MESSAGE FROM THE ALTARDEVOTIONAL SERVICE. 25/07/2021ARISE, O GOD.

2 CHRONICLES 20 :15Jahaziel said, “Your Majesty and all you people of Judah and Jerusalem, the LORD says that you must not be discouraged or be afraid for this large army. The battle depends on God, not on you.NUMBERS 23 : 19God is not like men, who lie;He is not a human who changes his mind.Whatever he promises, he does;He speaks, and it is done.JOHN 15 : 5″ I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.”1 JOHN 5 : 5Who can defeat the world ? Only the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.(GOOD NEWS BIBLE) David went against Goliath not because he was feeling like a giant that day, but because he remembered how God had always been with him. David remembered how God had helped him in his past travails. David knew that in confronting Goliath, he needed not king Saul’s armour but just the presence of God. David trusting in the strength of God went against Goliath and killed the giant. Satan wants us to believe that God can do a lot of things, but not all things. But Numbers 23:19 tells us that God is not a man that he should lie. Satan wants us to depend partly on God and partly on our own understanding, but it’s just a ploy for us to be defeated because we really need to depend totally on God for our victory. Satan has always antagonized God’s people, to destroy them. The predicament being faced right now in the world and particularly in this country can not be overcome through human understanding. The battle is spiritual: Satanic agents, parading as ‘angels of light” are everywhere killing, maiming, destroying other people’s lives and properties, in the name of fighting for their false gods which cannot fight battles for themselves; demonic beings tutored by Satan are claiming the ‘supremacy’ of human intelligence over that of the Creator of Knowledge, wisdom and understanding thereby drawing the misled away from the victory attainable only in God; rulers, held captive by satanic forces, lose sight of their mortality and with ruthless cum reckless abandonment crush their pauperized subjects into fearful submission, dehumanizing God’s people; in desperation people want to lean on their understanding of the times and how to survive in the battle. But, leaning on our own understanding is the wrong way to survive this scourge from hell’s gates. Challenges teaches us two things : something about God, and something about us. If we choose to believe that God will give us the victory, we will see how powerful God is. If, instead, we choose to trust in our own strength or intelligence, we will quickly see how inadequate we are. We need to truly believe John 15:5 which says we can do nothing apart from God. God’s grace is new every morning. God knows what I will encounter today since He has already been here.He is the God of all times. He is never caught off guard by our trials. He knows what will be before it becomes. Hr knows how to avoid what will be that it be not, and He knows how to overcome the travails of what must be when it has become. I know with certainty that I have enough grace for whatever He places before me.I do not say I will have enough grace for tomorrow. Tomorrow is not on God’s list for me today. I have no anxiety about tomorrow because tomorrow’s grace is for tomorrow. All I need is grace of God for today. If we let God fight our battles, we will always be on the winning side. There is no way you can have God on your side by fighting God. There is no way you can say you’re fighting for God when you’re destroying God’s heritage. There is no way that you can claim to be led by God when you’re sponsoring and encouraging vandals from the gates of hell. There is no way you can claim to belong to God’s family when you can not commit your battles to Him. There is no way you can claim to serve the Living God when you do not believe Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Son of God. Children of God, the turbulence can be calmed. The raging fire can be quenched. The boisterous wind can be stilled. The floods can be stopped The rampaging hordes can be conquered. It is certain that we can do nothing on our own. We need to call on our God to deliver us and we need to believe that God is able to deliver us. We do not need Saul’s armour . ARISE, O GOD.