How many of you know we are in a war? No for real, how many of you know we are in a
war? How many of you know the war is not just about our little battles although they are a
part of the big picture. The war we are in is not about how much money we have or how sick
we are or what our children are doing with their lives, although those things are battles within
the war. The war is not against homosexuals or abortionists although those too are battles
within the war. The war is not whether we will go to Heaven or Hell. The war is against a
system that calls itself Godly and yet lets it’s people live such unGodly lives that God is very
hard to find in any of our churches let alone our lives. We are so busy with our little battles
that we don’t even notice most of the time that the promises of the bible aren’t evident in any
of our lives or the lives of the church members around us. We continue to go after money
and health and control of our children in the traditional worldly ways and get no results but
refuse to believe that God could do anything for us. We sit in church on Sunday morning
week after week because it’s what we have to do to get to Heaven some day, watching our
watches and getting mad at the pastor if he preaches too long. We run out the doors of the
church as fast as we can to get back to our battles and don’t have a clue we are losing the
war.

The bible promises that:
Matthew 6:32-33 For the Gentiles (heathen) wish for and crave and diligently seek all these
things, and your heavenly Father knows well that you need them all.  But seek (aim at and
strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right),
and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.

Mark 16:17-18 And these attesting signs will accompany those who believe: in My name they
will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages; They will pick up serpents; and
[even] if they drink anything deadly, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick,
and they will get well.

Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart
from it.

      There you have it, the answers to your battles. They are all right there in the word of God.
He has the answers for every problem. He is called our Saviour! Our Saviour! What does that
mean? Wouldn’t it mean that He saves us from things? Things like money problems, health
problems, children problems, all problems? In this war that we are in He has every strategy
for every move of the enemy, so why is it that the church is so messed up and running away
from the doors of the church and into the arms of the world? Could it be we don’t really know
the war we are in and or how to fight it? Could it be the current religious system hasn’t taught
us how to pick up the armour of God and fight the war instead of the battles? Could it be that
God is calling for a new kind of warrior than we’ve ever seen?

     A few weeks ago in church during prayer for another, one of our prayer warriors said,
“Stop trying to seek peace during the battle!” That phrase has stuck in my head ever since
and God has begun to add to it. I don’t know if it’s just human nature or if it is something
we've become accustom to in our culture but we have a strong tendency to want to be as
comfortable as possible in every situation. We go to great lengths to avoid confrontation.
Whenever we find ourselves in an uncomfortable situation we seek peace immediately, but
I'm here to tell you that making peace with certain things now will cause you to lose the battle
later. Let me give you an example we can all understand. Your child wants to go somewhere
you know isn’t going to be good for them, so you say no. The child gets mad and throws a fit
so to make peace you give in and let them go. You just lost the battle on many fronts just to
get peace in this moment. I’ve become so aware that this is how we fight all our battles and
this is why we are losing the war.

One of the scriptures God gave me in this is:
1 Samuel 1:7 So it was year after year; whenever Hannah went up to the Lord's house,
Peninnah provoked her, so she wept and did not eat.

      Now to me year after year seems like a lot of years. Year after year Hannah wept and did
not eat. Sometimes crying is the way we try to find peace. Oh yes we do. Doesn’t crying many
times make people feel sorry for you? Won’t it stop someone from being mad at you? But
what does it really give you in the battle? Hannah did it year after year. It didn’t seem to give
her much, just another year of grief. But finally Hannah had had enough; she wasn’t satisfied
to cry another year. She decided it was time to fight the battle.


1 Samuel 1:9-18 So Hannah rose after they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest
was sitting on his seat beside a post of the temple (tent) of the Lord. And [Hannah] was in
distress of soul, praying to the Lord and weeping bitterly. She vowed, saying, O Lord of hosts,
if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your handmaid and [earnestly] remember, and not
forget Your handmaid but will give me a son, I will give him to the Lord all his life; no razor
shall touch his head. And as she continued praying before the Lord, Eli noticed her mouth.  
Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved but her voice was not heard. So Eli
thought she was drunk. Eli said to her, How long will you be intoxicated? Put wine away from
you. But Hannah answered, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I have drunk
neither wine nor strong drink, but I was pouring out my soul before the Lord. Regard not your
handmaid as a wicked woman; for out of my great complaint and bitter provocation I have
been speaking.  Then Eli said, Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant your petition
which you have asked of Him.  Hannah said, Let your handmaid find grace in your sight. So
[she] went her way and ate, her countenance no longer sad.

      Hannah finally did more than cry; she got before the Lord and fought the battle until she
knew it was won. Now Hannah didn’t have a sign that she was pregnant, there was no
ultrasound or positive pregnancy test, just a promise from the Lord. Hannah didn’t just do
the same old thing she had done year after year; she got up and got before the Lord until she
knew it was finished. How many years have you spent crying over the same old thing? The
same battle year after year after year and yet you just sit and cry until next year. We will never
win the war if we are always losing the same battle again and again. We gain no ground by
doing this. It is time to stand up and say God I’m tired of this, I’m tired of seeking peace in the
middle of the battle. God I want to come before You and fight this thing until You say it is
finished, until You say this battle won’t come my way again. Until my countenance has
changed and I am no longer sad. I want to fight the good fight of faith.

     Now I want to switch gears for a second and bring a new concept into this teaching. I
think I can show you how this fits in to what we’ve been talking about. I read a book recently
that talked about terrorism and the absurd way our Christian nation tries to handle it.

     First of all, we, in this country, try to seek our peace by saying that all religions serve the
same God and just call Him a different name. Well I’m sorry but my God doesn’t tell me to kill
people or blow up things to get what I want, so I don’t think I’m serving the same God at all.
My God doesn’t tell me to use terror to put fear in other people. My God tells me to love
people, to free them from oppression, to heal them, and deliver them from demons.

     Second of all I think we need to understand why terrorists do what they do. They want to
have what you have, they don’t want to make peace with you and share with you what you
have, they want it for themselves. They don’t care one inkling about you or what happens to
you. But we, in our peace seeking thinking, think they want peace too so we try to share with
them what we have, thinking it will bring peace.

Terror is not an act it is an attitude. It crosses the line of reason into a place where
negotiations do not exist. They cannot exist. You cannot negotiate with terrorists because
they do not want peace. They intend to destroy until what they are mad about is gone.
Terrorists want to destroy and annihilate. (Steve Gray, My Absurd Religion)

     Now I want to show you how we try to take those things we are in battle with and treat
them the same way we want to treat terrorists. Year after year like Hannah we react to
problems in our lives the same old way. We cry or ignore or escape or drink or sleep or go to
doctors or go to psychologists or scream or whatever it is we’ve always done to make peace
for the moment. Then when the pressure of the moment passes we feel comfortable again
and go back to life as normal until next year when we are faced with it again. Now I don’t
know what your theology is but I believe the terrorists we face are demonic forces. They
come to kill, steal, and destroy. They don’t want peace. They intend to destroy until they get
what they want. You can negotiate until you are blue in the face but you cannot negotiate
with a terrorist.

     So let’s bring it all together, if we are going to defeat the terrorists in our lives we are going
to have to go before God like Hannah and fight until He says it is finished. We can no longer
get by with a little frustrated prayer every now and then. We cannot stop fighting in the
middle of the battle to find peace. We must fight until the end. We must fight until we know in
our spirit that God has given us the victory. We can’t stop when the kids throw a fit, we can’t
stop when we are tired, we can’t stop when the doctor gives us a bad report. It is not over
until God says it’s over. If you are having a difficult time with your child it is not going to do
any good to talk and talk and talk. (I know that’s what the world will tell you but seeing where
a lot of our children are I don’t buy it.) If that child is rebelling against you and God then you
are dealing with more than just that child. You are dealing with a terrorist that wants to kill
your child. Think about it, doesn’t it use fear to pressure your decisions. My child won’t love
me anymore, I’ll lose them, they’ll hate me, aren’t those all fears that come on you? Isn’t fear
how a terrorist works? If you are having problems like this you are going to have to go before
God in prayer and battle it out until you, under the control of the Holy Spirit, break the power
of that terrorist. It may not be easy, it may not be comfortable, but that is what it’s going to
take.

     This is why standing on a street corner passing out tracks and ministering to people there
doesn’t produce much. Preaching at someone who is being controlled by a terrorist is like
trying to negotiate. The only way to reach people is to be under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit. Saying only what He says and doing only what He does. He is the only One worthy to
break the seals and break the power of the terrorist. Once the power of the terrorist is broke
you won’t have to negotiate, that person will be free to come to God with you willingly.

     I want to leave you with one last thought. Now mind you, I don’t put much hope in Freud
and his analysis, in fact I think he has done more to hurt our Greek thinking than help it. I am
a firm believer that however you got in the state you are in God can deliver you out of it and
most of the time analysing it isn’t going to free you from it. That said I was looking up the
word ego the other day and came across something very interesting.

Freud divided the id's drives and instincts into two categories: life and death instincts. Life
instincts are those that are crucial to pleasurable survival, such as eating and copulation.
Death instincts, as stated by Freud, is our unconscious wish to die, as death puts an end to
the everyday struggles for happiness and survival. Freud noticed the death instinct in our
desire for peace and attempts to escape reality through fiction, media, and substances such
as alcohol and drugs. It also indirectly represents itself through aggression.

     Okay stay with me a minute. I think the death instinct that Freud saw is really a spirit of
death. It is that thing sent from the enemy’s camp always looking for a way to bring us a little
closer to death. He said we have an unconscious wish to die because it puts to an end our
everyday struggles for happiness. Aren’t all the things we’ve been talking about everyday
struggles for happiness? Don’t we just want those things to go away so we can put an end
to the struggle with them? Don’t we just want happiness? Isn’t it a struggle just to have
happiness? Here is the interesting thing; he said we show this unconscious wish to die in
our desire for peace and attempts to escape reality through fiction, media, and substances.
Here it is in my words, every time you come face to face with that thing again and you ignore
it by watching another mindless movie, or reading another useless book, or eating another
brownie or doing anything except going to God and battling it out, you are acting on a spirit
of death that is bringing you one step closer to death. At the end it says it also indirectly
represents itself through aggression. So getting mad and screaming at a problem is just one
more way of trying to make peace with the terrorist. Seems silly doesn’t it, screaming could
be a way of trying to make peace, but it is. It’s just one more way of trying to stop the
situation in the middle instead of fighting your way through it with God’s strategy.

     I hope you all understand that I’m not saying you are battling against God. I’m saying that
you are to get in His Presence and battle it out together until you know that terrorist from
Satan has been defeated. I’ve also found that getting with other people who know how to
battle this way makes your defenses a whole lot stronger! Pretty soon you’ll find you’re not
on the defensive anymore but that God has given you the offensive plays to win.

Dear Lord, I pray that You will teach our hands to war and our fingers to fight. We are tired of
ignoring the same old battles year after year. We are tired of crying and going home with no
change only to come back next year and face the same problem again. You are the God of
the angel armies and the Lord of Hosts. You are God who leads us in battle. Make us into
mighty warriors for your Kingdom. Show us where the real war lies. Let us stop being a
people who seek peace in the middle of the battle but a people who will fight to the end.
Amen.
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Don't Seek Peace In The Middle Of The Battle
September 1, 2009