God Is Fighting with You

‘Occupy till I come.'

Luke 19:13

Jesus said, ‘A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, “Occupy till I come”’ (vv. 12-13). The word ‘occupy’ is a military term which means ‘to take possession of’. We haven’t been called to ‘hold the fort’, but to ‘go up and possess the land’. Christ isn’t coming back for a vanquished church, but a victorious church. You say, ‘But the odds against me don’t look good.’ Then you need to look at ‘God’s odds’. According to His mathematics one can defeat a thousand enemies, but two can defeat ten thousand (Deuteronomy 32:30). God loves to take something that looks small and insignificant, multiply it by Himself and bring victory out of it. When God told Gideon He would use him and three hundred soldiers to destroy an army of hundreds of thousands, Gideon reminded God that he came from the smallest tribe and the smallest family. But God said, ‘Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man' (Judges 6:16 KJV). One ‘surely’ from God does away with all our ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs’. Gideon told his three hundred men: ‘When I blow with a trumpet…blow ye the trumpets also on every side of all the camp, and say, “The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon”’ (Judges 7:18 KJV). When you’re swinging your sword on this side, look over your shoulder and you’ll see the Lord swinging His sword on the other side. You’re not alone. God is fighting alongside you, so you will win.

2 Chron 1-4, Luke 19:11-27, Ps 103:1-12, Pr 19:12-16

written by Bob and Debby Gass, with Ruth Gass Halliday.