The saints have their power, their glory, their victory, their lustre, and need no worldly or intellectual greatness…. God is enough for them.
~Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
~Ephesians 3:14-21
Oh beloved, it is true. Christ has won a victory for us beyond our comprehension. Eternity will indeed roll out before us as we reign with Him. His name will be written on our foreheads as we are written already on His hand. We will be one with Him. We will be one with Him in a way we can only begin to touch in our spirits now.
And even in this life, He has wrought the ability for us to be more than overcomers in Him. The power at work within us is the very same Power who raised Him from the dead, and returned the Trinity to stasis.
So, in this, we know the will of G_d is for us to live a Life abundantly full, and one which does not falter. We ask Him for victory over any sort of sin or weakness that does not please Him, and He simply does impart the victory for which we ask. And on our better days, we do reckon the end result already true. We know that ‘our starting place determines our outcome. Our starting place is always that we are in Christ and He is in us.’ (thanks to Graham Cooke for this line of truth) .
And here is where it gets interesting.
We are indeed heirs of the very Kingdom of Heaven. And this Kingdom has a defeated enemy who still has been given the limited right to harass the Victor and His troops. And while this seems a conundrum, the answer is probably more simple than we try to make it. It seems to this writer that the continued abrasive behavior by the accuser is simply being used to polish the true shine of each of the victors’ armor for The Day when all will be gathered in festival with their King.
So, in a victory, we seem to also be given an additional gift: testing and proving of the peace and power and strength we have been given for the problem. The evil one will immediately jump on any opportunity to put the Holy One to the test. And so again, as a believer begins to reckon the win true, the liar will howl about how a win is simply not possible.
Can we see it? The answer is exceedingly simple. Simply do not listen to the liar – and listen, with as much simplicity as possible, to The Truth. And this is not as hard as we might imagine. For His Spirit is already deeply at work deep within us. We have but to yield to the rivers of Living Water already rising up within us.
It may seem easier to listen to the fiery darts clanking off of the armor with which He has fitted us – but something in us knows that this is simply not true. We remember the feints we fell for in the past, and we can smell the stench of spiritual death in the temptations we still face.
Corrie Ten Boom (one of my spiritual grandmothers) put it much more simply, and perhaps better than this fool of a writer ever could:
