Passage of the Day: Joel 3: 9-10 [NLT] … 9 Say to the nations far and wide: “Get ready for war! Call out your best warriors! Let all your fighting men advance for the attack! 10 Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Train even your weaklings to be warriors….”
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Contextual Study of today’s passage: Joel, Chapter 3 [NLT] … Go to this link …
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Reference Passage #1: Ephesians 6: 17b : [NLT] …
17 … take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
My Journal for Today: Today Joel, Chapter 3, Verses 9-10 is the passage which my devotional editor, Os Hillman, led me to read/study for this morning. And this passage means a lot to me. It is the alerting passage which any seeker after the ministry I lead, Battle Plan Ministry [BPM], will find at the heading of our BPM website. Go to this link – and see our BPM call to arms.
At the time of this passage historically, the people of Judah, God’s people, had settled into a time of prosperity (in the 8th century BC); and they were turning away from dependence on God; and God called Joel to prophesy an upcoming judgment which would include an infestation of locusts and later an invasion of Judah’s enemies, the Babylonians. And in today’s passage, Joel is calling out the people to prepare for warfare by turning their instruments of harvest (i.e., plowshares) into weapons of warfare (i.e., swords).
Does anyone else, reading here with me this morning, see parallels with God’s people in Joel’s time and the people of this land now, who’ve turned to almost every man-made way of rejecting God in disobedience and rebellion? And God has been so merciful, just as He was for Judah, before their fall to Babylon. But in our times, like theirs, God’s people have become complacent and have turned away from His ways of doing battle.
And I think God, in our times, is calling us out just as He did through Joel to the people of Judah. And God is calling us – His people of this time– to rely upon His primary weaponry, i.e., God’s Sword (i.e., the word of God), instead of relying on money and political influence … as we’ve come to do in depending on man-man power rather than relying on God’s direction for our lives. God, through the prophesy of Joel, almost 750 years before Christ, is calling us out into the spiritual warfare in our day; and God wants us to turn our reliance from forces like money and politics into a reliance on the truth of His word to do battle against today’s forces of destruction (i.e., the locusts of financial collapse and the invasion of our enemies, such as those of Islamic radicalism).
We’re being called out for war in our times, just as Joel called out God’s people in Judah to prepare for battle. And I believe we’re being called to turn our reliance from human systems (such as financial power and political influence) into dependency on God’s sword of the Spirit … His word. That’s why, in our Battle Plan Ministry work, we do all we can to get our warriors prepared for the spiritual battles of every day life by becoming Spirit-trained swordsmen, … learning how to turn our plowshares into sharpened and practiced swords so that we can fend off the forces of evil in our every-day battlefields.
Actually this was the model which Jesus showed us (see - thru these links - Matthew 4: 1-11 and Luke 4: 1-13) when He had to do battle with His arch enemy, the Devil, in the wilderness. My friends, if relying upon God’s word and using it to battle with our spiritual enemies was good enough for Jesus, it certainly should be good enough for all of us. We are God’s army; and we are being called out for battle today; and I hope – nay, I pray – that we’ve become … or are becoming … Spirit-empowered swordsmen for Christ in order to battle against our Spiritual enemies daily.
My Prayer for Today … Every day, Lord, I come here to sharpen my sword and get ready for battle; and I know that You are here, Holy Spirit, as my drill-instructor, to prepare me as I practice with Your Sword. I follow You into battle today, Lord … and everyday. … Amen
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