Focus: The Lord's Battles (Pt.2)

Text: 1Sam.18:17

"Fight the Lord's battles."

The greatest of the Lord's battles is the battle for souls. Souls are lost, and need finding. Souls are trapped in darkness, and need to see the light. Souls are in bondage to sin, and need redeeming. Souls are blinded by Satan, and need to recover their sight. Souls are bound by Satan, and need to be delivered. Souls are carried away by idols - gods created by the figment of man's imagination and sculpted by man's hands, and need to be brought back to God. The souls of men are dead in trespasses and sins, and need resurrection.

In trying to gain the whole world, man has lost his soul. Man, going in the way that seems right in his eyes, has succeeded in destroying himself.

The battle for souls involves intense, earnest and unceasing prayers and intercessions. It involves sacrifices of love. It involves compassion, concern and care. The psalmist complains, "I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul" (Ps.142:4). We can only win souls if we care enough for them. God is not "willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2Pet.3:9). 

The cross is the expression of God's willingness to save man and a demonstration of His love for him. Evangelism cannot be productively engaged without serious, intentional, and agonizing prayer for souls.

Abraham sacrificed and fought to get Lot back. He paid a huge price for Lot's soul. Do you still care for the souls of men and yearn for their salvation? What effort are you making to bring souls back to Christ? Is evangelism still the supreme task of the church today? Have we become so preoccupied with or so involved in our earthly occupations that we have abandoned or relegated our heavenly vocation to the place of irrelevance? Do we still care that souls are perishing every day?

No battle is as important to God as the battle for souls. Let us pray and preach! Let us pray, and then reach out to them with the gospel! Let us cry out to God to save our loved ones. No man can save himself. Every sinner needs a Savior, and Christ is that Savior. He uses the saved to save others.

Let it bother you that someone in your family or neighborhood is not saved yet. Groan in your spirit for him. Pray intensely and constantly for him! Reach out to him in love and woo him or her to the Lord! The Lord Jesus Christ says, "Compel them to come." Paul says, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we PERSUADE MEN…" (2Cor.5:11). Jude says, "And others save with fear, PULLING [them] out of the fire…" (Jud.1:23). The word 'pulling' is harpazō in the Greek, it means to seize, snatch or catch away, or to pluck out or take away by force. Paul says, "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did BESEECH you by us: we PRAY you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God" (2Cor.5:20). 

We plead, persuade, pray for, pull out, compel men, and make every effort to snatch them away from the fire of hell. That is the Lord's battle - the battle for the souls of men. God wants us to be passionate about what He is passionate about - souls. The cross is the cost for souls. The cross shows the value God has placed on our souls, and winning souls is the job of every Christian believer. Let's battle for souls, and we will be blessed for doing so!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter