I have had one of those ‘little foxes’ weeks. It says in Song of Solomon Chapter 2 verse 15, ‘The little foxes spoil the vine.’ It’s been a ‘stone in the shoe’ week for me where I couldn’t get my mind off something because it was so irritating. But whenever I have a week like that, it draws me to a lot of meditation, a lot of jotting, thinking and appraising things.
There are many things – day to day, week to week – that war against our predestination. But mostly the real war will not be the things that come against us. They will be the responses we make to those things. I felt the Lord impressed two things on me through the week. Firstly, ‘Don’t war in the flesh’ and secondly, ‘Touch nothing unclean’. 2Co 10:3. 2 Co 6:17.
The Scripture says, ‘He who is clean only needs his feet washed’. John 13:10. And I felt I needed a good foot-washing this week. Sometimes things that are unclean encroach upon us. They are not major, but they are imposing, threatening. As I sat in church on Sunday, I felt like the Lord was using a scrubbing brush over my dusty feet. As I listened to the various ones minister His word, I just sat there soaking it up. The Lord was giving me a good scrub-up, neither saying, ‘Well done’ or ‘Not well done’. He was just saying, ‘Sit here and I am going to wash you’. And that, of course, is how Jesus is preparing the church as His Bride; He will sanctify her, ‘having cleansed her by the washing of water by the word’. Eph 5:26.
There is nothing that we have done that we cannot be washed clean from; unless of course, we make a bad response to the things that we have done or have been done to us. That is warring in the flesh. When I hear a complaint against myself, I go to prayer. I ask the Lord, ‘Is this so?’ If it is true, it can only help me to process my sin. And if the accusation is wrong, it can’t hurt me. The only thing that can hurt me is a bad response. The Scripture says, ‘Keep your heart with all diligence’. Prov 4:23.
The problem with many of us is that we keep plummeting into the flesh when things don’t go well. Somebody says something and we get offended. We are not cohesive in our marriages. Our children aren’t coping, so we’re frazzled. We don’t cope with our work. We’re not sure what to do. And so we plummet into the flesh. We get angry, bitter and frustrated: we turn on each other. Like a family which tears itself to pieces, the church can be its own worst enemy. As Paul said in his letter to the Galatians, if we bite and devour one another, will we not be consumed by one another? Gal 5:15.
