One Key to Victory in Spiritual Warfare

Hebrews 10:35–39

When we set out to do God's work — or when we are already in the middle of it — things sometimes arise that trouble our hearts or make no sense to us. This is because it is, in the end, a spiritual matter — Satan is trying to steal our hearts, and trying to steal the many fruits, the growth, and the maturity that come through our service. It might be that just as we are about to go and worship, something happens to wound our hearts. It might be that just as we are trying to obey something God has laid on our hearts, a misunderstanding arises.

The writer of Hebrews speaks to exactly this point. Hebrews 10:36 says: "For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised." Simply "doing" the will of God is already a struggle that demands endurance. That is why the verse just before it, verse 35, gives this exhortation: "Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward."

The presence of this kind of resistance is not automatically proof that we are on the right path. Sometimes difficulty arises simply because of our own immaturity or a wrong approach. But it is also true that when we truly obey and carry out what God desires, spiritual resistance often follows. That is precisely why we must watch and pray all the more, and discern carefully, so that we are not deceived by these things or defeated by them. When doubt comes, do the very thing you are doubting all the more. Do not throw away your confidence. Do not act according to your own heart. Jeremiah 17:9 says this: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"

Therefore, do the opposite of what your human heart and human reasoning want to do.

But if we are not to live according to our own hearts, then what gives us the strength to live this way? The basis is not found within ourselves. It is because Jesus is our strength and our power, and the foundation of everything. We are able to go against our own hearts not because our willpower is strong, but because Christ, who went against his own will before us and carried the cross, is alive within us.

When we do this, we will be able to carry through fully the work God has entrusted to us, and in the end we will share joy with God, and rejoice together with him. Hebrews 10:37 says, "For yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay." This season of endurance we are walking through is not forever. Trials like these will keep coming to us throughout our lives, without end — but the one who gives us victory over them stays with us just as endlessly. That is why verses 38–39 say this:

38 But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Not shrinking back, but being people whose faith leads to the saving of the soul — I pray, in the name of the Lord, that every one of us would be victorious to the very end.