Author: Calleen Hough

The Battle Belongs to the Lord

Because we don’t see the spiritual warfare going on around us, we may forget or don’t realize that it is going on. Satan is described in the Bible as the ruler of this world. Everyone is under the power of Satan until and unless they confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. Spiritual warfare is the battle that is constantly being fought over the hearts and minds of those who live on Earth. It is unfortunate that most people are unaware of it and especially tragic that the unsaved have no idea that Satan is in control of their lives.

Victory is difficult to celebrate in spiritual warfare because you can’t always tell the extent to which the enemy has been defeated. It says in Luke 15:10 about salvation that “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” And in1 Peter 3:23 speaking of Jesus it says, “Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.” Before Jesus came into the world, there was no victory over sin and Satan reigned over the whole Earth, except in the Promised Land. Israel was God’s country and his dominion over the land was exempt from Satan’s sovereignty. So why was there and is there still constant warfare in the land of Israel?

When the Israelites settled in Canaan, they disobeyed God by not driving out al the inhabitants of the land. If they had, the Promised Land would have become a no man’s land to Satan because he was not allowed to touch God’s people. It was the influence of the Canaanites and the worship of their gods that caused the Israelites to betray God and act like they had when they lived in Egypt.

The battle with the Canaanites by the waters of Megiddo when God subdued Jabin the king of Canaan (Judges 4:23) was a sort of preview of coming attractions. In Revelation 16:16 it refers to a place called Armegeddon (mount Megiddo) where the final battle between God and Satan will be fought. Judges 6:20-24 give us insight into the way the battle lines will be drawn. All the heavenly host will be drawn together to take their final stand and on Earth there will be a call to fight, but not everyone will answer.

Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the LORD, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the LORD against the mighty. Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent. (Judges 5:23-24)

Does it really matter?

I’ve heard it said many times that Good is no respecter of persons. I have to admit I’m not really sure I know what that means, but I know I’ve sometimes wondered why God uses certain people. I think the truth of the matter is that God can use anyone and therefore, he uses anyone that is willing to obey him and doesn’t care who gets the credit.

Deborah is a perfect example of someone that God used that did not have the right qualifications for the job, but was willing to step in and do what God told her to. Deborah was a judge which means that she was equal to Moses in her capacity to decree punishment when the children of Israel broke God’s commandments. She was not a priest, but she was a prophetess which means that God spoke to her directly and revealed his will to her during the time that she was appointed to judge Israel.

And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kadesh-Naphtali, and said unto him, Hath not the LORD God of Israel commanded saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor…And Barak said unto her, If thou wilt go with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go. (Judges 4: 6-8)

Along with David and Samson, Barak is listed as one of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 where it says of them:

Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. (Hebrews 11: 33-34)

Although it was Barak’s faith that got Israel the victory, it was Deborah’s authority that Barak relied on before he entered the battle. So why did Deborah do it? Why did she go with Barak and enable him to become the hero?

And she said, I will surely go with thee: notwithstanding the journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honour; for the LORD shall sell Sisea into the hand of a woman. (Judges 4:9)

Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, ended up killing the captain of the host of the Canaanite army by driving a tent peg through his temples while he was sleeping. Does it really matter who drove the tent peg through Sisera’s temples? In God’s eyes, no, he can use a man, a woman, or even a child to accomplish his will and in the case of Jael, he used the wife of one of Sisera’s allies to get the job done. But, I think it mattered to Deborah and even though God is not a respecter of persons, he does respect women and will respond to their petitions just as eagerly as he does the petitions of a man.

Relax, take it easy

I’m not really sure what the Israelites’ lifestyle was like during the time they were settling in the land of Canaan, but I imagine it was a little like when I go camping with my family. We like to tent camp, so we are pretty much out in the open spaces of the campground most of the time. There is little privacy and it is difficult not to get in each other’s way or interact with the campers around us because we are all sharing the common areas. Therefore, most everything happens in public including our emotional upsets and the tension that may develop between us.

A couple of years ago, we had a big family blow out on one of our camping trips and it resulted in so much tension that the trip was cut short because we couldn’t deal with the public airing of our dirty laundry  so to speak and wanted to go back to the safety of our homes where we had four walls to contain things.

Camping among the inhabitants of Canaan had to be challenging for the Israelites. Their presence was a constant reminder that war was inevitable and their track record of annihilating their enemies left no doubt that they intended to conquer every nation within the territory that God had given them to possess. When it says “the land had rest’ (Judges 3:11, 30), during the interim periods of their engagement in warfare, it means there was a period of time when the atmosphere was peaceful, a time when the people were able to relax and take it easy.

When I was growing up, it seemed like our home was always filled with tension, at least it was when one or more of my parents were there. My mom and dad fought constantly and my dad who was an alcoholic had a tendency toward violence. Aside from the fear that was always present in my life, I had a problem with not being able to relax. I was always on the alert for my dad being triggered or my mom having a bad day at work. There was never any relief, even when I was sleeping. I was often awakened by shouts and screams and witnessed my dad beating up my mom on more than one occasion.

For the past 3 1/2 years, I have been living alone and have begun to enjoy the benefit of being able to relax whenever I am at home. I think the rest that came to the land after conflicts were resolved was God’s way of showing the Israelites what things would have been like if they had obeyed him and driven the occupants of the Promised Land out. The 40 years of rest may have been a type of compensation for the 40 years they spent in the wilderness or it may have been how long it took the Israelites to forget that peace and prosperity are a whole lot better than being unequally yoked to someone that believes a marriage license gives him or her the right to treat you like a sex object.

You can go your own way

Being strong can be a Catch 22 of sorts because it’s both a help and a hindrance when it comes to walking with the Lord. To be effective as Christians, we must learn to depend on the Lord, but we must also be able to stand on our own two feet and not cower when we are attacked by our enemy the devil.

The Lord knows our weaknesses and does not expect us to do everything right. In fact, he plans for us to make mistakes and will always be able to account for the choices we make when it comes to accomplishing his will in our lives.

So then, does it really matter if we choose to go to the left instead of the right when we come to a crossroad in our life? Yes, if you would like to avoid some of the pain and suffering you experience in your life. Some people like to travel the hard road and enjoy having challenges on a regular basis. Other people like to take things easy and become discouraged when things get too difficult. Although I hate to admit it, I seem to be one of those people that can’t stand the easy life. If I’m not facing a challenge, I think there is something wrong with me. Getting into trouble is not second nature to me, it’s the only way I know how to handle things. I guess you could say I’m just naturally rebellious and believe me, I know a lot about pain and suffering.

“And it came to pass, when Israel was strong that they put the Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out” (Judges 1:28). The word strong here is probably referring to moral strength or courage, but because the Israelites were disobeying God by not driving out their enemies, you could say they were a little to strong, maybe even cocky or as my grandmother used to say, getting a little too big for their own britches. They thought they could handle being the task masters for a change and wanted to make slaves of the Canaanites the way they had been in Egypt. It was a bad decision, one they would regret eventually, but I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time and can relate to their desire to turn the tables and try to even the score.

The most prominent role God has in the universe is creator. It is of course a critical role because if he hadn’t been able to create things, then our world wouldn’t exist and there would be no life as we know it today. I think the role of creator overshadows most of God’s other roles, but by far the role that does not get the attention it deserves is fixer or re-creator. I believe God loves to fix things and that may be why he designed man with a sin nature.

In Joshua 5:9 there is recorded a significant milestone in the development of the nation of Israel that may not seem important unless you look at it from the perspective of fixing a problem. The problem was that after spending hundreds of years in Egypt and becoming slaves to Pharaoh, the Israelites had developed an attitude of reproach toward themselves, they knew that things weren’t right, but they felt helpless and unable to change because they has spent so much time living in a dysfunctional state.

It is natural to feel reproach when things are not right in our lives and because we are created in God’s image, we have a tendency to try and fix things when we feel reproach, but we do not have the same ability God does to make things right. It is like a five year old child that wants to make his own breakfast. When the toast gets burned, he tries to scrape the black stuff off, but it just doesn’t taste right after being burned. In Joshua 5:9 it says, “And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled the reproach of Egypt from off you.” The use of the words rolled away indicate there is some kind of process involved in removing their reproach, but it doesn’t make sense that God would literally roll away their reproach, so he must be speaking figuratively and is using terminology that will trigger their understanding of what has happened to them. What I believe the LORD was alluding to here was the Israelites reproach being like a large stone that needs to be rolled off the opening of a cistern so that fresh water can be accessed.

Cisterns were very common during the time when the Israelites were settling in Canaan. It was  standard practice to cover the cisterns with large stones that made it difficult to access the water because it was a valuable commodity and in high demand in areas where there was not much rainfall. As in the instance when Jacob rolled the stone from the well’s mouth so that Rachel could water her father’s flock, it was “a feat of unusual strength for one man, because the stone was large” (Note on Gen 29:10, KJV). When an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to confront the Israelites, he reminds them that God had done his part by bringing them out of Egypt into the Promised Land, but they had not done their part, which was to drive out the inhabitants of Canaan, “but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have you done this?” (Judges 2:2).

After I became a Christian, God cleansed me of all my sins an through the blood of Jesus Christ made me perfectly righteous and pure in his sight. All the bad things that had happened in my life up to that point were wiped away from his memory and I had a clean slate in regards to my right standing with him. But, the things that had happened were not wiped from my memory. In fact, it seemed like all the bad things I had done and that had been done to me were more prominent in my memory and I was suddenly aware of what a wretched sinner I was. So, instead of starting a new life and believing that God wanted to bless me, I compromised and got pregnant when I was not married.

“They ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way” (Judges 2:19). The word translated stubborn in Judges 2:19 is derived from the word qâshâh (kaw – shaw´) which means to be dense, tough or severe. “This word marks the restlessness, impatience, petulance, and irritability with which Pharaoh’s course of action was characterized while he was resisting the urgent appeals of both Moses and his own people” (7185). After entering the Promised Land, the Israelites began to act like Pharaoh. As they had once been abused and forced into slave labor, they began to do the same thing to their enemies in Canaan.

I’m not sure why victims take on the characteristics of their abusers, but I think it may be a sort of coping mechanism that helps them to function during times of stress. Because I was raped at a young age, I never had a chance to experience normal sexual behavior. Whenever I was in a situation where I felt someone was attracted to me sexually, my defenses would be triggered and I would immediately take on the role of the aggressor so that I didn’t feel vulnerable and overcome by fear.

When I got married, I was not able to respond to my husband the way a woman normally would. Our sex life was completely dysfunctional and it was one of the reasons our marriage failed. I really feel that the reason I didn’t change in this area after I became a Christian is because I was stubborn. I was harboring resentment over being raped and thought my behavior was justified. Now that I have been divorced almost 13 years, I can see that I was only hurting myself by being stubborn and wish that I had been able to overcome my fear and recover from the abuse I experienced.

One of the key principles that is emphasized throughout the Bible is sowing and reaping. When we continue in our “own doings” for long periods of time, we will eventually receive a return for our labor and from my own experience I can say the result is not worth the effort.

Choose this day

A crossroad is a place where we must choose the pathway we will follow. In practical terms, it is a choice to go our own way or to follow the Lord, but there is more to it than that. Ultimately, what is decided when we come to a crossroad in our life is will we reach our destination, the place God planned for us to live our life or will we end up in the wilderness where our life will remain on hold and our destiny unfulfilled until we see that we have made a mistake and want to start over again.

The Israelites gathered in Shechem to renew their covenant with God because it was a crossroad for them. Hundreds of years before they entered the Promised Land and took possession of land, “Jacob came to Shalom, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan…And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent…And he erected there an altar, and called it El-Elohe-Israel” (Gen 33:18-20).

Unfortunately, things didn’t go well for Jacob and his family in Shechem. After purchasing the parcel of land, it says, “And Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and defiled her” (Gen 34:1-2).

The contrasting events of Jacob settling in the land of Canaan and his daughter Dinah being raped illustrate perfectly the dilemma of a crossroad. A choice had to be made. Would Jacob stay in Canaan and continue to worship the LORD at the altar he had erected or would he do as he had every other time he had gotten into trouble, run for his life?

The choice is the same for everyone and if you haven’t come to this crossroad in your life yet, you will eventually. Joshua puts the choice to the Israelites this way:

Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24: 14-15)

I still love you

If you have your eyes closed, how close does someone have to be for you to sense his presence? I cannot see God, but there are times when I can feel his presence. Part of what affects my awareness of someone’s presence is my feelings toward that person. In particular, fear and love have a strong baring on whether or not I will be affected when someone gets close to me.

In Joshua’s final address to Israel, he reminds the people that they must remain close to God, “But cleave unto the LORD your God, as ye have done unto this day” (Joshua 23:8) and warns them against letting their affection toward God diminish because they are living among foreigners. “Take good heed therefore unto your selves, that ye love the LORD your God, else if you do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, even these that remain among you” (Joshua 23: 11-12).

The word translated cleave, dâbaq (daw – bak′) means to keep close and is the same word that is used in Genesis 2:24 where it says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.” It appears there is a connection between love and cleaving to someone because Joshua tells the Israelites to love the LORD and cleave to him rather than the foreigners that are living among them.

When my love for the Lord is strong, it seems like I am more aware of his presence. It’s as if the stirring of my heart tells me he is near. The only way I can control my emotions when I am in love with someone is to either constantly be with that person or to try and not think about him at all. The feeling of love is very powerful and it tends to be an all or nothing emotion in that you can turn it on and off, but you cannot regulate its strength or duration. The thing I have learned about keeping my love for the Lord strong is to never turn it off. It is much easier to stay in love than it is to fall back in love after you have stopped loving someone.

Living in the Promised Land

I think it is possible for a Christian, someone that has accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, to live their entire life outside the will of God. God always gives us the choice to go his way or not. He does not force his will upon his children. If you think of the Promised Land as the will of God, then being inside the borders of the Promised Land means that you are in the will of God, you are living your life according to God’s plan for you, and being outside the borders of the Promised Land means that you are outside of God’s will, you are going your own way and doing as you please.

Two and a half of the tribes of Israel chose to live outside the boundaries of the Promised Land. The children of Rueben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh lived on the other side of the Jordan from the rest of Jacob’s descendants. The Jordan River formed a natural barrier between the two territories and made it difficult to discern whether the Ruebenites, Gadites, and half tribe of Manasseh were a part of the family that had inherited the Promised Land because they were not actually living in it.

Even though the Ruebenites, Gadites, and half tribe of Manasseh chose to live outside the Promised Land, they did not want to give up their right to their inheritance all together. In order to ensure they would continue to be identified with the Israelites, they built a replica of the altar that was used to make sacrifices to God. The altar was intended to be a will of sorts, a legal testament to their right of ownership to a portion of the Promised Land.

Every Christian has the guarantee that when they die they will go to heaven. For some Christians, that is enough, that is all they hope to gain from their relationship with the Lord. But I think they are missing the point of why Jesus died on the cross to purchase their salvation. I believe God wants his children to experience a different kind of life on earth that what they would have if they were not Christians. he wants them to be resurrected before they get to heaven.

A question that I think is worth asking is why did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? Everything that Jesus did was used to teach his followers a lesson. When Jesus arrived at the home of Martha after her brother had died, she said to him, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died” (John 11:21). If it was me that had a chance to confront the Lord, I might have said, Lord, if you had been with me that night, I wouldn’t have been raped. What follows in their conversation is not only an important lesson about the resurrection of believers, but a lesson about the kind of life God wants his children to live while they are on Earth.

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believeth thou this? (John 11:25-26)

What I think Jesus is saying to Martha here is that if you are alive spiritually and are exercising your faith on a continual basis, you are never separated from God. You will not be thinking, if you had been here this wouldn’t have happened because you will know that the Lord is always with you. He is constantly by your side.

God is able

There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.

When God created the heaven and the earth, he spoke into existence everything that he created “and God saw that it was good” (Gen 1:10). There is a lot that God sees today that is not good, but he is able to change things, to change lives and make them as they were intended to be.

The way that God works today is the same way he worked in Abraham’s time, through promises. God tells us what he is going to do ahead of time so that we can see that it is good in the same way that he did when he first created the heaven and the earth. If you’ve ever watched an artist at work, you have probably been amazed to see the canvas or lump of clay come to life. It is amazing how a blank sheet of paper can suddenly become an image that moves you to tears or laughter.

The word translated pass in Joshua 1:45, bôw (bo) is an action word, “this verb connotes movement in space from one place toward another” (935). What it is referring to in this verse is the movement of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan. God brought them into the Promised Land, but it was the Israelites that had to do the walking, fighting, and occupying in order to live in the land.

It was a partnership, God did his part and the Israelites had to do theirs. I would refer to the arrangement as collaboration because God could not force the Israelites to go into the land and the Israelites would not have defeated their enemies without God’s help. They needed each other and to a certain extent, they had a shared destiny. God could have chosen another family, but he would still have had to choose someone to receive his blessing.

The question I have to ask myself sometimes is, do I really want God’s blessing? It is hard sometimes to be obedient and walk in God’s way. I get tired of going against the tide and don’t always agree with what God asks me to do, but I know if I want to live in the Promised Land, I have to be obedient and let God call the shots. He can do it without me, but I can’t do it without him.

God is my refuge

Not every mistake I make has the same effect on my life, therefore, I regret some mistakes I have made more than others. The good thing about mistakes is that you can correct them. The bad thing about mistakes is that sometimes the effect is so severe or the damage so unrepairable that you can’t just erase them and start over.

When I was in elementary school, my teachers would correct my papers for me. As I got older, my teachers expected me to correct my own mistakes. Eventually, I was not given an opportunity to correct my mistakes, I was just give a score and however well I did determined my grade for the class.

One of the things I made a lot of mistakes on when I was a teenager was driving. I got a lot of tickets and one day two police officers showed up at my home and told my parents they had a warrant for my arrest. I was taken to jail and had to appear before a judge to determine what my punishment would be.

I think the worst mistake I have ever made in my life happened when I was 14. It really wasn’t that bad as far as what I did wrong, but the effect changed my life and there was no way to correct it or repair the damage after it happened. It was one of those wrong place, wrong time scenarios that resulted in me being raped and losing my virginity to a man that would best be described as despicable. This year marks 40 years since that fateful day and I still have not completely recovered.

God knows we are not perfect and doesn’t take pleasure in seeing us suffer for our mistakes. In fact, the reason he sent Jesus to save us is so we wouldn’t have to be punished for our mistakes. In the Promised Land, there were designated cities where a person could take refuge. It says in Joshua 20:3 that if someone killed another person as a result of a mistake, the killer could flee to one of the cities of refuge and be safe until his case had been judged.

Not every church is a safe place for people that have made mistakes, but I believe the reason God established the church in a physical form was so that people would know where to find him if they got into trouble. Ultimately, God is our refuge because it is his protection we need when we have done something wrong. After I was raped, it took me six years to make my way into a church. It wasn’t until I was desperate and in a way, running for my life, that I was willing to seek refuge in the arms of God. Perhaps the real mistake was that I waited so long.

I asked for it

Joshua was the last to be assigned a territory in the Promised Land. Unlike the rest of Israel’s children who received their inheritance by lot or the casting of small pebbles similar to what we think of today as dice, it says in Joshua 19:50 “they gave him the city which he asked.” Joshua and Caleb received the land they wanted because they were the only survivors of the wilderness generation. When they were sent to spy out the Promised Land, they came back with a good report and believed they could overcome the people who lived there.

The Promised Land is described as a land flowing with milk and honey. It was a fruitful land and the city Joshua chose to live in Timnath-serah, which means “portion of (the) sun” (8556), could be described as a hot spot in Israel because it was located on a mountain facing toward the location where the Messiah was expected to arrive, Bethlehem. In a way, you could say Joshua wanted his family to have front row seats for the Messiah’s arrival. It’s possible that Joshua’s descendants were among the shepherds that received the announcement of Christ’s birth and visited him in the stable.

Sometimes I think about where I would like to live if I could live anywhere in the world. Every time, I always come up with the same answer, exactly where I’m at right now, Costa Mesa. What makes Costa Mesa special is that it is the home of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, the church founded by Pastor, Chuck Smith.

The Calvary Chapel ministry began in the 60’s during the hippie age and became famous for the trend of people coming to church dressed however they wanted to, even barefoot in some cases. Up until that time, everyone that went to church was expected to dress up and had their “Sunday clothes.” I think it’s interesting that Jesus was born in a stable to parents that were not rich and famous. I think Pastor Chuck was raised during the time when going to church was just a ritual that people went through and he understood that it was not going to church that mattered, it was what you did after you got there that was important. Calvary Chapel is famous for it’s worship and the teaching of God’s word is central to its mission.

If it weren’t enough that I live just minutes from Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, for the past five years I have had the privilege of being a member of Greg Laurie’s church Harvest Christian Fellowship. Greg Laurie is probably the most effective evangelist in the world today. Every year thousands of people are saved at the Harvest Crusade. A couple of years ago, Pastor Greg launched Harvest America, an annual event that enables hundreds of thousands of people to hear the gospel preached. I don’t believe it will be long before technology will enable the Harvest ministry to expand worldwide.

So here I am in the hot spot of Christian ministry and I can’t help thinking, how did I get so lucky? Well, I didn’t get here by a roll of the dice. I actually believe God called me here, particularly because of what is going on in the ministry and who knows, maybe I will end up having front row seats when Christ returns and raptures the church into Heaven?