30 Days of Gratitude – Day 19

Today I’m grateful that the enemy is defeated.  The Serpents head has been crushed.  Christ is the victor and we can live victoriously as long as we rely on God and remember that the battle has already been won.  Something Satan would like us to forget.

I love this quote from, January 14th of “Joy of My Heart: Meditating Daily on God’s Word” by Anne Graham Lotz, it so fittingly portrays what is going on spiritually in our lives.

Although I can remember killing only one snake myself, I was present several times when snakes were killed by others.  Each time I observed a fascinating phenomenon.  After the snake was killed, its body invariably continued to twitch until sundown.  Even though the head was crushed, rendering it powerless, the dead snake’s writhing body was enough to keep me at a distance.

We need to remember that ever since the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Satan has been a defeated foe.  His head has been crushed.  As we seek to climb higher in our faith, what we are confronted with is merely the twitching of our defeated foe.  But sundown is coming!  One day even the twitching body of that old Serpent, the devil, will be destroyed.

Now if that isn’t something to be grateful for, I don’t know what is.

Lord help me to always remember that when the enemy attacks he is merely a defeated foe and all I need to do is turn to you.  Don’t let me be fooled by the twitching body of a dead Snake.  Amen.

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More Than Conquerors

“If God is for us, who can be against us?”  – Romans 8:31b

There are so many times in a day that I forget that the battle has been won and I let the enemy get the best of me. Oh, that I would remember that the Omnipotent, Mighty, God is for me. If that were for front in my mind at all times I would live a life far different from the one I live now.

If I lived my life fully aware that God was for me and all that meant, I’d live a victorious life. God wants His children to succeed at things that are of His will, so that He will receive all the glory. When I live in victory it points the world to the One who is the source of that victory. That is one reason God wants us to be more than conquerors.

Our broken lives are nothing without Him. It is in our brokenness, when we turn it over to God, that the world sees the light of God shining through.

“You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘You did not make me’? Can the pot say to the potter, ‘You know nothing’?” – Isaiah 29:16

This is where people get the idea of God being the potter and us being the clay or the pot. In other verses of the Bible He talks about forming it for His purpose and what seems best to Him.

Being broken pots, those cracks of brokenness that we may be so ashamed of or embarrassed of, those are the very things that God uses to shine His glory through as He uses us. So let’s let God use us cracks and all. He doesn’t need strong people – they are self-reliant, that is why God uses the weak because it forces us to be God-reliant. Where He gets the glory He deserves.

So rather than being self-conscious or embarrassed or ashamed of our cracks let us remember that we have been chosen to be used of God with those cracks to shine the light of God on the world and show them how they too can be more than conquerors with the power of God in us.

Joy – A Woman After God’s Own Heart