Training For Christian Soldiers…
Your "Provisions"
Now what do you have?
You have God the creator and sustainer of all things as your Father! A perfect Father! A Father who created and sustains ALL CREATION IN EVERY DETAIL!
You know you have a perfect Father because He says in His word the Bible that He is perfect, and you choose to believe it. He IS perfect and He tells you He will supply all that you need whether it is blessing or chastisement. He will supply it to you in perfect love for you. Whether it is pleasure or suffering, it will be what is best, and will be for your good and the good of others. God our Father says we can come right into His presence and call Him "Daddy".
You have God the creator and sustainer of all things as your Savior!
Perfect God, the one who holds the entire creation together from the largest to the tiniest part, has forgiven you! This is not conditional on how many times you are disobedient or faithless! It is because of your choice to believe and love Him that He will forgive you and work as hard as He can to make you completely faithful! But even though your intentions will be to fully obey, love, and believe God, you will make mistakes. God does not count your mistakes and determine whether He forgives you by how small or large the number is. He only requires your sincere decision to resist the urges against Him and your choice to fully believe and love Him.
And even if you find that you have chosen to harden your heart, and/or not humble yourself before God, you can repent! You can choose to humble yourself before God and confess to Him what you have done and/or not done. You can choose again to resist the urge to harden yourself against God. You can choose again to believe and love Him. Because you choose again to believe and love Him, you can recommit yourself to obey Him since obedience is the result of sincere faith and love. Then because of your confession, repentance, and recommitment, as long as you are sincere you can choose to accept again the forgiveness for your sins that Jesus Christ provided by His death and resurrection. You can proceed with being a Christian just as if you had never sinned in the first place. Remember that as long as you have any interest in being a Christian, God is still offering you the opportunity! No matter how many times you may have sinned!
Note: However, this is not to imply that one can just freely and irresponsibly take advantage of God's tremendous grace and longsuffering by purposely letting oneself harden their heart against God, then repent, then harden, then repent, then harden, and on and on for the sake of self-indulgence. The Bible gives numerous warnings about the fact that continuing repetitions of hardening one's heart against God's influence can bring one to a place where God can no longer influence that one. Without God's influence to convince you, you cannot be convinced to believe, repent, and be saved. However If you are concerned that you have reached this place, then the fact that you are even concerned about it means you haven't reached it yet and God can and is still trying to influence you, which is proof that you have not reached it. But one should not count on being able to continue to get away with resisting God according to one's personal timetable.
You have a perfect Savior! He does not compromise His perfect standards, yet He completely saves you from your imperfections!
He is a perfect God and does not compromise His standards, but He is also Christ Jesus, the Messiah, a perfect Savior! He forgives you of your imperfections based on your faith and love concerning HIm, which compels you to strive to obey Him perfectly. Your salvation is not based on how well you achieve perfect obedience! He knows that faith and love for Him WILL compel you to "work" to know and obey Him more and more. God considers you "already perfect in performance" because He accredited to you His perfect performance as a result of your decision to believe and love Him. God counts you as being perfect in performance. Christians should never pass sentence on themselves or other Christians on how imperfect they are. Because you are a Christian God WILL change you so that you WILL spiritually experience His hatred of sin. It may seem weak, and your knowledge of sin may be minimal, but it will grow. You WILL spiritually experience His lack of love for the world and its things. When the term "world" is used as it is in the previous sentence it is talking about the attitudes of unbelievers and about the things they love and the way they love them. It is not talking about God's physical creation like our planet. You WILL spiritually experience His love which WILL compel you to take care of other Christians and refuse to participate in hating any of them. You WILL spiritually experience God's love for those who do not have enough. You WILL desire to visit brothers and sisters who are in prison. God WILL change you and teach you how to act according to those changes, but He also knows how long it will take to teach you to act according to them. God knows how limited we are and when we are a Christian He perfectly grants grace for our imperfections. He can do this because He, who IS perfect, died as the sacrifice for our imperfections, and because He is perfect, He could rise from death, go sit at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven, and clothe us with His Robe of Righteousness so that all our imperfections are covered.
You have God Christ Jesus as your perfect "Lawyer" in Heaven!
Not only does Jesus Christ do all that has already been mentioned, and much more, He also represents you to God His (and your) perfect Father! Jesus is your fellow heir! When Jesus forgives your imperfections, He also stands up for you and represents you before God the Father!
You have God the creator and sustainer of all things as your perfect Trainer!
He works as hard as He can to correct and convince you of the truth, and train you until you become the spiritual warrior He created you to be.
Like a perfect coach training a champion to win He will not leave us to our own inability to improve ourselves, He knows we cannot do that. He will work perfectly to train us; testing, encouraging, correcting, educating, providing for, and inspiring us. He will lovingly break us of that which we must be rid of, and push us so that we allow His influence to make us into that which is beyond our comprehension and reach.
You have God the creator and sustainer of all as your perfect Teacher!
He knows everything and He is perfectly capable of teaching all who do not harden themselves against His influence. Teaching us is something He accomplishes spiritually and it does not depend upon our ability to learn. In fact none of us are able on our own to learn anything of the truth that God will teach us. God the Holy Spirit comes to live inside us and change, instruct, and empower us!
You have God the creator and sustainer of all as your perfect Provider!
He will provide you with everything you need spiritually and earthly!
He supernaturally sets you free of the power your flesh has to force you to sin.
He educates, trains, and gives you His power to resist the enemy's attempts to trick, persuade, or force you to disregard or disobey God.
He provides you with everything you need to obey Him, and to be forgiven.
You have His Word the Bible!
He tells us that He made sure that the Bible was written by Him and we can trust what it says, even though He used the hands of men to write it. God had it written in a way that as we read it, the Holy Spirit opens our spiritual ears to understand the concepts and points God is making. What He wants us to know is described in enough different ways that we get the message no matter what version we read, as long as it is one of the versions that is accepted by churches in general. A version of the "Bible" that is only accepted by one church organization (denomination) should not be trusted because it probably has been altered to make it teach what that one denomination teaches. A book that is used to supplement the Bible in order to add teachings that are not already in the Bible, should not be trusted because God only endorses the Bible, not any other book or books. A denomination that only endorses its own version of the Bible, or a denomination that uses another book to supplement the Bible should not be trusted.
Don't "try to understand" the Bible. We can't trust ourselves to "figure it out" correctly. Instead just pray that God will by the Holy Spirit open your eyes to what it says and just read, read, read, it. Through the work of the Holy Spirit in you the Bible explains itself. It is like a big picture puzzle so the more you know what is written the more puzzle pieces you have to see the picture more clearly.
Don't try to interpret it. Mankind is not capable of doing that correctly. God has already made sure it says what He wants it to say.
Don't trust that any of mankind has figured it out correctly. Remember the Bible says that all mankind cannot trust themselves. Test what they are saying by the Word, the Bible, itself. If it is what the Bible truly says, then it is from God. If it is not what the Bible presents then it is not the truth so don't put your trust in it.
Just read, read, read it to find out what the Bible says. Then continually consider its instructions and devote yourself to do what you understand it to say. Live by the Bible's instructions. As long as you are doing this do not worry about what you do not know yet, God will increase your knowledge and understanding in His timing! He will continue to open your eyes to see what His Word says. When He does this His Word speaks so plainly that you won't have to "guess" at, or "figure out" what He wants you to understand. You will see it plainly.
Don't expect to understand it all. God chooses to let each individual see what He wants that person to see.
Continually reading the Bible, and devoting yourself to be a "doer" of what He lets you see is in itself challenging enough!
And, throughout all, you have the love, joy, and peace of having a friend and family relationship with your perfect creator and sustainer, God your Father in Heaven, Jesus Christ His Son your Lord and Savior, and the Holy Spirit. Even though these feelings will sometimes be strong and sometimes weak, they will be there fulfilling you even if at times you are not aware of it-but try to be aware of it by focussing as much as you can on God and Heavenly things so you can enjoy it more.
You have the best "family" on earth! Real Christians are all members of God's church and God's church is your family! When you find your brothers and sisters in the Lord, do not put off meeting with them, and meet with them as regularly as possible. Spending time with them is very beneficial and enjoyable. If sometimes it causes you trouble, stick with it anyway. It will be well worth it in the long run. Do your best to make and keep in contact with your Christian brothers and sisters. Sometimes it is just not possible though so do not feel discouraged when that happens. God is enough!
Remember, you have God the creator and sustainer of all actually living in you, to spiritually counsel, empower, instruct, convince, inspire, and comfort you, and to be your full time companion, closer than a brother!
You have a perfect Captain, who not only tells you what to do, but how to do it (click here to learn more), and enables you to do it!