Winston Churchill said, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.”

You are flawed. You lack courage. So do we all. But without it, satanic “hatred and violence” will overwhelm you. How can you replace your fear with courage? Believe and fear and obey God. He commands true Christians who are doing His work to “be strong and of good courage” and “be not afraid” (Ezekiel 2-3; Deuteronomy 3). Follow the examples God gives you in the Bible, and trust Him for the courage. Joshua led the Israelites into the Promised Land, and conquering it took six or seven years of fighting one fortified city after another.

“It appears that the Joshua of Moses’s time had one outstanding strength, spiritual courage.” (Joshua 1:5-7) “God was instructing him to use this quality, showing him how much he would need it.” Among those true Christians who have turned away from God, “spiritual courage may be the greatest need. Without it, the other virtues are of little value!” 

Satan is raging. His “spirit of hate” is in the process of literally ending the world as we know it (Ephesians 6:12). And his greatest targets are those who have something to do with God, His work and His message. You will either succumb to him, or you will arm yourself with God’s power and overcome him (verses 13-18).

Joshua said to the Israelites then, and to us today: “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous. This is what the Lord will do to all the enemies you are going to fight.” (Joshua 10:25)

Without God, you are “helpless and hopeless.” But with God, you can be “fearless, brave, solid, courage’s and not afraid.”

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