Your Battles Belong to the Lord by Joyce Meyer

Author:Joyce Meyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2019-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

The Importance of Watchfulness

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:8 ESV

A watchful person is someone who is alert and keeps an attentive eye on things. For example, a watchful driver quickly sees and stops for pedestrians crossing the street. A person who is watchful over his finances will not get into oppressive debt and end up not being able to pay his bills. As we walk through this world, it pays to be watchful in all areas, and it especially pays to watch out for the devil so he doesn’t slither into our lives and deceive us. There is almost no limit to the ways—both big and little—the devil conspires to ruin God’s work and attack His people. He desires and works hard to bring Christians into bondage and unhappiness.

John Bunyan’s book The Pilgrim’s Progress was published in 1678. Bunyan wrote it to help believers understand what they would face and know how to be watchful and overcome the enemy. This allegorical story about how Christians can make progress in their walk with God presents a clear picture of the wiles of the devil and depicts a man who has repented of his sin and received Christ as his Savior. But his troubles do not end there.

Teaching people that once they are saved their troubles are over is a huge mistake. I often tell people who accept Christ in my conferences that becoming a child of God does not mean they will never have any more problems. It does mean, however, that they will never have to fight their battles alone. I also tell them that their worst day with Jesus will be better than their best day ever was without Him.

A few great books similar to The Pilgrim’s Progress have been written on the subject of the soul’s conflict after salvation, but according to D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, most of them were written before 1880. This type of literature was characteristic of the Puritan era, but little has been produced since then—not nearly enough to equip Christians for the battle we are in. John Bunyan called it the “Holy War,” and Richard Sibbes called it the “Soul’s Conflict.” Today, we refer to it as “spiritual warfare.”

I have been greatly blessed personally by portions of a more recent book that has helped me, which is Watchman Nee’s The Spiritual Man, because it thoroughly deals with the subject of the soul and the conflict we experience as we mature in Christ.

We need writing and teaching on the wiles of the devil and especially about the ways he attempts to afflict believers. If we are forewarned, then we can be forearmed. If we understand how the enemy comes against us and if we know how to resist him, we can be ready to combat his attacks instead of taken by surprise and defeated. This is one reason I have written this book.

The Old Testament tells a story about how God led the children of Israel to the Promised Land by a much longer route than necessary.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.