Your Hands for War

These are the nations the LORD left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience). Judges 3:1-2

Do not desire to be trained for spiritual warfare if you are not yet able to obey God in laying down your life and all the things you want in life to gain His desires and His plans for your life. The Lord's training for warfare is going to cost you your life -- nothing less. If you cannot follow Him that way, you cannot follow Him at all.

He is the One who trains. He is the One who teaches. If you do not yield to that, you will yield to something else. If you do not submit to the training and discipline of God, you will submit to something else. You are either for God... or for something else.

Who will you yield to? Who will you submit to? Who will you let train you? God? Or someone else?

God will train your hands for war, especially if you have not experienced it before. But you have to recognize that initially it is going to look unattractive, painful and uncomfortable. You're not going to like it at first, but in the end God's training -- the testings that come; the sacrifices required; the obediences demanded -- will strengthen your feeble knees, train your hands for battle and make you the warrior God has designed you to be.

But first be yielded to His will.

This war cannot be won with complacency and nonchalance. The devil has had us blinded for far too long already. Recognize that you are a soldier in God's army and you have a destiny that Satan wants to steal, kill and destroy -- both in the physical and the spiritual. The devil will stop at nothing to eliminate you -- you are a bane to his existence. He wants you dead. And if you cannot even learn to kill your flesh or even control your emotions, the devil will find it easy to toy around with you. If you won't even cry out to God for help, do not expect to put the enemy under your feet. Chances are the enemy will be doing tap dances on you.

God allows hardship into your life not to weaken you or to push you down, but because He wants to strengthen you by causing you to draw near to Him -- not run away from Him. That's how He trains you. Training for warfare is not easy. Understand that. Training is going to be tough. Why? Because the enemy is tough and he's been at it for much longer than you have been. But if in every painful and disappointing situation in your life you choose to run from God and cower in your own corner, how will you learn to fight this enemy of ours?

The Lord knows you are weak, that's why He has sent His Spirit to empower you. But you have got to make the choice to get with the program -- go all the way for God. That's how you win. Decide to follow Him no matter what the cost is, no matter what needs to be let go and laid down. Your present sufferings are called "light and momentary troubles" in the New Testament and compared to the glory yet to come, what we go through in this lifetime is nothing but a breath.

God will train your hands for war. He will equip you to not just survive the daily assaults from the enemy and from the world, but to be a victor at every turn. Just ask for Him to train you. Cry out to God to help you. Be yielded to His ways and then you'll see yourself becoming stronger in the strength of His might. You'll see yourself becoming the conqueror He sees and says you are!

Empty your hands! The Lord wants to train them for war!


"Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me. O LORD, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him?" Psalm 144:1-3