The Battles Ahead
The Battles ahead require Diplomacy, Unity and Strategic Targeting by intercessors and those who take ground for The Kingdom.
Diplomacy and Influence
I felt drawn to look at the Book of Acts, I was led to this to gain insight from the conflicts that went on between the early disciples and those who opposed them.
It was a shock to observe that some of the persecution that arose in the beginning of Acts, was in part fanned into flame by statements that provoked the opponents of the Gospel.
Out of this persecution came St. Paul, who had watched Steven die and forgive those who stoned him. It was as if prayers for the persecuted saints were answered in capturing one of the very people who had been the strongest and most angry, opponents of the church.
Yet Paul was to bring a different approach to advancing The Kingdom of God.
When you look at Paul, his conflict with authorities was handled in a less confrontational way than the first apostles.
Rather than provoking those who opposed him, he was often trying to win those opponents to his side. His leadership showed the way of both holding to integrity and truth while doing so with wisdom and diplomacy.
In an age of opposition and a rebel attitude, this is something we need to learn from.
It’s important to handle opposition in a way that doesn’t actually make it a whole lot worse. We cannot carry weighty influence over others if we build walls or touch raw nerves in an insensitive way.
It can seem brave to present a bold combative approach that stirs up a Christian crowd, or as an internet sofa warrior, but this may not be by the best for the body of Christ, nor the unbelieving people who hear.
We need to model wisdom in battle because it’s not by might and not by power, but by his spirit that wisdom keys become available to us.
Undivided by Ethnicity and Culture
The other battle that was going on in The Church in Acts, was coping with the fact that Greeks were coming into The Church in substantial numbers, and so those who preached to the Greeks saw much fruit, while those reaching the Jews received much opposition.
The new Greek converts also faced discrimination by Jewish believers, who were not ready to accept those outside their own race as fellow believers of equal status.
Hence we see the discrimination of the early Church and the need to address this nationalism and racism that prevented the full unity of the young Body of Christ.
We may be guilty of this ourselves in that many believers, who came to this country with Afro-Caribbean ethnicity were not welcomed, to even the live Churches — hence the reason why so many black-led Churches grew became part of the new Church landscape.
I once went to a recent Christian meeting, where for a strange reason, 90% of white Christians mainly sat on one side of the church and 90% black Christians on the other side.
This was not planned — but just seemed to happen. It showed me that we still need to break out of old comfort zones and come together united as God’s family.
Strategic Targeted Warfare
In my dream the next evening, I was aware that we were in a battle and I was with a group of about 20 believers, facing Viking-type warriors, who were very powerful.
Although there was a lot of rhetoric and fierce words of opposition against these opponents little was being done and the believers were slowly on the retreat.
In my dream, I spoke up to other believers and said we need to work together to target those leading the opposition and destroy them, although they were very powerful.
One Viking fighter was a blond-haired warrior. I decreed that we need at least four of us to come against him (the evil) together and we would defeat him.
Once he is destroyed, the rest of the enemy troops will be unsettled and become a lot easier to handle and we can then start winning the battle, as our enemies will not have leadership.
As believers, we are too often exposed to saber-rattling in the form of warnings and apparent revelation, yet we must follow a strategic move of God that hits the key target and defeats the enemy stronghold.
The defeat of Haman by Esther had all three elements of this Diplomacy, Diversity and Strategic Plans (Diplomacy with the ruling power, Jews working with gentile leadership, and targeting of the strongman enemy).
It needed Esther to receive favour from the King, and a faithful service record to the king by Mordecai.
Haman’s fall enabled other shifts to take place that turned the battle against all the enemies of God’s people shifting the power balance in favour of the people of God.
“The king took off his signet ring, which he had reclaimed from Haman, and presented it to Mordecai. And Esther appointed him over Haman’s estate.
Esther again pleaded with the king, falling at his feet and weeping. She begged him to put an end to the evil plan of Haman the Agagite, which he had devised against the Jews. Then the king extended the gold scepter to Esther and she arose and stood before him.
“If it pleases the king,” she said, “and if he regards me with favor and thinks it the right thing to do, and if he is pleased with me, let an order be written overruling the dispatches that Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, devised and wrote to destroy the Jews in all the king’s provinces. For how can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?”
King Xerxes replied to Queen Esther and to Mordecai the Jew, “Because Haman attacked the Jews, I have given his estate to Esther, and they have impaled him on the pole he set up. Now write another decree in the king’s name in behalf of the Jews as seems best to you, and seal it with the king’s signet ring — for no document written in the king’s name and sealed with his ring can be revoked.” Esther 8:2-8.
~ Geoff Pick
Really good insights and clarity Geoff !!!!! Well done!!!
The apostles’ response to opposition in early Acts – were loaded with “who YOU crucified” giving no room for those opposing them to become “less hostile” to this new (Christian) sect, that appeared to them to be a threat.
Watch Paul by contrast turned a room of religious opponents around in the same chapter after he withdrew his pigsty remark, simply by a few well-chosen words that aligned him with some of his opponents.
“Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.”
7 And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. 9 Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?”
ACTS 23
Peter was surely speaking by the the Holy Spirit when he used the phrase “whom you crucified” in Acts 2:36, since the following two verses state
“Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”
Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
I would rather be confronted with the truth about my sin, as a necessary step towards a real salvation, than to hear a modern preacher talking about “making mistakes” – a vague term that is equally used for making errors in arithmetic.
The first apostles regarded being persecuted as par for the course – and even rejoiced that that they were worthy to suffer shame for Christ [Acts 5:41] – and not as something to be avoided through diplomacy.
Some might dare to say that the Lord Himself, when talking to the Pharisees, was undiplomatic, and yet He said in John 12:49, according to the New Living Translation,
“I don’t speak on my own authority. The Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it”,
and I emphasise “how to say it”. I cannot see that the first apostles were any more “undiplomatic”; and, later, Paul, if anything, was more so when he called the high priest a “white-washed wall”, saying that God would strike him.
Peter also said, “and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” [1 Peter 3:15]
I would suggest that there is a difference between meek and being diplomatic, and that the uncompromised gospel message is intrinsically undiplomatic, and is even described as an “offense”, since it hurts human pride by drawing attention to the existence of sin and the need for repentance.