Wednesday 12th September 2018 (Matthew 16:13-20)

Gidday Everyone and Happy Birthday Dulce!!

It’s a tremendous privilege for me at this time annually, to join with the other Directors on the Leadership Board of the Crosslink Christian Network to host the International Gathering; this year at ‘His Story Church’ in Lidcombe west of the Sydney CBD. I am the Secretary of the Network and was appointed to the Leadership Board in 2005.

After the 6 monthly Board Meeting and the AGM on Tuesday, we launched in to session one and to my excitement the National Chairman shared about a prophetic word he’d received for his own ministry and the Network’s, that shone a light on the fact that the church in Australia has lost too many battles and that it was past time that we became battle or combat ready. The other interesting thing is that he used the strategic keys given to us by Jesus in Matthew 16 to highlight the sort of tools we need to utilize if we are to see the advance of God’s kingdom rule of people’s hearts. This is very much aligned with the word we have been receiving for a few months now at our time of corporate prayer on Tuesday evenings each week and in particular the recognition that the battles that have impact in the spheres of our temporal world are waged in the spiritual realms as we’ve highlighted during the few times this year we’ve looked at Jesus’ strategy about ‘what we bind and loose on earth and it’s flow on effect in heaven’ and vice versa.

Even though it is hard sometimes to reconcile the militaristic images of war, and we certainly aren’t happy (to say the least) about wars of any size or shape that are waged between people on this planet, it is clear from scripture that the keys to kingdom advancement or the cultures that are core to heaven, like reconciliation or forgiveness, are in fact ‘acts of war’ in the context of the battle for people’s hearts and souls. To state it even more strongly, if we are fighting people – it’s the wrong battle and the wrong enemy.

When Jesus responded to satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4), He wasn’t just trying to repel the enemy with a trick, He was the embodiment of His response. Jesus prepared  intimately with His Father and was equipped over a significant period of time so that He didn’t just recite a memory verse when challenged to turn stones into bread, he was living the word and its truth and its transforming power was at work in and through His life. As such Jesus was empowered to see beyond the tyranny of any urgent need and focus on the end game. If we are going to defeat the enemy as Jesus did then we need to fight with the weapons that Jesus fought with.

If all you and I know is the information and we don’t engage and activate the life force of heaven in our daily lives, we can’t win the battle. We can’t win the battle if we are just reciting His story and not allowing His story to re-write OUR story.

More on Sunday … Love, Graeme 

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