Flash 22: Defend and Extend

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Greetings dear reader, 

As we progress with the year 2025, here are a few thoughts for our consideration. 

One of the inescapable realities of Christian life is that of warfare. Having been born again, we enjoy peace with God but we automatically attract enmity from the devil. He is constantly stalking and plotting against us. Like a master predator, he is always studying and marking us his targets, looking for vulnerable points through which to launch his attacks. His mission? To steal, kill and destroy. Knowing that, we cannot afford to be casual in our approach to his attacks. Rather, we need to gird up our minds and our spirits, always ready to fight back, in what the bible calls the good fight of faith. We need to settle it in our minds that we will not take the fight sitting down in our comfort zones, but that we will fight tooth and nail until we have the victory. Our mission? To possess, defend and extend. Like Jephthah, let we seek to be intentional in possessing that which God has given to us.

Judges 11:24
New International Version
24 Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you? Likewise, whatever the Lord our God has given us, we will possess.

In addition to possessing, we ought also to defend. Carefully take stock of the things that God has given you. Is it a family, a business, property, a ministry, a talent, a job? Whatever it is, know for a surety that the enemy would love to have you lose these things to him. He will try to steal what God has given you and therefore you must be intentional about defending. Defend your relationship with God and the faith you have in Him. Defend the blessings that God has released into your life. Defend the calling that God has placed upon your life. Defend the kingdom of God. Child of God, this 2025, be intentional about defending the ground God has put in your possession.

Finally, extend. One of the mandates placed upon every true child of God is that of extending the kingdom of God wherever God places us. The enemy is constantly extending his ground, and we cannot be slack in the same. We ought to be more aggressive in extending the ground God has given us. Let us extend the kingdom of God in our families and homes, in our workplaces, in our friend groups etc. Wherever God has placed us, let this mind be in us: how can I extend the kingdom of God? Let us seek God for wisdom and knowledge on how to extend his kingdom and all that it represents. Then, having sought him, let us then apply his wisdom and enlarge. We ought to make up our minds that this year we will extend our tent stakes to the east and to the west… that we will enlarge our tent pegs because in us is the desire to extend the frontiers of the kingdom of God. That our impact will be felt in the places where God has placed us because we will be enlarging. Shalom brethren.

Isaiah 54:3-4
3."Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.
4.For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.

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