The Changing of the Guard

 

Eagles Over America

August 2023 Edition 

The Changing of the Guard

By Pamela Gudgeon

I missed something.  The Lord spoke to me from the depth of my soul. This morning in prayer, the Lord Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, reached into my depth and brought out something that was buried so deep in me which I found difficult to accept.  I tried to deny it, but I couldn't.  He said "You think I am tricking you." I had an initial reaction of "oh no, Lord,....." I didn't get to finish that statement. I sat in quiet dismay.

I had lost my way.  As I thought back through the many years of promised servanthood for the Lord, I realized that what seemed to be a failure in service to God and His people was really a stepping stone to my future.  Every perceived failure had brought me to a low place of a faithless blundersome depression as I would state to myself, "Well, that's not how that was supposed to happen!"  I then would start guarding my heart to protect myself from the pain of perceived yet personal rejection.  As it turned out, I was guarding my heart in a wrong way. 

Ashamedly, through these years I sat in my quandary wondering if the Lord was hoodwinking me as to my giftings and purpose in Him and how He wanted to use me for His kingdom.  My faith was wanning. This day I have received from the Lord a new, fresh Word that has given me new, fresh hope.  

He said, "When you are able to focus on the downtrodden, broken people and take up their burdens, then you will be ready for the calling I have stored up for your life." 

Ministry is not what I have been given from God to give out to His people as much as it is what I give out to His people to meet their needs which God ordains in His timing. In other words, God's people and their needs are the first focus and not what I have to offer His people.

I remember I heard a speaker in the past say that the Lord asked her to take all the grocery shopping carts back that people had left amiss in the parking area. She complained, but did it.  As she spoke about it, truthfully, it seemed a little trivial at first.  However, once you are honest with God and yourself, you can see the value in cleaning up someone's mess, even when you didn't make that mess.  

How would our culture be today if we all learned this simple little lesson when we were 6 or 7 years old?  Be honest with yourself and with God.  Jesus is the great teacher on this issue; He cleaned up our messes so we can be heirs in the Kingdom of God and so we can help clean up other people's messes.

So, my issue could have been resolved according to Psalm 119:28 (KJV) as it reads, "My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word".  

However, the (NIV Ps. 119: 28f) reads this way, "My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word. Keep me from deceitful ways; be gracious to me and teach me your law. I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I have set my heart on your laws."

We can get a bit dismayed in service to God and His people, but we are to rise above perceived defeat with right thinking.  That little bad seed that was in me could have grown and caused me great turmoil if the Lord hadn't healed me and changed my thinking.  I turned my heart over to the Lord concerning this wrong thought.  I have allowed the Guard (Jesus) to take control of my heart, where my understanding of Him and His word lives.

This article entitled, "The Changing of the Guard" is not referring to a literal duty or shift change of fresh and rested soldiers, but the figurative change of soldiers ' hearts living in the fresh and rested kingdom of heaven with His resurrection power here on earth.  These Christian soldiers have Christ inside them and should daily test themselves to seek the changes from mere humanity to God-like humanity. 

2 Corinthians 13:5-8 reads, "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?  6 But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates. 7 Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates. 8 For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth".

Adam Clarke's Commentary on 2 Corinthians 13:5 employs a metaphor and it reads like this: 

Try yourselves; pierce your hearts; try yourselves by what I have written, and see whether you retain the true faith of the gospel.  Put yourselves to the test, as you would try gold or silver suspected of adulteration.  No more take that for gospel which is not so than you would take adulterated money for sterling coin.  This is a metaphor taken from testing or assaying adulterated metals.

Are you not full of wisdom and understanding?  And is it not as easy to find out a spurious faith as it is to detect a base coin?  There is an assay and touchstone for both.  Does Jesus Christ dwell in you?  You have His Spirit, His power, His mind, if you are Christians; and the Spirit of Christ bears witness with your spirit that you are the children of God.  And this is the case except ye be reprobates; base counterfeit coin; mongrel Christians.

This change should be a constant, daily duty with the Lord Jesus guarding our hearts instead of our imperfect, tired way of guarding our own heart.

What kind of world would we live in now if all of God's people said this when they awoke every morning?   

Ps. 139:23-24 (KJV)

"Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting."