Back To The Future
I love the seemingly contradictions we find in the Scriptures, such as: You must die to live, go down to go up, serve to lead, be least to be greatest, give to receive and go back to go forward. Surely God’s ways are different from ours. Even when He talks about our warfare, the weapons He equips us with are not what we would normally expect, such as: Love, our testimony, forgiveness, humility, Word of God, the Blood and Name of Jesus, etc. To the natural mind, this just doesn’t make sense. But, then again, God is God. His ways are higher than ours.
Even though there are many things we do not understand, looking at the natural, we can see some spiritual principles; such as: To shoot an arrow, one must draw it back on the bow and then release it for it to go forward. The same is true about our testimony. We look back to see what God has done in the past to propel our faith to believe God for even greater things for our future. An example of this in the Scriptures is in the life of David. As a shepherd boy he killed both lions and bears, when they threaten his flock, and he used this testimony as the basis in confronting the giant, Goliath.
Going back to review past victories is like referring to a manual on warfare. It gives us the understanding and incentive for present and future victories. In this way, it is more than linear, but also vertical. Our testimony serves as a foundation upon which we stand. It is saying that if God gave us victory in the past, He will do it again now.
The enemy tries to defeat us by presenting arguments of our past without Christ. Our testimony defeats his accusations, because it speaks of our past with Christ. What Christ has done in our life annuls the power that sin has had over us. The Blood of Jesus has wiped the slate clean and we have been born again. Because of Christ´s work on the cross, our testimony is that we are as if we had never sinned.
We can have victory over present temptations, because we have been delivered from sin.
Our testimony is our personal journal. It is our story of what God has done in our life. When King Saul gave David his armor to wear, when fighting Goliath, David refused. He couldn’t use what worked for King Saul, he needed to use his own testimony. The sons of Sceva, (Acts 19), tried to expel a demon using the testimony of Paul. The result was disastrous as they were soundly defeat by the demon. Our testimony is our weapon. As the arrow must be pulled back to go forward, so reviewing our testimony of what the Blood of Jesus has done for us propels us into a new level of victory and faith. It is going Back to the Future.
Scriptures to meditate on:
Acts 1:8; 4:33; Rev. 12:11; I Sam. 17:34-37; Acts 19:11-16