Daily Devotional for Friday August 7, 2015
When the Enemy Attacks, That is the Time to Make Your Faith Real
(Ephesians 6:12)
***DAILY PERSONAL PRAYER FOR YOU: Lord, give me the discernment I need today to recognize the traps of satan. Help me to see with spritual eyes and hear with spiritual ears YOUR Truth alone. In the name of Jesus...AMEN!
I want to share with you a lesson I have learned over the years about our daily journey through this life. When the storms come, when the enemy attacks, THAT is the time that you must make your faith real. Faith is believing God can and do exactly what He says in His Word. You will be in a position at times when you have nothing but your faith in Christ to sustain you. It is during those times you will realize how much God loves you and that His promise to never leave you nor forsake you is true!
I have written this Devotional every day since Liveprayer signed on the 31 of August 1999. My normal day starts out very early in prayer and in the Word. After that time with the Lord, I sit down and type out the initial draft of the Devotional for the next day. It is reworked several times during the day at the office, reviewed by several on my staff so that I seem semi-literate, and finally is prayed over for God to use those words to touch peoples lives and sent out for distribution around midnight. This Devotional is different. I am actually writing it at 8 p.m. on Thursday night, having had about 3 hours sleep in the last 48 hours, with no staff on hand so please excuse what I am sure will be many errors.
This is an important Devotional since it deals with handling the trials that we all face in this life, as well as confirming the truth of God's Word that the real battles we face in this life are not of flesh and blood, but are SPIRITUAL! Monday night was one of those spiritual mountaintop experiences for me, with the expectancy of an incredible week ahead. On the TV program, a young lady in bondage to drugs called and accepted Christ as her Savior live on the air, we had many praise reports from people who had called in the past, and had a wonderful evening ministering to those who called in with needs.
Wednesday, I had the honor of doing the eulogy at the gravesite of a dear friend of mine who died last week after a long fight with cancer, being able to share the Gospel with his family and friends. The TV program has become the top rated program in our time slot in many markets over nationally syndicated programs, but more important, we have seen many people accept Christ as their Savior and tens of thousands of praise reports from an audience that is 65% non-Christian.
Thursday morning, I got to my office at around 6:30 a.m. and turned on my computer and I heard that sickening clanking sound of a hard drive that had crashed. The latest back-up disk I had was almost 3 months old, and for anyone that has had this horrible experience, you know how helpless you feel. So, as I was working to get the hard drive to a data recovery service to see what they could salvage, and getting ready to leave for the funeral, my phone rang and it was a dear brother that had been a huge blessing to the work of Liveprayer over the past 2 years. He and his wife had a very successful business and had donated close to $100,000 in the past 12 months.
He informed me that in the past 3 months they had lost 3 contracts that represented about 70% of their annual revenues and they were in going to have to restructure their entire business and simply would not be able to continue the level of support they had been giving to Liveprayer. We prayed together for God to replace the contracts they loss with even larger ones, and I have no doubt the Lord will be faithful as they have been faithful.
When the attacks come my friend, that is when we must rely on our faith and trust God. So many of the battles we face in life are out of our control. Many of the battles that you are facing today are out of your control, but the Bible tells us the BATTLE IS THE LORDS! Let me repeat that. You may be facing great battles in your life today, battles you can?t imagine winning. BUT YOU WILL SEE VICTORY BECAUSE THE BATTLE IS THE LORDS!
I love you and care about you so much. The data recovery specialists were able to at least salvage all of my Outlook Express files. The rest of my computer had to be reconstructed, but by noon today it was back on my desk and working. The graveside service for my friend Wednesday was a blessing, many who would not hear the Gospel heard it that morning. I was able to get some work accomplished during the day by using my laptop I work on at home which is a partial mirror of my office computer.
Does that mean the battles are over, the attacks are finished? Nope. The wars in the heavenlies wage on. But I have learned 'over these many years of walking with the Lord and serving Him, that all He ever expects of me is to be faithful. God doesn't expect me to do something I can?t do, but He DOES expect me to do what I am supposed to do. All God expects of me is to be faithful each day to do what I am supposed to do to the best of my ability. THAT is something I do have total control over!
I will be praying for you today. I know many of you are in the midst of the battles today. God is not asking you to fight those battles alone. Actually He has promised to fight them for you, but He does expect you to be faithful to the things you are supposed to do each day. With God fighting for us, and with us being faithful, we can walk in His victory no matter what the battles may be. The real battles each day are unseen, they take place in the heavenlies because they are spiritual battles. But we already know the final outcome, God wins!
That is why today we can claim 1 Corinthians 15:57, "But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
In His love and service,
Your friend and brother in Christ,
Bill Keller