Holy Defiance
The journey from half-way living to the all-in life in Christ requires that we cultivate a holy defiance of the enemy. Jesus set the example. When Peter questioned his mission he shot back, ‘get behind me Satan’. When the Pharisees challenged his authority he shouted, ‘you brood of vipers!’ When commerce invaded the temple it incited such righteous anger that he overturned tables and drove out merchants declaring for all to hear that this was a house of prayer. Jesus responded to the lies of the enemy with unbridled contempt, ‘The thief comes to kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life abundant.” Do we believe that the agenda of the enemy is to kill and destroy? We can either be the victim or the victor in this battle. The victor’s journey is marked with this holy defiance of the enemy’s agenda. Not through our own power, but in the name of Jesus who declared, ‘I saw Satan falling like lightening from the sky.’ To do less is to be sucked back into the muddled mediocrity of the half-way life of the victim. The writer of the classic hymn gives us our marching orders, may it be our prayer,
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock I stand all other ground is sinking sand.
