Tip Of The Spear

This is the Truth Network. I was all by myself and felt there was no one but me insight literally no one at all to help me. Now I want you to think about that that description when it comes to your family, your family, this is your family.

Is there anyone else who can or will step up? Actually that primary role belongs to you as a mother, as a father. This is God's plan for the protection of your family.

In this podcast, we talk about God's supernatural outcomes, divine interventions, the way God moves in our lives for the miraculous and the out of the ordinary. And the experience that I'm describing to you actually occurred in a place that is really known historically for a sense of oppression. It's unusual poverty. The people struggle in all kinds of ways. And we know just from studying the history of such areas that it usually connects to the choices that have been made by the people occupying that area. Literally the culture, you might say, as the choices are made and there is a choice made to choose sin, it affects the way that the enemy has access to that area. Really to recalculate so in many ways, again, the door is open to the oppressor through the choices that have been made by the people in that area.

Our title today is the tip of the spear. And specifically this context I'm referring to is the spiritual impact that Satan attempts to have to accomplish his plan to stop you or discourage or thwart you in any way, certainly through your family. And for me, listen, this experience that I'm describing to you, I was unprepared, completely unsuspecting.

I'd never known anything like this. And actually that is a description, a great description of the way demonic oppression occurs really on any level. And you know, I just, I think of this experience that I had years ago when I was just really learning about spiritual warfare and the things that the enemy does to trip up and to discourage God's people. And as I was in that environment, I experienced something that was physical and it was debilitating. Not only, uh, not only was I lightheaded, but I was really completely incapacitated. So since I was unsuspecting, untrained, unaware, not even thinking well, because I've never experienced anything like that before, I was completely vulnerable.

I think that would be an accurate word. And so unsuspecting, unprepared, just nothing ever like this before. And so what happens is, and there's a lot of people who are, and so what happens is, and there is, um, so much scripture to support this, this thought, basically the spirits are too strong for you. The spirits that are entrenched in that area or in that situation are in that project.

They're just too strong for you. One verse that comes to mind is second Samuel 22 verse 18. But there are many, there is a, there's a consistent thread of this kind of, um, the Lord letting his people know that this is something from the enemy and it's not from him.

Therefore we are to resist it. So back to what I was saying about this experience, it completely, completely laid me out. I mean, figuratively, literally in every way I couldn't function.

And so I just laid down on the ground straight out right where I was and in my mind just basically waited for someone to come help, you know, hoping it would be someone friendly obviously. But you know, as time went by, it was so obvious to me that I was in a war. I was in a battle and whether anyone came to help me or not was really up to me to discern what was happening, to recognize it for what it was and that it was not of God or from God. It was not a natural thing, not really even a medical thing.

This was a contest that the enemy was attempting to wage against me physically. Well, we know that our, our contest and our opposition is not with flesh and blood, right? So we know that this is something coming from the spirit realm is something engineered by Satan. And so as you, as I realized what was happening and really, you know, it's sort of like anything else in life. The first time you encounter it, you may not know what to do, but the spirit of God will tell you, he will instruct you.

And he did that day. He came to me before any human being came and basically laid out for me what was happening, what was going on in my physical body in response to what was taking place from the outside. And that being from a spiritual opposition standpoint. So listen, the Lord just really walked me through that thing. And he told me things like how to breathe. And he told me to resist the fear of that vulnerable place that I was in literally literally completely helpless. That is not an exaggeration. And in the, in the setting, it was an extremely warm day.

The sun was high overhead. So that discomfort did not help. And everything that went with that, God told me, he instructed me, he inspired me exactly what to say, allowed to resist the enemy. And as I followed his lead and did, as he said, I began to come out of that experience and slowly but surely and over the period of about probably 20 to 30 minutes, I made my way, pulled myself back up on my feet and struggled to get to the inside of the nearest building and to sit on the nearest and most available chair just to continue resisting that force. Once I knew what it was and that it was not something natural, that it was something that the enemy had sent, I knew to trust God. And I knew that he would walk me through it. That doesn't mean that I didn't have to resist fear.

I did. I did have to resist fear probably more than anything else, probably the strongest symptom. Anytime the enemy comes to steal from you in any way to diminish you in any way is a certain amount of fear. And so in that process, I learned firsthand not only how to trust God through that experience, but I came to realize and he opened my understanding that when you are, keep in mind our topic today is the tip of the spear. When you are endeavoring to do anything for the Lord, whenever you have decided to submit your life to him, and whenever you are aggressively intentionally going that way, you're going to encounter opposition, not always something this dramatic or traumatic, but then, uh, we can always be prepared. That was the greatest lesson I came away with not only the how to, but understand who your enemy is. He is a, he is a lion is prowling about seeking for someone to destroy someone to hurt someone to steal from. So he is prowling about.

Okay. Our posture must be to be alert and to be aware that yes, we are protected by our Lord and savior and by the blood that he shed at Calvary. But that does not mean that we will not encounter the enemy head on sometimes in more demonstrative, expressive ways than others. So let me just say this, a natural, I think real, real natural and logical sort of a rational response would be, well, this was a medical situation, you know, a fainting kind of, uh, experience. And so there is a diagnosis, I guess that you could pull out of the air there.

And maybe sometimes that would be involved in this case. That was not the case. There was nothing leading up to this experience. And when it was over, there was nothing after there was a period at the end. And I submit to you that the reason the period came, the period at the end of this experience, like the period at the end of a sentence was the resistance, the, the deliberate, very conscious, very scriptural response to the enemy's attempt to steal from me and to harm in any way. So we're looking at this expression in the context of God's people being this expression, the tip of the spear. And in anything specifically the culture know this, we as God's people, we are literally the tip of the spear. Um, just to give you some background and some context here for what that actually means, where this expression comes from. I have an acquaintance who specializes in military history and this is his response to my question. What does the tip of the spear mean to you?

His response. This is a slogan or motto that is used by a unit deemed to be the sharpest part of a larger unit. The whole spear, he goes on to say, including the shaft represents the total unit. The sharpest part of a spear, this unit is at the top and thus leads the way for the rest. The point or the tip of the spear is sharp so that it can pierce the target and open the way for the rest of the spear. So the best trained elite unit task with leading the way is called the tip of the spear. It is also a morale building slogan in private industry.

So there you have like a generic expression and there you have something that we might use to encourage a group of people on any level. The tip of the spear represents the sharpest part of the unit. The part that is best trained, most likely to penetrate and to accomplish the mission of piercing the target and opening the way for the rest of the unit, those who are to follow. I think of the ministry of the forerunner. So I think of also the ministry of the fivefold gifts to the church, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists. These are the tip of the spear, but I'm suggesting to you that you need to be prepared to be part of that elite unit to be at the tip of the spear.

Because if God calls you, if you have a mission, if you are believing God to use you, whether it's at the family level, at the level of your congregation to do something and accomplish exploits for him, be prepared to do the forerunning work because somebody has to. Another example, actually another definition I found, what is the tip of the spear? Traditionally, the term is used by military strategists, tacticians, and historians to describe the sudden and overwhelming use of combat force to pierce an enemy's first line of defense. It's the first and most meaningful action in an offensive.

In the business world, executives use it to describe trailblazing businesses and new endeavors. So if you look at the experience I've described to you, my experience that day as I lay incapacitated on the ground, there was a sudden need, an overwhelming need to combat the enemy. And that day I was not just the first line of defense, I was the only line of defense. In other words, if the spirit of God did not rise up on the inside of me, I don't know when someone would have come. And so there you could say that the enemy could really add fear to fear and really find a way to further address some kind of physical debilitation, whatever. At the very least, basically saying to you and to me, listen, this is going to happen every time you launch out to do something for the Lord.

So you just better not do that, okay? Well, I didn't fall for that. And I'm telling you, don't fall for that, because we all are called of God in that sense. We're sort of a volunteer, you know, we step up.

The Lord said he looked for someone to stand in the gap and make up the way. There's actually a quote from Colonel Jimmy Doolittle from the World War II era. He made this statement, nothing is stronger than the heart of a volunteer. Nothing is stronger than the heart of a volunteer. So concerning the culture today, which, listen, it's horrendous on every level and increasing that way, increasing that way.

Some nations more than others, some communities more than others. What is God saying? He's saying, I am present to heal this thing. I am present to heal this thing. I want to heal this thing.

I want to penetrate this attack. And I want my people to be willing to be the agent of healing, to be the tip of the spear. After all, if he sends us out to represent him this way and to make known the truth about his love, which that is our number one mission, right? Would he not train us as to the wiles of the enemy? Would he not warn us? Would he not prepare and protect us for what is ahead?

Of course. And he always does just like he did for me that day. So consider your role in this capacity as the tip of the spear. God is saying to the culture and to the world, I am present to heal this thing, no matter how far south it's gone, no matter how horrendous, no matter how much human trafficking, no matter how many children are being tormented beyond anything we could ever have thought possible, beyond the tyrants' swift move to harass and to torment the people under the jurisdiction of his rule, his or her rule. God is saying, I want to heal this thing.

I want to recover all. I need all my people ready to be the volunteers with a heart that says, yes, choose me, choose me, Lord. And we, we look and we realize how do we know God wants to heal this thing because he's doing everything in his power to get our attention. He's showing us signs on every side. For example, in our last episode, we looked at the sign that we see in the running of the Kentucky Derby, a race where a horse unlikely to win not only one, but one against all odds. There's so much to that story. If you haven't checked that yet, go to the show notes of our last episode.

You'll find plenty of information there. That's just one sign. There are others, and God is speaking to hearts. What better sign than that to say, listen, I'm ready. I'm ready to shake the heavens and shake the earth. And I intend to move by my spirit.

And I need you to be ready and willing to move with me. And right here, I can just make a serious point about the failure in some places of the church to equip the people with this information. Uh, honestly, sometimes the message is more watered down than we can ever consider something like a healthy diet to equip us for what God is saying at this point. At this point in the end times, we are bumping up against the very end of the last days, the last of the last days.

Therefore we know that the battle is intense, but also the light is getting brighter and brighter. So in the church, you want to stay away from the mentality that says, well, no one told me, well, I didn't know. Listen, you've got the Holy ghost, right? You've got the Holy spirit leading and guiding, directing, and giving you the benefit of all truth. But you have to be willing to hear. You have to have ears to hear and you have to have an eager heart.

You have to have the heart of the volunteer. You have to be Lord here in my sin me, you have to be the one that answers that call to stand in the gap and make up the hedge because another word, another term that you want to think about is the word vortex. The Lord spoke this to me in my prayer time the other day and I looked to see the meaning of the word. This is it, something that resembles a whirlwind. And in a sense, when a whirlwind begins to blow, it has a draw.

It has a sucking capacity. So it can like reach out and bring whatever is on the periphery in and in a negative way, definitely that is happening because evil begets evil and things that are vulnerable that make themselves vulnerable to evil who opened the door to that. They can be a subject to being drawn in to the vortex of evil. But I'm saying this from the standpoint of the spirit of God and the moving of the spirit of God, like a vortex that that whirlwind of God's goodness, the message of his love, the experience of the, of those of us sharing this message, telling our story and making testimony of what God has done in our life, the supernatural powerful interventions of God.

And that is the more powerful whirlwind, the more powerful whirlpool drawing us in more and more to God's love and his goodness. Recently, during a prayer time in our ministry, we set apart a day a week just to intercede for families. And without question, the families that are a part of the partnership and the friends and those who have been joined to our ministry, without a doubt, this time, this attack on families is unprecedented. It is cruel.

It is, um, deceptive. It is so egregious as you can't even imagine the things that are happening to families who are the express image of God's goodness in their community and have laid down their lives in so many ways. The enemy has just come to attack those families. And so our family, our, um, yeah, well the family of our ministry stands to intercede for these families. And so what we do there, we resist the enemy and we insist that he leave. We break the hold of the enemy against those family members. We break off the influence that the enemy Satan has been able to engineer. Remembering now he has a hellish vortex, a hellish vortex, pulling things in, sucking things in for destruction.

Well, we take authority over that and I'll bet if you have any experience, um, pressing into the kingdom of God, you know exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to these elements affecting your family. And so listen, you be bold and you be strong and don't you hesitate. And one more thing, and I'll just throw this in, you have to get out in front of a thing like this. You can't lag back and wait a day or two or three or four or a month or a year.

You cannot wait. Once the enemy finds an entrance, you have to resist him. You have to resist him steadfast in the faith. Resist him by the word of the Lord. Use God's word. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Let him tell you what to say. He is faithful to the faithful man.

He shows himself faithful. He will give you the words when you need it, but you have to be, you have to reverse engineer this thing sometime. Look at the where it got you last time when you just let it go.

Look at where it got you. Okay. Back up from how that situation turned up, turned out, go back to the way that it began and resolve in every situation going forth, no matter how strong you feel or don't feel, you get words and you say, as I did that day in the example, when the enemy came to just lay me out flat, you still have words. You have words and you say, no, no Satan. I resist you and I in cyst, take your hand off of me, off my life, off of my body. You flee this scene right now. I resist you and the Lord rebukes you.

Lord rebukes you. You see how when you're talking like that, when you're saying things like that, you can see how boldness begats more boldness, right? You are the tip of the spear.

You are qualified. You are engineered this way. From Genesis to revelation, we read about God's people and how he made us to be overcomers. He made us to win in this contest against the enemy. And so in every case, get out ahead of the enemy. Don't wait.

Don't wait another second. Stop right then and speak to the enemy. Use your words. Use God's word.

Use your faith. Father, we're looking at this right now and the understanding that we have from the way that you are pouring out your spirit and all of the earth. It is time for the greatest visitation of almighty God ever known or seen or recorded in our history. Therefore, we volunteer. We say, yes, Lord, send us. We are not afraid. We have power over the enemy. And that power is the name and the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary.

And he has purchased the victory. Therefore, we follow the commander in chief and we volunteer to be your tip of the spear. We thank you, God. We thank you, God. We say that your kingdom comes and your will is done in the earth, just like it is in heaven.

Amen. And so in closing today, remember how in the same way that I was the only one, there was no one coming to help me. And the dependence on the Lord was completely absolute. Compare that same example to your family and the reality that you are the only one. If you are the only one, if no one else comes to help, you and the Lord are enough.

You are the tip of the spear in this atmosphere, in this environment called your home. The Lord will instruct you. He'll show you exactly what to do.

You can trust him and know that he will lead you out of that darkness and away from the enemy's devices. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support this podcast, please share it with others. Post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. Don't forget to check out the show notes or visit acleartrumpet.org where you can subscribe to Shirley's email list. Download the ministry app and purchase your very own copy of Shirley's 365-day devotional, Running with Horses. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.