Victory truly begins with surrender to the will of God no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. The circumstances you will find yourself in will not be the problem, nor will the people who play their roles in your circumstances be the problem. People will always act according to their nature. The problem will be your flesh as it is confronted by the Spirit. If we keep in the front of our minds that the point of our lives it to become more like Christ and glorify God, it will help us in our confrontations. Please do not get me wrong brothers and sisters, I am not underestimating the pain of your trial. The Jeweler always sets His diamonds and gold against the backdrop of black velvet. It highlights the beauty of the gems and precious metals. Your circumstances and your confrontations is the black velvet. God desires to display His work for all the principalities and powers, and a fallen world, to see. Your surrender is the key to it all.

If we were to break down Victory in Jesus and peer into what that looks like, what would we find? We have already talked about confrontation. That is the overarching structure. Gethsemane was a confrontation. Jesus confronted His fears and His own will and was victorious. Calvary was the culmination of confrontation. Revenge was confronted and defeated by “Forgive them father.” Sin was confronted and defeated. Despair was confronted when Jesus cries out “My God, My God why has thou forsaken me.” Gross darkness was confronted and overcome by the light of Christ. Death was confronted, the grave itself, and was overcome by His glorious resurrection. This is what victory looks like and this is the process that all of us who would desire to live a Godly victorious life find ourselves walking through. There is no other way. You will be confronted by all of these things if you desire to live a victorious life. And it is how you react to that confrontation that will determine the kind of life that you will ultimately live. The abundant life in Christ is entirely paradoxical to what the world and much of Christendom believe it to be.

As I was walking one morning and praying this thought came to my spirit. “What does victory look like,” and the Lord spoke into my heart. Victory for the Christian almost always comes against a backdrop of darkness. Battles against the flesh. Taking up our cross. Trials and tribulations. These circumstances, these events bring to the fore a confrontation or rather are brought to the fore by confrontation. The Christian walk is a perpetual confrontation of one kind or another. If the Spirit of God dwells within you and you desire to live a life that is pleasing to Him, then the war only ends when we throw off this mortal coil. Victory in Christ is to keep on walking.

The title to this piece is of course misleading, you cannot deal with strongholds, or make a deal with them. The Lord is looking for unconditional surrender. In that type of surrender, there can be no place found for strongholds. In war, in unconditional surrender, all weapons must be laid down. Unconditional surrender is total capitulation. How this wars against the flesh. Many elements within Germany and Japan desired to fight to the death rather than suffer the humiliation of total capitulation. Our flesh is not much different from those unyielding elements found in Germany and Japan.

We have a saying where I come from, actually I have found this saying all over the world. I come from the town of Greenock in Scotland, so they say “you can take the boy our of Greenock but you cannot take Greenock out of the boy.” It is usually said when you have done something negative that reflects the culture of where you come from, but in it there is usually a sneaking pride. For example if someone got in my face and I punched him out, they could employ that saying. Maybe I would try and excuse my behavior my employing that statement. What I would really be saying was “it’s not my fault.”

It is true that as saints we carry vestiges of the world from whence we came in our flesh. And it never ceases to rise up and challenge our spirits. They war against each other and this war can certainly make us weary. Oftentimes soldiers would be so weary that they cared less if they lived or died. It is that kind of weariness when in and of ourselves we despair of this war

How then do we overcome in this war of attrition? How are we to diminish the flesh in us? Some of you may be familiar with Greek mythology. There was a beast called the “Hydra.” It had nine heads and as each head was cut of by Hercules, another would grow back in its place. I think our battles with the flesh often feel like that. We deal, what we think is a death blow, only for it to return again when we least suspect it. In the Greek story the neck had to cauterized, sealed shut by fire so that it could not grow back again.

Our flesh is made up of multiple strongholds. When we come to Christ and are reborn, we are given the Holy Spirit and when we cooperate with Him, then we can overcome these strongholds and as each of them is overcome then the flesh is diminished and loses power. Each stronghold has to be taken down one by one. As an example, Jericho had to be dealt with. The children of Israel were given instructions and they followed them and down came the walls. Do you see the universal principal there? God instructs us through His Spirit and His word, we hear, we obey, and down comes the stronghold. Is there any other way? No. In ourselves we have nothing, no power, the flesh rules supreme.

The kingdom of our flesh, your life, has been invaded and the invader demands total capitulation, total surrender. He will go through the land and deal with the strongholds one by one and He must have our obedience in this. This is how we overcome the flesh, in Him, by Him and through Him. Even after the stronghold has been torn down, we must remain vigilant. The defeated enemy can scatter to the woods. Our spirits must be alert. The remains of the enemy will undoubtedly attack on dark and stormy nights. The rain will be so loud that you cannot hear him approach. When you are weary in the midst of trial he can come screaming out of the trees catching us of guard.

The only safe place is by His side. Staying close to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our enemy can do nothing when we stay close to Jesus. He is our big guns. And that enemy knows he cannot come close to us when we are standing right by his side. So he waits, like a wolf in the shadows to see if we drift away from His presence, from His nearness. If we do, then he strikes. If we do not then he waits and he waits and he waits and all the time he is starving and dying. This is how you kill the flesh, he must be starved to death. In this we overcome and stand in the power and the might of Christ our risen King. Victory in Jesus our Commander in chief.

In the land of the Lilliputians,a strange and foreign land, Gulliver, the fictional character from a series of books entitled “Gulliver’s Travels, finds himself pinned to the ground by a thousand shackles. He is in the land of the little people who are merely six inches tall. They were at first friendly towards Gulliver but in the end he refused to help them conquer and enslave their enemies. After a long swim back from enemy territory, Gulliver falls into a deep sleep and when he awakes he finds himself pinned to the ground. They could only get him while he was in a deep sleep.

Saints, are we not giants in a world full of little people? Is this world not foreign to us? Have we fallen asleep to a satanic lullaby and awoken to find ourselves pinned to the ground? Shackled by the bands of the little people, shackled by the bands of this world, held down by thorns and thistles and all the cares of this world? How could something so large and so grand like the sons and daughters of the Living God be constrained by the little things? We need to break free from everything that holds us down.

Rise up ye giants of the earth, ye sons and daughters of the King and walk through the land. Walk in the calling you have been called to. Rise up saints and walk in the Kingdom of God. Remember what God called our brother Gideon “ye mighty man of valor.” And this when he was the weakest man from the weakest clan and hiding behind a wall lest his enemies discover him. Brothers and sisters, don’t you know that you will judge angels? Now is the time to throw off all distractions, everything that will hold you down. You need to stand up, rise up and walk throughout the land.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners? (Isa 14:12-17)

In the natural world there is such a thing called “The empty nest syndrome.” It is well documented. You may be in that position now, or approaching it. So, the empty nest syndrome happens when your last child leaves the house and now it is just you and your spouse. On average the children period lasts for around twenty years or so. The central focus of that twenty years has been your children. You have common cause with your spouse and typically everything revolves around the children. It can be hard to tell what kind of relationship the parents have because of all of the activity and emotional investment that revolves and swirls around the children.

Then suddenly, one day you wake up and there is a strange silence through the house. Nothing is stirring, not even a mouse. And you wonder. Do we now have anything in common? Could we hold down a decent conversation? Do we love each other and do we even have a relationship? Many couples have found to their horror that they do not have a relationship with this person they call their spouse outside of an apart from their children. Sometime couples discover that they don’t even like each other. Of course there is the other type of couple. Their love is real and strong and at the center of it all was their love and devotion to each other and from that place came the strength and resolve to raise their children. And when that part of their life is over, they are ready, together, to launch into the next part with each other, hand in hand.

I would like to suggest that this empty nest syndrome is an analogy that can explain the difference between someone who is religious and someone who has a relationship with God. In the case of the people who have no real relationship and are bound only by their children, their children can represent church on a Sunday. Bible studies. Groups, organizations. If we began to strip all of those activities away what would be left standing? Would you have a relationship with God without these activities?

For someone with a real relationship with God, no matter what was stripped from them they would still stand strong in their faith. The vital love and passion that they have for God is the central focus of their life and everything that is in their life revolves around this. For the man and wife who love each other and are one in the Lord together, that will not change when their children leave the house. If a man and a woman do not love each other and have no relationship outside of their children then the marriage will not last long when the cementing force is taken away.

Love and relationship has to be at the core of who we are. It is the force that binds us together. Children come and go, birds fly the coup, activities can come to an abrupt halt like we have seen in the last year with Covid. What still stands when the smoke clears? Our abiding relationship to Jesus. With everything, or stripped of all things Jesus remains. He remains preeminent in our hearts. This grows deeper with time if it it is real. He is what defines us. And we truly see this more clearly as the trappings of this world fall away. Even as youth and strength and beauty and vigor depart from us, we know that the inner man is renewed daily and this is what the world sees. We, the children of God are no loveless empty nests, we are instead the temple of the Holy Spirit which grows richer with every passing day.

For those who do not know who the Praetorian Guard were, they were an elite handpicked group of Roman soldiers that would guard Roman Emperors. They were made up of nine “cohorts,” each consisting of around 1000 soldiers, so about nine thousand in all. While the legions were not allowed to come near to Rome, they had to stay north of the Rubicon river, the Praetorian Guard were barracked just outside of the city of Rome.

It is said that on Wednesday, there will be over twenty thousand national guard in Washington D.C for the transfer of power, the inauguration of Joe Biden. It has been reported that everyone of those twenty thousand soldiers have had background reports carried out on them. Hand picked men and women of a certain political persuasion? Is there a purge going on in the military? What would disqualify you?

Is it possible that we are looking at the politicization of the Army? What next, the police? This is very dangerous territory we are entering into. If the armed forces and the police become armed centers of ideology where all dissenting voices are purged out, then they simply become an armed wing of one dominant political force. You can see how that would end. Not well. Purging the institutions of society of any voice that disagrees with the dominant narrative has occurred many times in history. It never ends well.

Yet we know that saints don’t we? It does not end well for us in this world. It did not end well for our Lord Jesus. But, wait………..He rose again, He rose again!!! The enemy might kick us when we are down but we shall rise again. He arose so then shall His servants. If the Lord Jesus is for us then who can be against us? It may be dark all through the night but cometh the morning the sun rises and the dawn breaks. Jesus is our sunrise, Jesus is our dawn and at the break of the end of ages we shall be with Him as He comes again for all the world to see. Glory to God. Be of Good faith brothers and sisters for He has overcome the world.

Many times in history, Christians have had to run and seek refuge. The Moravians fled in the late 1400s and early 1500s and again in the 1700s. The fled from place like Bohemia and Moravia to Saxony. And in the 1700s they would find refuge there under the protection of Count Zindendorf at Hernhut. Christians had fled from England to places like Amsterdam in the 1500s. These pilgrims would then move on to the American colonies from there and England and from all over Europe.

This is just some of the heritage of the Christian story as pilgrims. For this is what we are, is this not correct? We have no abiding city in this world. Think about what it meant to leave your home country back in the 1500s and 1600s. Leaving everything that you know behind, oftentimes with just what you could carry. And why endure all of this? For the freedom to worship God as they were led. It was monumental and yet they were actually living the pilgrim life. The Spirit of God was with them. They may not have had a country to call there own, but they were comforted by their convictions and by the Lord their God.

Now saints. Where shall we run to? In an increasingly hostile world is there anywhere left to run to? Do we even have a people that would be willing to leave everything behind them, including their national identity, the home of their birth, their roots? Would we be willing to uproot ourselves for the sake of being able to worship the Lord our God as we please and be able to stand upon and walk in the great truths of the Scriptures? Would we/will we have the strength of our brothers and sisters who came before us?

I believe that God’s genuine children do have that same strength because they have the same Spirit burning within them. The Kingdom of God is more important to the saints on earth than the kingdoms on earth and the places of their natural birth. I believe that the Lord is indeed preparing places for us to run to. It may be regions of the world that you would never have imagined. It will be a double edged sword of course. For as we gather together in these places as the persecution arises then we will, in the end, ultimately, be an easier target. Yet this is our calling and the Lord will be with us. Let us pray our flight will not be in winter.