Paul, as he finished his letter to the Ephesians, told them to put on the full armor, and then he explained
“Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”
Ephesians 6: 13
This powerful verse shares a key to victory: “having done everything, to stand.” How often do we face a situation and do everything we know to do, but the victory fails to manifest? What do we do then? Well, Paul explained that we must simply stand. But what does it mean to stand?
Let’s start by understanding a foundational truth as Smith Wigglesworth explained-
“The divine plan is so much greater than all human thought. When He can only have us in hand, when we are willing to yield to His sovereign will, when we have no reserve, how wonderful God is, always willing to open the door till our whole life is filled with the fragrance of Heaven.”
If we understand that He has a perfect will and plan for our lives and if we simply trust and receive it from Him, we will find we always gain victory. We live in a world that is all about taking care of ourselves in which we are taught early to trust no one. It is hard for us to simply let go and trust the Lord. We tend to think and believe we know what is best for ourselves and struggle to let go.
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.”
Hebrews 10: 23
What He promises, He is faithful to fulfill.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from Heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
Isaiah 55: 9-11
The Word always works and produces the purpose of the Father. It starts with the purpose and desire of the Father, and it is brought forth through His Words. The Father doesn’t simply speak words, and some random series of accidents produce something. Smith said-
“It is the breath of God. It is the Word of the Spirit. It is the revelation of the Most High. God wants to show you to sweep everything else, and dare to believe that Word. If you allow anything to come in between you and that Word, it will poison your whole system, and you have no hope.”
We look at all the great heroes of faith in the Old Testament and all the great things they did, but none compared to Jesus. Why, because Jesus had life! John opens his Gospel explaining…
“All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.”
John 1: 3, 4
If we hang our hat on these verses and let the Spirit speak, we see that we need His Word, which is living and produces. We can’t make our stand on our dreams or our wants or our desires and expect results. We can labor hard and long-standing trying to bring our desires into reality and fail. Our stand must be on His living Word. No wonder Smith said-
“It is the Word of life. It is the breath of Heaven. It is God and His breath of quickening power by which your very life is changed, and you begin to bear the image of the Heavenly.”
They would say of Jesus that He spoke like no one else, and Hie disciples said that He had the Words of life. If you heard Jesus speak, there was something about the way He spoke and His Words. Jesus, when He prayed, always got the answer because His mouth released living Words that came forth from the Father by the Holy Spirit.
“For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.”
1 Corinthians 2: 11-12
The Holy Spirit takes the deep things of the Father and imparts them to our spirit, so that we might know all that He has for us. He takes of the treasury of Heaven and pours forth into us that we might receive His abundant blessing freely. Smith explained-
“If you will dare to trust Me and not doubt, I will abundantly satisfy you from the treasure house of the Most High.”
He has provision for everything we need and for everything we face on this earth. David explained-
“Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37: 4
This is a favorite verse of almost every Christian, yet let’s look at it closer. Most see in this verse the golden ticket to obtain what we want. The first step is to “delight,” or in Hebrew “anag,” and it means to soft, to take exquisite delight, to make merry, to make happy. This delight is not in ourselves but in Him. We are to be soft towards Him and seek to bring Him joy by our abundant delight in Him. The next part is “desire” or the Hebrew word, “mishalah,” or the petition, desire, or request. Our delight must be forged out of our Secret Place dwelling and delighting our heart in Him. What we desire should bring the Father delight; if we come to know the Father, then He has perfect desires for us. So, if we receive His desire and delight in Him fully, we come into alignment with Him and the place where we can receive. We know His will and His desires through His Word. Smith explained-
These grand truths of the Word of God must be your testimony, must be your life, must be your pattern. You must be in the Word; in fact, you are of the Word. God says to you by the Spirit that “you are an epistle of Christ” (2 Cor. 3:3).
If we go back to standing, the Greek word used for “stand” in Ephesians chapter six is “histemi” and it means: to place, be set, to make a stand in the presence of others, make a stand before judges, to make firm, to establish a thing, the foundation of a building, to enforce.
Smith said-
Dare you take your inheritance from God? Dare you believe God? Dare you stand on the record of His Word? What is the record? If you will believe, you will see the glory of God. You will be sifted as wheat. You will be tested as though some strange thing tried you. You will be put in places where you will have to put your whole trust in God.
Do we trust His Word in the midst of the trial and make our stand on the report of the Word? Smith added-
The truths you stand for, you are tried for.
Here we must choose His Word and to walk by faith and not to feel. This comes by being made in the Secret Place of His Presence. Our stand must start in the Secret Place before the High Court of Heaven and in our heart so that then we can stand before our flesh, the world and the devil.
“This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we the requests which we have asked from Him.”
1 John 5: 14-15
If we have that “desire” or request that aligns with His heart, then we know He hears us; if He hears, we have the answer. But now, we must hold fast and make our stand until the promise manifests fully on the earth. But we must have a heart that fully receives the Living Word. Smith explained-
So we must clearly understand that the Word of God can never come forth with all its primary purposes unless our ground is right. But God will help us, I believe, to see that He can put the ground in perfect order as it is left in His hands.
