Re-runs

Living through the battle of life is tedious and sometimes boring.  I wonder how many wars were lost because of shear boredom?  When you are in the thick of it is easy to rally your forces and fight back.  When the enemy engagement lingers and stretches on to time indefinite it is so much the harder to keep up that fight. 

I think one of Satan's particular talents is patience, he has been waiting till before time began to avenge his fallen nature on God.  He can wage war on us it seems sometimes forever.  And just when you think the battle is over, even without a ticker tape parade, a skirmish on the outskirts draws your attention.

This is my life at present: the lingering into time indefinite stage of the battle.  Oh, I know that Christ has won the War (capital "W", the Big One, the Once and for All).  I know that Satan will be defeated completely at the time of Christ's Second Coming and, even more, that Christ defeated him totally on the cross 2,000 years ago.  I see evidence of this defeat in my daily life but Satan, like a mosquito caught in the car, is annoying and hard to kill on my own.

So this is the current (and it seems indefinite) battle...leaning on God's amazing power and ability and glorious riches instead of on man made escapes that really aren't escapes.  Do you remember the mask I posted several weeks ago?  The weed on the back represented the things God is pulling up by the roots in me.  This is one of them, my attempt to create my own rest when if I would just rest in God, He would be my shalvah.  I feel like a broken record but there it is.  

God is my shalvah.  He is my leisure, my rest, my hope, my strength, my victory even in the most lingering of battles!

"This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: 'In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.'"

Isaiah 30:15

Oh, to have all of it instead of none.  To make God my rest and my strength.  To sacrifice to Him a repentant heart and a quiet soul.  You are my salvation, O Lord.  I trust in You!