A Transparent Heart Unveiled
God desires to fight for the injustices in our lives. He is a God of love and righteousness, and within that, His justice prevails. Our safety is in the goodness of the Lord. I’m grateful that the bible assures us that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, and are called according to His purpose for them (Romans 8:28).
If we are surrendered to His purposes, we are redeemed from the messes in our lives. If we are surrendered to His way, He will fight for us and His righteousness will protect us from doing wrong and bringing further trouble to any conflict, injustice or affliction in our lives. But if there’s even a hint of pride or deceit in our hearts about our own motivation, we forfeit seeing His will clearly. Letting God fight for us means that we humble ourselves and unveil our hearts. We desire to follow after His holiness in every engagement, conversation, motivation and choice.
God Promises To Fight For Us
As I prepared for this month’s THRESHING FLOOR, questioning how I was going to make sure I handled this topic correctly, I dealt with an issue in my own life. As I took my hands off of my situation and watched it unfold, I felt the Holy Spirit reassure me that He wants to fight for us and He wants us to know that He wants to.
There is a gravity in God’s righteousness and we need to carry a healthy fear of the Lord. As we discuss how God fights for us at The THRESHING FLOOR we are also reminded to be grateful for His mercy and sovereignty. If God didn’t fight for us, we would never overcome. So we thank God for this reality, because in God’s righteousness is God’s glory. That’s our direction for this topic.
Let’s look at some verses that demonstrate God’s intent and promise to fight on our behalf:
Exodus 14:14 (NIV)
The LORD will fight for you, you need only to be still.
(NKJV)
The LORD will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.
(NLT)
The LORD Himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.
Perhaps this is the main reason God wants to fight for us – because we so easily sin when we go in to a fight ourselves. It’s too easy to get caught in wrong motives. We don’t stay calm. We don’t hold our peace. We judge. We put our fists up. We think we’re right and everyone else is wrong. We sin.
God’s righteousness is just and impartial and He cannot sin. He is never tempted. He is the perfect referee. He goes in to fight the proud on behalf of the meek. We need to be meek, and when we step back and give it to God, and say, ok LORD, I’ll trust you to deal with this the way you see fit, we are being meek. It’s also a really wonderful way of taking the stress out of your life. Relinquish it to the all-knowing, loving power of God.
Psalm 91:14 (GNB)
God says, "I will save those who love me and will protect those who acknowledge me as LORD.
It’s not always a relationship battle that God goes in and fights for us over.
You might have to go into a big group and meet a whole lot of new people and you might find that really hard.
Maybe you have to overcome a weakness or addiction in your life and you have to rely on God to help you think differently, make different choices and keep you convicted to follow through.
God will go in before you. You just need to be still in Him. He’s with you. He’s sees your need and can strengthen and comfort you. He sends His angels to minister to you and to guard you.
Psalm 34:7-8 (NKJV)
The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
The night my marriage ended I had been abandoned in an unknown city and had to navigate myself on foot for hours through street after unknown street in the darkness of the night back to the place we were staying. The chances of that happening were crazy-to-none and the unlikelihood of making it back safely was not lost on me. Though I was afraid, and also really angry, I felt a blanketing presence around me and I now know that I was given an angelic encampment around me, physically safeguarding and guiding me back. It turned out that while I wasn't attacked on the dangerous streets outside, I was attacked inside by the person I should have been able to trust the most, but even then, God put a stop to his actions.
Later, journeying through a separate unpredictable relationship, I came back to the Lord and began seeking God’s direction through the bible in order to take instruction for every situation I faced, every conversation I was having, every decision I faced and the mindset I needed to be equipped with.
God showed me clearly how He was fighting for me and with me. Through every situation, as I placed my life back in His hands, He began to redeem my situation. He spoke to me through His Word and I took the scriptures that leapt out at me and spoke to my situation, by faith. I began to meditate on them and declare them over my life.
Isaiah 54:14
In righteousness you will be established: Tyranny will be far from you; you will have nothing to fear. Terror will be far removed; it will not come near you.
I thought I knew how God would act. But God didn’t act in the way I thought and He didn’t bring about the outcome I thought I needed.
While I had to learn to fight in faith, God developed a backbone in me. I learned about the spiritual battle not being flesh and blood. I learned not to look at the person in front of me that I thought I was fighting, but behind him to the spiritual element that was messing with him. I learnt how to tread carefully, not angrily, impetuously, vengefully, or spitefully. I learned that God loves me but He also loves who I'm fighting. He moves against the proud but He is long in suffering and requires that I am too.
Isaiah 60:18
No longer will violence be heard in your land, nor ruin or destruction within your borders, but you will call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise.
Even though my situation didn’t change in any way I imagined, God established safe borders for us. While God was establishing our safe borders, it didn’t always feel safe. It didn’t become easier for a long time. I held on to the scriptures He gave me, believing they were for me and my household. I held on to the knowledge that God was helping us and wouldn’t let us go and would see us through to the very end.
Psalm 34:18 (NIV)
The LORD is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
2 Thessalonians 1:6 (BLB)
For indeed it is righteous with God to repay those oppressing you with affliction,
I didn’t see God afflict with punishment or violence in return for my affliction but I saw Him afflict with frustration and blocked the way of my oppressor. In that, I have seen an amazing grace at work through it all.
Romans 12:19 (NLT)
Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, “I will take revenge. I will pay them back” says the Lord.
We have to be careful to keep our hearts pure. Revenge, manipulation, spitefulness is all part of a lack of trust in God and allows Satan to work rather than God. God doesn’t desire for us to be at war.
Psalm 46 (NIV)
:1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble
: 5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
:8-10 Come and see what the Lord has done…. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.... He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
God showed me the time where the war in my relationship would cease. He showed me He was over turning the tables and that I would not be the tail any more, the worm under someone else’s shoes.
We don’t always see what God’s plan is. We have to learn to trust Him.
Sometimes God expects us to fight (we covered that in the last THRESHING FLOOR discussion, The Art of a Good Fight, you can read the notes here), but whether He wants us to fight, or to stand, or to be quiet and wait, afterwards we can see how He worked things out for us.
God desires to fight for us.
It’s okay to ask for release from situations, but God often wants us to stay in the fight because of what He’s wanting to accomplish. He’s more interested in our transforming process than our temporal situation. He knows how to look after us through our temporal situation but are we trusting and engaged enough to allow Him to do things His way? It’s not always comfortable or what we’d choose, but we have to call to mind something big: He is training and developing our character to rule and reign with Him in eternity. He develops our character so that we lack nothing and we do not remain immature (James 1:4).
The Bigger Picture
Romans 12:9 (NRSV)
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.
Hebrews 12:14-15 (NIV)
Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
It's A Long Road
It can take a long time for a life to be rebuilt. There’s many things that we don’t understand and they might look unfair or unchanging. We may lose property, marriages, or closeness with our children. We may have to work our way through court processes. We may battle illness. We may lose careers and financial security. At times, it may feel like we're losing our mind.
How do we stop ourselves from becoming devastated when we don’t seem to get any respite? How do we stop ourselves from being disappointed when we don’t seem to reap from the good things we’ve sewn?
Isaiah 58:11-12 (NIV)
The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
We need to elevate our spiritual understanding and change our perspective.
God gives us promises to look forward to. It’s important not to give up on what God can do. Think about bible characters like Moses, Jacob, Joseph, Job, David, Daniel or Peter. Sarah, Rahab, Naomi, Ruth, Bathsheba, Queen Esther and Abigail. In the times when it’s hardest and we’re stretched beyond what we feel we can handle, we can let God do the fighting and rest in His ability each day. At times, we just have to go along for the ride, trusting in His goodness and His power to sort things out. It’s often like the last breath of a dying man, but when you’ve reached rock bottom and you have nothing more to give, our desperation and inability can be a good thing.
Philippians 1:6
God will finish what He started until the day of Jesus Christ.
Why Does God Fight For Us?
We are created in His image (Genesis 1:26); in His likeness; we were made to resemble Him.
Our lives, all of our messes don’t resemble Him, do they? So what is God’s perspective?
God Wants Our Lives To Be Used For His Glory
Proverbs 16:4 (NLT) The LORD has made everything for His own purposes.
Isaiah 43:7 They are my own people, and I created them to bring me glory.”
Jesus’ life purpose was to sacrifice Himself for all of humanity. Our sacrifices and our obedience bring God glory.
John 17:4 TLB [Jesus said] I brought glory to you here on earth by doing everything you told me to.
His Glory Is Weighty
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (BSB)
For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
We fix our eyes not on what we see our lives are in deficit of, but we fix our eyes on the weight of God’s glory that is beyond comparison. God ultimately fights for our faith.
What does that mean for us?
He is fighting for our redemption and salvation through life circumstances as well as our eternal salvation.
A Different Perspective
John 4:24
God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
Genesis 1:27 (AMP)
So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them.
We are firstly spiritual beings. Our body may be how we are recognised but it is a tent that will be replaced. Just like the temporal things in life that we place so much emphasis on in the present, they won’t mean much in eternity unless we have surrendered them to God and allowed His glory to be revealed through us.
I was spending quiet time with God and felt Him so close that I wanted to hug Him. I had this sudden thought, 'I’ll never be able to hug you!' (to the Holy Spirit). 'Because you’re Spirit'. And I heard an immediate response like a little chuckle, ‘You are too’.
Through my mind, within a couple of seconds, I thought through these things: how God the Father is enthroned in radiant light His face can’t be seen so He is physically untouchable though not spiritually (Ezekiel 1:25-28); but Jesus took on the tent of humanity and even since His resurrection is recognised physically in a certain way (Luke 24:39 ESV See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."); and the Holy Spirit can take on the form of anything – the bible shows God’s presence with the Israelites in the desert through a cloud by day and fire by night, a dove when Jesus was baptised, and He is also described as wind and water throughout the bible.
We are made in the image of God, and God is Spirit. The spiritual nature is the eternal nature. The bible says we’ll receive a new body after we die – the point I’m trying to make is that all that we see and experience physically is temporal, so we need to question the emphasis we put on those things.
2 Corinthians 5:3-5 (NLT)
For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.
It’s what we don’t see that really matters and so we have to begin to see our maturing journey as vital, our spiritual nature as more important. This is lasting and therefore more relevant than our temporary conflicts and suffering on earth.
Just to take this a little further, briefly, God is not restricted to time, thought, sight, hearing, taste, or space. When we think of Him we worship Him in spirit and in truth also. We don’t fully grasp how our spiritual being is not restricted to any of those things either.
Look at Philip, who was transported from one place to another in an instant (Acts 8:26-40). Enoch was caught up and seen no more (Genesis 5:24-25). Elijah was taken up to heaven (2 Kings 2:11). Moses was buried by God (Deuteronomy 34:5-7). Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were seen inside a furnace with a fourth man that appeared to look “like a son of the gods” (Daniel 3). Stephen was shown an open heaven moments before he died (Acts 7:56). The bible itself is a book of prophetic understanding that we receive by faith and understand with spiritual sight.
Our lives are so much more than what we can see with our natural eyes and experience in our physical nature. Our perspective has to shift dramatically so that we understand how we can truly overcome.
Allow God To Comfort You
Matthew 5:4 (NIV)
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
While we need to stretch our perspective to understand life through a more spiritual lens, what we experience in the natural world still has significance. We can be comforted that Jesus understands our sufferings. God made us to enjoy life’s pleasures. God made us for relationship and wants us to experience those joys. When we have loss, we experience its profoundness in a very natural, real way.
When I was 16 years old, I remember hearing James Dobson say we weren’t created with the capacity to cope with the pain of divorce. It’s strange that that stuck with me at the time but God dropped that in my bucket because He knew I would need to reflect on it over time. And it’s not just divorce, it’s every earthly suffering we endure. We weren’t created for suffering; we were created for God’s glory. That’s why we need God. When we mourn, we need to allow ourselves to be comforted by God.
We can be thankful that He fights for us and will demand justice for wrongdoing against us. But we all wrong others, so our hearts need to become unveiled, where we desire God’s mercy for others as much as His justice, because we also need it.
In our mourning we are given the opportunity to learn wisdom and growth and extend forgiveness and grace.
Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Set up boundaries against natural inclinations that would darken our heart and our thinking so that we don’t shut off God’s comfort, His love, His power, His sound mind, and His glory.
Through our suffering we are comforted and acknowledge that our lives, no matter what happens to us, are first of all a physical expression of a spiritual journey. Learning to place that understanding over the top of our emotional needs and expectations helps us to shift perspective upwards.
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