VICTORY or DOMINION

We have been considering spiritual warfare, and the keys to victory in our constant battles with our enemy Satan. His strategy is to “wear down the saints”, and we must find an effective way to prevent this. As a follow up to our article on the keys to victory, let’s look again to the story of King Jehoshaphat from (2 Chr 20:22-30).

First let’s compare the word “victory” with the word “dominion” to see the difference in the two. Victory means to fight a battle and win,---which is good! Dominion, on the other hand, is a position of supreme authority, where our enemies are afraid to attack us,---which is better! Paul tells us that the OT can serve as our example for instruction purposes (1 Cor 10:1-11), so let us look more closely at verses 27-30 to find out what we can about the position of dominion over their enemies, that they came into according to verse 30.

First we notice that they returned “with joy, for the Lord had made them rejoice over their enemies”. Another OT scripture tells us that the joy of the Lord is our strength, but we must realize that “joy” in the Lord is not the same thing as a “happy, happy” feeling, that we see portrayed in some Charismatic circles! Real joy in centered in Jesus, while the other is centered in what makes us “feel good”!

Next we see that they went into the house of the Lord with their musical instruments, to rejoice together, and give thanks to the Lord for His great victory that day that He had won for them over their enemies. This is very important to see that He gets the credit for the battles that He wins for us! It is very hard not to take some of the credit for ourselves, after a victory has been won. Pride is a very subtle thing, and can show up even in the telling of our victory to our friends

The end result was that their enemies feared them and they had peace, and “the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet, for his God gave him rest all around.” This is surely the result that we should all be striving to attain, and is there for us in the perfect will of God. He has made full provision through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus so that we can be “more than conquerors through Him”. Why settle for anything less? But we definitely have a part to play, because He didn’t create us as robots. We have a free will which must come into alignment with His perfect will before we can expect to see these results!

Sincerely submitted

Gramp