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YOUR SOTERIA® AT WORK THE STORY Of SOTERIA® {so-tay-ree’-ah} Greek for SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, & HEALING 3 Levels of WAR! Ever feel like everything around you is simply falling apart? The car, the family, the nation, the world? Well, it just may be. There are many things all around us that are continually being destroyed, torn down, blown up, or dying. It literally is all around us. Melody and I just returned from a trip to Tucson, AZ for her 99yr old grandmother’s funeral. When she was lowered into the ground, the war in her life was over. Sure, she was a kind and gentle person. But her entire life was a battle. Not just about illness, but about what she thought. She constantly worried about her kids. She struggled with her religion. She was concerned about her imposing on others during her later years. She was at constant war in her mind. Aren’t you? Don’t you continually war with your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and reactions to what others have said, done, or thought about you? The Apostle Paul stated he was at “war” with his own body members! They don’t do what he wants and then they go ahead and do what he doesn’t want. What a dilemma for the Bible’s greatest Apostle. His war was also in his mind. Jesus said the battleground was in the mind. We are constantly warring with all we are. Every day we are all at war. Even in our hearts, we war over right and wrong motives, agendas, and direction. How can we live an entire life at war with ourselves? How can someone like Melody’s grandmother live 99 years at war with her own life? How many years have you warred? How many more do you have to go? What about our churches? Are they at war? Or, are they just infighting to find significance or more attendees? Why would the church be at war? Who is the enemy of the church? Who is the enemy of our own body? Do you really know? Is it Satan or is it us? Where is the bigger threat? Does Satan actually fight with us in our Body and in our churches? Or does he simply send out some little accusation to get us fighting against each other, or worse, against our self? Last month we mentioned the explosion in the 3rd world for church growth while the American church has been stagnant for fifty years. Who is holding up our progress? Who put the wrench in the cogs? Is it Satan again, or simply us? Are we so at war with ourselves and our brothers and sisters in our own families and in other churches simply because we haven’t realized we don’t need to be? Do you continually fight over your time? Do you argue about your priorities? Is it confusing and confounding how fast the week goes by and you seemed not to have accomplished a thing? Did you spend most of your time fighting a loosing battle? Did you loose what you thought you were fighting about; weight, bills, worry. People are so funny. They spend so much time worry and warring over things instead of doing something about them, then they worry and war again because they can’t get anything done. What a vicious cycle! Is the world and our society any different? Aren’t individual people reflected in their churches and their societies? After all, they’re just made up of people. The world is at war. Constantly. It isn’t the trees fighting the bushes. It’s not the seas fighting the atmosphere. Nor is it the mountains straining to overtake the plains. The physical world is not at war, just the people in it. What is there to war about? History has shown us there is one basic reasons for war; power. It has also shown us there are four powers: Military, Religion, Politics, and Economics. In Biblical times until about 300 A.D. the rule and reign was due to military power. Such great war powers such as Egypt, China, Babylon, Mongolia, Persia, Greece, and Rome were con’t. FEBRUARY 2006 © Soteria Ministries 2003 EDITION 4 Vol. 2 Our SOTERIA At Work is a monthly publication to inform and enlist everyone to work out their Salvation by Loving others and living a disciplined life unto CHRIST! WORD FOR THE MONTH War, good God ya’ll. What is it good for?—Exd 15:3 The LORD [is] a man of war: the LORD [is] his name. Luk 14:31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? 2Cr 10:3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 1Ti 1:18 This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare; Jam 4:1 From whence [come] wars and fightings among you? [come they] not hence, [even] of your lusts that war in your members? Jam 4:2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Rev 12:7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Rev 17:14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him [are] called, and chosen, and faithful.