“No weapon formed against you shall prosper, And every tongue which rises against you in judgment You shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, And their righteousness is from Me, Says the Lord.” (Isaiah 54:17, NKJV)
Yes, you did read that correctly. NO weapon will succeed against us… ever! Too often we stop after the first 7 words. But there are words of direction, identification, etc. that we miss by not reading the entire verse.
As wonderful as the first 7 words are, especially when we feel we are or are on the verge of being defeated, the scripture goes far deeper. The rest of the verse tells us that we shall condemn tongues that rise against us. It gives us our foundation when we see that our heritage is based in our standing as the Lord’s servants. We also are affirmed in righteousness when the Lord states that it comes from Him. Those are strong words on our behalf. Do we stand on them?
However, no matter what the gifts and promises from the Lord are – we have to appropriate them. If all they are is available but we don’t act, then we waste our inheritance as well as our equipping. I believe that we are defeated far too often from a lack of action than from the wrong action. Remember the first verse of this old hymn? If we ‘trust and obey’ …
“When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will, He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
Trust and obey are action words. They don’t just sit in our minds, they are to be activated … especially when we are under attack. You say you don’t know what you should do? Look at this verse again – ‘while we do His good will’. If you feel you don’t know what this is then go to His word – there are examples of what we can do. Sometimes this is trusting ourselves, that we will walk with the Lord and He will show us. And if we do the wrong thing? He will still be with us and show us how to redeem the situation.
When we start from the understanding that no weapon will succeed against us… then we can stand. We have to activate, through trust and obedience, what is already prepared for us to overcome and prosper.
